Review: Tales of the Peculiar

Tales of the Peculiar by Ransom Riggs
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Folklore and folktales have been a little ruined for me lately, on account of my having taken a particularly dreadful folklore class last spring that promised an interesting anthropological look at the genre, only to turn into so much of the professor relying on crappy PowerPoints, creepy NPR podcasts with Fred Armisen or someone talking about how calamari is really pork bung (of course he'd have you believe that, so I don't), and only one interesting lesson in which she lectured us for an hour before putting on one of Star Trek: The Next Generation's best episodes.

Thanks to this defictionalized-at-last printing of the Tales of the Peculiar, I'm able to finally look at folklore in a more positive light again. All the tales in this short compilation feel real - and sometimes, more real than any Grimm's fairy tale. The stories are set all across Europe from Scandinavia to Iberia, and even on other continents too. Our favorite invisible boy Millard, as the editor, interjects his own notes (like the one that talks about one story not having a satisfactory ending, so it's become just as traditional to make up your own) and footnotes, Jasper Fforde-style. And, most importantly, this book includes a story that perhaps answers my biggest burning question yet about the peculiar world: the origin of the ymbrynes.

If you loved Riggs' original trilogy as much as I did, you owe it to yourself to check this book out - sooner rather than later, too, to get yourself suitably hyped up for the movie, now less than a month from hitting theaters. Can't wait!

#StayPeculiar, my friends.

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Review: Salt & Stone

Salt & Stone by Victoria Scott
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

At first, I went into this book thinking it would be the end of a duology. But with that cliffhanger? Nope nope nope. And what a cliffhanger it is, too, bringing the main plot of the first two books mostly to an end (with a ton of feels to go with it, of course), while clearly setting up for the next story arc - which of course is even more straight out of The Hunger Games than anything in even these first two books.

Let's just say that whenever the third book comes along (it hasn't been announced yet, which makes me such a sad reader), it's going to be something completely different. Of course, I should have seen it coming, two relatively bite-sized books not being enough to tell the whole story...but seriously, this story needs to come to its conclusion, sooner rather than later.

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Review: Grave Peril

Grave Peril by Jim Butcher
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Wizards vs. Vampires vs. Ghosts from the Nevernever.

It might sound overdone to you, but then again, it is a Dresden Files book. It pulls the job off nicely, and then some. The usual high action helps, of course - and also the interplay between Harry and his friend Michael, who's more than just a Token Religious Teammate. Being Catholic (or so I'm picking up vibes), he's a pretty good foil to Harry's cheerful agnosticism (at best), and still kicks some serious supernatural ass with the best of them.

As of now, I have two more Dresden books sitting in my TBR pile. More to come later, of course.

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Review: The Collector

The Collector by Victoria Scott
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

And now for something a little different from Victoria Scott - not a story about a young woman going into a deadly near-future competition to save her family, but a story about a self-centered, sin-happy demon who goes around marking souls for collection. His new job - collect the soul of a girl who does so much good in the world that the world, of course, treats her like crap in return.

Dante Walker may be an assbutt, as Castiel might say, but that's where the character development comes in. He did used to be human, after all, and he hasn't quite lost his humanity, as much as he likes to try and act like a seventeen-year-old version of Fox's hilariously douchey Lucifer. Even that devil of a guy has a heart, though, and so does Dante. So, naturally, he starts falling hard for Charlie, the girl whose soul he's supposed to collect.

This could easily have been another pile of yuck like I found Obsidian to be, but hey, being a Delta Bravo comes with the territory when your main character's a demon. And like I said, character development. This makes the feels so much more real than you would expect, and the feels are what pushes this book into five-star territory. (That, and Max with his Stiles-like personality, although he's criminally underused. And also Blue. If you don't love him by the end of this book, the collectors already got to you.)

Two more to go in this series, and I can't wait to read them both!

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The Battlemage: Cover Reveal

The cover to Taran Matharu's third (and apparently NOT final) Summoner book is here. Repeat, the glorious red cover is here!

Is that Ignatius flying in the background too?

Welcome to Mars, I guess...with Fletcher looking very, very dangerous. :D

MUST.

HAVE.

THIS.

NOW. *getting grabby*

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Review: Fire & Flood

Fire & Flood by Victoria Scott
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Thanks to Titans, I've had to go back and start reading Victoria Scott's other work...and this was the first one I chose to go with. I was pleasantly surprised to discover the similarities between Fire & Flood and Titans - chiefly, the young protagonist engaging in a dangerous competition to help her family, as well as a Twenty Minutes Into The Future sci-fi kind of setting that feels like modern day America, except not quite. This book also has some shades of The Hunger Games, pitting a large number of teenagers against each other, and some of them forming alliances, while surviving dangerous landscapes. And, similarly to The Golden Compass, as well as Taran Matharu's Summoner series, we've got the Pandoras, which...well, based on Titans, I was expecting them to be vehicles for the Brimstone Bleed. Nope, they're animals. Usually. And of course Madox, that cute little fox, just had to be my favorite.

Needless to say, I need to read Book 2 ASAP. But first, I'll take a detour into another Scott work - The Collector.

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Review: Ashes of the Innocent

Ashes of the Innocent by Gavin Hetherington
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It took me an agonizingly long time to read this book after beginning it on Wattpad...six months ago? Of course, the book itself was very long, and I had so much crammed into the old schedule...but today, I've finally finished it, and let me tell you, the final three or four chapters or so validate the length with their unending twists and up-to-eleven gore and puke. It's pukey horror in-universe and out. High Octane Nausea Fuel. But I watch Hannibal and Salem, so I'm not puking at this stuff. If it were on TV, I'd eat dinner while watching it.

Today, I've finally gotten started on Book 3. Here's hoping it won't take me six months to read that one...but if I wait that long, I might just be done with school and have a lot more free time while waiting to graduate. (No worries, though - that's not a legitimate reason for me to delay my reading.)

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