Review: The Iron Sword

The Iron Sword by Julie Kagawa
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Julie Kagawa likes to stick to a few certain patterns in her storytelling, I've found, and this latest book in the world of the Iron Fey breaks a few of those patterns. While previous series in this 'verse stuck to the same POV throughout, here Kagawa shifts away from Puck's POV (as was in this book's predecessor) in favor of Ash's, with a great deal of emphasis on him confronting his past failures and how they haunt him deeply. Thematically appropriate, given the revelations this book makes about the nature of Evenfall itself. And also thematically appropriate that it serves as a good allegory for a lot of today's problems in the world - namely, emphasizing the nature of the internet delivering fake news to rile up people of various political stripes. And while Kagawa doesn't break form with this book's cliffhanger ending - and make no mistake, she goes all out on that - what really makes this book cliffhang like none other is that, unlike virtually every such time Kagawa's done that before, we still have no idea what the next book will be called, or even when it'll come out. So brava, Kagawa, for this, one of your most solidly punchy and powerful books in many years.

View all my reviews

Review: This Woven Kingdom

This Woven Kingdom by Tahereh Mafi
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It's not the first time Tahereh Mafi's done a fantasy book, but it's the first time she's done one for the YA audience she's worked with for the vast majority of her career, and it's also pretty well steeped in the legends of a long gone by Persia as she's been hinting she'll write about for many, many years. So here we have it, the first of a promised trilogy focusing on a young woman of secret djinn heritage and a prince whose heart and soul lead him soooooooo astray as only that of a Tahereh Mafi lead could. For just over 500 pages, one of her biggest books yet, Mafi leads us around on a delicious slow burn of a story before dropping some of the most shocking cliffhangers in her history. All I'm gonna say is this: more than any other story of Mafi's since Shatter Me, this is the one I need to see them make a movie of the soonest.

View all my reviews

Review: House of Sky and Breath

House of Sky and Breath by Sarah J. Maas
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Well, you know, this latest book of SJM's modern urban fantasy would've maybe been a 3.5 rounded up to a 4...if not for a few key points against it. As much as I enjoyed the first book for getting my ship right, and I liked that there was some natural progression to that ship's course, I still found that SJM really leaned a little too much on a lot of her biggest and worst tropes that are such pet peeves of me and other fans, many of whom have long since abandoned her over these storytelling sins. So it's a bit eye-rolling from me when I see SJM double down on everyone being a "male" or "female," all the "males" having enormous penises like in that Da Vinci's Notebook song, sex scenes long enough to match those dicks...

Review: Leviathan Falls

Leviathan Falls by James S.A. Corey
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Well, this is it...after nine novels (and a collection of stories which I still haven't read because the print compilation is still forthcoming), the book universe of The Expanse finally comes to an end. While it's a shame that the TV/web series ended first after tackling Book 3, then Book 6, is it too much to hope that this book and its two immediate predecessors eventually get adapted too? I'd sure hope so, because it feels like the Corey team was still writing this one with adaptation in the style of the hit series in mind. Still introducing more new characters, and yet bringing back some long dormant old perspectives human and supernatural alike. And the very end, let's just say it reminds me pretty nicely of that of Babylon 5. And that's as much as I'll say without spoilers for this, the ave atque vale to the world of The Expanse...at least, until Memory's Legion hits shelves at last.

View all my reviews

Review: The Nobleman's Guide to Scandal and Shipwrecks

The Nobleman's Guide to Scandal and Shipwrecks by Mackenzi Lee
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

So how long has it been since the second book of this series - two years? Three? Something like that. Maybe it just feels longer because it's so unusual for a YA author to go more than a year in between publishing novels - but then again, this is Mackenzi Lee we're talking about. It was over a year's gap between the first two Montague books, if I remember correctly. And then of course, Lee's reputation has taken quite the beating in the last few years as the target of numerous Book Twitter cancellation campaigns (at least one of which I'm sure she obliquely referenced with the Amsterdam section of this book opening up with mention of all the tulips being dead). But you know what? For a surprising distant epilogue to the greater stories of Monty and Felicity, as well as the exploration of the life of Adrian - by far the most heterosexual of the three siblings, but also for sure someone who would be marginalized in "polite" society due to his debilitating mental struggles, which Lee has said are inspired by her own, as, I'm sure, is Adrian's desire to champion liberal causes even in the face of his conservative upbringing - I'm just glad to see Lee get back up to her rollicking, adventurous storytelling style once again. And to the Montague siblings - all of them - I hereby bid ave atque vale at long last.

View all my reviews