Review: Ashes of Gold

Ashes of Gold by J. Elle
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

J. Elle debuted last year with a pretty kickass YA fantasy recommended by Sabaa Tahir herself, and this year she concludes the story with another action-packed and highly relevant thriller. With her mission to save Ghizon and take her rightful place in society, Rue's got her work cut out for her every step of the way - but mercifully, she also has some of the strongest allies a girl could hope for. Elle wraps up the storyline pretty neatly, but I still would love to see some more adventures in Ghizon, whichever character they may follow as they spring from Elle's fertile imagination...

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Review: Girls of Fate and Fury

Girls of Fate and Fury by Natasha Ngan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

There was a point where I thought Natasha Ngan wasn't going to be able to finish her debut trilogy, in part due to her ongoing real-life health issues, but also due to the folding of the Jimmy Patterson imprint (a real shame given that, with this and other books and authors, it had become quite the house of diverse YA). But after an extra year's delay, Ngan finally gives us the dual-POV trilogy conclusion we've all been waiting for, and it's about as tense and thrilling as you can expect, every page turning with the threat that Lei and Wren won't get the happy ending they deserve. I'm glad Ngan took the time to really work on this one, though, because it is exactly the ending the readers and characters deserve, and at no point is it an easy road to get there. So, to Girls of Paper and Fire, I now declare ave atque vale while waiting to see what Ngan has in the pipeline next...

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Review: Once Upon a Broken Heart

Once Upon a Broken Heart by Stephanie Garber
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I felt that Stephanie Garber's debut series, Caraval, had diminishing returns over time, with each book being progressively less enjoyable for me...but this time, with a new spinoff series beginning, I think Garber's really found her footing a lot more easily. While this book does require you to have read the complete trilogy from before - the reappearance of old protags Scarlett and Tella is pretty clearly marked as post-Finale and very spoilery - this story, for me, is what finally makes me see just how much Garber deserves all the hype she gets. Though the whole Fates system is still a bit poorly detailed for me, the overarching story, with its curses and twists aplenty and some downright beautiful imagery (I'm especially looking at Jacks's introduction, with him eating a white apple with blood red juice), is the stuff of Legend, far more so than the Caraval trilogy ever was. So I'm looking forward a lot more to the next book from Garber than I ever have before, and that's saying something...

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Review: Pahua and the Soul Stealer

Pahua and the Soul Stealer by Lori M. Lee
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I somehow missed this one for a few months after it first came out - in part because the usual library through which I order Rick Riordan Presents books never did get it, but at least I had a backup. So here it is, a new addition to the lineup rooted in the legends and culture of the Hmong people - and I'm happy to say that one of my littlest cousins, who is Hmong, will finally be able to see a hero just like her in Pahua. A smart cookie with more than a bit of the smart aleck wit that populates every book Riordan either writes himself or curates from others, a pretty strong interest in Star Wars (you know you're in for fun times when even the book's intro outright compares the villain's aesthetic to that of Kylo Ren), and of course an even more smartass animal companion, aptly named for the Hmong word for cat, Miv. There's no word yet on any sequels that I can see, but not unlike a few others in the Rick Riordan Presents lineup that similarly had no follow-ups announced at first (most notably Dragon Pearl and Tristan Strong), I think I smell one coming sooner rather than later...

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Spider-Man: No Way Home: NO. SPOILERS.

***WELL, FOR SURE SPOILERS FOR FAR FROM HOME AND A FEW FOR INFINITY WAR AND ENDGAME. YOU'VE BEEN WARNED.***

It's finally here, the Marvel event we've most been waiting for this chaotic calendar year. Tom Holland back in the Spidey-suit after Far From Home upended him into the same not-so-secret nature of identity as pretty much every other Marvel Cinematic Universe version of our classic heroes. Thanks, Mysterio. And thanks, J. Jonah Jameson, played once again by J.K. Simmons - and, in this latest movie, graduating from being a mere Alex-Jones-type nuisance to running his own Fox-News-type operation of big bullshit. Naturally, it's bad enough for Peter Parker trying to live with too much polarizing infamy for his own good when he's just trying to get into college, but as the lives of his friends and family become impacted, who better to turn to than our favorite Strange sorcerer (not Supreme, though; Wong having taken that post "on a technicality" due to Strange having been one of the victims of Thanos' snap, which I still refuse to call the bloody "Blip" to this day) in his nice little townhouse of a Sanctum Sanctorum?

But.

As OP as Strange so often is these days, he's no match for the Peter Parker Prattle, ruining the spell to wipe literally everyone's memories of Peter due to Peter fretting about the implications of losing his place in the memories of his loved ones.

Lost in the multiverse, and lost in mind, we shall soon be.

With No Way Home.

Where's Ned and MJ when you need them for a snuggle puddle?

I shall spoil nothing of the movie in this review, but that means it'll have to be kept short by design - not unlike, say, my review of Endgame a couple years back. 

Review: Our Violent Ends

Our Violent Ends by Chloe Gong
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"without the monster, there is no madness. without the madness, he goes out of business." 

These Violent Delights 

"nothing was ever as simple as 'my people' or 'your people...'" 

Our Violent Ends 

Early this year, These Violent Delights became another one of those books that I wish I could've actually read in its debut year, and now the series comes to another duology conclusion for the YA list. Although it's a bit of a stretch to call this one YA since the protagonists, Roma and Juliette, would be in college if they were in a modern-day setting. But no, Chloe Gong wraps up their side of the story in this exploration of an alternate 1920s Shanghai, steeped in real-life historical upheaval but with a few salient details adjusted for artistic license as needed. And I feel like Gong took a bit of inspiration from R.F. Kuang's ending of The Burning God too, because the story keeps the action going to the very, very bitter and tragic end...and let's be real, she pulls a bit of inspiration from another very infamous YA series finale, which I won't reveal here. But given the very source material inspiration, it shouldn't be hard to figure out...and hell, the door's still open to further exploration of this alternate Shanghai. Who knows?

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Review: Cytonic

Cytonic by Brandon Sanderson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It's been a minute since Sanderson put out a book in this current YA sci-fi series - two years, in fact - and it's pretty clear that he's used that time to really work hard on the material we got in this here Book 3. It feels so different from the previous books in this series for sure, miles away from the territory of Book 1 (with its extremely Ender's Game-esque storyline) and Book 2 with its laser-focus on Spensa and M-Bot and its blazing fast action. This time, Sanderson gets into some much more cerebral territory, taking the reader into some truly unexpected realms that question everything about what it means to be sentient. It's truly out of this universe, much more so than out of this world, and now we're getting some real promise for what comes next in the upcoming fourth (and final?) book, Defiant. (Nobody tell Veronica Roth that title is taken, lol.)

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