Review: Broken Lands

Broken Lands by Jonathan Maberry
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Maberry's back to his old world of YA zompocalypse action, and more than ever, we get to see just how screwed up the world got After The End. No longer simply focusing on Benny Imura and his crew, we also get to follow the POV of a new survivor: Gabriella "Gutsy" Gomez, a bi Mexican girl with more than a passing resemblance to Chloe Bennet according to that stunning cover art - and hell, in text it's stated that likely due to her Native-looking features, she's often mistaken for Asian, just as I've occasionally seen some people (namely, my dad) mistake Chloe Bennet for Latina. Benny and Gutsy form two halves of one great story, a long and sprawling one, over 500 pages long, but blazingly fast-paced. For sure, this is the best YA novel that Maberry's given us to date, and I'm excited to see where he takes us next in the Rot and Ruin and beyond! Though first, I'm going to need to catch up on Joe Ledger's adventures, 'cause I understand I'm two books behind on that front...

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Review: Thanos: Titan Consumed

MARVEL's Avengers: Infinity War: Thanos: Titan Consumed by Barry Lyga
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I'd say Barry Lyga's a pretty equal-opportunity fanboy. This book couldn't be any less like Lyga's Flash trilogy: not only is it Marvel, but it's a pretty epically crushing secret origin for Thanos. Following the Mad Titan from his birth onward, we get a glimpse of how great a world Titan used to be, until all that prosperous veneer came crashing down in the end, as we all knew it would.

Review: Sherwood

Sherwood by Meagan Spooner
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I wasn't as impressed with Meagan Spooner's Hunted as I was with her collaborations with Amie Kaufman, but this second solo-written retelling of Spooner's, which I read in ARC form, is somewhat of an improvement over Hunted. It's still nowhere near any of my favorite books ever, but as a Robin Hood retelling, one in which the original Robin is dead almost from the get-go and Marian has to take up the mantle, it's a pretty good one which I really hope to see get made into a movie someday. I mean, the last couple of attempts at a major studio production of Robin Hood were both pretty financially floppy, but a film adaptation of this book? I could see it raking in the big bucks if it's done right, retaining the action-packed feminist core of its source material.

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Review: Dragon Pearl

Dragon Pearl by Yoon Ha Lee
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The third book published under the Rick Riordan Presents imprint proves to be the most different yet in the lineup, mostly because instead of being a straight-up modern fantasy just like Riordan's books were, here we get our mythological retelling (Korean, in this case) in the form of a space opera. And also very differently from previous Riordan books and Rick Riordan Presents, this one's a standalone. So far. With that open ending, there's absolutely room for continuing the story, and I'd be very devastated if Yoon Ha Lee never does continue it, not when there are literally a Thousand Worlds to explore! But for this book, Lee gives us a fast-paced interstellar adventure, where spaceships and fox magic (and goblin magic, and dragon magic, and more kinds of magic) have pretty equal impact on the story's unique aesthetic. That fox magic, though...it's really something else, something that our protagonist Min's been forced to hide all her life, but only now that she needs it does she really get to cut the heck loose. (I wonder if perhaps Lee drew on his experiences as a trans man to write Min and her unique conflicts with society.) It's a great little book, though, a bite-sized powerhouse of action and intrigue. And of course, pretty inclusive in its characters, as befits the Rick Riordan Presents imprint (most notably, it's common practice for people, especially in official positions, to wear symbols on their nametag indicating their gender.) Again, I'll be very sad if Lee doesn't come back to this story world...but hey, I'll be sure to read more of his other books as soon as I can!

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Review: Black Wings Beating

Black Wings Beating by Alex London
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Trigger warnings: parental abuse, religious discrimination, racism.

I'm actually a little...disappointed...in how this book turned out for me. The first time reading a new Alex London book since Guardian, almost half a decade ago, and I wasn't super invested in it? Like...WTF happened? I mean, that's not to say the book is a total stinkbomb. It's much more readable for its characters, especially Brysen and Kylee. But especially Brysen, #ownvoices gay as he is...and just like with Syd in the Proxy duology, London writes him as both Black (or, at least, Black-coded, and biracial Black- and white-coded at that) and gay, but takes care to ensure that neither his skin color nor his sexuality be his sole defining characteristics. (Unlike Proxy, this is also a very queer-friendly world. While Syd has to put up with rampant homophobia including heavy use of futuristic slurs, here, nearly nobody bats an eye at Brysen going out with another boy, and heterosexuality isn't treated as the default either.) Kylee, though, reads more like she stepped into this book from the world of This Savage Song - she's cut from some of the same cloth as Victoria Schwab's Kate, so I feel like she's very hard to like...hard, but not impossible.

Review: The Black Coats

The Black Coats by Colleen Oakes
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Trigger warnings for this book: rape, sexual assault and allusions/accusations thereof, racism, death of a loved one.

Picking up this next book from Colleen Oakes in ARC form at work, I expected it to be a rewrite of her Peter Pan-themed fantasy retelling just like Queen of Hearts and sequels were rewrites of a previous self-published project. But no, instead she gives us a pretty high-stakes - and pretty accidentally relevant, since it was written several years ago before #MeToo became so prominent and topical - contemporary thriller.

Review: Red Glove

Red Glove by Holly Black
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I'm...starting to remember what it is about Holly Black's books that I tend not to like. It's always been some kind of undefinable something missing, and that's still undefinable, but after the first book made a good impression, this sequel kinda left me a bit cold. For a follow-up to a real masterpiece of world-building and prescient political commentary, this second book feels like it adds little to nothing new to the table. I mean, it has its good moments of that political commentary coming back to the fore from time to time, like in this scene where some of Cassel's schoolmates want to go to a pro-worker protest and the headmaster bans the protest entirely. But really, this book had its flashes of fun and then for the most part came off rather boring. It's a shame, really. But you know, I'll still go ahead and complete the trilogy and see what happens.

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