Ricky Pine's Blog, page 105

Review: City of Bones

City of Bones by Cassandra Clare
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

*editing my old review from years and years ago so I can share this on my blog just 'cause)

I don't know why I like this book series so much...oh wait, yeah I do. Cassandra Clare knows what we want to read. She knows that we the people love paranormal stuff. She knows we need generous doses of questionable-quality humor.

In short - SHE EFFING DELIVERS.

When I was in high school, still an insecure teenager endlessly questioning his sexual...

Review: Unhooked

Unhooked by Lisa Maxwell
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I went into this one on a friend's recommendation - and because I thought it looked very A.G. Howard-esque. Basically, the Peter Pan version of Splintered. In that respect, I wasn't disappointed - Unhooked proved just as creepy and fantasy-action-packed as expected. However, the story itself was a little too breakneck-paced when it didn't need to be, and the plot, mostly because it felt so surface-similar to an A.G. Howard book, was surprisin...

Review: King's Cage

King's Cage by Victoria Aveyard
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

"You need to watch me beg and lose it all."
-The Dear Hunter, "Never Forgive Never Forget"

"Wake to see your true emancipation is a fantasy
Politics have risen up and overcome the brave
...
You don't have long, I am on to you
The time, it has come to destroy your supremacy!"
-Muse

Rise, red as the dawn.

All aboard the Aveyardian Hype Train once again, my friends, and you know I'm never getting off this one. Red Queen was a lavish dystopian with...

Review: The Walled City

The Walled City by Ryan Graudin
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Before Wolf By Wolf, Ryan Graudin went not so much for alternate history as for an alternate world, inspired by the Kowloon Walled City slums of Hong Kong in the mid-20th century. Photos of the place (which appear at the end of this book) make it look so otherworldly, like something out of Star Wars, that of course Graudin couldn't resist penning a dystopian novel set in what is, in all but name, the Kowloon Walled City.

It's an action-...

Two Years Of Blogging, Etc.

Two years ago, I started blogging because Andrew Garfield was getting replaced as Spider-Man, and my poor little fanboy heart couldn't take it. Since then, of course, I've accepted Tom Holland as a more than suitable replacement, though I've kept on working on Amazing Spider-Man-centric fanfics because I cannot, will not, ever let go of my top fandom. I'm still nowhere near finished with Deadpool Syndrome: Marvel's Folly.

In my second year on this blog, I've expanded my social media presence a...

Review: Wolf by Wolf

Wolf by Wolf by Ryan Graudin
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I think I've been hearing the name of Ryan Graudin for a while, but it took me just as much of a while to pick up one of her books - specifically, the first in this alternate-history series about an international motorcycle race in a 1956 where the Axis powers won World War II. (The implication, pretty significant to our time as well, is that this particular historical tide shifted because the US never broke its policy of isolationism, an...

Review: Rules of the Game

Rules of the Game by James J. Frey
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

And thus endeth the Endgame series, on a surprisingly short but no less all-out action-packed note. Maybe a little too short - not unlike Marie Lu's Midnight Star, the barely-over-300-page length really doesn't do this could-have-been-a-touch-more-epic apocalyptic finale justice. Unlike Frey's previous 2016 series finale in Pittacus Lore's United As One, this book, while not at all slouching or slacking in its pace, is pretty jumble...

Review: Battle of the Ampere

Battle of the Ampere by Richard Paul Evans
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Though the Michael Vey books aren't outright bad, finishing the third book hasn't endeared me much to this series. By this point, I feel like Evans is piling up twists for the sake of twist-piling, not unlike James Patterson's chief fatal flaw with Maximum Ride, and the story not only brings next to nothing new to the table, it also doesn't seem to go anywhere. Well, it does, but it's a very strange little Peru Evans gives u...

Lorien Legacies Reborn: Generation One by Pittacus Lore

OH MY GOD.

They're doing a Lorien Legacies sequel series.



Forget all others - THIS is the 2017 release I'm looking forward to the most now.

Review: History Is All You Left Me

History Is All You Left Me by Adam Silvera
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

"A warning sign
I missed the good part, then I realized
I started looking and the bubble burst
I started looking for excuses..."
-Coldplay

Alternate universes. As a reader and writer frequently looking for worlds other than the real one, and dabbling in sci-fi and fantasy, I need them. And I often need to find them. Like, I need to find the alternate universe where The Amazing Spider-Man, with Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone both, w...