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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