Review: The Mercy of Gods

The Mercy of Gods by James S.A. Corey
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

I wouldn’t be surprised if this book was a stealth sequel to The Expanse. I mean, it’s pretty clear from the fact that the human civilization of Anjiin is pretty strongly implied to have come through the protomolecule portal to colonize that world, only to then be colonized themselves by a fearsome super-Borg hive mind. But coming from the same authors as The Expanse, this book was nothing short of disappointing, and that’s putting it mildly. Whereas Abraham and Franck excelled in their character development and science-fantasy politicking in their signature series, this new series is a huge step back with boring characters I couldn’t care about, poorly detailed world building, and generally being one of the slowest books I’ve ever read. I almost got halfway through before just giving up entirely, and I can’t see myself giving this one another shot anytime soon.

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Review: The Wren in the Holly Library

The Wren in the Holly Library by K.A. Linde
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

If ACOTAR and Crescent City had a baby and raised it on a steady diet of Deborah Harkness novels, it'd be somewhat close to what this book is, and yet a more charitable description than it deserves. I'm definitely a sucker for a bookish kind of leading lady - Belle was always my favorite Disney Princess as a kid - but even Kierse, the Belle of this ball, couldn't carry this book beyond two star territory for me. Oh, how she tried...but then along came the likes of Graves, the rather smarmy and disgusting love interest character who feels less like a Beast and more like a watered-down mashup of Kaz Brekker, Matthew Clairmont, and Edward Cullen, with some truly cringeworthy "sexy" dialogue. Seriously, "what a pretty pussy" made me laugh so hard that I almost quit the book right then and there. Kierse has better chemistry with her ex-girlfriend than she does with Graves, but that's a conversation for another day. For today, though, I'll chalk this one up as yet another romantasy series that I just can't see myself continuing, and unlike with Fourth Wing where I did change my mind, I think I'll stick to that decision this time.

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Review: Arkangel

Arkangel by James Rollins
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Even for a Sigma book, this one's got everything, and I mean EVERYTHING, that makes me demand there be a film adaptation of this series immediately.

Yes, I know by now Amazon has a TV series adaptation planned, but call me cynical but I strongly suspect the streaming world isn't gonna be as kind to this series as it deserves, unless it's anywhere near as much of a hit as the books' bestseller status ought to afford it.

But that Amazon series better last long enough to adapt this book somewhere in its timeline, because it demands it greatly. It's one of Rollins's most classic books in years, building the great mystery of Hyperborea as our friends at Sigma (plus Tucker Wayne and his war dogs Kane and Marco) seek to find it before the Russians do (the book does make some vague references to the ongoing war in Ukraine, with Rollins connecting Russia's attempt at colonization there to the old Hyperborea story as part of their grander ambitions now that church and state are a lot less separate than they ought to be.) No spoilers, but once we do get to Hyperborea, the book gets into some serious thriller territory, verging on horror as well.

Once again, Rollins reminds me of why he's one of my all-time favorite authors, and I'm dying to see what he's got in mind next, because he's promising ever more wild adventures in the next book, which will hopefully be ready to read by this time next year...

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Review: Angel of Vengeance

Angel of Vengeance by Douglas Preston
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The Leng Quartet (as it were) comes to its conclusion in this latest Pendergast novel, which goes full Alienist with its near total immersion in the 1880s setting for most of our favorite characters. All respect to the late Caleb Carr, though, but Preston and Child outdo Dr. Laszlo Kreiszler with the typical hypercompetence of the Pendergast brothers - both Aloysius the agent and Diogenes the devil, the latter having well established himself as a serial killer and identity thief of rich men from many continents, and in at least one case a holy man, ironically enough.

Review: Some Desperate Glory

Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Once again, I find myself picking up the Hugo winner for Best Novel and come up disappointed. And just like last year with T. Kingfisher's Nettle and Bone, there wasn't a sudden long line at the library for it - which should've been a sign to me that the book wasn't going to impress me.

I get that this book is trying to be one of those about a character who has to unlearn how horrible her society is when she realizes how corrupt the leadership is, and how racist and sexist and xenophobic and homophobic and all the other bigotries you can think of. But let's be real, if this book was published five or seven or ten years ago, I'd be willing to bet someone would've written a nearly 10k word blog post all about how horribly offensive and racist and homophobic this book is, and then kiss this book's chances of a Hugo award goodbye, eh?

I'll give this one an extra star because it's not entirely full of unlikable characters, but unfortunately this one was a pretty big misfire for me.

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Review: Disquiet Gods

Disquiet Gods by Christopher Ruocchio
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

So it turns out that Ruocchio's original contract for this series with DAW was unexpectedly ended after the fifth book, and the only reason he was able to publish the sixth (and thankfully move past that brutal ending in Ashes of Man) was because his old employer Baen Books came to the rescue. Seems that Baen made the right call, and DAW decided they would get back in the game with this series and soon reissue all the first six books before getting the planned seventh novel, which Ruocchio says will be the conclusion. And in the meantime, there's this fast-paced, wildly epic story setting up the stage for the ending, much like Pierce Brown did with Light Bringer as the Prolonged Prologue to Red God. Now it's just a matter of time to see which of the two young masters, Ruocchio or Brown, finishes his septology first...

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Review: The Light of All That Falls

The Light of All That Falls by James Islington
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

The end...or is it? Because the very end of the book acknowledges that a couple of characters developed a side story of their own that would've been enough for a full length novel in its own right. Definitely not as big a book as any in this series - maybe half the length if that. But I don't think I'd be picking up that spinoff if and when it ever happens, because I love Islington's other series, The Hierarchy, so much more than this one. At least this one brings the main characters' story to an end, and a new beginning of sorts, because it's definitely not a rehash of The Wheel of Time with slightly more interesting characters. At least that ending is worth it for how Chris Nolan-like it really is.

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Review: The Seventh Veil of Salome

The Seventh Veil of Salome by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I'll just say it: Evelyn Hugo walked so Vera Larios could run. SMG shies away from her typical supernatural style in this one, but it's no less sharp in its commentary or grand in its story for it. Focusing heavily on race in 1950s Hollywood just like Taylor Jenkins Reid's signature book does (and arguably more authentically since it comes from an author of Mexican descent), this book is short but complex, and adds in rich details for the life of Salome herself as she inspired her eventual film adaptation - a life which the Bible forgot, to hear SMG tell it in the author's note at the end. I'm not happy that this book hasn't been nearly as runaway a bestseller as The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, but if there's justice in the world of literature and film, this one will get the movie treatment before Evelyn Hugo gets out of development hell. Too many people are sleeping on Silvia Moreno-Garcia, and that's a damn travesty.

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Review: The Mars House

The Mars House by Natasha Pulley
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

I admit I kinda thought this would be an interesting sci-fi romance, a sort of Red, White, and Royal Blue in space situation (I say having not read RWRB beyond checking out little snippets of it during my bookstore days when the book was first super popular). Boy oh boy oh boy was I wrong, and when I checked back against the blurb and realized that this was more akin to a romance between an oppressed minority and a racist ruler, I noped out pretty quickly.

Review: Ashes of Man

Ashes of Man by Christopher Ruocchio
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Ruocchio's fifth novel of the Sun Eater would have been a three star comedown for me based on the first 400 pages or so, where the plot really slows down and grinds its gears while setting up the next match on the 4-D chess board. This book does bring great promise of the villains behind the villains, the Cielcin gods who want to truly lay waste to everything and everyone in the known universe, but it takes forever for the story to really advance.

But when it does...

That ending.

Damn you, Ruocchio.

That's why this book earns that fourth star in the end.

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Review: Wildwood Imperium

Wildwood Imperium by Colin Meloy
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Portland's Narnia concludes in a third sprawling, nearly 600-page brick of paper - with some of those pages, as usual, thicker than usual in order to accommodate Carson Ellis's color prints. It does add a little something new for texture - the Chapeaux Noir, a group of French anarchists with plans to bring down the big old Fantastic Mr. Fox style Industrial Wastes, who ultimately give this book some eerie similarities to another Wes Anderson movie that came out years later: The French Dispatch. Definitely more kid-friendly than that particular Anderson movie, though, but that doesn't mean this book doesn't have its moments of darkness. Particularly the ending, which is majorly surprising in how bleak it gets, until suddenly it isn't so much anymore. But it truly is the end for this series, and while I can't say whether or not Laika Studios would get to adapt all three books into a movie, I can only hope they do get the chance, because they'd do it justice.

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Review: Take Flight

Take Flight by J L Pawley
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I guess Pawley is making some steady progress on getting the revamped Generation Icarus series reissued in this new format - I don't think the third book is out yet? But hopefully by the end of this year at least. In the meantime, though, it was great to once again get a throwback to the old Wattpad days with one of the best angel books you're not reading, now in a new form, with a hell of a lot more focus on Tui than I remember (but that's only a good thing, because she's really become one of my favorites in the Flight over the years.) And dear God, did I ever forget how strong the "post dramatic Jess disorder" was with these books...but I should be ready to see how Pawley wraps things up in the newly minted third and final book soon enough...

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Review: The Reformatory

The Reformatory by Tananarive Due
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is my first time reading a book by Tananarive Due, which is definitely going to have to change. While Stephen King trod similar ground with his book The Institute a few years back, Due goes back to 1950s Florida, taking some inspiration from a real-life ancestor of hers who perished in such a "school" as the one depicted in this book. Not only is the full scope of Jim Crow laws in effect, but the Gracetown School for Boys harbors some seriously horrible secrets, which protagonist Robbie has to learn about from talking to the haints that continue to stay bound to this place. With the warden making his sinister designs very clear from the very start, and Robbie's sister Gloria fighting to rescue him (which requires outside help from up north since all the local white folks are too fearful and racist to rely on in any way), it's as page-turning as the blurb suggests. But absolutely not for the faint of heart, as you can well imagine.

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Review: Death and Glory

Death and Glory by Will Thomas
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The fifteenth mystery in Will Thomas's decades-running Barker and Llewelyn series keeps things fresh and unexpected as Victorian London's top enquiry agents take on a mystery involving former Confederates, thirty years after the end of the Civil War. As well-known as it is that there were many who continued to believe in the "Lost Cause" even to the present day, this book also dwells on aspects of the Confederacy that even I didn't know, or perhaps forgot about. Such as their plans to eventually annex a number of Latin American and Caribbean nations (to the point where the Knights of the Golden Circle in this book count among their number a Colombian, born after 1865). But also there's a conspiracy element that I won't spoil here, other than to say that it's eerily plausible, especially based on Thomas's afterword where he talks about having researched this theory in his local library in Tulsa. And because if I remember correctly, he pulled a similar twist with another historical killer a few books ago, so if any author can make me believe such a story, it's Thomas.

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