Review: Infinity Kings

Infinity Kings by Adam Silvera
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I used to be such a big fan of Adam Silvera like 5-10 years ago, but more recently I'm afraid he's been losing his luster for me. He used to be so good at writing stories about glorious gay geekboys who made me laugh and cry in equal measure, but it says a lot that this book included one particularly major character death and I didn't cry reading it. I should have, but I didn't, and I blame that on this book's massive overlength, too many characters, too many POV's, and too many times cheating death for various other characters, including a few who should've died a thousand pages ago.

Review: The Diablo's Curse

The Diablo's Curse by Gabe Cole Novoa
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Though I'll always be a fan of Beyond the Red and sequels first and foremost, I'm very happy to see that Gabe Cole Novoa has been carving himself a nice new niche in the YA publishing world, now with his second book in a loosely connected series of pirate fantasy novels. Trading in the sunny Caribbean for the more forbidding waters off Massachusetts (albeit with a misplaced tropical island or two, because diablo magic) and focusing on the mission-driven demonio Dami as they try to cancel all the deals they've made, Novoa's got the recipe down for some of the finest adventuring in the business. Naturally, our protagonists come from all across the LGBTQ+ spectrum - Dami, of course, being genderfluid and nonbinary; Silas, who irritates the hell out of them for all the right reasons; and Marisol, a trans girl fleeing from the family who never let her be herself. Though some aspects of the prose do read a little distractingly modern for this 19th century setting, it helps establish the characters' witty styles better, so it works better than most other anachronistic examples. I hope to see more seafaring fun from Novoa coming soon, though I can't imagine how he could make a better (anti) hero than Dami, who's one of my favorite characters of his by far now. (Though Eros will still be my best bi boi, of course, for obvious reasons.)

View all my reviews

Review: A Tempest of Tea

A Tempest of Tea by Hafsah Faizal
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It's been a few years since Hafsah Faizal wrote a new fantasy novel, but it's definitely been worth the wait for this one. Coming pretty close to the same trajectory as Leigh Bardugo took with the Grishaverse, Faizal follows up on her initial series, the Sands of Arawiya, with the start of a new series focusing on a highly diverse ensemble cast carrying out a heist. A lot like Six of Crows this story becomes, set in not-London instead of not-Amsterdam (White Roaring, capital of Ettenia), but with a few extra elements to really make it a memorably new experience. This book features vampires existing in the shadowy underground of White Roaring, including a Jack the Ripper analogue. Most of the ensemble cast are people who've come from other nations in this universe - including Arawiya, of course, but also parallels to different Asian nations. Ceylan, Qirilan, Jeevant Gar, all with lots of natural resources which the colonizing Ettenians have sought to exploit for generations - which helps motivate the likes of Arthie, Jin, and Flick to challenge the status quo. Along the way, they make a ton of shocking discoveries about Ettenia's plans for the future, all leading up to a pretty solid cliffhanger that makes me hope Faizal doesn't take as long to present the second book in this series - which I suspect will be another duology conclusion, but we'll see soon enough, I suppose.

View all my reviews

Review: The Familiar

The Familiar by Leigh Bardugo
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Bardugo's got a pretty extensive contract to write as many as 12 new books now, and I'm thinking this standalone fantasy novel was just the first of them. It's very definitely a Bardugo book in a lot of ways - dark, moody atmosphere, strange magic, Jewish protagonist struggling to hold on to her tenuous links to her culture, a mysterious bad-boy kind of love interest? All of the above, represented.

Review: The Enchanted Hacienda

The Enchanted Hacienda by J.C. Cervantes
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

I wanted to like this book when I picked it up at the library - it looked like a sort of darker, more mature take on Disney's Encanto, but Mexican, with a flower based magic system - and maybe, just maybe, the protagonist getting to discover her magic after all. (Spoilers for Encanto, but I'm still salty that Mirabel never got a gift.) Be careful what you wish for and all that, though - because in this book, while the packaging promises mystery and darkness, it's jarring to see how oddly light in tone the book is, and yet almost every character (including Harlow, the protagonist) is annoying in their flaws at best and flat out unlikable at worst. Sorry to say, this one was definitely not for me, so it's an official DNF.

View all my reviews

Review: Lore of the Wilds

Lore of the Wilds by Analeigh Sbrana
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Got this romantasy rec from a friend in Z Brewer’s Minion Horde Discord server. It’s not my favorite in the genre, but it’s a nice touch to see a Black-led story of humans and Fae and a secret library that gives all the Beauty and the Beast vibes better than anything SJM ever did. (Not April Foolin’, even though that was yesterday, but whatever. I said what I said.) Lore herself is a very engaging protagonist too, with her connections to both her human family and the Fae to which she must connect in order to achieve her story goals. It’s a promising start to a new series, and my hopes are just a little higher for Book 2…

View all my reviews

Review: Making It So: A Memoir

Making It So: A Memoir by Patrick Stewart
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I guess I’ve been on a slight celebrity memoir kick lately, having read Geddy Lee’s My Effin’ Life over Christmas, and now this memoir from Sir Patrick Stewart. Though there’s much to be said about his star-making role as Picard (my first and favorite Star Trek Captain), he wouldn’t be the great legend we know today if not for his humble beginnings in a working class family in Yorkshire (trigger warning: domestic violence, a facet of his childhood he’s spoken frankly about before), as well as his days in theater, from regional to international and always including Shakespeare. He may be disciplined, but he’s a humble and honest man too, and I relished learning about Stewart’s craft and style. And there were a few surprises in his story too - like, I didn’t realize he didn’t know Sir Ian McKellen, much less befriend him, till they played nemeses for the ages in the X-Men films. It’ll be a sad, sad day when the world loses Sir Patrick, but I think that day is still a long time coming.

View all my reviews

Review: Empire of the Damned

Empire of the Damned by Jay Kristoff
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Bloodydamn goryhell, Mister Kristoff.

Baise-moi le visage.

You've done it again. You love your readers, but you love breaking their hearts even more, and now, two and a half years on from the start of your darkest and most epic trilogy yet, it's never been as clear as it is now.

Review: Dark Star Burning, Ash Falls White

Dark Star Burning, Ash Falls White by Amélie Wen Zhao
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

It's such good fortune that despite the ridiculous Book Twitter attempts to cancel her career before it even got started (the North remembers, as does Pepperidge Farm, and so do I), Zhao now has two completed fantasy series under her belt. I was more than a bit surprised to see that she decided to go with the duology route in this one, but after reading this book, I can see where she made it work at that length of series rather than try to stretch things out into a trilogy. Though this series is unfortunately not my favorite of Zhao's, it's undeniably richly steeped in the stories and legends of China of old, and I'd say she does a great job of wrapping up the story in this one. As always, I can't wait to see what great new story Zhao's got in mind next, but for now, this series gets a well-earned 告别 from me.

View all my reviews

Review: Fate Breaker

Fate Breaker by Victoria Aveyard
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Aveyard has finished two series to date, but this one, for the first time, really and truly feels like it's all come to an end. To be fair, War Storm had a very open ending, and while Broken Throne had short story epilogues, I'm still dying for Aveyard to return to that story world with the promise of a new follow up series about the War of Red Thunder.

But here, in the last of Aveyard's YA-in-marketing-only epic fantasy love letter to her Tolkien-loving teenage self who needed a little something more than what Tolkien and Lewis liked to write (especially from a gender and cultural standpoint), she brings the story to a strong conclusion that finally earns this series a place on my five-star "read this if it kills you!" shelf, and once again validates my status as a lifetime passenger on the Aveyardian hype train.

Review: The Spear Cuts Through Water

The Spear Cuts Through Water by Simon Jimenez
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

This one unfortunately is a classic case of not only "interesting premise but poor execution," but also "just not for me." I wanted to like this one, but when the book immediately launches into a long winded second person POV narrative (which is historically off putting for a reason; I'm still surprised to this day I managed to read N.K. Jemisin's entire Broken Earth trilogy, but then at least she didn't do second person POV the whole time like this book does - hell, I checked the acknowledgments in the back and Jimenez wrote those in second person too), it's just way too hard to get into all at once. Sorry to say this one is an official DNF for me.

View all my reviews

Review: Most Ardently

Most Ardently by Gabe Cole Novoa
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Gabe Cole Novoa's been hyping up this book for a while, and it's a pretty sharp departure from his past work because it's the first non-speculative fiction book he's published. No sci-fi, no fantasy, and by his own admission, no magic...but definitely he's still got his usual gifts of unexpectedly twisty romance well in hand as he contributes to Feiwel & Friends's lineup of Remixed Classics. This gender-bending take on Pride & Prejudice gives us Oliver Bennet, a gay transmasculine protagonist struggling to live authentically in Regency England while all manner of suitors court him and his sisters. Including, of course, Darcy, who is gay as well in the modern sense.

Novoa's author's note at the end of this book talks about how the Regency had more of a thriving gay scene, even if it was pretty well underground, though nowhere near as much as the Victorian era and its repression of all sexualities. That said, Novoa doesn't paint this setting as an LGBTQ+ paradise either - Oliver and Darcy, as well as Charlotte and her lady love Lu (an original character) all have to stay closeted as far as wider society is concerned, and threats of outing are pretty common a tactic among the book's villains.

While this book is definitely not my usual cup of tea - I think I may have read the original Pride & Prejudice some time ago, but I had to look up a lot of details again to compare to this book - and it's not a happily ever after for everyone who deserves it the most, Novoa still shines brightest when it comes to the love story, as well as the constant twists of who's trying to court whom, and props to him for transforming Austen's comedy of manners and errors into some serious narrative tension. Hopefully soon I'll be able to read Novoa's next, even more eagerly awaited new book, going back to his new universe of Caribbean pirate fantasy with The Diablo's Curse.

View all my reviews

Review: All This Twisted Glory

All This Twisted Glory by Tahereh Mafi
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Last year, when I read the second book of Tahereh Mafi's current series, I expected that that book was the middle of a trilogy - hadn't it been announced as such at first? But since then, Mafi not only announced that this new book would not be the end of the series after all, but that she's planning as many as five books total in the series. Now, as much as I love Mafi's work, and she's never losing her position as one of the prettiest prose stylists in the business...I have to say, this series has been unusually hard for me to get into compared to her earlier work.

Review: Sky's End

Sky's End by Marc J. Gregson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

For this hella hyped new series opener, I'm going to give it a 3.5 rounded up to a 4. Other reviewers have pointed out how much this book is a throwback to the YA dystopian boom of the 2010s, combining a lot of well known stylistic hallmarks - a protagonist joining one of a large number of postapocalyptic factions, a certain fascination with the number twelve in the structure, first person present tense narrative, and a high dose of action punctuated by minced oaths from a Utah writer...yeah, it's safe to say that while The Maze Runner has lost its luster in part because of its author's awful behavior behind the scenes, here at last is a strong spiritual successor to rival Brandon Sanderson's Steelheart and Skyward YA sci-fi series. Already they've announced the remaining titles in the trilogy, and I'd say the confidence is well earned.

View all my reviews

Review: The Atlas Maneuver

The Atlas Maneuver by Steve Berry
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Not my favorite, but still a far better Atlas-titled book than any of Olivie Blake's BookTok overhype.

(There, I said it.)

Cotton Malone's back again, and this time, taking on a bizarre multipronged conspiracy to hack the world's economy with a combination of lost Japanese World War II gold and conning numerous countries around the world into adopting bitcoin as legal tender. Sure, this book already feels a bit dated since bitcoin was more of a household name in the last decade, and Berry's usually impeccable research falls flat a couple of times - like, why the hell is Malta the only EU nation listed among those in the plan for bitcoin adoption?

Review: The Tainted Cup

The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Robert Jackson Bennett returns with the start of a brand new series, although this book is pretty standalone in its unique new world. Imagine if Rian Johnson in the midst of his Knives Out era collaborated with Jasper Fforde in the midst of his Shades of Grey era, and you'd have something approximating this book - biopunk fantasy murder mystery with creeping vines and spores out to kill everyone (so a bit of Tress of the Emerald Sea), rampaging leviathans out to sea (so a bit of Attack on Titan, and infrastructure is a constant imperial investment), quirky investigators with various sensory improvements leading to neurodivergence that makes them almost impossible to live normally among their peers, and a unique imperial setting mashing up aspects of other historical places and times that you wouldn't normally expect to work (kind of Greco-Roman, kind of Japanese, and kind of Ottoman - the latter especially since Turkish appears to be the basis of the imperial language.) Bennett's done it again with another home run of a book, and now that I've learned he wrote a few others before he really started making a name for himself with City of Stairs and sequels, I'll have to go back and read some of his earlier works at long last. But I'd be pleasantly surprised if any of them hold up as much as this under the radar masterpiece does.

View all my reviews

Review: Lucero

Lucero by Maya Motayne
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It's been over two full years since Motayne published the second book of this trilogy, but I'm very glad that she got the chance to publish the whole series, because it's truly one of the most underrated in the YA sphere. While the first book and especially the second book dealt a lot with colonialism and its effects on linguistically attuned magic in universe, the diabolical cliffhanger ending of Oculta ensured that this book would have a wider focus on saving the world - and especially the diabolical first chapter of near instantaneous mass murder on Sombra's part. In order to defeat Sombra, Finn and Alfie and even Luka and James have to figure out a way to travel to all the other countries in Mundo - the Scandinavian inspired Uppskala, Nigerian inspired Ygosi, and Chinese inspired Weilai (named Mirai in earlier books, but I see Motayne decided to change that since the original name was more Japanese) - to recover all the missing parts of Sombra. Because the biggest challenge is that in order to defeat Sombra, Sombra's gotta be made whole. Not gonna be easy, is it? But our heroes are as up to the challenge as you might expect, and while I can imagine the epilogue pisses a few fans off (Motayne said she wrote it very early in her process for this whole trilogy), I'd say it's as excellent an adiós as this series deserves.

View all my reviews

Review: The Might

The Might by Siri Pettersen
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

The third book of The Raven Rings took a little while to arrive for me at the library after reading the first two in relatively quick succession, but unfortunately it did keep the series' downward trend going. While the first two books had constant action over their hundreds and hundreds of pages and led to some wild cliffhangers on each one, this time, the story manages to move super fast and still take forever to wrap up at the same time. I do feel like the ending is pretty unexpectedly abrupt and unlike the endings of most similar fantasy series, but I'm still thinking about whether that was a good or a bad thing. I'm gonna go with neutral in the end, though, I'm thinking. To this series, I now declare a good old Norwegian farvel.

View all my reviews

Review: The Spy Coast

The Spy Coast by Tess Gerritsen
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Ahh, finally, a breath of fresh air to take me out of my current reading slump. Gerritsen says that this book, the start of a promising new series, took some inspiration from the fact that apparently the small town in Maine where she moved in her golden years is also full of golden-years people...and many of them have some secrets in their pasts that they can't talk about even to their doctors. Thus was the genesis of The Spy Coast, where spies may retire in peace...until someone comes along with an agenda rooted in a past mission gone wrong. Though that mission in Malta is undeniably a tragic one when its details are revealed in an extended flashback in the third act, it's still a well earned mention of the land of my mother's mothers, one that makes me really want to see the movie adaptation happen sooner rather than later. Seeing as Amazon published this book through one of their imprints, I would hope they also get to produce the film adaptation in house for Prime Video as well. As long as they film on location properly, and give it the theatrical release it deserves as well...

View all my reviews

Review: A Plague of Giants

A Plague of Giants by Kevin Hearne
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I thought I might have attempted to read this book once when it first came out, but I guess this is my first time leaving a review here for it. Oh well. Unfortunately, if I did read it back then, I must not have remembered it well at all. And this time, I'm remembering it for the wrong reasons. Normally, I would have expected I'd love a fantasy novel with a bard in the center of it all, but the disjointed narratives of several characters, only a small handful of whom are memorable and most of whom are difficult to tell apart...it's a recipe for disaster, reminding me unpleasantly of The Witcher, especially the TV series adaptation which I gave up on because of how much the writers bungled the job on that one. Hearne's earned his laurels years ago for The Iron Druid Chronicles, but recapturing that magic? I'm still waiting for that day to come.

View all my reviews

Review: Ruthless Vows

Ruthless Vows by Rebecca Ross
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I did like the first book in this series well enough, but this sequel, the concluding entry in the series, was just a little bit of a letdown in comparison. Sure, the tension between Iris and Roman (the latter having a serious memory problem as a result of his abduction by a semi-sympathetic elder god who wants him to write propaganda opposing the even less sympathetic goddess who's been luring soldiers to fight for her thousands of miles from home) is still as strong as it ever was, and keeps the book compulsively readable. But seriously...I feel like I'm going to be complaining about this for the rest of my life, but why has the publishing industry, especially in YA, really been pushing duologies in recent years? Other than Marie Lu, most authors struggle to pull it off. I seriously think Ross should've made this one a trilogy, because as it is, she had to really rush the ending to make it another duology. But for now, I declare ave atque vale to this series as I've done with so many others before it.

View all my reviews

Review: The Golem of Brooklyn

The Golem of Brooklyn by Adam Mansbach
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"'If you think clay monster who just learn English yesterday understand all that, you giant dickhead,' said The Golem."

I didn't realize going into this that Mansbach was also the writer of those parody children's books that Bryan Cranston narrated, "Go the F**k to Sleep" and sequels, of which there appear to be at least three by now. But after reading this, I guess it makes sense, because this book is an extraordinarily dark comedy that's totally tailor made for a race between Seth Rogen and the Coen Brothers to nab the film rights. Or why not both? They could put their heads together and adapt this into a gnarly little movie, although I do suspect Rogen (he who loves getting the VFX dept. on The Boys to shell out for giant phallic models on set) might balk at the fact that the poor Golem comes back into this world missing his precious shmok.

But that's just the tip of the iceberg of how bonkers as hell this book really is - I suspect Mansbach took some inspo from the Venom movies with Tom Hardy as well, because The Golem sounds like Venom by way of Larry David with a generous helping of lethally potent drugs. The contrast between ethnic and cultural Judaism among the human characters is also a very important theme, and relatable even for some of us goyim (like my raised Catholic ass.) I'm just surprised this book isn't bigger on the scene than it is...although that, too, is probably Mansbach's point, when antisemitism is so shamefully on the rise all over the world. Again.

View all my reviews

Review: House of Flame and Shadow

House of Flame and Shadow by Sarah J. Maas
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Last year was one of the few where Sarah J. Maas didn't release any new books, so the time was ripe for other authors like Rebecca Yarros to stake their claims to the romantasy throne. Hell, did anyone even start using the term "romantasy" until last year? I don't believe so. But in any case, SJM is now back to stake her own claim to retake the throne as the Queen of Romantasy that she's been for these last few years, and of course she does so with 800-plus new pages of not only the Crescent City saga, but also, as promised, a crossover into the world of ACOTAR.

Review: Erasure

Erasure by Percival Everett
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"'I make up shit for a living and I couldn't have come up with that.'"

Just over two decades have passed since Percival Everett's book was adapted into this year's five-time Oscar-nominee American Fiction, and the sharp satire of race in publishing still hits as hard today as it did then. Even more so, I'd say, now that a lot of writers in particular are more attuned to the systemic issues that plague the industry, an industry that isn't exactly sending its best to the table if this book and the movie are anything to go by. I mean, between this book and R.F. Kuang's Yellowface, you can't imagine that there are people in publishing so monumentally boneheaded as to completely fail to understand when they're being punked. But when Thelonious "Monk" Ellison polishes off a satirical parody of the sort of ghetto fiction that white influencers hold up as the paragon of the Black literary experience, is it really any surprise that the same influencers bend over backwards to give him all the money for it? And with his mother's illness requiring constant care, and his brother Bill unable or unwilling to lend a hand, there lies the source of the conflict that drives Monk.

Review: A Machine Divine

A Machine Divine by Derek Paul
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Derek Paul gives us one of the finest works of fantasy in quite a while, with more than a touch of sci fi in the DNA as well. Almost Miyazaki like in its setting, with zeppelins and genetic experimentation and World War style chemical weaponry, it’s a little bit steampunk, a little bit biopunk, and a lotta bit awesome indie storytelling. Asher is me and I am Asher (if I’d been fortunate enough to go to college out of town, that is.) So far this one looks to be standalone, but I really do hope to see more stories in this universe - it’s just too good an opportunity to waste.

View all my reviews

Review: The Rot

The Rot by Siri Pettersen
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The first book in this trilogy promised a huge shakeup for Book 2 with its diabolical cliffhanger ending, and now here we are on that second book with a distinctly divided narrative. Rime's POV keeps one side of the story rooted in the ymish world where the series began, but Hirka is now stuck in modern day Europe - England, to be exact. Though Hirka does quickly adapt to the strange ways of the modern world, it was her story that was the most interesting part of this book, because it plays out so differently from most other fantasy stories (there's a reason why I still have a soft spot for the 2013 Sleepy Hollow TV series, despite how off the rails the show became in the worst ways as it went on.) Whereas Rime's story in Ym is...quite honestly, boring in comparison, and distracting from the freshness of what's happened to Hirka. And with Urd all but gone from the picture, there's not even a villain to love to hate. But I'll be generous and give this one a 2.5 rounded up to 3, if only for Hirka's storyline...and for yet another terrifying cliffhanger guaranteeing that I'll be seeing this trilogy through.

View all my reviews

Review: The Faithless

The Faithless by C.L. Clark
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The second book in this planned trilogy proves to be full of surprises, especially for a reader like me who had expected Clark to follow the Court of Fives fantasy-decolonial playbook pretty closely. But also, the way Clark wrote Luca harked back so much to Helene in An Ember in the Ashes, a very complex character ethnically linked to the colonizers but wanting to do better for her legacy, that I shouldn't have been so surprised by how this book progressed after all. No one ever said decolonization was easy, especially for people like Luca and Touraine, representing both sides and doing their damnedest to push for peace, no matter how difficult it is. Adding to those difficulties, of course, are Luca's uncle, the Balladairan regent who refuses to step aside, and the constant wicked machinations of assorted Balladairan nobles, and the book's general emphasis on the price of magic and how that differs between nations. Touraine has already had to know some of that cost in terms of Qazāli magic, and Balladairan magic, long banned because of its barbaric side, is starting to make a pretty sinister comeback...but perhaps there's no more sinister comeback than the force that rears its ugly head at the very end of this book. So now to wait even longer for Clark to finally come out with Book 3...

View all my reviews

Review: The Unbroken

The Unbroken by C.L. Clark
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

C.L. Clark at one point wrote an article for Tor.com challenging the trope of the "butch martyr" in SFF, citing specific examples of Gideon the Ninth and The Traitor Baru Cormorant. This, then, is her extended challenge to that trope, with lesbian leads and their complicated dynamics - but also adding to that complication, the colonial setting, heavily inspired by North Africa under French imperial rule (Touraine is Qazāli, analogous to Moroccan or Algerian but forced to deny her true nationality in the colonial armed forces, while Luca is Balladairan, which is all but straight up French just like Aquitaine in Heidi Heilig's For a Muse of Fire.) Based on the acknowledgments section, Clark really did her research with French and Moroccan institutions alike, and the setting and themes remain as urgent and timely as ever today. I wasn't as invested in the characters, though. I could suspect that there'd be a certain Court of Fives playbook of decolonization for them to follow...but the ending was a huge surprise, setting up some twists to lead into a second book that I'm hoping will play out a little more in the style of An Ember in the Ashes, with characters whose complexities makes them even more worth rooting for.

View all my reviews

Review: Odin's Child

Odin's Child by Siri Pettersen
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I found the second book in this series available for only one dollar at the Friends of the Library room in one of the libraries in Vancouver, and as it happened, the same library had the first book in the series available to request. But only the first book. Oh well, it looked interesting and different, so I bought that second book and put it aside while waiting to pick up and read the first book. This one is set in a distant fantasy world heavily inspired by the Norse legends and lands of old - a grim, cold land with unrelenting chills natural and supernatural alike, and everybody loves to swear by blind bats and crones. It switches back and forth between a set of three distinct POV's, some heroic, some villainous - Urd, the primary villain, actually proves the most entertaining because of his love-to-hate factor. While this book is a real slog to get through at over 600 pages of constant darkness, it's the majorly surprising ending that really changes everything, and validates the (one) dollar I spent to purchase that second book for sure.

View all my reviews

Review: The Legacy of Yangchen

The Legacy of Yangchen by F.C. Yee
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Overall, it's pretty safe to say that for a legacy, Yangchen doesn't leave one nearly as iconic as many of the franchise's other Avatars - especially the likes of Kyoshi, Roku, and of course Aang and Korra. But with the conclusion to her duology, it's pretty clear that she's nobody's fool, although she has to put up with a lot more interpersonal conflict than Yee had previously depicted in the Kyoshi novels. Even after a nasty betrayal, she has no choice but to realign with an old friend. But as an Air Nomad and a woman, she still has to really fight to show her strength - tellingly, even though this is well before the point in time where the Fire Nation committed genocide against the Air Nomads, the action scenes in this book still feature much more of the other types of benders, and disproportionately few airbenders. I guess that's a point Yee is looking to make throughout the history of these Chronicles - because hell, the Kyoshi novels were light on airbending too now that I think about it. Hard to say where Yee will go next, but maybe we'll get young Avatar Szeto? Or even Avatar Kuruk, though I imagine any books about him would be tragic as hell...

View all my reviews

Review: Defiant

Defiant by Brandon Sanderson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This hasn't been my favorite Sanderson series - hell, it started off with one of my least favorite books of his, since Skyward felt so derivative of Ender's Game until a last minute twist or two. It did improve over time, with Cytonic in particular standing out for its sheer weirdness, but then this book comes along and returns to a more basic style and storyline. It's a bit like Cytonic was the Last Jedi of this universe...but thankfully this book isn't a Rise of Skywalker situation. It's not my favorite Sanderson book, and this will never be my favorite Sanderson series, but I'd say he does a pretty good job of sticking the landing and wrapping up all the story threads for Spensa, M-Bot, Jorgen, and the like. I imagine he'll want to focus a lot more going forward on his epic fantasy bread and butter with Mistborn and The Stormlight Archive, but Sanderson isn't quite done with this world yet - it looks, though, like Janci Patterson will really take over the reins on the sequel, Skyward Legacy. To which I say - sorry, Star Trek, Dragonsteel promised a space-themed Legacy series first.

View all my reviews

Review: Divine Rivals

Divine Rivals by Rebecca Ross
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Normally I'm leery as hell when it comes to BookTok hype - Fourth Wing, anyone? - but this book lives up to the level of attention it's been getting these last few months. A little less spicy than most romantasy offerings, enough that Fort Vancouver Regional Library shelves it pretty confidently as YA instead of adult (or even NA, which is where I'd really categorize it myself), but it's definitely a hell of a lot more inky and smoky, befitting its setting in a steampunk-like world where our main characters work in an old-timey newsroom and wind up covering the distant wars fought between human proxies for a couple of feuding gods. This book is billed as Shadow & Bone meets Lore, but I'd consider it much less Lore and much more Howl's Moving Castle, with a dash of Legend of Korra as well due to the feuding gods being oddly reminiscent of Raava and Vaatu. And while the enemies-to-lovers trope (so common these days, as we all know) makes Iris and Roman have a certain Reylo-like feel to them at times, their story progression feels a lot more grounded and realistic - and again, less spicy, though even Ross does highlight a certain chapter in her dedication, and for good reason. Now to wait on the long waitlist again to finally get around to the sequel...

View all my reviews

Review: The Innocent Sleep

The Innocent Sleep by Seanan McGuire
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"'I hate prophecy,' muttered Ginevra. 'It's never a clear set of steps. It's like trying to assemble an IKEA bookshelf using an instruction booklet that's been translated from Swedish to Japanese to English without a human double-checking the translations.'

Reminding me of how Jim Butcher surprised the readers of The Dresden Files in 2020 with a double feature of novels, Peace Talks and Battle Ground, is the latest pair of novels in Seanan McGuire's signature October Daye series. This time, though, she takes a leaf out of her InCryptid books instead by switching to an all new POV, a first for a full-length October Daye novel.