Ricky Pine's Blog, page 101

Review: Battle Royale

Battle Royale by Koushun Takami
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I'm a huge fan of The Hunger Games, books and movies both - especially the movies. But for this very similar piece of dystopian, I spent years sleeping on it, until a Twitter mutual of mine convinced me I should try all the Battle Royale media there was - book, manga, movie. So I started with the book and, while I still enjoy The Hunger Games more, Battle Royale presents a very chilling alternate world, a dystopian Japan of the late 90...

Review: Stalking Jack the Ripper

Stalking Jack the Ripper by Kerri Maniscalco
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The first time I read this book, I have to say, I didn't really enjoy it. It felt like it didn't live up to its potential, not even close, not for a story inspired by Jack the Ripper. And it certainly didn't help that there was that "I was the girl who loved the Ripper" back-cover blurb, which actually kinda put me off. I picked up the book again, though, because now I know that its follow-up will be an even more interesti...

Review: Empire Decayed

Empire Decayed by Daniel Kraus
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Well, I liked the first volume of The Death And Life of Zebulon Finch well enough, but I found that this one followed a path similar to Kraus' Rotters in that it began wonderfully, only to end as a mere shadow of its former self. It certainly doesn't help that, even more so than its predecessor, Empire Decayed is a giant brick of paper and ink, a collection of smaller stories that build up to the promise of the prologue of At The Edge O...

Review: Blood of Wonderland

Blood of Wonderland by Colleen Oakes
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I read Queen of Hearts last summer and was really enamored with it, being that it was basically Alice in Wonderland meets Game of Thrones, but in a smaller form. While I very eagerly awaited Blood of Wonderland - and with a title like that, how could I not? - I think maybe this book got a little too GRRM-like for its own good in a way. Not because it was long - it wasn't. Not because it killed my faves off - it didn't. But more be...

Review: Leviathan Wakes

Leviathan Wakes by James S.A. Corey
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I've only seen six episodes so far of the Syfy TV series based on these books, but based on that, I wasn't really expecting quite what came up in Leviathan Wakes. It's a massive, expansive (of course) piece of space-opera, a little like Red Rising in its depiction of the future of our solar system a couple hundred years from now (but not progressed to the point where it becomes an enormous space Roman Empire), and also reminding me...

Review: The Forever Song

The Forever Song by Julie Kagawa
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Finally, three years after this book comes out, I've read and enjoyed it and, for now, I'm all caught up on the complete bibliography of Julie Kagawa. I'm sure if I look back at some of her earlier Iron Fey books, I'd see her remark on how her readers' tears feed her muse, but now this is the earliest I've seen her acknowledge this fact that I remember. And while those tears may be a powerful energy source, they mostly go towards powe...

Review: Clockwork Prince

Clockwork Prince by Cassandra Clare
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Well, well, well. Ms. Clare is truly in fine form now! As notorious as she is for her Draco Trilogy fanfic (which is basically the Grindelwald to My Immortal's Voldemort), Clare is one of my favorite authors, and it is all because of this ever-expanding universe of wildly awesome fantasy novels.

Why do I like these books so much? These characters are a most wonderful Victorian set of equivalents to the TMI (haha) character set. I lo...

Review: The Darkest Magic

The Darkest Magic by Morgan Rhodes
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I've enjoyed all the Morgan Rhodes books I've read to date, but this one, the middle entry in the Spirits and Thieves trilogy, suffers from a bit of Sophomore Slump. It's a surprisingly slow read, with a lot of POV switches that are sometimes hard to keep track of unless you go back to the headings at the start of each chapter, and a pretty convoluted story that leaves me scratching my head quite often. But the cast of characters in...

Review: The Eternity Cure

The Eternity Cure by Julie Kagawa
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

My reread of Blood of Eden continues, and I'll be reading the third book very soon, because this time, not only did I finish The Eternity Cure, but I enjoyed it a lot more than I did the first time around. Sure, the book did have a bit of a disjointed, slapdash feel at times, but it keeps Allison Sekemoto's story going into some really weird and messed-up territory as a new, and of course, deadlier plague (the source of the book's ti...

Review: Clockwork Angel

Clockwork Angel by Cassandra Clare
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

*finally posting my old review to my blog, with some minor edits*

And so it begins, the prequel to Cassandra Clare's (deservingly) glorified fanfic story.

Tessa Gray (who thankfully has no relatives - that we know of! - named Christian), teenage American in the Victorian days, travels to London to see her brother - and ends up imprisoned by a pair of creepy old ladies. You know things are not what they seem when the globe in their hou...