K.N. Salustro's Blog, page 12

Review – The Broken Kingdoms

[image error]Another highly engrossing and captivating read from N.K. Jemisin. And this one is fraught with tension.

Told from the perspective of Oree, a blind woman who can “see” magic and gods, this book hit hard in a number of ways. It’s an incredibly rich story that takes place ten years after the events of the first book, revealing how the world is reacting to the return of the gods in the wake of the overthrow of Itempas. And oh how it is cracking.

Oree herself states that there is good in the world...

Review – An Artificial Night

[image error]Continuing the October Daye series, this one is less private investigator and more adventure horror. And I loved it.

This feels like McGuire getting into her groove with the character, exploring Toby much further than before. And Toby rises to the challenge, making selfless and difficult choices, and learning to embrace her role as a hero. That’s something she’s been fighting against ever since her failure in Rosemary and Rue, and it was beautiful to watch her go on this literal and figurativ...

Review – A Local Habitation

[image error]I am becoming a big fan of Seannan McGuire’s work, and I’ve only read a small fraction of her books. This one is the second installment of the October Daye series, and reminded me of how beautiful and brutal McGuire’s writing can be.

Chock full of living fairytales and small but pivotal pieces of magic, this murder-mystery is a great read. I did think that it was a little slow in the beginning, and some of Toby’s internal asides throughout the book went a bit too long for my taste, but this b...

Review – The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms

[image error]Take warring deities, throw in imperialism, add enslavement, mix it all together and then shatter it with a heroine determined to uncover the truth even as her heritage demands the ultimate sacrifice, and you get this book.

I liked this a lot. I’m actually glad that I read the Broken Earth trilogy first, since that made me fall in love with N.K. Jemisin’s writing and world building. It also prepared me for the fact that Jemisin will purposefully disorient you, but if you can handle the initia...

So we adopted a cat last week…

Meet Marina.

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Marina is an amazingly sweet, two-year-old calico with what I think is some tabby in her. She has what look like brown tabby spots on her sides and tail, and a bit on her face, but the rest of her is calico. It’s interesting in that her calico hair is quite a bit longer than the tabby hair, but she is adorable all the way around.

She’s still getting settled with us, but she has been very affectionate from the start, and likes to know where her people are, even if she’s not sitti...

Review – The Last Namsara

[image error]I hate this book cover. Not because I think it’s bad, but because I think it’s a terrible fit for the story. Based on the cover alone, you would expect this to be some vaguely erotic, romance-driven story, or a book about a heroine that wields her sexuality like a weapon. Those aren’t inherently bad stories, but they tend to be not up my alley. So it is with great relief that I discovered that this is NOT one of those stories.

From the blurb and the opening chapter, I expected this to be a ro...

Review – Exo

[image error]I love Fonda Lee’s writing, but something about this book did not click with me. I think that, had it been written by anyone else, I would have enjoyed it less, but Lee writes with a clarity and nuance that is so wonderful. She is a great author, plain and simple.

So what was it about this book didn’t I like?

Most of it stemmed from main character Donovan’s insta-attraction to Anya. Attraction is one thing, but they are on opposite sides of a war, with Anya is considered to be a terrorist, as...

Review – Red Rising

[image error]I have a lot of mixed feelings about this book. The beginning felt unique and refreshing, and I was looking forward to getting to know Darrow in the context of his family and their society. Then his wife Eo is fridged, Darrow is physically modified to make him part of a superhuman race, and then the book becomes a weird combination of Divergent and The Hunger Games.

There were parts that I enjoyed, and I did like that Darrow was allowed to fail, to be betrayed, and to be taught harsh lessons....

Thoughts on “Woman on the Edge of Time”

[image error]I had this book on my To Read list for a while. It was recommended to me back in college by a professor, when I was gearing up to write a thesis on dystopian sci-fi. That said, I can see why this would be considered an important book, but as a post-thesis me looking for something more engaging to read on the commute to and from work, I’m just not drawn in.

There’s a lot of blurry slang in this book from Luciente the time traveler, and a lot of it is hard to follow. Combine that with the bruta...

Review – Uprooted

[image error]I liked this book a lot. Far more than I expected to, even though I was a big fan of His Majesty’s Dragon. I think I made the mistake of reading a few too many reviews that called the main character Agnieszka a Mary Sue, which is something that I strongly dispute after reading this.

Also, we really need to stop using that term. It’s bad. It’s undermining female characters, and robbing us of putting actual thought into our criticisms. You don’t like a character? That is perfectly legitimate! B...