Review: The Art of Prophecy

The Art of Prophecy by Wesley Chu
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Wesley Chu, in a recent tweet, promised that this book, his epic fantasy debut, is a blend of the wuxia action of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and the self aware humor of The Princess Bride. On that level, you will not be disappointed - hell, it’s a most apt description of this book, so steeped in Chinese inspiration from several periods in its medieval history, but also a sense of humor that wryly walks the line of an affectionate parody of the genre. Between the killer cool action and Chu’s ever smartass sensibilities translating well from his sci fi days with Tao and Io (not to mention his collaborations with Cassandra Clare), is it any wonder that this book reads as breezily, almost one sittingly, fast as it does?

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Review: Fireborne

Fireborne by Rosaria Munda
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I picked this book up on Piéra Forde’s recommendation, because of how much she loved the trilogy - even if the third book broke her heart so much that she couldn’t finish. Reading my way through this book, I had a few moments where I was starting to wonder if I’d gotten a dud recommendation, a true rarity from her. Or maybe I’m just not as good at keeping up on YA anymore? In any case, while this book does suffer from a weird structure of switching POV’s multiple times within each chapter, and the world building is a touch thin on background, this series does have a very good way of keeping my interest thus far. And I can tell you that Book 2 is already a pretty significant improvement…

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Review: Upgrade

Upgrade by Blake Crouch
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Blake Crouch returns with his latest terrifyingly fast-paced (helped, of course, by his trademark single-line paragraphs of sentence fragments) sci-fi thriller. This one is slightly less space-time continuum mind-bending than Dark Matter and Recursion before it, but makes up for it with its near-future post-apocalypse and its use of genetic warfare to a level worthy of Michael Crichton. Crouch also puts his protagonist in a pretty unique moral position, not only when he becomes the unwilling subject of an experiment to rewire his genes and increase his intelligence and ethics, but also when he realizes that he was selected specifically because of his connection to the experimenter. This, plus the fact that his late mother accidentally caused at least one part of the apocalypse, with her attempts at genetically-modified crops failing so horribly that at least 200 million have died in the Shenzhen Famine some decades prior. That said, though, Logan has already spent years making a life of his own, and that gives him the advantage as he rises to the challenge of preventing his same upgrades from killing yet more millions, if they're allowed to wreak their intended havoc in the world. I imagine this one will be pretty well ready for a film adaptation someday soon, even if the aesthetic might resemble Lisa Joy and Jonathan Nolan's misfire Reminiscence a little too closely...

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Review: The Reyes Incident

The Reyes Incident by Briana Morgan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Briana Morgan's latest horrorshow takes readers to the small town of Dawsonville, Georgia, which wouldn't be out of place in the HBO adaptation of Stephen King's The Outsider. Of the three Morgan novellas I have on my bookshelf at the time of this writing, it's easily the shortest page wise, but also the most adult, focusing this time on a young woman who may know a little something about some murders and mermaids in this town, and the police officer who gets a little too close to the case in all the ways. Boasting some seriously unreliable narration for the ages, as well as some sapphic love triangulation (it wouldn't be Morgan without sapphic storytelling, would it?), I'm just sad that it took me as long as it did to finally buy myself a copy. Thank God for birthday gift cards.

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