Review: Alexandria: The City that Changed the World

Alexandria: The City that Changed the World by Islam Issa
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Islam Issa presents a definitive, comprehensive, digestible, and all around fascinating history of one of the world’s greatest cities of all time. Delving into every era in detail - ancient precursors, Ptolemaic Greek, early Christian, caliphate conquest, Napoleonic, all the way to the modern Egypt Issa knows well - it still manages to teach me much I hadn’t known before. Like how Alexander himself never saw this city built in his honor, or how Egyptian figs are actually the fruit of a sycamore tree. But as a cosmopolitan center of world culture and politics back in the day, it’s the model city to which all others today must strive to follow, if they are to leave nearly as much of a mark even when their time appears to have come and gone.

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Review: The Awakening of Roku

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

Randy Robay concludes his first duology in Chronicles of the Avatar with Roku leaving his adolescence behind and truly becoming a man of the world. Tracing a mysterious illness to its source, learning the ways of waterbending and witnessing for himself that the Water Tribes have much more distinct customs than we ever thought (Ribay shouts out some good research material he made use of while learning about real Inuit peoples), but also, this is where we start to really see the corruption of Fire Lord Sozin and his eventual fall to the dark side, which gives the very end of this book a bittersweet note. My guess, though? Based on the considerable presence of Avatar Kuruk in this book, I wouldn’t be surprised if Ribay was setting up to finally write his duology next.

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Review: A Canticle for Leibowitz

A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller Jr.
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I first heard of this book several years ago when Charlie Jane Anders used it as an example for a Star Wars book she wanted to write, as an exploration of how the Empire could successfully wipe out all historical records of the Republic and the Jedi could be considered a myth less than a decade after they were purged. It took years before I finally found a library copy - in Beaverton, whereas it was unavailable in Vancouver or Portland before - and I had no idea how expansive the scope of this novel would be. Spanning many post apocalyptic centuries, this is exactly the novel that doesn’t lend itself well to optimism in a nightmarish time of history. But then, remember - it was even bigger atrocities, namely those of WWII, that inspired this book to begin with.

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Review: Better in Black

Better in Black by Cassandra Clare
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Though Cassie Clare has been on a long hiatus from the greater Shadowhunter world, and emphasizing The Chronicles of Castellane far more, this collection of romantic short stories is a welcome trip back to her signature series. Couples from every Shadowhunter era are represented, although my faves are definitely the ones from TMI and TID. Particularly when Tessa is involved. And Clary. And Simon and Izzy. And there’s a nice change of pace with a story narrated by Luke, with Jocelyn as second person POV. I wasn’t nearly as much into the pairings from TLH, but it was great to see what Emma and Julian get up to after TDA ends - although I’m still salty that Clare wrote it so the good Shadowhunters abandoned their homeland to the Cohort. It’s a good thing this series isn’t super influential politically like The Hunger Games, because the last thing we need is for progressives and liberals to copycat that and abandon America to the fascist right wing…but I digress. What piques my interest the most, though, is the sneak peek to the long awaited next novel in the saga, the first of the final trilogy…well played, Cassie. That’s a very interesting setup, to say the least.

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Review: Brigands & Breadknives

Brigands & Breadknives by Travis Baldree
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

By his own admission, Travis Baldree often has trouble writing the next book in this series, and this time it really showed more than before. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a welcome change to see Fern, that adorably foul mouthed rattkin, as the principal POV character this time around. She sure grew on me a lot in Bookshops & Bonedust, and clearly on Baldree himself too. But this book also takes the chance of being massively different from its predecessors in that we don’t get to see Fern establish a new business to this world the way Viv often does. No, Fern is basically on a midlife crisis adventure, and the storyline feels like it has to take more leaps of logic from beat to beat. Then again, don’t go by me. I never played D&D.

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Review: The House Saphir

The House Saphir by Marissa Meyer
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Marissa Meyer, after a few years pivoting away to contemporary YA, returns to her fantasy and fairytale retelling roots with a new standalone piece that’s très français, and unexpectedly dark on top of that. Inspired by the old tale of Bluebeard, this book follows a young witch with limited powers as she takes on a job from a guy said to be related to Monsieur le Bleu himself, and Monsieur is, how you say, maybe not so dead and gone as you might think. Though it doesn’t quite command the heights of previous Meyer fantasy books, it’s a damn sight better than her more recent 2020s work in the genre. She’s not the titan she used to be, but she’s clearly revving up for an even bigger comeback very soon, I hope…

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Review: Maieman: Paradox

Maieman: Paradox by D.L. Hannah
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

D.L. Hannah is back with the start of a fourth series in her universe of interplanetary royal drama, now focusing on a new young king, Jonah, rising up to rule the world of Maieman. This new world is probably the closest we’ll be able to get to old Coldarius at this point in the timeline, particularly with its blue-forward aesthetic - especially the blue lemons and other fruit of a different color. (Giving me flashbacks to my own eighth grade short story writing assignment where a guy’s plane crashed and he had to survive in a grove full of experimental fruits, like ultra sweet blue strawberries and flammable bitter purple lemons…) As with Hannah’s previous books, this one is pretty heavy on the extended flashbacks, resulting in a short but slow burning story with lots of mind-screwy moments, because even a king can’t trust his own senses sometimes. Soon I’ll be preordering the next book, Revelations, to complete the collection up to now…

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Review: The Rebel and the Rose

The Rebel and the Rose by Catherine Doyle
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The très français sort of YA romantasy saga continues, and as with its predecessor, Catherine Doyle’s newest tale had a very long waitlist at the library for me. In the end, this one is not ending a duology, and thank God for that…but this book definitely feels like it caught a classic case of Sophomore Slump Syndrome. It’s lovely and French, but it’s also long in its lavishness and moves events forward with surprisingly slow pacing. But where this book excels is its increased emphasis on the saints of this world, and how some of them have cults in their name that have really developed their business acumens over time. I’m sure by this time next year, Doyle will be gracing the world with one more book to wrap this series right up…

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Review: The Strength of the Few

The Strength of the Few by James Islington
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

James Islington’s long awaited return to the world of the Hierarchy…well, more accurately, worlds, after that big time multiversal twist at the end of the first book. But yes, we’re now following Vis across three separate universes, his original Romanesque one plus two additional timelines modeled on Celtic (particularly Welsh and Irish) traditions, and one modeled on the ancient Egyptian underworld (I half expected Anubis to show up, or a weary Taweret forced into his role like on Moon Knight, perhaps?) I should’ve heeded Piéra Blackthorn’s review a bit better and tempered my expectations, but with the three universes and wildly different POVs as a result, it took a lot of getting used to. Islington does tend to start his series strong but then bite off more than he can chew. However, despite my initial fears, this is not the end of the series, and I’m hoping that the eventual third book actually wraps everything up…as tall an order as that may be.

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Review: The Whyte Python World Tour

The Whyte Python World Tour by Travis Kennedy
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

“Take me to the magic of the moment
On a glory night
Where the children of tomorrow share their dreams
With you and me
Take me to the magic of the moment
On a glory night
Where the children of tomorrow dream away
In the wind of change…”
-The Scorpions

Though that Scorps song captures the optimism of the end of the Cold War very well, it’s nothing on the wacky, action-packed antics of this fictional account, centered on exactly the kind of “more balls than brains” hero the world needs: Rikki Thunder, a glam metal god in the making…except the groupie he’s fallen in love with is a CIA agent looking to recruit him for a fundamentally life changing mission beyond the Iron Curtain. It’s a ludicrous historical thriller that honestly demands a movie adaptation ASAP, although good luck finding the right cast to play these characters - it’ll be a challenge especially for Rikki, that underlooked drummer and raw songwriter and surprising polyglot (he picks up Romanian in particular very quickly, and German too, among other languages of the Warsaw Pact.) But when you have talents as disparate as Cory Doctorow, Ernest Cline, and even Kat Rosenfield singing the praises of this book, you know you’ve tapped a vein of pure awesome.

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Review: Eternal Ruin

Eternal Ruin by Tigest Girma
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Tigest Girma returns to the world of Uxlay in her Ethiopian vampiric dark academia trilogy for the second bloody - and just a tad bit spicy - round of fantasy politicking and power grabbing. Though it’s a long book, it doesn’t catch quite as much of a bad case of Sophomore Slump as you might think. Especially with the ongoing story thread of House Adane being in danger of losing their position in the hierarchy, which makes the other houses’ announcements of their votes, slowly paced for suspense, easily the best part of the book.

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Review: King Sorrow

King Sorrow by Joe Hill
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Joe Hill's always been his father's son, but never does it feel more apparent than in this latest epic novel, his first in a decade, almost 900 pages of sprawling dark academia fueled by CIA-grade weed and other pharmaceuticals. Think Death Note meets Ninth House, but instead of a sole sociopath who happens to come across Death's book, or a troubled young woman swept into a secret society in the Ivies, we have a ragtag band of misfits in 1980s New England and beyond who find a certain book bound in the necromantic skin of its own author and use it to summon a mythomagical dragon to get one of them out of a really truly shitty deal. And the dragon, like so many of his ilk, is ever hungry and curses them to a lifetime of obedience, which - fueled, again, by the CIA-grade weed given to Colin's grandfather, ostensibly as treatment for AIDS but truly to keep him placated since he knows all this country's dirty little 20th century secrets - comes off like an allegory for the misguided "justice" of America as the world police. Let's just say this book would always have been scarily timed, but finishing it right before Trump went and started an illegal, immoral incursion into Venezuela? Neither Joe Hill nor Stephen King could've predicted how creepy that was.

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