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...)

View all my reviews

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...

View all my reviews

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...

View all my reviews

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.

View all my reviews

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.

View all my reviews

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.