Review: Once Upon a Broken Heart

Once Upon a Broken Heart by Stephanie Garber
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I felt that Stephanie Garber's debut series, Caraval, had diminishing returns over time, with each book being progressively less enjoyable for me...but this time, with a new spinoff series beginning, I think Garber's really found her footing a lot more easily. While this book does require you to have read the complete trilogy from before - the reappearance of old protags Scarlett and Tella is pretty clearly marked as post-Finale and very spoilery - this story, for me, is what finally makes me see just how much Garber deserves all the hype she gets. Though the whole Fates system is still a bit poorly detailed for me, the overarching story, with its curses and twists aplenty and some downright beautiful imagery (I'm especially looking at Jacks's introduction, with him eating a white apple with blood red juice), is the stuff of Legend, far more so than the Caraval trilogy ever was. So I'm looking forward a lot more to the next book from Garber than I ever have before, and that's saying something...

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Review: Pahua and the Soul Stealer

Pahua and the Soul Stealer by Lori M. Lee
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I somehow missed this one for a few months after it first came out - in part because the usual library through which I order Rick Riordan Presents books never did get it, but at least I had a backup. So here it is, a new addition to the lineup rooted in the legends and culture of the Hmong people - and I'm happy to say that one of my littlest cousins, who is Hmong, will finally be able to see a hero just like her in Pahua. A smart cookie with more than a bit of the smart aleck wit that populates every book Riordan either writes himself or curates from others, a pretty strong interest in Star Wars (you know you're in for fun times when even the book's intro outright compares the villain's aesthetic to that of Kylo Ren), and of course an even more smartass animal companion, aptly named for the Hmong word for cat, Miv. There's no word yet on any sequels that I can see, but not unlike a few others in the Rick Riordan Presents lineup that similarly had no follow-ups announced at first (most notably Dragon Pearl and Tristan Strong), I think I smell one coming sooner rather than later...

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Spider-Man: No Way Home: NO. SPOILERS.

***WELL, FOR SURE SPOILERS FOR FAR FROM HOME AND A FEW FOR INFINITY WAR AND ENDGAME. YOU'VE BEEN WARNED.***

It's finally here, the Marvel event we've most been waiting for this chaotic calendar year. Tom Holland back in the Spidey-suit after Far From Home upended him into the same not-so-secret nature of identity as pretty much every other Marvel Cinematic Universe version of our classic heroes. Thanks, Mysterio. And thanks, J. Jonah Jameson, played once again by J.K. Simmons - and, in this latest movie, graduating from being a mere Alex-Jones-type nuisance to running his own Fox-News-type operation of big bullshit. Naturally, it's bad enough for Peter Parker trying to live with too much polarizing infamy for his own good when he's just trying to get into college, but as the lives of his friends and family become impacted, who better to turn to than our favorite Strange sorcerer (not Supreme, though; Wong having taken that post "on a technicality" due to Strange having been one of the victims of Thanos' snap, which I still refuse to call the bloody "Blip" to this day) in his nice little townhouse of a Sanctum Sanctorum?

But.

As OP as Strange so often is these days, he's no match for the Peter Parker Prattle, ruining the spell to wipe literally everyone's memories of Peter due to Peter fretting about the implications of losing his place in the memories of his loved ones.

Lost in the multiverse, and lost in mind, we shall soon be.

With No Way Home.

Where's Ned and MJ when you need them for a snuggle puddle?

I shall spoil nothing of the movie in this review, but that means it'll have to be kept short by design - not unlike, say, my review of Endgame a couple years back. 

Review: Our Violent Ends

Our Violent Ends by Chloe Gong
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"without the monster, there is no madness. without the madness, he goes out of business." 

These Violent Delights 

"nothing was ever as simple as 'my people' or 'your people...'" 

Our Violent Ends 

Early this year, These Violent Delights became another one of those books that I wish I could've actually read in its debut year, and now the series comes to another duology conclusion for the YA list. Although it's a bit of a stretch to call this one YA since the protagonists, Roma and Juliette, would be in college if they were in a modern-day setting. But no, Chloe Gong wraps up their side of the story in this exploration of an alternate 1920s Shanghai, steeped in real-life historical upheaval but with a few salient details adjusted for artistic license as needed. And I feel like Gong took a bit of inspiration from R.F. Kuang's ending of The Burning God too, because the story keeps the action going to the very, very bitter and tragic end...and let's be real, she pulls a bit of inspiration from another very infamous YA series finale, which I won't reveal here. But given the very source material inspiration, it shouldn't be hard to figure out...and hell, the door's still open to further exploration of this alternate Shanghai. Who knows?

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Review: Cytonic

Cytonic by Brandon Sanderson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It's been a minute since Sanderson put out a book in this current YA sci-fi series - two years, in fact - and it's pretty clear that he's used that time to really work hard on the material we got in this here Book 3. It feels so different from the previous books in this series for sure, miles away from the territory of Book 1 (with its extremely Ender's Game-esque storyline) and Book 2 with its laser-focus on Spensa and M-Bot and its blazing fast action. This time, Sanderson gets into some much more cerebral territory, taking the reader into some truly unexpected realms that question everything about what it means to be sentient. It's truly out of this universe, much more so than out of this world, and now we're getting some real promise for what comes next in the upcoming fourth (and final?) book, Defiant. (Nobody tell Veronica Roth that title is taken, lol.)

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Review: Gilded

Gilded by Marissa Meyer
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I dunno about you, but I'm sad to say that Marissa Meyer, in recent years, seems to have been losing her touch. Don't get me wrong, this latest book of hers, a welcome return to her fantasy and fairytale roots (after her strange turn toward contemporary-with-a-touch-of-magic in last year's Instant Karma), is as compulsively readable as ever - and, not unlike years past with the likes of Winter or Renegades, I spent a lot of time reading it on Thanksgiving morning while waiting for the real festivities to come. But this time, Meyer also shies away from her sci-fi roots in favor of a darker, grimmer (pun not intended) retelling, this time of Rumplestiltskin, though with the Erlking as the main villain trapping Serilda and the mysterious Gild. And while it's nice to see Meyer try something different, it's also a bit dismaying that she isn't doing it as a one-shot the way she did with Heartless in 2016 - no, this time, it's the start of yet another YA duology. (Seriously, I will never understand why the duology trend is even a thing.) Also, there's the fact that the last time I read a story with the Goblin King in it, it was S. Jae-Jones' Wintersong duology, with an increasingly gossamer-thin plot over time in favor of dreamy prose. Meyer isn't nearly as dreamlike or surreal in her story, but unfortunately, this book is far too long to have such little plot, and I'm pretty sure, looking at the list of reviews here, I'm not the only one who thinks this about Gilded. Such a shame, but hopefully the conclusion to this two-parter will prove that this one was really just little more than Prolonged Prologue.

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Review: Daughter of the Deep

Daughter of the Deep by Rick Riordan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Rick Riordan may have taken a bit of a break from the world of Camp Half-Blood (though he'll be back with Mark Oshiro on the long awaited Nico di Angelo and Will Solace spinoff, of course), but now it looks like he's gone off and started a whole new series that works pretty well in the style to which his fans have grown accustomed. This time, it's also got its roots in the old "fantasy/fairytale retelling" trend that was so big about 5-10 years ago, but with a very unique twist - a modern-day continuation of Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, with our protagonist Ana being a distant descendant of Prince Dakkar, aka Captain Nemo. So in this universe, while Verne's book (and its sequel, The Mysterious Island) were published for real, they were based on much more real events than the world knew. And now, in the present day, there are still those who want to steal Captain Nemo's legacy for themselves - namely, the Land Institute, named of course for Ned Land, and their own deadly attack sub, the Arronax. Though a little too herky-jerky in its pacing and occasionally predictable in its plotting (the big twist is nothing new to longtime Riordan fans, let's be real), this book is also pretty timely with its social commentary (particularly re: colonialism, and you can thank Roshani Chokshi for that) and stays Riordan-style without relying too heavily on some of his usual (pop-culturally) humorous touches, indicating a certain evolution in his style. While there's been no sequel announced yet that I know of, I'd be willing to guarantee one will happen...and is it too much to hope that in the next one, Riordan includes some lines in the Maltese language after he referenced it in this book? This Maltese boy hopes not.

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Review: Firekeeper's Daughter

Firekeeper's Daughter by Angeline Boulley
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I'll admit, I made the mistake of thinking this one was a fantasy novel at first due in part to the style of its cover art (that the title is written in a near-identical font to the one used by Leigh Bardugo on Six of Crows, from the same publisher no less, doesn't help), as well as its title (to which I kept mentally adding "The" at the start when it's not actually there). But this Reese Witherspoon-approved YA thriller is a real curveball in a lot of ways. Not only is it pretty well-rooted in the author's background as an Ojibwe woman, not only does it deal very frankly with issues of drug dealing and abuse on the reservation and the ways in which main character Daunis, being mixed race, is truly torn between two worlds, but it's also very subtly set in the mid-2000s. While not the first recent YA contemporary to be set in that particular near-past period (Tahereh Mafi's set two novels there so far), Boulley is careful to not actually reveal this until Daunis finally says around page 250 or so that her senior year began in 2003. Until then, she lets certain subtext - such as the ways all the teenagers' cell phones still have minutes, and they text in the sort of shorthand that's long since gone extinct except for when my buddy Koda messages me - do all the heavy lifting. I'm glad this book is getting as much push as it has - my local library put it on a pretty prominent table in the front, which is where I found it - because it deserves it.

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Eternals: Ignore The Anti-Hype, Please.

**NO SPOILERS FOR ETERNALS, BUT SPOILERS FOR PREVIOUS MCU MOVIES APPEAR WITHIN. YOU'VE BEEN WARNED.**

For the third time this calendar year, Marvel gifts us with a long-delayed movie, and this time, it's rather unusual this time in that we also have the first officially "Rotten" MCU movie on Rotten Tomatoes, earning only 48% at the time of this writing. Well, I'm here to tell you that in a world where the likes of Thor: The Dark World exist, and where Amazing Spider-Man 2 is also rated "Rotten," such classification is seriously misleading about Marvel's latest. It ain't a perfect movie, but it keeps up pretty well with Marvel tradition - stunning visuals, all-star casting, a left-field choice of director previously known more for low-budget and/or indie fare (and while Chloé Zhao is a well-deserved Oscar winner now, it still feels like quite the leap from Nomadland to Eternals), and an increasing commitment to diversity of talent before and behind the camera.

Review: The Hellion

The Hellion by S.A. Hunt
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I do feel bad that S.A. Hunt's series seems to have stalled out due to the bugbears of low sales and difficulties in her life (she'll occasionally vent about those on Twitter), and even more so that it took me this long to finally read her third novel. That said, though, I did get the feeling that this one may have been affected by the troubles in Hunt's personal life, coming off a little wheel-spinny with an aimless narrative overall. But Hunt is still as dangerously gifted as ever with the thrills and chills, and around Halloween is the perfect time to have read this one. I do hope, though, that the publishers don't give up on her just yet. A fourth Malus Domestica book would be just what the doctor ordered, truly.

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Review: A Patriot's Tale

A Patriot's Tale by Nicole Pierman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Nicole Pierman gives us a new historical look at the Revolutionary War, one that naturally calls to mind a lot of previous fictional dramatizations on that segment of American history. Most notably, the Southern setting of The Patriot and the subtle machinations of Turn, with an engaging young woman protagonist who takes on a man's persona to finagle her way into the ranks of the army, the sort of Joan of Arc the Revolutionary War isn't widely known to have had (though if we did, I wouldn't be surprised if such a Joan were lost to all but the most hidden of histories.) Pierman's multilayered storytelling takes us on a years-long trip through the Revolution in the South in particular, a segment of the war often ignored in the popular consciousness, as well as showing the many dangerous ways Lily has to navigate the soldiers' world - and the numerous personal problems throughout the ranks, throwing out a lot of drama and dissension to keep the pages turning. Well, in the ebook ARC I got, more like swiping, but you get the picture.

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Review: Mouth Full of Ashes

Mouth Full of Ashes by Briana Morgan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

As a Bay Area boy, I unfortunately was never lucky enough to get to visit Santa Cruz. Except in movies like Us, and movies with fictional counterparts to NorCal's most famous beach town. Santa Carla in The Lost Boys, Sunnydale on Buffy...and now, with particular inspiration from the former, Briana Morgan's new novella and its setting of Neap Bay. Blessed with a beautiful cover art and a haunting story that packs a serious punch (and is as wonderfully queer-inclusive as any Morgan story), I have to say that its only real flaw is that the book is just too short. But it makes it easier to devour in...well, I wasn't fortunate enough to have time for a single sitting on this one, but I came close. Very close.

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Review: Ashfall Legacy

Ashfall Legacy by Pittacus Lore
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A lot of the reviews I see here seem more disappointed in the audio version of this book, so I'm glad I didn't go for that one. Pittacus Lore may be the most infamous ghostwriter in all the loopy-loo YA biz, but I'll be damned if he doesn't pen a good story, and this latest look at a decidedly different kind of alien space opera is no exception. Doing a damn finer job of exploring worlds beyond this than even I Am Number Four, and reminding me a little bit of Charlie Jane Anders' Victories Greater than Death in its gentle deconstruction of genre tropes (though admittedly far less exploratory of gender and sexuality, but hey, when protagonist Sydney is a fan of Octavia Butler, you know he's got good goddamn taste.) The frequent spins on a Superman-type mythos, as well as the unexpected strings of twist after twist, keep the story going at a pretty propulsive pace, and not unlike a lot of Lore's previous novels, it builds up to a very sudden cliffhanger to virtually guarantee a sequel. Oh, how I hope we get to see more Denzan misadventures soon...

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Review: The Bronzed Beasts

The Bronzed Beasts by Roshani Chokshi
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Since Roshani Chokshi isn't ending the Pandava series from Rick Riordan Presents with four books as was the original plan, this now marks the first time I'm completing one of her series, and it's a pretty wild ride all the way to the end in this one. Perhaps a little too wild, because then the ending feels surprisingly anticlimactic in a few ways. But given the ways the first two books ended, I'd say we who've stuck with this trilogy from beginning to end get the ending we want and deserve the most. And the cast of characters from all across the globe shines brighter here than ever before - I think Enrique's far and away my fave for sure, especially as a bi boy, and I'm even more glad that Chokshi goes out of her way to avoid certain stereotypes there. (Which I wish she could've done a bit better with when writing Zofia, whom I still feel is a little too reliant on autistic stereotypes, but I digress.) To this series, though, I now bid the ave atque vale it has merited after two-plus years.

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Review: Steelstriker

Steelstriker by Marie Lu
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Not unlike Warcross and Wildcard before it, Skyhunter and Steelstriker exist to prove that as much as I typically find something irksome about the trend of YA duologies that's gone on for years and years, Marie Lu is damn good at actually justifying the two-part story - and this one, a blistering anti-imperialist (and anti-conservative, like the nightmarish scene where the Karensa Federation's map now covers the whole land in red instead of the one free blue holdout of Mara) critique and world-class post-apocalyptic SFF thriller, loaded for bear with twists as the heroes and villains collide in their many-layered gambits. And, of course, for the first time since the original Legend trilogy, Lu goes back to giving us two excellent first-person POVs - Talin, forced into servitude at the hands of the Karensan premier's threats to kill her friends and family, and Red, wanting so much to save her but plagued with uncertainty and anxiety and depression. It's a genius feature on Lu's part to not give that negative inner voice of Red's a distinct formatting - it embeds itself much more thoroughly and insidiously into the narrative that way, as depression is wont to do. But this book concludes the duology with Lu's finest signature aplomb, and to this world I now bid ave atque vale while eagerly awaiting her next work, which Lu's been teasing lately with particularly great promise.

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Review: Empire of the Vampire

Empire of the Vampire by Jay Kristoff
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

There's a reason why Jay Kristoff's one of my faves, and it's because he's one of the most bloody rockstarinest writers in the biz. But you know what the bloody hell else he is? Like Pierce Brown, he is an Apex Asshole, capable of plundering the depths of his imagination and holding a mirror up to the world in the darkest of ways, and taking us readers on a long, perilous journey through a fantasy world where the sun won't rise and vampires rule.

Review: The Champion

The Champion by Taran Matharu
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Taran Matharu brings his second trilogy to a terrifying, bloodydamn fast-paced, unpredictable, thrilling close in The Champion, in which I'd have a very hard time believing that Matharu didn't read at least one of Matthew Reilly's Jack West Jr novels for inspiration for this one. HIstorical figures from all over the world, and their long-lost, long-storied tombs, play the most important part of all in Cade and company's quest to defeat the sinister Abbadon once and for all, even as this strange parallel world also fills with lost nukes from all across the 20th century and beyond. Weapons some see fit to use no matter the consequences. But Matharu, as always, doesn't let up for even a page, to the point where the only time you get to breathe again is when the acknowledgments come and you can finally bid the series ave atque vale...unless Matharu decides to go the route of the Summoner series with a prequel novel in the next year or so? Who bloody knows.

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Review: Bloodless

Bloodless by Douglas Preston
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

For the 20th Pendergast novel, Preston and Child bring things up to a level of quality I haven't seen from them in a few years - the best Pendergast novel since at least 2015, and certainly one of the best in the current era of Pendergast partnering with Agent Coldmoon. Though it does feel at times that the D.B. Cooper prologue is far less connected to the main plot in Savannah than it should be, leave it to Pendergast (after a fashion, including a trip up to the Mount Adams Wilderness region not far from my new PNW home) to piece together all the clues and come up with a truly terrifying twist or two as the story wraps up. Though of course it all ends with a couple of cliffhangers as far as ongoing storylines are concerned, but Bloodless is just another Pendergast book for which I wish I still had a bookstore job...

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Shang-Chi And The Legend Of The Ten Rings: Studies In Duality

 **NO SPOILERS FOR SHANG-CHI, BUT MAJOR SPOILERS FOR PREVIOUS MCU FILMS  - ESPECIALLY IRON MAN 3 - ABOUND WITHIN. YOU'VE BEEN WARNED.**

Despite the world (at least, in certain areas already predisposed to it) largely returning to past levels of Covid caution, I'm fortunate enough to still be able to go to the movies with all necessary precautions, and especially now that Disney has decided not to follow suit with the pattern set by Black Widow and do a hybrid release for their next Marvel tentpole. Whether it was because they were afraid star Simu Liu might take a page from Scarlett Johannson's book and sue for lost profits (though as outspoken as Liu can be, I doubt this would be a battle he'd pick) or because they think it might hasten a cultural return to normalcy (a sentiment I might be able to appreciate even if many around me wouldn't), who knows.

But for this second of four MCU movies to drop in 2021, Marvel pulls out all the visual stops in such a way as to justify the cost of the theater tickets.

Ten rings, but at least ten times as many distinct powers.

Review: The Night Has Claws

The Night Has Claws by Kat Kruger
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It took me too many years before I finally got around to reading the second book of Kat Kruger's Lycan Code series, in part because when I finished Book 1 on Wattpad and immediately moved ahead to Book 2, Kruger only had a tiny little sampler available to entice readers to buy the books in full. At the time, I couldn't really afford to do so, but now I'm finding my way to completing this trilogy and putting it in my collection for the first time. It's a bit of a come down for me in this one, a minor Sophomore Slump, but that mostly owes to this book (as action-packed and tense as it is) being a pretty clear bridge between the first and last books of the trilogy. The ending? Ohhhhhhh does it end on one of the nastiest cliffhangers you'll ever see - and I'm very glad my copy of Book 3 arrived in my mailbox today, so I'll be able to conclude the trilogy soon enough...

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Review: In the Wild Light

In the Wild Light by Jeff Zentner
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is, by far, the best book by Jeff Zentner that I've read since his auspicious debut in The Serpent King - not only because of how much it gets all the feels in all its pages, but also because of how many references to Zentner's previous novels this book has, confirming that all of them are set in the same 'verse. Lydia's an NPR host now, Midnite Matinee is a bigger hit show than ever, even the concept of Goodbye Days is brought up (as much as I rather disliked that novel compared to Zentner's others, it's still a good concept to bring in.)

Review: Livingston Girls

Livingston Girls by Briana Morgan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The third season of American Horror Story may have had a certain iconic Coven, but it's Briana Morgan who brings us a better one in a better school, one with more than a few shades of Dead Poets Society (the frequent quoting of Walt Whitman and Robert Herrick helps), but also a lot more queer (this book boasts a pretty good f/f pairing, I'd say.) But also, it's a pretty timely and punchy little book, short but full of strong social commentary about a group of witches still facing those who would burn them, and it's the same kind of enemy all witches have faced since the days of Salem. Not the first book by Briana I've read (I believe my first was Blood & Water back when I once found it on Wattpad), and absolutely not the last!

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Review: The Bands of Mourning

The Bands of Mourning by Brandon Sanderson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

As much as I rather like the characters of Wax and Wayne, I do feel like Sanderson kinda dropped the ball on this particular novel of theirs - which makes a tad bit of sense when I look back at the release dates for this one and its predecessor, not even a year apart. And then the fourth and final novel of this particular cycle of Mistborn...well, Sanderson did say it would come along after Oathbringer and that's still true, but there's been a whole other Stormlight novel since then, and I still have no idea where Sanderson intends to bring this series to its conclusion. But hopefully it won't be long before we the readers find out, because then Sanderson can start working on the cyberpunk-themed third Mistborn cycle for which I've been especially waiting all this time...

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Review: The Taking of Jake Livingston

The Taking of Jake Livingston by Ryan Douglass
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I'm a little sad that this book, a debut that I feel like it's been pushed off for at least two years again and again, is starting with a shockingly low GR rating. On the one hand, I can kinda see why at times, since Douglass doesn't shy away from imbuing his characters with flaws and messiness enough that I could see a lot of YA readers running for the hills. The fact that half the book is in a surprisingly sympathetic villain POV, a gay boy who turned school shooter and then ghost, doesn't really help - but then again, he's still undeniably the antagonist to Jake himself, also gay, but also Black and forced to put up with racism on top of that (witness the scene where he actually stabs a white classmate for making a slave joke to his face in class), and there's a certain element of Greater Scope Evil to it all in this short, punchy book. Maybe the subject matter turns a lot of people off...or maybe they're also under the sway of certain influencers who've no doubt been running whisper campaigns against Douglass ever since he wrote that HuffPost article criticizing activists in YA for being largely privileged and white themselves (to this day Douglass still throws frequent shade at the clique ringleaders online, and I don't blame him one bit, especially since a few of those who've taken potshots at him have been criticized or even cancelled themselves. Looking at you, Shaun David Hutchinson...but I digress.) For sure, though, if I was still working my bookstore job, I'd be giving this one as many customer eyeballs as I can muster.

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Review: Shadows of Self

Shadows of Self by Brandon Sanderson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Having finally read this far in the Mistborn saga...well, I did get up to the first Wax and Wayne book a few years ago, only to stop not because I didn't like the books well enough, but because I'd unfortunately fallen victim to the then-latest recurrence of the whole "Brandon Sanderson is a raging homophobe" canard when someone brought up old comments he'd made about Dumbledore. (Oh if only they could see how much he's sought to be more LGBTQ+ inclusive in recent years, especially in The Stormlight Archive...but I digress.) Point being, years late, this is my first time reading this far in Mistborn, and while I'll be giving this one a 3.5, I'll generously round it up to a 4 for Sanderson's usual beautifully complex world-building and lovely spin on steampunk and Western styles. Sure, this book doesn't feel like it moves the plot needle all that much, but there's already one more I've got from the library, and hopefully soon the last novel of this part of Mistborn before Sanderson finally embarks on the pseudo-1980s-cyberpunk-styled series I've been waiting for...

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Review: The Night Has Teeth

The Night Has Teeth by Kat Kruger
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A beautiful little tale of werewolves, the wonders of Paris, and weird, weird science. Funny at times, feels-making at others (if you'll excuse my use of Uglies-speak), and downright freakish the rest of the time. Luckily, now that I'm a little more financially independent than I was in my Wattpad days (and able to order physical copies through a variety of indie bookstores!) I'll be able to read the sequels someday soon. When, I couldn't tell you. But after all these years, I shall keep on trying. Just keep trying, just keep trying...not really what Dory says, but whatever.

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Black Widow: Marvel Takes Us Back To The Movies

 **MINOR SPOILERS FOR BLACK WIDOW, PLUS MAJOR SPOILERS FOR PREVIOUS MCU FILMS  - ESPECIALLY CIVIL WAR, INFINITY WAR, AND ENDGAME - ABOUND WITHIN. YOU'VE BEEN WARNED.**

It's been a minute.

After most of 2020 saw the movie theaters closed for months at a time (depending on where you live, of course, but I still lived in California at the time so maaaaaaaybe one or two months open was the best we got, and I didn't even go back there then, not even for Tenet like I'd really been hoping), 2021 is looking to be the year when, with the help of various hybrid theatrical/streaming releases and most people (assuming you can trust their Insta and/or dating app profiles anyway) taking their Covid vaccines, the box office starts finally coming back to life.

And so far, the biggest boon in this year's cultural story has been, naturally, the swan song of the great Scarlett Johansson's performance as Natasha Romanoff, going back to before her untimely death in Endgame to a period between Civil War and Infinity War when she was still on the run for violating the Sokovia Accords (and especially for assaulting the King of Wakanda, according to Secretary Ross in an early scene as he tries to apprehend her.) While it's no longer technically the start to Phase Four of the MCU like nature intended - that honor goes to WandaVision now, and all its bonkers sitcom pastiches, deep explorations of the persistence of grief, and gleeful pokes in the eye to all the fans and their theories (to the point where it almost feels like the writers deliberately made...adjustments...to torpedo the theories with extreme prejudice, as impossible as it would've been given the known production timelines and logistical difficulties posed in the world of Covid.) 

But for Black Widow, director Cate Shortland and a spot-on cast - particularly the supporting cast, many of whom do a great job acting circles around ScarJo and making promising cases for their own movies and TV shows further down the line - serve up a damn fine thriller in the vein of Mission: Impossible - a little more grounded than most Marvel productions, but still, never losing sight of where to spend all the money Disney racked up in the last few years.

Where one family leaves, another awaits.

Review: City of Reckoning

City of Reckoning by Brianna da Silva
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

First off, Brianna...how dare you.

No, but of course you dare.

It's been a long, long time since I was lucky enough to get an ARC anywhere. Most of those came from my time working at the Stanford Bookstore, and all of them were physical ARCs. So now, I've been lucky enough to get ahold of an ebook ARC of a sprawling, epic debut from one of my dearest friends, and I'm calling it right now - I don't expect any other book to beat this one on my Top Books of 2021 list. Maybe I'm not doing the Pinecone Awards so much on my blog anymore - I've rather let it fall by the wayside, sadly - but if I was to do the 2021 Pinecones, Brianna da Silva and City of Reckoning would steamroll all the competition.

Review: Witchshadow

Witchshadow by Susan Dennard
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It's been a while since Susan Dennard gifted us with a new novel in this series - and this one, perhaps the darkest and deadliest yet, has been delayed tons of times for tons of reasons. Like a lot of her fellow YA fantasy authors, Dennard's had a lot of health scares in recent years, as I understand it...and apparently she also had to rewrite a huge chunk of the book after sensitivity readers said she'd run into some offensive tropes or another. Can't imagine what, but for sure, Dennard made this book worth the wait...even if her characters would have words with her for what she's done to them. Especially Safi and Iseult, dragged through the wringer as they both are. And need I mention Aeduan? As much as Dennard herself seems to love "Baeduan," it sure as hell doesn't stop her giving him all the most horror she can muster. It's a tough book to read, but at this point, I think we're looking at maaaaaaybe one more book to go? If so, who the hell knows what Dennard has in mind for the finale...or how long it'll take to see it!

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Review: Ace of Spades

Ace of Spades by Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I've been keeping an eye out for this book for a while for a lot of reasons - the title, the amazing cover, the promise of a Gossip Girl-Get Out mashup...and while I've never seen a single episode of Gossip Girl (and still don't think I ever will), any comparison to Jordan Peele's horrifying masterworks is an automatic YES as far as I'm concerned.

Review: An Emotion of Great Delight

An Emotion of Great Delight by Tahereh Mafi
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It's not a sequel to Mafi's earlier semi-contemporary smash hit A Very Large Expanse of Sea, but there's a case to be made for this one existing in the same universe. Set, like that other book, in 2002-03, the book presents America in a particularly heightened state of Islamophobia as the background, but unlike Large Expanse, this book is much less about Islamophobia and/or racism. While those bigotries lurk behind the surface, this book is focused much more on central elements of grief, mental health issues, the delicate balancing act of cultures for the children of Iranian immigrants (who frequently argue in both English and Farsi in the same conversation), and the tenuous threads on which friendships and romances may hang. As such, it feels like the story world is smaller and more introspective - which fits because while this is a short book, it pulls no emotional punches, all of which land well above the book's weight class. This is most likely a book readers will pick up once and then never again, if only because of how haunting and harrowing it is.

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Review: City of the Plague God

City of the Plague God by Sarwat Chadda
My rating: 4 of 5 stars



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Review: Mister Impossible

Mister Impossible by Maggie Stiefvater
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Yeah, I'm sorry to say that Maggie Stiefvater's insistence on sticking to the world of The Raven Boys is, for me, coming up with diminishing returns. I mean, at least this book is perhaps her fastest read yet, and the cast of characters - Ronan, Hennessey, and Farooq-Lane especially - feel a little more fleshed out, especially given that it's been a couple of years almost since Stiefvater last published a book in this world. But again, her tendencies towards aggravatingly thin plotting and airy, dreamy prose drag the book down for its general lack of a plot except in the first and last pages, and quite unexpectedly for supposedly being a trilogy, this book feels like it could just as easily end it all. Or maybe I'm just burnt out on Stiefvater...again. Who knows.

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Review: Hurricane Summer

Hurricane Summer by Asha Bromfield
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I picked this up just because of...was it in Jaroda's book haul? I think it was, and on that level I reached out to my local library to pick it up. They delivered it pretty quickly too - Fort Vancouver has some of the most efficient library service I've ever seen! And then of course I only realized after I picked the book up that its author was one of the stars of Riverdale - though, having never even finished the first episode of that show, of course I didn't know that, lol.

Review: Oculta

Oculta by Maya Motayne
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It's been a couple of years since Maya Motayne debuted with her tale of linguistic magic and thievery and royal intrigue, but I'd like to think she took that time to really serve up a sweet sequel to the best of her ability. Long like its predecessor, but not as fast-paced this time, because here we get into a hell of a lot more royal intrigue now that Alfie's got to host the incoming monarchy of Englass. The former colonizers' presence doesn't go over well in Castallan, of course, especially with Alfie and Finn and Luka, who have to contend with sharing space with magical classist capitalists - unable to colonize Castallan anymore, they now enforce a strict caste system depriving their lower class citizens of their potential magic. But is there a little hope for redemption from these royal fools? Even though the book's climax rolls out in much the way you might expect, Motayne does a damn fine job of convincing us there could be room for change. But there's a lot more to the ending, though - especially the weapons-grade surprises inherent in this book's cliffhanger, ensuring that Motayne is absolutely sticking to her original plan for a trilogy. Maybe we'll be waiting two years for that final novel too? Who knows, but that book will be a long time coming no matter when it eventually does.

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Review: Goldilocks

Goldilocks by Laura Lam
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Due in part to the real-world horrors that marred the real-world release cycle for this book, it took me a little over a year to finally get ahold of it and read it (though it's absolutely one of the highlights of me having moved to Oregon so far, having found it in Klindt's Books in The Dalles, where the bookseller raved about it as I expected.)

Review: I Come with Knives

I Come with Knives by S.A. Hunt
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Happy Pride Month, and to start it off with my first June review this year, some pretty slick and scary horror from S.A. Hunt - which I didn't get to read until almost a year after it finally came out, and soooooooo many years after Hunt made a name for herself on Wattpad with Malus Domestica, aka the future Burn the Dark...and now we're finally getting to see more of the world she's built, and more of the secret history that helps inform the life and career choices of our favorite monster-hunting YouTuber. For the love of God, someone start making a movie or TV adaptation of this series already - for real, why isn't it a bloody movie yet?

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Review: A History of What Comes Next

A History of What Comes Next by Sylvain Neuvel
My rating: 2 of 5 stars



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Review: Unconquerable Sun

Unconquerable Sun by Kate Elliott
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I started this book thinking it was going to be a damn good one - a lavishly designed space opera in a pseudo-Asian setting, with the main character's nation being pretty clearly China-inspired (Elliott apparently got a lot of early readers across numerous Asian cultures, if the acknowledgments are anything to go by), and a lot of promising comparisons to Princess Leia, Alexander the Great, etc. But then, as the book goes on, we get introduced to a second POV. And while Sun herself is a pretty nice and engaging character, Elliott gives the privilege of first-person POV to Persephone instead, and repeatedly tries to hype her up with every chapter she's in being headed with some variation of "In which the wily Persephone..." Honestly, the ridiculous shilling of a character I couldn't bloodydamn stand made me want to quit the book half the time, and really dragged down my enjoyment of the story single-handedly. If this had just been Sun's story, maybe I'd be a lot more hyped for the promised two sequels listed on one of the book's early pages. But now I just feel like this one was more hype-damaged than anything else.

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Review: Project Hail Mary

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Andy Weir returns with his first novel in four years, his third overall, and to my mind, his best one yet. Long and sprawling and immense in its scope, Weir here channels a lot of Blake Crouch's penchant for twisty, nonlinear sci-fi adventure, as well as elements of The Expanse, Interstellar, and Arrival. And, of course, he keeps things light with protagonist Ryland Grace managing to be both a genius engineer who knows his shit and a First Person Smartass par excellence who isn't afraid to talk shit on anything and anyone that pisses him off, whether it be international bureaucracy on Earth or the overly inquisitive ship's computer that keeps trying to knock him out when he can't remember anything as the book begins. I was lucky enough to go into this book entirely spoiler free - with almost no hint as to what the story was really about - and I highly encourage all readers to do the same, if only to fully, truly enjoy the ways Weir slings all the twists and imperils his poor protagonist.

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Review: Realm Breaker

Realm Breaker by Victoria Aveyard
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It's been a minute since Victoria Aveyard - who established me as a lifetime passenger aboard her hype train with the Red Queen series - published a full-length novel, and once again, she shows just how many leaps and bounds she's made in her craft since she started publishing six years ago. Though this story has a few pebbles in its path, and does tend to feel a bit like so much Prolonged Prologue, it's still pretty easy to round the 3.5 up to a 4 for this one.

Review: The Gilded Ones

The Gilded Ones by Namina Forna
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Picking this book up from the hold shelf at the White Salmon Library, the librarian told me that this wasn't the first time she'd seen this particular book cross her shelf. As well it shouldn't, given how well-done Namina Forna's debut is, following a lot of the most relevant trends in fantasy with powerful results. Rooted in a world with numerous cultural and ethnic groups that serve as parallels to real ones, protagonist Deka not only faces god-awful racist taunts from white Northerners, but also sees just how quickly her theocratic society turns against her when her blood turns gold and she fails a ritual test of "purity." Blood indicating her magical skills, which to the priests and royal forces, only mark her as serviceable to the Emperor, not as a human with her own strengths and destiny. Forna, in her writing, holds up a sharply critical mirror against our society and all its real, bigoted ills - and unless I'm reading the entries on her Goodreads page wrong, it's only the beginning of what promises to be a trilogy for the ages.

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Review: Burn

Burn by Patrick Ness
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I guess I'd just missed that Patrick Ness came out with another book? At least I got to pick it up as one of the first reads I found at the library in my new hometown in Oregon, a town not too dissimilar to the fictional setting of this book in Frome, WA. Rooted in an alternate 1957 - Eisenhower is still president, and the book begins on the day of his second inauguration no less - Ness clearly takes a lot of inspiration from E.K. Johnston's most underrated Story of Owen duology, with the heavy emphasis on dragons having their own territory in Canada, as well as Russia. The Cold War setting informs this book very well with the dual threats of not only nuclear war, but dragon war as well. Being set in 1957 also helps Ness emphasize the ongoing issue of racism as a mirror against our present day, with Sarah as a biracial protagonist (Black mom, white dad) feeling a lack of belonging in both communities, and her best friend Jason, being Japanese-American (he has to repeatedly mention that he was born in Tacoma), was sent to Minidoka internment camp as a baby. Then there's the parallel storyline (a feature Ness has used before, but now to its best level yet - unlike the deliberate detachment of the "indie kids" chapter headers in The Rest of Us Just Live Here or the weird juxtaposition of real issues and magical shenanigans in Release, Ness now has the parallel storylines so closely entwined that building a single book around them is entirely justified) about a guy named Malcolm on a religious pilgrimage of sorts from a dragon-worshipping cult in Canada, taking rides across the border (and trying to fend off strange advances from too many men, while there's one guy in particular with whom he's fallen head over heels in love.) Though Ness has always been a real hit-or-miss writer for me, I'm happy to say that this one's a hit - though a heavy hit at that, for a lot of the reasons outlined above. Consider yourselves warned.

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Review: On This Unworthy Scaffold

On This Unworthy Scaffold by Heidi Heilig
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It took me a while to remember some key details from the second book of this trilogy given that it’s been a little over a year since it came out. But now the finale is here and, as with all things Heidi Heilig, it’s a story that breaks all the rules, dissecting history through a skillful world builder’s lens and experimenting with form at every turn, periodically switching to sheet music and stage script formatting, as well as giving those usual tiny interludes into Chakran legend. And of course, really showing just how difficult it would actually be to achieve true decolonization after so many years of Aquitan rule, and years of Aquitans actually establishing their own lives in Chakrana that can’t be uprooted so easily. But Heilig gives it a blisteringly fast pace all throughout, as well as sticking the landing pretty well right at the end, so to this series I now bid ave atque vale.

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Review: Aru Shah and the City of Gold

Aru Shah and the City of Gold by Roshani Chokshi
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Of course. Of course. I had to know that while Roshani Chokshi had first announced that the first series under the Rick Riordan Presents banner would be a four part series, of course she just couldn’t stop there. And so she doesn’t, not when the latest Pandava adventure delivers the most complex group dynamics yet among Aru and her fellowship (the LOTR references fly thick and fast at times, among others - there’s at least one mention of Sal and Gabi’s adventure being a bestseller in universe!), as well as the most gut punching twists or two. But no, there’s at least one more adventure in store for the Pandavas, so guaranteed I’ll be ready to read that one very, very soon...

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Review: Mirror's Edge

Mirror's Edge by Scott Westerfeld
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Westerfeld took a little more time to give us this third book of Impostors - in part, I think, because wasn't he really sick with Covid last summer? But with this third book - and the third new cover art style too, going back in line with the recent paperback reissues of the original Uglies series - we get ourselves another blisteringly fast-paced futuristic thriller. Seriously, the opening of this book, with several chapters devoted to a high-altitude jump at terminal velocity? That's the stuff of legend for sure. And then in the second half, as Frey and Col and all their allies lose themselves in their various aliases and missions, they start to see just how warped their enemies can be - and how dangerous the truest enemy of them all is, so dangerous that we're going to need a bigger hero to lend a hand in the fourth and final book, whenever that comes along...

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Review: The Kaiser's Web

The Kaiser's Web by Steve Berry
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Steve Berry returns with his annual high-stakes thriller examining the dark side of recent history - in this case, getting down and dirty with what may have happened when the Nazi regime fell, because we all know a lot of Hitler's minions escaped to South America among other places. In this case, though, the challenge for Cotton Malone and Cassiopeia Vitt lies in figuring out whether or not it's true that a far-right nationalist candidate for German chancellor, running in opposition to the more level-headed and rational incumbent, may in fact be descended from Nazis - which, given his absurd fascination with their symbology and ideology, isn't too far out of the realm of concern. But of course Berry has a way of flipping the script 180 degrees or more every few hundred pages as Malone and Vitt travel to Germany and Chile and South Africa searching for answers, and ultimately it all builds up to one of his most striking - and strikingly tragic - resolutions yet.

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Review: Victories Greater Than Death

Victories Greater Than Death by Charlie Jane Anders
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

In the run-up to this, her YA debut, Charlie Jane Anders has spent a lot of time not only offering amazing artwork and pins based on this book for preorder campaigns, but also outlining in long Twitter threads how much she seeks to upend the conventions of space opera by keeping things fun and light, while also emphasizing that the genre's roots need a little bit of pruning of old, offensive impulses. And also going on truly inspired theoretical tangents about why and how the universe of the Star Wars galaxy works.

Review: Lost in the Never Woods

Lost in the Never Woods by Aiden Thomas
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I think Aiden Thomas said, in the run up to Cemetery Boys, that this was the first manuscript they worked on, even before their #ownvoices debut. Maybe so, and released a bit out of order in that case, but it's still a pretty good book that Thomas has given us. My guess is that they really started working on this book a few years back, when fairytale retellings had become one of the biggest YA trends. Given how that trend has largely died down in recent years, this makes Thomas's take on Peter Pan, with Wendy working as a file clerk in the hospital in Astoria, OR (and making me extra relate to her after taking a job in a medical clinic in another small town of the PNW), reeling from the disappearances of her brothers (and a spate of similar child disappearances in Astoria), and struggling to solve the mystery that Peter Pan himself brings back when he reappears and triggers some long-buried memories...yeah, this one's a pretty neat little throwback, am I right? While it does tend to lag behind Thomas's debut in the character department - nobody here really pops off the patge the way Yadriel or Julian did - it also does one thing better than Cemetery Boys, and that's keeping the mystery and ending even more unpredictable. Bottom line, Thomas is demonstrating some pretty serious range, and to those out there trying to shame them for not writing #ownvoices on their second novel, it's you who should be ashamed instead.

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Review: Rule of Wolves

Rule of Wolves by Leigh Bardugo
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Leigh Bardugo took a while to get around to giving us this, the seventh novel so far of the Grishaverse, and the second of her second duology. Two years after King of Scars and its cliffhanger ending that made me so angry that I'm still livid about it to this day. But this time, Bardugo gives us 600 pages of jam-packed fantasy action and social commentary that leads to a much more hopeful Bardugoan cliffhanger, the antithesis of its predecessor's ending - and the promise of yet more Grishaverse adventure for which I cannot wait!

Review: Red Tigress

Red Tigress by Amélie Wen Zhao
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Would it really surprise you to know that in this terrible time of increased anti-Asian racism, of #StopAsianHate trending online, that this book, sequel to one its author wrote in response to widespread issues within Asia itself (in particular human trafficking), is authored by the one Asian author YA Twitter would rather pretend was cancelled? Or, more accurately, that as soon as it became clear she was a victim of racist bullying from notorious edgelord Emily Duncan because they (almost in the same week) had dueling Bardugo-esque YA fantasy novels in a pseudo-Russian setting, that someone, somewhere, pointed out that Blood Heir was dragged on accusations of anti-Blackness, and therefore Amélie Wen Zhao deserved no sympathy?

Would it really surprise you?