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?

Review: The Iron Raven

The Iron Raven by Julie Kagawa
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

To think it's easily been over five years since the last time Julie Kagawa's career was built so immediately on the strength of her uniquely scientifically fantastic Iron Fey series. But now, she's back to that world with the start of the new Evenfall series, now centering on a wonderfully engaging - and interestingly conflicted - protagonist in Puck. I admit, I still look back at Puck as another example of me shipping super duper wrong, but it's nice to see his POV as an exploration of how difficult it must be to live knowing you're the losing arm of the love triangle. And as a bi dude, because God knows there are still so few of us as protagonists at any age level, in any genre. And the latter, especially, informs Puck's trouble facing the most existential threat yet to the Fae kingdoms - a threat which he'll need to draw on help from Meghan, Ash, Nyx of the Forgotten, and even the much-beleagued Keirran. Summer, Winter, Iron, and Forgotten vs. the truest darkness yet? As always, I'm very glad that Kagawa ends this one in her typical style: revealing the sequel's title immediately to take the edge off another weapons-grade cliffhanger. The true reasons why she's still got it as one of the best in the biz.

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