Review: A Curse for True Love

A Curse for True Love by Stephanie Garber
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Stephanie Garber brings another dark fairytale romance trilogy to its end, and this time, while the returns have steadily diminished on this series too, she sticks the landing far better than she did with the original Caraval trilogy. It helps, I think, that she ended the second book in this series on such a mind-bending cliffhanger, which she builds off of so magnificently with this book as it becomes very clear that the journey to happily ever after will be a hell of a twisted and cursed path for poor Evangeline and the mysterious Jacks, whom she doesn't remember, and that's the way the screwed up Apollo would prefer it. Of course, happily ever after not being the desired ending after all is one of Garber's most prominent themes, and this book is no exception, but there's a hint of promise that there'll be more stories in this universe. A trilogy of trilogies now? We'll see. But for now, I bid this story world once again, ave atque vale.

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Review: My Effin' Life

My Effin' Life by Geddy Lee
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

"We're only immortal for a limited time."
-Neil Peart

There are three reasons why Rush is one of my all time favorite bands. Pratt the Professor, quoted above with lines from the underrated 1991 classic song "Dreamline" (which I've sung acapella and karaoke for various audiences in my time), was one of them. Lerxst and his wackadoodle antics are another. But perhaps none make as great an impact as the Dirk, the Deke, Geddy Lee himself.

Review: Air Born

Air Born by J L Pawley
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

As good as I remember from the old Wattpad days, and better. With some minor updates here and there after so many different rereleases, but that’s no surprise, really. I just can’t wait to finally get all three books on my shelf - for the first time, no less, because the last time this book was rereleased was before I even had a shelf, just an overstuffed drawer or two or three. But I’ll be ordering each successive book in this series, that’s for sure. As soon as Jess has them ready, that is…

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Review: Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone

Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone by Benjamin Stevenson
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

So this book tries to be the next Knives Out and make itself stand out on the basis of its tongue in cheek parody of the mystery genre, building on the Ten Commandments of the genre from Ronald Knox (well, nine, since one of them is redacted for racist language) and presenting a protagonist who's the black sheep of his criminal family, a mystery writer who's gotten at least one of them locked up for murder before. Naturally, our narrator Ernest is full of expertise about the genre's tricks and tropes and traps, but for all his attempt at metafictional humor, he comes off so random and half assed. Like, if you're gonna be funny, commit to the bit, won't you? Couple that with the utter unlikability of every character - including Ernest, who's one of the most pathetic protagonists I've ever seen - and it's guaranteed I'm not gonna continue with this series, or watch the upcoming HBO adaptation that's apparently in the works. I'll stick with Rian Johnson movies, thanks.

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Review: System Collapse

System Collapse by Martha Wells
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

At this point, after seven books of varying size, haven't the corporations of the future learned by now that Murderbot just wants to be left alone to stream intergalactic soap operas all day? Yeah, right. Corporations never learn, in the present or in the future, and in this story world, they're so dangerously close to stepping into Weyland-Yutani territory with their sheer disregard for life that they ought to just die off already. As much as I love Murderbot as a character for being so relatable in its moody attitudes, the stories that Wells tells about it are unfortunately starting to lose me as a reader. This series is just so increasingly monotonous and repetitive that the only reason I'm not giving it a real thumbs down is, again, because Murderbot is just such an on point protagonist.

Review: The Hurricane Wars

The Hurricane Wars by Thea Guanzon
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

In recent weeks, Reylo fandom (of which I used to be a minor member thanks to a couple of my friends being really into it) has become something of a headline and punchline with the revelation that upcoming debut novelist and Reylo shipper Cait Corrain had review bombed several of her fellow 2024 debut novelists with sock puppet accounts, targeting a lot of authors of color in particular. Not a good look, and a shameful stain on the LGBTQ+ and neurodivergent communities of which Corrain was part (as am I.) Unfortunately not the first time that a Reylo shipper who made it big (well, Corrain's made it big in infamy, with her entire career all but canceled at this point) was exposed for terrible online behavior - Emily Duncan at least got to publish an entire trilogy, with a lot of Reylo and Grishaverse influences, before being exposed for slinging racist abuse at Asian and Middle Eastern authors, not to mention openly admitting that she built her trilogy on some of the oldest antisemitic tropes in the book.

But Reylo fans may instead find solace in an author who does their community right - Thea Guanzon of Metro Manila, with this Southeast Asian inspired dark fantasy, apparently extrapolated from her post-The Force Awakens fanfic where Rey and Kylo end up stuck in an arranged marriage at the orders of Snoke.

(After reading this book, I learned that apparently Guanzon was one of the many authors whom Corrain targeted with her sock puppet review bombing, and I'm unfortunately not surprised.)

Review: The Hunting Moon

The Hunting Moon by Susan Dennard
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I'm gonna be honest, this one gets an extra star for cover love - seriously, that design with the hummingbird skeleton growing dangerous leaves and flowers has haunted me for months, ever since it was first unveiled. Helps that it reminds me a lot of the style of one of my old favorite 2000s YA series whose style Dennard has steadily emulated in this series - specifically, Lisa McMann's Wake trilogy.

But while Dennard's pretty well invested in her little ongoing "Sooz Your Own Adventure" experiment, now expanded from one Luminaries novel to a trilogy (and predominantly conducted on Instagram now because Twitter can go screw, eh?), I don't think I'll be continuing any further with this series. It just doesn't work for me nearly as well as The Witchlands, which - while I haven't had effusive five star love for it the way all the rest of the YA Cool Kids' Table always does - nevertheless invites me to reread from the beginning every so often, especially with the increasingly long wait times between books in that series. (If the planned final novel Witchlight makes it to publication in 2024 as currently planned, it'll have been a three year gap since its predecessor, a pretty long gap in the YA world.)

Review: Murtagh

Murtagh by Christopher Paolini
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I was never the biggest fan of Paolini or the Inheritance Cycle. Hell, I didn't even finish the first book when I was in grade school, and my sister enjoyed the video game a hell of a lot more than I did when I got it as a Christmas present. (I didn't watch the movie, because as I understand it, there is no Eragon movie in Ba Sing Se.)

The only reason I read the books was because my roommate a couple of years ago was a big fan of them when he was a kid, and he convinced me to give them a try. I didn't like them much even then, but I did at least finish the series. Now, maybe this book (plus the hints that Paolini is going to help write and produce a TV series adaptation for Disney+, in much the same way that Rick Riordan is doing for Percy Jackson) is what'll finally convince me to really truly reassess the entire series, knowing that as Paolini matures, so does his writing.

Review: Silver Nitrate

Silver Nitrate by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Silvia Moreno-Garcia definitely gets a lot of Guillermo del Toro vibes in some of her many Mexican-set period spec-fic stories, but never more than in her latest novel, which incorporates a lot of the same kind of elements that GDT loves to work with. Film history and Nazi occult scares, set in late 20th century Mexico City - in 1993, no less, the same year when GDT first came onto the scene with his auspicious and timeless debut feature Cronos. If SMG is writing this as an audition to write for The Cabinet of Curiosities, then if I were GDT, I'd give her the job to write the adaptation immediately. Though this book does suffer from a couple of leads who aren't very likable - especially in the context of a potential romantic relationship, one of the very few times I actually don't ship childhood friends to lovers - the unrelentingly creepy weird vibes and skillful dissection of bigotry in both the Nazi occult and Mexican society (Montserrat challenging the boys' club of the Mexico City film scene, Tristán having to hide his bisexuality and the Lebanese roots evident in his birth name) make this a new favorite Silvia Moreno-Garcia novel for me.

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Review: Wish of the Wicked

Wish of the Wicked by Danielle Paige
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Danielle Paige made herself one of my favorite authors almost ten years ago when she debuted with Dorothy Must Die, and now, after a few years dabbling in the worlds of graphic novels and modern-day paranormal sisterhood, she now returns to the Fractured Fairytale style that made her name. She rose up during the heyday of the YA fairytale retelling craze, and while a lot of titans of that genre (Marissa Meyer comes particularly to mind) don't got it so much anymore, Paige here proves that she never lost it. It's a throwback to the 2010s for sure, but this book outclasses most of the rest in the field with its incredibly original perspective, that of a young fairy godmother needing to make sure Cinderella meets the prince because it's part of a long game of revenge against the evil queen. Surprisingly, most of the plot threads wrap up pretty neatly in this book, but Paige is for sure planning a sequel with some of the cliffhangers she's leaving us with on this one, and I can't wait to see what she comes up with next!

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Review: Foul Heart Huntsman

Foul Heart Huntsman by Chloe Gong
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This one goes out to all the people hopping on a ton of Chloe Gong hate bandwagons these last several years:

Sit there in your wrongness and be wrong and get used to it.

Yes, still.

"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

"don’t upset me in the future and it will be swell, i suppose.'"
Foul Lady Fortune

"the easiest way to disappear was to never disappear fully...'"
Foul Heart Huntsman

Review: The Art of Destiny

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

“‘Goramh’s second Tenet of Humility. The mind should starve in victory and be ravenous in defeat,’ recited the duchess.

“‘Goramh must have lost a lot of wars,’ Qisami quipped.”

For me, this latest from Wesley Chu is more of a 3.5 rounded up to a 4 - the 3.5 owing to how long the book goes on and on and on even compared to its predecessor, but the rounding up because it doesn't lose its predecessor's delightfully sarcastic humor (such as, for example, the above quote) even as a ton of in universe intrigue starts to build up. (Also, because the last book I read before this one, Iron Flame, got rounded up to 3, so I'm clearly in a generous mood lately, and Chu always gets my generosity.) Thankfully, he says in the acknowledgments that this is to be the middle of a trilogy, because while Goodreads hasn't made an entry yet for the third book, Del Rey would be remiss not to publish one after the particularly abrupt cliffhanger ending of this one, which promises the highest stakes yet. We'll see, though, which trilogy he ends first - this one, or The Eldest Curses with Cassandra Clare (though I'm gonna guess this trilogy gets its ending first...)

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Review: Iron Flame

Iron Flame by Rebecca Yarros
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Review: Bookshops & Bonedust

Bookshops & Bonedust by Travis Baldree
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

After Legends & Lattes took the fantasy world by storm last year, it seems only fitting that Travis Baldree would return with a new book in that same universe. According to his note at the back of this one, it began as a fantasy takeoff on the cozy mystery genre in the style of Murder, She Wrote, but evolved into something completely different as he realized that particular story wasn't working (though I do hope he takes another shot at writing a book in that style for Viv, because I'd sure as heck love to see it.) Instead, Baldree turns back the clock a few years in Viv's past, where once again she's introduced in the thick of a battle but then pulls out of it, only this time it's not her fault. She's too badly injured to continue, and the party has to leave her behind to recuperate in a small town where she manages to scare just about everyone around her. But not Fern, the rattkin proprietor - think Beatrix Potter's character Thomasina Tittlemouse with a much fouler mouth - of a small bookstore (reminding me very strongly of a particularly small and very slightly dusty one I once visited in Cannon Beach), or her utterly adorable pet gryphet Potroast.

And, just like Viv will do much later when she starts innovating coffeeshop concepts in another city across the land, she proves herself to have a pretty good yen for innovating bookstore concepts, helping Fern organize and promote the books she has on stock, and even enticing a local author to do a reading and signing. And I'm going to presume that Fern getting Viv to start reading for pleasure absolutely was a canon event that set her on the path to quitting her mercenary life and starting a coffeeshop, because without that, we wouldn't have her as quite the soft-centered tough girl we know and love. Not even close.

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Review: The Olympian Affair

The Olympian Affair by Jim Butcher
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Eight years have passed since the first book in Butcher's steampunk series, and I thought for a while it would be utterly forgotten while he concentrated on very slowly advancing the plot of The Dresden Files. I didn't realize for a while that Butcher had had quite a lot going on in his personal life these last few years, and that's the main explanation for why he's only released three books since 2015, and two of those were a double feature in 2020. At least now he's back with more exploration of the world of the Spires, with Spire Olympia serving as a sort of neutral ground in the heating up war between Spires Albion (the English-like home of our heroes) and Aurora (which resembles Spain with its fearsome Armada.) Overall, for 600+ pages, this one does feel like so much moving of chess pieces more than anything else, but the exploration of Auroran as well as Albionian POVs is a very nice touch, and the Aurorans' new weapon is scarily biological in nature, a steampunk version of one of the most terrifying sci-fi destructive forces imaginable. Although I will say this - it's bloody distracting when the Aurorans keep spelling their flagship, the Conquistodor. On every page. Like it's to be feared more for its stench than anything else. Was that a joke on Butcher's part? I'll credit him as such, anyway.

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Review: Shutter

Shutter by Ramona Emerson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Longlisted for the National Book Award, but it would've been nice to see this one win something too, because it came across my radar at the perfect time for me to really get into it. The Fort Vancouver Library branch up the street from my workplace was promoting this one for Native American Heritage Month, along with many other titles by Native American writers, and this one stands out for its uniquely thrilling blend of murder mystery and paranormal chills. I definitely came for the mystery and stayed for the ghosts, and especially the family drama around some of the ghosts, particularly in the flashbacks to Rita's childhood as one of the few Navajo girls in Catholic school. (And, of course, her grandmother telling stories about residential schools and the associated trauma thereof.) But also, dear God is Erma one of the most angry ghosts ever put to paper, and she's justified. Emerson being a filmmaker by trade, I would love to see her put together the funds to adapt this book with a Native cast and crew as it deserves.

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Review: Nettle & Bone

Nettle & Bone by T. Kingfisher
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I ordered this one at the library after it won Best Novel at this year’s Hugo Awards, and while Gresham Library has been remarkably quick at getting my orders fulfilled, I would’ve expected a longer wait for the winner of a prestigious genre award. But now I can see why the wait list wasn’t so long for this book - and still isn’t, in fact, with only 16 people waiting for a physical copy at this time, in contrast to Fourth Wing with over 300 holds. Not that Fourth Wing being a bestseller is a measure of its quality when it so shamelessly rips off other better bestsellers, but I digress. This book, from an author getting a fair amount of hype in the SFF and horror scenes, promises some bite sized thrills and chills, but overall comes off like a really bad A24 horror movie in book form. It’s bleak, it’s dark, but also it’s shockingly boring and a waste of an interesting premise. I’ll be generous with an extra star for the occasional stab of dark humor from these oddball characters, but overall I’m mystified that this could win the Hugo going up against the likes of Nona the Ninth, or especially Legends & Lattes, which by rights should’ve won. At least it’s still better than Mary Robinette Kowal’s unlikable misfire The Spare Man, or that Scalzi book about the kaiju (I don’t plan on reading that one; Scalzi lost me a while ago). But yeah, I don’t think I’ll be picking up any Kingfisher books anytime soon either, because this one was a poor first impression for me, sadly.

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Review: Family Lore

Family Lore by Elizabeth Acevedo
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Acevedo’s adult debut is a sprawling multigenerational drama rife with magical realism and lots of interesting dynamics between the ladies of this Dominican family, both on the island and in New York. Shifting between the late 20th century (post Trujillo years, but with a few references to the old dictator and his propensity for forcing himself on women) and the present day, we get to see all sorts of mysterious magics making life tough for Flor, with her uncanny ability to predict death, and her sisters and daughters, and naturally it’s going to take a long awaited family reunion to bring all the drama to a boil. Some of these perspectives are more likable than others, and it feels a bit odd how Ona manages to discuss her bizarre “alpha vagina” powers with curiously childlike humor (I don’t remember Acevedo’s YA protagonists coming off this silly, quite the contrary), but this book is proof that even transitioning away from the YA audience isn’t going to rob Acevedo of her poetry at heart.

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Review: The Sunlit Man

The Sunlit Man by Brandon Sanderson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The fourth and final Secret Project of the Year of Sanderson is the most clearly Cosmere connected of them all, with a Worldhopper protagonist who views everything around him in terms of Rosharan culture first...and it's definitely appropriate when he's on a planet in the Cosmere that, like Roshar, is uniquely difficult to habitate. Unlike Roshar, where the people have to hunker down against highstorms that ravage the continent regularly, this is a rotating but tidally locked world where the people must move their entire civilization to ensure the Investiture of the sun doesn't fry them, and the nearly freezing night doesn't kill them either. Sanderson compares this one to Mad Max and neo-westerns, but there's also just a bit of Mortal Engines in the DNA of this book as well, and it's as great a gift to his loyal readership as we could ever have expected. Now to wait for the long-awaited return to Roshar in Knights of Wind and Truth... - but first, it's just come to my attention that there's a new Horneater novella, centered on Rock, in the works as well...

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Review: Sword Catcher

Sword Catcher by Cassandra Clare
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Cassandra Clare's first fantasy series for adults has, naturally, already made the bestseller lists, and also gotten a lot of flack from those who think she hasn't put her old plagiarizing ways behind her. Namely, they look at the fact that one of the protagonists is a boy named Kel with a strong connection to a crown prince in a realm where red and gold are the royal colors, and think that he's a ripoff of Kell from V.E. Schwab's Shades of Magic universe. No, it's pretty safe to say that this story and Schwab's share little similarities other than that, and while Clare's newest series is something of a mixed bag at first, the positives outweigh the negatives enough for me to round up a 3.5 rating to 4.

Review: The Girl in the Eagle's Talons

The Girl in the Eagle's Talons by Karin Smirnoff
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Stieg Larsson allegedly had plans for as many as ten novels with Lisbeth Salander, but ever since his death, and now with a second Swedish publisher taking over rights to this series and handing the reins to yet another author, it's become more clear than ever that this series really should never have continued without its original creator. The trilogy that David Lagercrantz wrote from 2015-19 at least started out reasonably well only to fizzle into forgettability - if I were to go back and reread them, I'd almost certainly knock off stars from my original hyped-up ratings and reviews. Karin Smirnoff starts a new trilogy here that's a mixed bag right from the start. At least Lisbeth gets to finally bond with a blood relative (after a fashion) with whom she has much more in common than, say, Camilla or Zala. Her niece Svala takes so much more after her, and it's interesting to see this kind of dynamic which neither Larsson nor Lagercrantz attempted. Unfortunately, Smirnoff doesn't know what to do with Blomkvist and saddles him with a pathetic and boring storyline that had me skimming pages just to get back to Lisbeth (even Larsson was prone to this flaw, but at least Blomkvist really felt like a character with agency and personality in the old days, even if Larsson idealized him in certain uncomfortable ways.) Not to mention, the book opens with some pretty gross necrophiliac type content, which really soured the experience for me. At this point, I don't see myself continuing the series...although maybe if the next one shows up on the Lucky Day table at the library in a couple of years and I've got a dearth of books on hand, who knows.

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Review: The Chalice of the Gods

The Chalice of the Gods by Rick Riordan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The much-hyped return of Percy Jackson, more than ten years since the last official Percy Jackson and the Olympians adventure and with tons of other stories from Rick Riordan in between, is proof that Riordan is at his best form when he's got the original Persassy Jackson (and his signature silly chapter titles) fully in command of the storytelling. And luckily, this bite-sized little book isn't actually the Grand Finale as it was initially marketed to be, but rather, Part 1 of a finale trilogy, focusing on Percy's attempts to get letters of recommendation from different Olympians so he can enroll at New Rome University along with his favorite Wise Girl in the world, Annabeth.

Review: Holly

Holly by Stephen King
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

King said he was welcoming one star reviews from the many MAGA types he freely insulted through Holly’s perspective in this book, and while I do enjoy a few digs at Der Orangeführer and his many supporters in Holly’s unspecified red state home (okay, a lot of digs, but that’s nothing new from Stephen King anyway), it was really the constant Covid content that made me round my 3.5 down instead of up. I mean, it does make sense that Holly, who is famously neurodivergent and cautious and guarded in her life, devotedly wears masks everywhere and inquired about vaccination status (and regrets that her Trumpist mother refused the vaccine and died of Covid.) But as with the movie Glass Onion, it really doesn’t serve much purpose in the narrative other than being an unnecessary extra layer of political messaging that overly dates the story. (And I highly doubt that for all King says about Holly’s views on Covid matching his own, that he’s anywhere near as super cautious as she is.)

Review: Fourth Wing

Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I'm being generous with the extra star for this one, and it's mostly because I can relate to Violet wanting to be a scribe, rather than a soldier. It's too bad she had to have a mother who comes off like a watered down version of the Commandant from An Ember in the Ashes who wouldn't allow her to pursue a path she really wanted at Basgiath War College.

I say "watered down" because unfortunately, for a book full of dragonfire and burning passions, a lot of the story is watered-down versions of so many YA and NA fantasy greatest hits from the last ten years:

Review: The Fragile Threads of Power

The Fragile Threads of Power by V.E. Schwab
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Six years and change since Schwab last wrote and published a full length novel in the world of the Shades of Magic, six years since I first bid that trilogy vas ir...anoshe, and now we're back with the long-awaited, long-hyped first book of the sequel trilogy. Just like the first book of the original trilogy, though, I do have to say that it doesn't quite live fully up to the hype for me. For this one, as grateful as I am to return to the series that's deservedly Schwab's signature work, I still have to give this one a 3.5 rounded up to a 4.

Review: Of Thieves and Shadows

Of Thieves and Shadows by B.S.H. Garcia
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I found this one on the shelf at the library in Gresham. It sure looked interesting, and I was especially intrigued when I picked it up and saw that it was from an Oregon-based author. Self-published epic fantasy? Yes please. But while the book had some interesting ideas, especially from a world building standpoint - a movie adaptation of this one would be very eye-catching with its cast of human and variously furry elfin characters - the story itself is difficult to follow, as is the geography because it's very hard to tell where certain characters are in relation to the provided world map. And the prose is oddly, bizarrely flowery, even by epic fantasy standards. Oh well, guess this one just wasn't for me.

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Review: The Jasad Heir

The Jasad Heir by Sara Hashem
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The first of a promising new fantasy series in an Egyptian-inspired desert setting is a great showcase of debut author Sara Hashem's talents. Centering on the lost heiress to a kingdom thought destroyed and the terrible debt she finds herself in to a leader from the enemy nation that led the crusade to destroy hers, it's been billed as "enemies to lovers" but it most definitely isn't that simple. Normally, that trend and trope is one of my least favorites, but Hashem's leads walk the fine line of that tension better than most examples I've seen in recent years. 500 pages go by almost in the blink of an eye - I was able to read this book in one sitting - and no, there is no way there won't be a kickass sequel to really raise the stakes.

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Review: Soulbrand

Soulbrand by Andrew Rowe
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The third book of Weapons and Wielders - and the last one to date - is where I'll have to stop my ongoing read-through of Andrew Rowe books for now, at least until one of my local libraries finally sees fit to acquire the fourth book of Arcane Ascension. But it's a good stopping point, I'd say. While it's far longer than either of its predecessors in this series, long enough to stand on par with the first two Arcane Ascension novels, it still has a blistering fast pace and a hell of a lot of fun in the weapons department. Pale Crescent, in particular, is a new favorite weapon of mine, purely for its lunar imagery involved. I really hope that it gets used more often in future installments, though hopefully not paired with the dreaded Weight of the World attack, because that one's a real doozy...

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Review: The Mountain in the Sea

The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This book got a pretty nice push in marketing a few months back from Barnes & Noble, if I remember correctly, selecting it as a Book of the Month. So when I placed an order for it at the library, it was a very long waitlist, over two months...and let me tell you, I'm sorry to say that it was not worth the wait. The premise is intriguing enough, with its idea of octopi whose language is just waiting for humans to decipher, if the octopi don't kill the humans first. It's like Arrival in that respect, especially when the octopus language relies heavily on variations on circular symbols, but also like Arrival it's a very slow burn of a story. Too slow, if you ask me, and the dull human characters and their endless philosophizing doesn't help. No, this one's not for me, but maybe I'll try another Nayler novel some other time...

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Review: Tides of Fire

Tides of Fire by James Rollins
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Seichan largely sat out the last Sigma Force adventure, but that was because Rollins had a lot more personal peril in mind for her in this latest installment. Following multiple lines of narratives throughout the South Seas and Southeast Asia not unlike previous adventure The Judas Strain, this time around, Sigma has to face a string of escalating geological cataclysms throughout the interconnected submarine trenches of the region, from Tonga to New Zealand to Indonesia to China. Naturally, making things worse, a Triad gunfight against a recurring Russian enemy breaks out while Seichan and Gray and friends are visiting with Seichan's mom Guan-yin, the Triad boss - and there happens to be a huge earthquake in Hong Kong, followed by a tsunami.

Inspired, as Rollins says in the author's note at the end, by the movie Krakatoa, East of Java, this book focuses more on the enormous eruption of Tambora in 1815, the Year without a Summer, with the usual historical prologue focusing on a strange phenomenon around the volcano where people's bodies turned to blackened coral. Connecting that phenomenon to some bizarre geological substrata - remnants of the planetoid Theia's collision with the young Earth that birthed the moon, though I'm pretty sure Rollins made a typo saying it was four and a half million years ago, instead of billions - and the Aboriginal Australian stories of the Dreaming and the Rainbow Serpent, with evidence to suggest that perhaps Australia, not Africa, was the origin of the human race all along...it's as head-spinning as Rollins's adventures get, but beware, and I do mean BEWARE, of the weapons-grade cliffhanger at the end.

There's gonna have to be another big team-up for the next one, that's for damn sure.

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Review: Seven Mercies

Seven Mercies by L.R. Lam and Elizabeth May
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I'm very glad that I was able to read this fast-paced series conclusion so soon after finally getting around to its predecessor Seven Devils super late to the party. Normally, I'm not much for the duology trend - I've complained about it numerous times - but reading the two books in such quick succession is exactly what the doctor ordered. It may have technically taken me many days, but that's only because my reading time has been a bit shortened as of late, especially with library ebooks. But this book really does live up to Lam and May's promise of Fury Road in space, a high flying and high speed and high stakes narrative as we finally set the stage for the fall of another deadly interstellar empire. Hopefully some indie movie producer gets the rights to a film adaptation someday (I say indie because let's be real, the major studios have lost a lot of goodwill with their greed in these times of WGA and SAG strikes.)

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Review: Forging Divinity

Forging Divinity by Andrew Rowe
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

While waiting for the third book of Weapons & Wielders, I took a little side trip through Andrew Rowe's backlist to the first book of another series with a tangential connection at best to the other two series of his that I've been reading on my coworker Tory's rec. I think Tory might've read these books too, but it was Arcane Ascension that he liked the most, followed by Weapons & Wielders, and this series barely earned much mention from him. And I'm not surprised. Being written well before the other Rowe series, it's definitely less polished, but the dual POVs in this one are so detached and dull that it makes the book more skimmable than anything else. I'll give up after this book for this series, but at least I have another Weapons & Wielders book ready to read soon.

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Review: Dead Mountain

Dead Mountain by Douglas Preston
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The latest mystery for Nora Kelly and Corrie Swanson is quite an adventurous one, once again tackling some mysterious deaths high in the mountains - this time, in the Manzano Mountains of central New Mexico. Tackling a cold case - in more ways than one - of dead missing hikers in one of the highest caves in the range quickly leads to Nora running afoul of the long arm of the corrupt law, as a nastily racist sexist shitheel sheriff tries to railroad her and her brother while they try to explore the remains ethically, since they're also in close proximity to ancient Native American burial grounds. Preston and Child, for the climbers, took inspiration from a strange incident in Soviet Russia, for which Preston was actually about to sign up for film rights before Russia invaded Ukraine and the studios decided to abandon the project. But being set in New Mexico, they get to incorporate some mysterious radiation, since they're so close to the site of the Trinity test and all...and in parallel to the Manhattan Project is a fictional, but eerily plausible, conspiracy theory in universe about the "Boston Project" of supersoldier experiments with Yeti DNA. (Be glad Steve Rogers was nowhere near this project.) Naturally, since their Relic days are behind them, Preston and Child come up with more earthbound explanations for what has happened, but that doesn't make this mystery any less interesting for it.

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Review: Diamantine

Diamantine by Andrew Rowe
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Keras's little side story of capturing the Six Sacred Swords continues, with the lit-RPG world now taking on a lot of inspiration, as Rowe says, from shōnen manga and anime and their tournament arcs. He specifically cites the Hunter Exams from Hunter x Hunter and the Chunin Exams from Naruto, so yeah, now I can see where Rowe gets a bit of his long-term storytelling style from. I never really grew up on shōnen manga or anime like just about every other boy my age, but I've read and/or seen some as I grew up, and I'm pretty sure none of them had a protagonist anywhere close to Keras in age. That's a pretty unique little selling point for sure, but unfortunately, this is clearly another point where Rowe is starting to drag his feet as far as telling the story goes. The implication at the start of this series was that the first two books would essentially be the story told in the time it took for Keras, Corin, Sera, etc. to ride the train between the second and third Arcane Ascension novel, but no, we're not done yet. Not when there's at least one more book to go in this particular series, which hopefully wraps up Keras's prequel tournament arc and doesn't make it drag for 20 repetitive episodes or more (looking at you, Yu Yu Hakusho...)

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Review: Immortal Longings

Immortal Longings by Chloe Gong
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Normally I'm more than willing to go to bat for Chloe Gong, especially given the absurd and irrational hatedom she gets from Book Twitter types. But for this, her adult debut (when her previous books are pretty much YA in marketing only), inspired loosely by Antony and Cleopatra instead of Romeo and Juliet for Secret Shanghai, and set in a densely packed cyberpunk twin city inspired by the infamous Kowloon Walled City of mid-20th century Hong Kong...I'm sorry to say that this book just doesn't meet the standards I've come to expect from Gong.

Review: Seven Devils

Seven Devils by L.R. Lam and Elizabeth May
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It's a shame it took me three years to read the first of L.R. Lam and Elizabeth May's sci-fi collaboration series - for a number of reasons, mainly that my hometown library in California never acquired it in the time of Covid, and then I moved to a town that didn't acquire it either, and Multnomah County and Fort Vancouver Libraries never acquired it themselves for the longest time...but I digress. Here, though, is the first of a duology of sci-fi about women vs. a corrupt space empire, perfect for fans of the Hugo-winning works of Arkady Martine, and comped by the authors themselves to Fury Road. There's a bunch of points of view to go around, and the story bounces around with a lot of flashbacks to three years ago, two years ago, etc. It builds to a pretty nice cliffhanger with a chess metaphor that promises a lot of action in the sequel, which I've already got ready to start reading very soon, thankfully...

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Review: The Torch that Ignites the Stars

The Torch that Ignites the Stars by Andrew Rowe
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The Arcane Ascension series continues with a detour to another land on this vast continent of mana and magic, where Corin, Sera, and all their friends and allies are taking a break between school years to do some independent study, as it were. There could really be some hidden treasures in the secret magitek labs, some cures for various maladies our heroes may suffer, some hints about where the next known level of attunement may lie (Peridot is discussed), and maybe finally some advancements from Carnelian to Sunstone? If only Corin could find some better mana food. Relatable, that struggle.

Sadly, while this book is noticeably shorter than either of its sprawling predecessors, it unfortunately is also less focused as a story. It really does feel like a touch of filler between the first book covering the first school year, and the second year arc promised to begin in the fourth book. Also, while Sera narrates the recap at the start, I was hoping to see more of her involvement in this story as a result, and was sadly disappointed on that front.

That said, though, Rowe still keeps my interest as well as can be expected, especially with the nasty cliffhanger this one ends on. It's just too bad that my local library doesn't have Book 4 yet, and claims they can't even order it either. Guess I might have to shell out some gift card money from my birthday for that...

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Review: The 9th Man

The 9th Man by Steve Berry
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

The first book of a projected trilogy (at least) spinning off from Berry's signature Cotton Malone series, I'm afraid this one doesn't give a particularly strong first impression of Luke Daniels as a character. By Berry's own admission, Daniels is like a younger and more impetuous Cotton Malone, but after years of reading Malone's stories, Daniels just comes off shockingly incompetent, the worst student Malone could have had. As for the story, Berry and Blackwood (that frequent collaborator with other big names in the genre, like James Rollins, and the late Clive Cussler) present some very interesting ideas of what could've truly happened to cause JFK's death in 1963, and it's an eerily plausible theory they come up with - one that rings particularly true after years of actual incompetence in the US government. Still, though, the book takes its sweet time revealing that theory, with more than half of it elapsing before we finally start getting into the usual Berry territory. Hopefully the next couple of books which Berry alluded to will be better collaborations with Blackwood, but this one, for me, is undeniably a dud.

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Review: Six Sacred Swords

Six Sacred Swords by Andrew Rowe
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Ahh, here's a nice little change from Andrew Rowe. After two meaty paper bricks in the Arcane Ascension series, here, Rowe shifts focus to Keras with a sort of prequel spinoff, presented as a story which Keras tells while on a long ride abroad with Corin and company at the end of On the Shoulders of Titans. It's a much shorter book than the first two Arcane Ascension novels were, and is a hell of a lot of fun to read, in one sitting no less. Though there are some nods to this universe's complex geopolitics, religion, and magic systems, it's a more straightforward story here of Keras just doing some Keras things. Like meeting a dragon who proves to be quite a match for him in combat, but just as much fun to have around as a companion (and helps this story pair pretty well with L.R. Lam's Dragonfall). Or Dawnbringer, a hilarious sapient sword who knows full well this isn't any old Arthurian legend. It's hard to say whether or not this book's blatant cliffhanger is meant to lead into its own sequel, or the third Arcane Ascension book, but the latter is luckily already atop the pile of library books on my desk, so I'll be starting it next.

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Review: Light Bringer

Light Bringer by Pierce Brown
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

No spoilers for Light Bringer, but spoilers for previous Pierce Brown books will appear herein. You've been warned.

"Our sun floats in darkness attended by moons made of trash."

And with that, Darrow once again proves himself the Imperator of Opening Lines.

Four years ago, we all thought Pierce Brown was only going to give us one more book after Dark Age in the Red Rising Saga, but after that book proved to be such a "Frankensteinian" "mental twister" in Brown's words, it really shouldn't come as any surprise that Brown couldn't just wrap things up with one thousand-page brick to rival Brandon Sanderson. No, it really shouldn't come as any surprise to see that Comic-Con 2022 had Howler One finally announce after years of delays and trashings of manuscript pages by the hundreds, that there would be two big boy books coming down the pike - Light Bringer now, and Red God still to come.

And it definitely shouldn't come as any surprise, none whatsoever, that Howler One Pierce Brown is still the Apex Asshole, the most rockstarinest writer of them all, and even he couldn't help but cry at that one death.

This after he wrote the most unthinkable death of them all in Dark Age with the newborn Ulysses Barca.

But this time, it stings so much worse because this character was finally coming back from the brink, from the abyss...and along comes a certain punchable Hate Sink to ruin the whole thing.

You know what you did, Pierce Brown.

YOU KNOW WHAT YOU DID.

Review: On the Shoulders of Titans

On the Shoulders of Titans by Andrew Rowe
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

While seeing me read this second book of Arcane Ascension at work, my coworker Tory, who recommended this author to me to begin with, would go off on tangents about the various connections between this series and others from Mr. Rowe. After reading this book in its entirety, I can see why - the ending to this one is slightly more concerned, especially right on the last line, with setting up a spinoff more than its direct sequel. In any case, I've already ordered both those following books at the library. In the meantime, I'll be able to sit and digest this one a little longer. It's for sure a bit of a bigger beast than the first book, but also pretty long and slow at times. But there's just a bit more family drama woven into the geopolitics of it all - we finally meet Corin's father Magnus, for instance, and learn just how much he needs to be under the continent for how horribly abusive he is to his own son and his son's friends. Corin also tries to navigate his complex feelings for Jin, as well as the fact that he's also finding himself drawn to a lady classmate, suggesting that he's biromantic. Best of all, the winter ball, built up ever since the middle of Book 1, finally comes along with all the drama one could expect - Buffy's proms ain't got nothing on this. Hopefully soon I'll have one or both of the follow-up books in my library pile...

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Review: The Clearing

The Clearing by Simon Toyne
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Ahh, now this is more like it. The second Laughton Rees mystery by Mr. Toyne dips slightly back into his fantasy roots, while also specifically going for the sort of folkloric West Country vibe that influenced Tolkien. (No seriously, there’s a lot of hobbit and orc jokes throughout this book, even in the internal monologue lament of an Earl whose historic house would require repair work from a very old fashioned blacksmith.) Far away from the humdrum city life of the first book (though thankfully DCI Tannahill Khan is only a phone call away), Rees now goes forth to investigate a disappearance around Midsummer’s Eve, leading her to a string of similarly vanished women, a cult based on the evil Cinderman spirits of the local legends, and a twist ending that reminds me of at least one Jack the Ripper theory (which I believe Will Thomas used as the basis for one of his Barker & Llewelyn mysteries.) Shorter and punchier than its predecessor, this book will hopefully be only the next in a long line for Mr. Toyne and his newest protagonist.

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Review: Dark Objects

Dark Objects by Simon Toyne
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

With each series he’s worked on in the last decade, Simon Toyne has shifted more towards realism than the intense modern fantasy thrillers of the Sanctus trilogy, a series that I’ll not soon forget. This book is the first of a new series with protagonist Laughton Rees, a young profiler with a terribly troubled past - like Barry Allen, she saw her mum’s murder, but unlike Barry Allen, she wound up so traumatized that she lived on the streets, in shelters, and had a baby at a very young age too. Luckily for her, she’s been able to rise up and make a life for herself, but her past traumas will all come back on this case. It’s a very peculiar kind of mystery novel where the actual murder story is so dry that it winds up being overshadowed by a large number of competing storylines, including the secret truth behind why Laughton’s book on profiling is on prominent display at the scene of the crime, or her struggles to keep up with her daughter’s emotional issues due to school bullying, and the backstory of DCI Tannahill Khan, who is Pakistani and grew up very ashamed of that fact thanks to rampant racism. This book is a bit hit or miss for me, but it’s Toyne, so the hits are pretty strong. And I’ve already gotten started on the sequel, so we’ll see how that goes soon enough.

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Review: Yumi and the Nightmare Painter

Yumi and the Nightmare Painter by Brandon Sanderson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Sanderson's third of his 2023 Secret Projects was also by far the quickest to reach me when the new quarter began. I guess the ongoing production and fulfillment issues at the Dragonsteel warehouse in Utah must have resolved themselves pretty well, and third time's the charm for the project which Sanderson has indicated to be his favorite of the Secret Projects. It's certainly my favorite from a visual standpoint, with its heavy use of blue and pink contrast between Painter and Yumi and their mysterious and divergent worlds. It's kept unclear at first where in the Cosmere they should be, relative to each other, but the answer to that question, when it comes, is a total mind blower. No wonder Hoid is just sitting there smugger of mug than ever as the truth ultimately unfolds for the reader and the protagonists alike. It's also pretty lovely in its romance, which apparently was Emily Sanderson's hope because she'd love to see more of that in her husband's work, and taking cues as it does from Japanese anime and Korean dramas (the soap operas the characters get to watch in the light up hion lines sound like a Cosmere counterpart to the real world K-drama Alchemy of Souls in particular), it's a romance for the ages for sure. Here's hoping that the last of Sanderson's Secret Projects is just as good as the rest, if not better...

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Review: The Book Eaters

The Book Eaters by Sunyi Dean
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

If I hadn't been aware that author Sunyi Dean was autistic, I'd have been very suspicious of her for writing a book where the main character's son, a rare monster among monsters, comes off like a grim allegory of how neurotypical people see autistic people as inherently creepy. That Cai, the mind eater character in question, is only able to adhere to what is typical for his people when dosed with a drug curiously known as "Redemption" doesn't help.

Review: Fractal Noise

Fractal Noise by Christopher Paolini
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

A lot of one star reviews for this book are flat out review bombing. I don't engage in such a practice myself. But while I did give this book a fair shake, I was absolutely not impressed. Even leaving aside the utter ridiculousness of Tor being caught using AI to create the cover art (allegedly by accident, since they simply took from a normally reputable stock photo source, so they said) and Paolini defending it against deserved backlash, this book just doesn't deserve the hype. Paolini said in his afterword that he tried to write this one after finishing the old Inheritance Cycle, and that his initial draft was way too bleak and nihilistic, so he moved on to To Sleep in a Sea of Stars instead. If only he'd left Fractal Noise to molder away in the slush pile of oblivion, because this book belongs there. It's short, but plodding, dull, unfunny (most of the attempted humor comes from a really obnoxious Slavic stereotype named Pushkin who speaks in broken English like a side character on NCIS: Los Angeles, and most of the other characters run on sci-fi stereotypes as well, with a protagonist in mourning, a hyper religious teammate, etc. etc.) While I was never a big fan of Paolini, at least his previous works had heart. This one...let's just say I would be unsurprised if the AI was limited to just the cover. I suspect a lot of the inner artwork might've been AI as well, and there could've been some touch ups the editor might've run on the text, if not Paolini himself. I hate to speculate but...who knows. All I know is, I gave this one a shot and I found this book wanting for even a hint of enjoyment.

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Review: Sufficiently Advanced Magic

Sufficiently Advanced Magic by Andrew Rowe
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

My coworker recommended me this big old self-pubbed piece of fantasy, a sprawling litRPG kind of novel that makes me think of the time a certain fantasy author - mostly YA, but dipping his toes into adult fantasy these days - once asked me to try my hand at writing that subgenre with him, but I had to say no because I didn't think I could do it justice. Seeing this example of litRPG live and in person, I think my initial assessment was right - it's a genre I wouldn't get right if I were to attempt it. Though maybe I can get to that level of epic someday, a word count comparable to Brandon Sanderson's Stormlight Archive and a big world map full of complex geopolitics.

Review: Age of Vice

Age of Vice by Deepti Kapoor
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

I’m sorry to say that while I did go into this book with good expectations, I should’ve heeded Jaroda’s not so dazzling rating. This book, in addition to getting plaudits and blurbs from Marlon James and Lee Child both (when was the last time that happened? Or will it ever happen again?), also manages to be both compulsively readable and yet so unrelentingly downbeat and vicious to its own protagonist that after a while of long slogging, I just had to give up. I think it was the point where Kapoor introduced a journalist character clearly based on herself. That was the point where I just skipped ahead, found a few pages that had maybe one line of text, or a few lines of text in the middle all alone - a page count padding tactic I also remember from the only V.E. Schwab novel I didn’t like, Our Dark Duet - and that was where I decided to just nope out. As much as I sympathized with Ajay, I just couldn’t bring myself to continue reading about him and his endless cycles of tragedy and abuse. This one just wasn’t for me, sadly.

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Review: The Sun and the Star

The Sun and the Star by Rick Riordan and Mark Oshiro
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

If I'd finished this book a few days earlier, I'd have been able to cap off Pride Month with this review. But alas, time was not on my side, so we'll have to settle for, as the citizens of cyberspace may say, Gay Wrath Month instead. Lol.

It's not that it doesn't happen, but it is very rare for me to come across a Rick Riordan book that I read and don't super enjoy. Then again, I'm definitely well aged beyond his target audience by now, but still, Riordan and the many authors he's brought under his aegis in recent years know how to keep things adventurous and funny for their middle grade fantasy protagonists.

This time, though, Riordan collaborates with someone who's not exactly known for their sense of humor in their books, and it shows.