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.

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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.

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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...

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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 came out, and now it's been 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.