Review: White Cat

White Cat by Holly Black
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I think I've finally found a Holly Black book I super-enjoyed the first time around...and I think a lot of that owes to the fact that this one would make a great comp title for my own literary agent querying. That is, if I query again. I seem to have run out of literary agents, though there could be more that I haven't tried yet.

But the point that I'm really trying to make here is that there's quite a few surface similarities between this book and mine. Like, the fact that it's an alternate world with more than a bit of influence both paranormal and X-Men. And that they have two-word titles with the first word being a color. And that the main character is a teenage boy attending a boarding school, with sleepwalking problems, and a hell of a lot of family secrets to discover. For bonus points, Holly Black even writes Cassel as an example for TVTropes' "Ambiguously Brown" page, not unlike how I do with Alex Snow - though Alex's darker skin owes to Moroccan and Maltese blood instead of Indian like for Cassel.

Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse - Hate To Say It, But Did Sony Actually Get One Right?

***THIS IS A SPOILER-FREE REVIEW.***

Well, this was a terrible movie to watch...

...on a day when I'd been fighting off some kind of tension headache.

What, did you think I was going to do what a small number of assbutts did by contributing to the loss of this movie's perfect 100 on Rotten Tomatoes? Perish the thought. Though the two Amazing Spider-Man movies remain my favorite Spidey-films ever purely because of how much Andrew Garfield mirrored my own personality - and because of how much he and Emma Stone, as Gwen Stacy, formed the platinum standard for fictional ships for my own writing to aspire to - Into the Spider-Verse, our film debut for numerous incarnations of webslingers including the great Miles Morales, is a smaller, and yet bigger, masterpiece of cinematic awesome.

Also: god DAMN, I wish those kicks of his weren't so spendy IRL.

Review: The Way of Kings

The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A pretty good little piece of epic fantasy, this Sanderson book - which so many at my work have been reading lately, and I'm very glad I picked it up again for the first time in almost four years because, frankly, I'd forgotten most of the details up to now. Rereading this first book of Sanderson's magnum opus, though, it's easy to see just how well-thought-out his work really is. Maybe there's a lot of stuff that's a little harder to follow because some characters keep coming and going maybe once every 600 pages if we're lucky. But such is the nature of the genre, and such is the nature of how much this book benefits from not being speed-read - even if I found myself often reading the book while drinking coffee right before work. (Don't kill me, Sanderson. I know that's against your religion, but it ain't against mine, lol.) Next up, tomorrow will begin my first reread of Words of Radiance. Stay tuned.

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Review: The Supervillain and Me

The Supervillain and Me by Danielle Banas
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Was it SwoonReads where I first read this manuscript in its original form, or Wattpad? Either way, I'm very happy to see it finally published formally. Though I'm not happy to admit that it took me this long to finally pick it up again after its publication. Probably owing to the fact that my library, for whatever reason, never picked up this book and I had to special order from Sacramento like so many others.

Review: Someday

Someday by David Levithan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

As the official follow-up to Every Day - notwithstanding the semi-concurrent companion piece Another Day - Someday continues the story of A and Rhiannon and especially of Nathan, with a few new additions - namely, some random POVs of a very diverse group of people scattered here and there throughout the narrative. And also, X. Dear God, X. This guy was such a piece of work, taking A's unique body-surfing abilities and gaining a certain measure of control over them - and also being pretty callous and cruel in his treatment of the bodies he gets ahold of, and those he meets as well. And then he also talks up a good game about needing to maintain one's own humanity in a world where, by his very existence being so transient, he doesn't really get the chance to have any. He almost makes me want to come to his side just because of how much I relate to his feelings of disconnection from any kind of sense of soul.

And then there's A, who may not live in any body for more than 24 hours, but still has the most soul of all. I'd rather grow up to be A for sure.

Review: An Assassin's Guide to Love and Treason

An Assassin's Guide to Love and Treason by Virginia Boecker
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I feel like there's been a bit of an uptick in books rooted in the historical conflicts of Protestants and Catholics in Elizabethan England lately. Earlier this year, Nadine Brandes gave it a magical twist in Fawkes, and now, Virginia Boecker makes her return to alternate-historical YA with a less magical but still pretty fun read. Though Assassin's Guide is a little more slow than I'd like at times, and the two POVs of Katherine and Toby are sometimes a little hard to tell apart, it's got a lot going for it too. Queer rep, for one thing - Toby's bi, and very deep in the closet because of how rampantly phobic pretty much all of Europe was back then. Crossdressing rooted not only in spycraft, but also in the first production of Twelfth Night - and with Shakespeare himself as a major supporting character, possessed of a sharp wit and more than a touch of madness. And of course the big reason, I think, why Elizabethan English religious strife has been so popular in lit and film lately: a reflection of today's bitter political divisions. This book is pretty standalone, but there's for sure room for a sequel, which I'd be happy to read if it ever happens.

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Review: Archenemies

Archenemies by Marissa Meyer
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

*sees the cover*

*SCREAMS IN FANBOY*

My favorite cover of 2018. Hands down. No question. Period.