Review: The Epic Crush of Genie Lo

The Epic Crush of Genie Lo by F.C. Yee
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I've seen a fair few people on Book Twitter raving about this here book, and now that I've read it, I can totally see why. The Epic Crush of Genie Lo is a relatively short story, but no less action-packed and richly written for it, not to mention steeped in Chinese legends (especially that of the Monkey King) with modern twists. Every character from our heroes on down pops off the page, and the Bay Area setting, though cleverly disguised with fake place names (Santa Firenza, the name of which of course reminds me of San Incendio from Gene Luen Yang's The Shadow Hero, could be pretty much any near East Bay suburb, though of course as a Fremont resident I'm inclined to believe it's based on my hometown), feels very accurate and well-detailed. And my favorite part? Everyone talks nerdy. No, seriously, there's so much work that goes into providing plausible scientific explanations for how the magic system works, and it shows.

Thank God there's going to be a sequel to this one - we readers deserve nothing less.

View all my reviews

Review: Leia, Princess of Alderaan

Leia, Princess of Alderaan by Claudia Gray
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Yeah, I think it's official - Claudia Gray writes the best Star Wars novels of them all. I loved her take on a pre-Force Awakens Leia in Bloodline, and now, her return to YA with a teenage Leia proves to be a wonderful, and very thought-provoking, prequel to A New Hope, while also featuring some clues about The Last Jedi - most prominently the world of Crait, which I'm pretty sure is the land of salt and red sand featured in at least one shot of the Last Jedi trailer.

As for Leia's life as a princess and diplomat, that's covered very well too. Not only does she make some really memorable friends - and even a first love in fellow Alderaanian Keir - but she also starts to discover her parents' involvement in the Rebellion, the extent of the Empire's tyranny and fearmongering, and (despite her being raised in a fairly egalitarian society on Alderaan) coming to terms with her royal privilege (particularly apparent in the scene where she conducts negotiations with representatives of an alien species that's distrustful of humans, calling them "dry ones," and has such a complex gender system that C-3PO advises her to use they/them pronouns because theirs don't really translate into Basic) and how her best intentions may still pave a road to hell for others as well as herself. Just like Bloodline, this latest work from Claudia Gray proves very significant in the current political climate, with the Empire being such champion peddlers of fake news and the Rebels still looking like terrorists, especially when Saw Gerrera is basically the Star Wars embodiment of a violent Antifa type. Of course, we know the situation gets a hell of a lot better eventually, but for now, what Leia has to deal with in life makes for some gripping reading. Gray really ratchets up the suspense to make you believe that maybe, just maybe, this story's resolution will somehow defy canon and be a lot more tragic than expected.

Seriously, give Gray all the Leia books. All of them for always and eternity.

View all my reviews

Review: Tower of Dawn

Tower of Dawn by Sarah J. Maas
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

These days, it's hard to find anyone who genuinely enjoys Sarah J. Maas' books anymore - she's kinda done a lot of her readers dirty with her recent forays into erotica and general lack of diversity, but more recently, she's been working to correct some of the flaws that have turned so many readers against her. Tower of Dawn, I have to say, is her best effort in that department yet, not only because it helps make up for Chaol's total absence in Empire of Storms by giving him his own much-deserved book, but also because it includes more diversity among its cast - by necessity, since it takes place on the Southern Continent. So we get a lot more PoC rep, and more queer rep (not in any main characters, but I feel like she does a better job working it into this book than any of her previous ones.)

The real controversy with this one, of course, surrounds disabled rep, since Chaol's whole arc seemingly revolves around him traveling south in a last-ditch attempt to heal the nigh-unfixable injury that cost him his ability to walk in Queen of Shadows. Of course, to reduce Chaol's story to that slick one-sentence peg does it, and him, a great disservice. While I'm not physically disabled and can't really comment on the rep, I can tell you, without spoilers, there are tons of surprises in store. And for all the talk I've seen about Chaol having to put up with microaggressions - like the fact that he's actually asked, to his face, if his dick still works - said microaggressions are challenged pretty quickly, as the one responsible, healer Yrene Towers, expresses regret for her unprofessional behavior the next time she gets a POV chapter. Yrene, in fact, is one of my favorite characters in this book, because she's so conflicted for most of the story - caught between her duty as a healer and her resentment towards Adarlan and its army because they killed her family, and was Chaol responsible for any of that death by virtue of being part of that army? Hell, while we're at it, Chaol has to confront his own Adarlanian (read: white) privilege quite often as he and Yrene grow closer and closer.

Relationships, of course, are a pretty big part of this story - and yes, there's some sex involved. Thank God it's nowhere near as explicit as the infamous "velvet-wrapped steel" type scenes we've had to put up with in every SJM novel since ACOMAF, but for those who long for the series' early days when all love scenes were fade-to-black at best, I think those days are still pretty much over.

And you know what else is a big part of the story? The ongoing war that Aelin's been fighting back home. Though she's nowhere to be found in this story (and thank God for that - I've soured on her too much lately, to be honest), she and Rowan and their war still weigh on Chaol's mind. Not only because he's here to heal his injuries sustained in that war, but because even though Queen of Shadows could have easily been the end of the series...nope. The Valg return with a bloody vengeance here, and even if you're not arachnophobic, you'll want to run for the bloody hills.

Oh wait, that's where they hide...

While I think this book could've been a little shorter - because isn't it true that SJM's been pretty ill lately too? Jeez, the woman's liable to burn herself out! - at least it didn't feel as long and draggy and/or full of filler as the other 600-700 page bricks she's put out in the last 18 months. (Though I'm still annoyed with those stupid Bible-thin pages that are so difficult to not tear when I turn them!) That said, though, I feel that Tower of Dawn is a more mature novel than we've come to expect from SJM lately, in a good way, because though it's not free of her usual problematic nature, it's all the more thought-provoking for it. It's something of a return to form, to what SJM does best - characters who are flawed but lovable, and truly horrifying Lovecraftian threats for them to deal with all day and night.

I'm actually dreading the seventh (and supposedly final) Throne of Glass novel now, because Tower of Dawn, the Chaol novel we all deserved, is, for me, the final proof that he should've been the hero all along, not Aelin. If every novel in this up-and-down series were like this one, I'd have less trouble recommending it to anyone and everyone.

View all my reviews

Review: My Best Friend's Exorcism

My Best Friend's Exorcism by Grady Hendrix
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Seeing the paperback of this book on the shelves at the Stanford bookstore - a lovely design meant to evoke 80s VHS tapes - I had no choice but to order this one ASAP. It being virtually unavailable at any Bay Area library, I had to order it special from Sacramento instead. Now that I've read the whole thing - mostly during my break times at work, one of those accompanied with a Dark Mocha Frappuccino - I've found My Best Friend's Exorcism a peculiar first taste of Grady Hendrix's style and talent. Of course, now I have to read his first book, and any and all others, based on what I saw in this one. It was a little slow-moving at times, though it was easy to savor the immersion in 80s culture - not only the music and movies, but also the politics and Moral Majority nightmare-fueling that, let's face it, explains why this decade saw such a resurgence in horror movies. And then comes the actual horror show that Abby and Gretchen have to deal with, a real slow burn of terror and psychological damage that you really think could be simply real-world devils, not the supernatural kind, for the longest time.

But of course this ain't that kind of book. This book boasts a damn good soundtrack in all the chapter titles - even a lot of my personal faves like "Tonight She Comes" that nobody seems to know about. This book boasts a truckload of supporting characters with all sorts of issues to deal with, and it's hard not to sympathize with most of them to some level - though none anywhere near as much as Abby or Gretchen. This book even boasts a most unconventional exorcist, one who actually winds up being one of the story's flaws because he's simply not included enough until near the end of the book.

My Best Friend's Exorcism ain't perfect, but it delivers on the scare front, and I'm gonna keep on attempting to hand-sell this one as long as there are copies left at the store - and as long as the Halloween season is upon us.

View all my reviews

Review: Written in Red

Written in Red by Anne Bishop
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I had to pick up this book after seeing some of its sequels on the shelves at work (though the store only carries the two most recent books) and finding it peculiarly interesting. Reading it, I've found that it's not quite what I expected. I think I expected a contemporary fantasy, but this book blends that with urban fantasy, alternate history, and paranormal romance. Think True Blood meets The Dresden Files meets Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore.

In practice, the book's genre mashup left a little to be desired, and some of the characters fell rather flat for me. I also found it more than a bit unsettling that the various terra indigene shapeshifters are coded rather like the indigenous peoples of non-European continents - though at least they proved more dominant over the Euro-coded humans than the indigenous people of our world's history - and that in the present day, they live in a tense approximation of harmony with humans, though with not-insignificant bad blood between them.

That said, though, Simon Wolfhard was the saving grace of this book for me. He was a bit of a dick sometimes, but then again, so are a lot of my faves, especially in urban fantasy. I almost wish Bishop could've made him the star of the show - at least then I'd feel a bit more of a Lost Girl vibe that would've pushed this book into four-star territory for me.

Well, even though I wasn't as impressed with this one as I could've been, I'll still keep on going till I catch up and can recommend the rest of the series to bookstore customers.

View all my reviews

Review: The Fifth Season

The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

If you know anything about N.K. Jemisin from following her on Twitter or anywhere else, you know she's a whip-smart lady, and that she's got quite a few award-winning books out there. So for my first Jemisin book, I figured I'd try the beginning of her Broken Earth Trilogy and see how it played out. Well, I can see for sure why she's an award winner, even though the book wasn't quite 100% to my taste. The book's narrative styles, while each were delightfully snarky in a genre that so often takes itself way too seriously, were so unconventional (particularly the use of second-person POV for about half the book in total, usually a major turn off for me) that reading the book proved to be almost more of a struggle than it was worth.

That said, though, as difficult as the story was to follow at times, I still very much appreciate what Jemisin's giving us in the subtext here. Not only does she beautifully blend sci-fi and fantasy, but she also blends these genres with blistering social commentary, criticizing humanity not only for bigotry - rather X-Men-like, if one parallels the orogenes with the mutants, and Jemisin also includes story threads about in-universe slurs and reclamations thereof - but also for our damage to the environment. Not unlike the Once Upon a Time Arc Words "All magic comes with a price," orogenes' power, because it draws from the earth itself, tends to cause some serious damage when used, and it's no wonder the earth fights back with such constant and deadly seismic activity. Considering the recent rise in devastating earthquakes, floods, and hurricanes the world over, it's a theme that's all too timely right now.

(On a lighter note, though, the earth's seismic self-destructive nature lends itself, in-universe, to some surprisingly amusing volcanic-themed swears in the ironically-named Stillness.)

I'm happy to report that I've already got the remaining books in the trilogy on order at the library, and that yesterday I managed to sell the only available copy of The Fifth Season to a bookstore customer. Given how thought-provoking and yet darkly funny this book is (its opening lines are some that I'll surely be quoting to other customers as soon as we restock on this book), I expect nothing less than more greatness from not only the sequels, but all the rest of Jemisin's acclaimed bibliography, which I'll surely read in due time.

View all my reviews

Top Ten Tuesday: Fall 2017 TBR

Having seen Joey @ thoughtsandafterthoughts tweet this latest installment of Top Ten Tuesday, I couldn't resist taking part again, especially since it's the Fall 2017 TBR edition and I did the Fall TBR last year as well. Now it's my turn, and you'll find that I've got a few titles in common with Joey, starting with the one on the very top of the list.

10. Patrick Ness, Release

I've heard some good things about this book. I've also heard that, tonally, it's perhaps closest to The Rest of Us Just Live Here, my least favorite Ness book of all. But maybe I'll like this one more because it feels less likely to be a satire that, for me, would fall flat on its face. And also, Ness needs all the love he can get given that his BBC baby Class went and got unceremoniously cancelled.

Sharing the UK cover 'cause I like that one a lot more than the US cover.

9. Sarah J. Maas, Tower of Dawn

Yeah, yeah, I know, SJM's problematic in all the ways and should be avoided like the plague, but I'm still a fan of hers and I'll read her books - I especially can't ignore this one about Chaol, because thanks to Aimal, he's become my favorite character again after I briefly fell for the Rowan spell. If nothing else, read this review of ToD from my friend. Spoilery, but if you're like me, you've got plenty of mutuals who've spread most of the same spoilers online anyway.

We still got robbed not having Chaol on this cover, though.

8. Jay Kristoff, Godsgrave

Also an author (and series) many of my Twitter mutuals recommend everyone avoids because he's got a history of being problematic as hell, but me, I'm too loyal a Hufflepuff droog. I named one of my own villains after Mister Kristoff for a reason! And while I'm far more psyched for Obsidio, this middle entry of the Nevernight Chronicle promises a pretty kickass magical Olympics in the vein of The Mime Order or A Gathering of Shadows. Also, this bi boy is happy to hear that the whisperings of a bi Mia Corvere I was hearing from Mister Kristoff for a while appear to have become canon.

The bookstore has no less than two signed copies of this one!

7. James Rollins, The Demon Crown

Technically not coming out till the tail end of the fall season - early December, to be precise - so I probably won't get to read this one until sometime in 2018. But James Rollins never fails with his Sigma Force series, and for this we're looking at yet another high-stakes, high-intensity dose of apocalyptic action. So apocalyptic, in fact, Sigma's gonna have to temporarily align with the Guild to stop it, five books after we thought the Guild was defeated.

Why does this cover remind me so much of Fireblood, though? Or, even better, Talon.

6. Tahereh Mafi, Whichwood

I've been waiting for this one way too long. And it's a companion to Furthermore? Like, set in the same universe? I'm so down!

#OwnVoices MG fantasy FTW!

5. Rick Riordan, The Ship of the Dead

Magnus Chase, meet Percy Jackson. You're welcome. Obviously.

This'll pair perfectly with Thor: Ragnarok, am I right?

4. Barry Lyga, The Flash: Hocus Pocus

An official kidlit Flash novel? Sounds a lot less dark than we Lyga fans can expect, but I'll be damned if he doesn't do my favorite guardian angel Scarlet Speedster justice. (I mean, he's a Barry writing about another Barry, setting up for some Barry-ception at some point, am I right?) And, being middle-grade, I'm hoping that this book shies away from some shipping routes I'd rather avoid, the main reason why I've got such a love-hate relationship with what used to be my favorite show.

winn-schott-i-love-you.gif

3. Jo Whittemore, Supergirl: Age of Atlantis

A month after Lyga's Flash novel will come this official kidlit Supergirl novel, for which I can wait even less because Supergirl, the Angel from Krypton, has become my favorite Arrowverse character of them all. This book, I have all the faith it'll be perfectly awe...and some.

Again: winn-schott-i-love-you.gif

2. Zac Brewer, Madness

If there's one thing you need to know about me, it's that Z is one of the best in the biz and you're all sleeping on him. Remedy that immediately with all his books in order, building up to this one, which I'm thinking will be his most Silvera-esque yet. Dark, but with just enough of a nugget of hope at the end.

Make this one his next big bestseller, I beg you.

1. Adam Silvera, They Both Die At The End

*cries in bisexual because the bookstore STILL doesn't carry this one despite it being officially an NYT bestseller*

crying-garfield-spidey.gif - that one's getting attached to EVERY Silvera review I write, you know.

There you have it, my loyal Pinecones. The fall 2017 books I wanna read the most. Believe it or not, Tower of Dawn will be the first one I read, I'm thinking. Unless extra copies of TBDATE pop up at the library the way they did for ToD...hmm.

Till next time...

#FeedTheRightWolf

Remember: Denis Leary is always watching. Always.