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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