Review: Red Star Falling

Red Star Falling by Steve Berry
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I almost wanted to give up on Berry and Blackwood's collaboration with the Luke Daniels series after the first book last year was such a disappointment. But after eventually getting to read this latest book in the series, I have to say it's a serious improvement. Not quite to four star territory, I'm afraid, but still a better Berry book than his Cotton Malone novel The Atlas Maneuver earlier this year. For me, I think it was the fact that this book was rooted in the same decommissioned Soviet-era missile system that served as a key aspect of the climax to one of my favorite Clive Cussler novels, Plague Ship, that helped make this one a much more memorable read for me. That, plus the inclusion of numbers stations, an old favorite subject for conspiracy-minded moments. And while the current Russian president isn't mentioned by name (and on the same subject, when I said his name in front of a Spanish-speaking colleague yesterday, she thought I was calling him a homophobic slur in that language), just as Berry has made mockery of Trump in recent years, so he now uses Konstantin Franko as an insulting stand in for Putin and his imperialist aims in Ukraine. It's a good throwback of a book, and hopefully a sign that Berry is getting back to the heights he's had no trouble reaching in years past.

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Review: Navola

Navola by Paolo Bacigalupi
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

It's not the first time I've tried reading a book by Paolo Bacigalupi and found it lacking, and based on this one, I don't think I'll be making another attempt to get into his bibliography. Though the book is billed as a Renaissance Italian take on Game of Thrones, it's nowhere close to that series' level of addictive, propulsive storytelling. Even when George R.R. Martin's books are going nowhere fast, it's still a ride I couldn't help but want to keep going on. But this book...I slogged through about 100 pages or so before finally giving up. Nothing about it is keeping my interest, even the attempts at worldbuilding by showing how much this faux-Florentine, faux-Venetian city-state trades with clearly Middle Eastern and Far Eastern inspired nations. The real problem is the protagonist Davico, who tries to portray himself as a man of culture and intelligence but instead comes off as a dull, banal boy - and creepily fixated on his adoptive sister to boot.

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Review: Everything We Never Had

Everything We Never Had by Randy Ribay
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Four stars for this one but I don’t think I’ll be putting it on the “why isn’t this a bloody movie yet” list, only because it’s a powerful book that would be even more difficult to stomach in visual form. But let’s be honest, Ribay is a shoo in for the National Book Award again on this one. Back in his Filipino-American contemporary milieu for the first time in five years, this book combines a lot of aspects of his previous books - mixed race Filipino-American boys who don’t have the best relationships with their families, as well as pointed political commentary about racism in America and colonialism and corruption in the Philippines.

Review: Vilest Things

Vilest Things by Chloe Gong
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I wasn't as impressed with Immortal Longings last year as I was with Gong's Secret Shanghai novels, and the GR ratings reflect that a lot of others were similarly unimpressed. But this book, I do have to say, is a noticeable improvement. By this time, we're a little past the weird not-quite-cyberpunk game aspect of Book 1 and much more into fantasy politicking, with a detailed world map showing how San-Er is located at the peninsular tip of a massive landmass resembling imperial China both past and present. While the protagonists are still eminently dislikable - except for August, the only one I'm really rooting for because Calla and Anton are screwing him over so hard with their endless campaigning against each other - I especially loved how Gong wrote this book as a critique of Chinese imperialism, especially the fact that outlying provinces in the north aren't allowed to follow their traditional religions or speak their native languages. R.F. Kuang would probably approve as well, I'm sure. And, once again, this book ends on a diabolical cliffhanger with no title or release date for the third and final book in sight...yet...

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Review: Godkiller

Godkiller by Hannah Kaner
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I can see why this book has been such a hit, and it’s a shame I’ve been sleeping on it as long as I have. It’s a surprisingly small book, but still packs a punch well above its weight class, channeling the likes of Samantha Shannon, L.R. Lam, and Brianna da Silva. It’s a world where the gods are NOT good, but the goddess of beauty has to be the worst by far - the brief snippets of story we get about her are some pretty on point allegories for the dangers of the excessive pursuit of beauty. But that’s just a drop in the bucket that is this multi POV adventure, whose sequel I’ve finally ordered at the library so I can catch up well before Book 3 comes along…

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Review: The Chronicles of Viktor Valentine

The Chronicles of Viktor Valentine by Z Brewer
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

When I was in high school, senior year, I got to volunteer behind the librarian's desk, and the librarian recommended me a lot of good books to try out - including The Chronicles of Vladimir Tod, which had flown under my radar until that time. Now, fourteen years after ending the original series and ten years after ending the first spinoff Slayer Chronicles, Z Brewer is back with their latest legacy sequel, a stealth job of it that focuses on original characters of whom Vlad himself would approve, plus some vampires both (to quote Young Frankenstein) "famous...and infamous!"

Review: Sunrise Nights

Sunrise Nights by Jeff Zentner
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

I'm really starting to feel like I'm outgrowing Zentner here, between this book and how I was whelmed at best with Colton Gentry's Third Act. To be fair, this one is very different for Zentner, not only a collaboration with another author (and I've never read anything by Brittany Cavallaro yet, though her solo books do seem interesting), but also partly a novel in verse (half verse and half dialogue, but still somewhat jarring to read), and also no longer in Zentner's usual Deep South settings, but instead in Michigan, which I believe was Cavallaro's idea so no fault to her on that one. But the story in this book just feels like a half-baked, watered-down John Green love story (and I say this being extremely not a fan of John Green), right down to the fact that one of the teenagers in this couple is disabled (though far from just being set-dressing, her degenerative eye condition is pretty essential to her character.) Unfortunately, for me, it's gonna have to be a DNF.

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Review: The Reckoning of Roku

The Reckoning of Roku by Randy Ribay
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Randy Ribay hasn't published any new novels since at least pre-Covid, but this year, he's got two of them - including this start to a new Chronicles of the Avatar duology, taking over from F.C. Yee after his work on duologies for Kyoshi and Yangchen. Here, Ribay gives Roku a slightly similar storyline of self-doubt to Kyoshi, whose having been mistaken for a false Avatar has become the stuff of legend by the time he's been identified as the Avatar as a teenager.

Review: The Extraordinary Disappointments of Leopold Berry

The Extraordinary Disappointments of Leopold Berry by Ransom Riggs
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Ransom Riggs is baaaaaaaaaaack! And I am 100% all in for this.

Like Miss Peregrine before it, this latest series opener from one of the best authors in the YA business follows a boy whose family trauma has shaped him into a depressed young man who doesn’t think he stands a chance in the world. But that’s because the world doesn’t respect him like he deserves, except for his buddy with the strange taste in smokables. (I told my buddy Koda that Emmet resembled him a lot in that respect, but funnily enough, Leopold bears a stronger physical resemblance to Kodes, being six foot plus and lean and rangy.)