Review: The Hurricane Wars

The Hurricane Wars by Thea Guanzon
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

In recent weeks, Reylo fandom (of which I used to be a minor member thanks to a couple of my friends being really into it) has become something of a headline and punchline with the revelation that upcoming debut novelist and Reylo shipper Cait Corrain had review bombed several of her fellow 2024 debut novelists with sock puppet accounts, targeting a lot of authors of color in particular. Not a good look, and a shameful stain on the LGBTQ+ and neurodivergent communities of which Corrain was part (as am I.) Unfortunately not the first time that a Reylo shipper who made it big (well, Corrain's made it big in infamy, with her entire career all but canceled at this point) was exposed for terrible online behavior - Emily Duncan at least got to publish an entire trilogy, with a lot of Reylo and Grishaverse influences, before being exposed for slinging racist abuse at Asian and Middle Eastern authors, not to mention openly admitting that she built her trilogy on some of the oldest antisemitic tropes in the book.

But Reylo fans may instead find solace in an author who does their community right - Thea Guanzon of Metro Manila, with this Southeast Asian inspired dark fantasy, apparently extrapolated from her post-The Force Awakens fanfic where Rey and Kylo end up stuck in an arranged marriage at the orders of Snoke.

(After reading this book, I learned that apparently Guanzon was one of the many authors whom Corrain targeted with her sock puppet review bombing, and I'm unfortunately not surprised.)

Review: The Hunting Moon

The Hunting Moon by Susan Dennard
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I'm gonna be honest, this one gets an extra star for cover love - seriously, that design with the hummingbird skeleton growing dangerous leaves and flowers has haunted me for months, ever since it was first unveiled. Helps that it reminds me a lot of the style of one of my old favorite 2000s YA series whose style Dennard has steadily emulated in this series - specifically, Lisa McMann's Wake trilogy.

But while Dennard's pretty well invested in her little ongoing "Sooz Your Own Adventure" experiment, now expanded from one Luminaries novel to a trilogy (and predominantly conducted on Instagram now because Twitter can go screw, eh?), I don't think I'll be continuing any further with this series. It just doesn't work for me nearly as well as The Witchlands, which - while I haven't had effusive five star love for it the way all the rest of the YA Cool Kids' Table always does - nevertheless invites me to reread from the beginning every so often, especially with the increasingly long wait times between books in that series. (If the planned final novel Witchlight makes it to publication in 2024 as currently planned, it'll have been a three year gap since its predecessor, a pretty long gap in the YA world.)

Review: Murtagh

Murtagh by Christopher Paolini
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I was never the biggest fan of Paolini or the Inheritance Cycle. Hell, I didn't even finish the first book when I was in grade school, and my sister enjoyed the video game a hell of a lot more than I did when I got it as a Christmas present. (I didn't watch the movie, because as I understand it, there is no Eragon movie in Ba Sing Se.)

The only reason I read the books was because my roommate a couple of years ago was a big fan of them when he was a kid, and he convinced me to give them a try. I didn't like them much even then, but I did at least finish the series. Now, maybe this book (plus the hints that Paolini is going to help write and produce a TV series adaptation for Disney+, in much the same way that Rick Riordan is doing for Percy Jackson) is what'll finally convince me to really truly reassess the entire series, knowing that as Paolini matures, so does his writing.

Review: Silver Nitrate

Silver Nitrate by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Silvia Moreno-Garcia definitely gets a lot of Guillermo del Toro vibes in some of her many Mexican-set period spec-fic stories, but never more than in her latest novel, which incorporates a lot of the same kind of elements that GDT loves to work with. Film history and Nazi occult scares, set in late 20th century Mexico City - in 1993, no less, the same year when GDT first came onto the scene with his auspicious and timeless debut feature Cronos. If SMG is writing this as an audition to write for The Cabinet of Curiosities, then if I were GDT, I'd give her the job to write the adaptation immediately. Though this book does suffer from a couple of leads who aren't very likable - especially in the context of a potential romantic relationship, one of the very few times I actually don't ship childhood friends to lovers - the unrelentingly creepy weird vibes and skillful dissection of bigotry in both the Nazi occult and Mexican society (Montserrat challenging the boys' club of the Mexico City film scene, Tristán having to hide his bisexuality and the Lebanese roots evident in his birth name) make this a new favorite Silvia Moreno-Garcia novel for me.

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Review: Wish of the Wicked

Wish of the Wicked by Danielle Paige
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Danielle Paige made herself one of my favorite authors almost ten years ago when she debuted with Dorothy Must Die, and now, after a few years dabbling in the worlds of graphic novels and modern-day paranormal sisterhood, she now returns to the Fractured Fairytale style that made her name. She rose up during the heyday of the YA fairytale retelling craze, and while a lot of titans of that genre (Marissa Meyer comes particularly to mind) don't got it so much anymore, Paige here proves that she never lost it. It's a throwback to the 2010s for sure, but this book outclasses most of the rest in the field with its incredibly original perspective, that of a young fairy godmother needing to make sure Cinderella meets the prince because it's part of a long game of revenge against the evil queen. Surprisingly, most of the plot threads wrap up pretty neatly in this book, but Paige is for sure planning a sequel with some of the cliffhangers she's leaving us with on this one, and I can't wait to see what she comes up with next!

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Review: Foul Heart Huntsman

Foul Heart Huntsman by Chloe Gong
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This one goes out to all the people hopping on a ton of Chloe Gong hate bandwagons these last several years:

Sit there in your wrongness and be wrong and get used to it.

Yes, still.

"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

"don’t upset me in the future and it will be swell, i suppose.'"
Foul Lady Fortune

"the easiest way to disappear was to never disappear fully...'"
Foul Heart Huntsman

Review: The Art of Destiny

The Art of Destiny by Wesley Chu
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

“‘Goramh’s second Tenet of Humility. The mind should starve in victory and be ravenous in defeat,’ recited the duchess.

“‘Goramh must have lost a lot of wars,’ Qisami quipped.”

For me, this latest from Wesley Chu is more of a 3.5 rounded up to a 4 - the 3.5 owing to how long the book goes on and on and on even compared to its predecessor, but the rounding up because it doesn't lose its predecessor's delightfully sarcastic humor (such as, for example, the above quote) even as a ton of in universe intrigue starts to build up. (Also, because the last book I read before this one, Iron Flame, got rounded up to 3, so I'm clearly in a generous mood lately, and Chu always gets my generosity.) Thankfully, he says in the acknowledgments that this is to be the middle of a trilogy, because while Goodreads hasn't made an entry yet for the third book, Del Rey would be remiss not to publish one after the particularly abrupt cliffhanger ending of this one, which promises the highest stakes yet. We'll see, though, which trilogy he ends first - this one, or The Eldest Curses with Cassandra Clare (though I'm gonna guess this trilogy gets its ending first...)

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