Ricky Pine's Blog, page 11

Review: Everything We Never Had

Everything We Never Had by Randy Ribay
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Four stars for this one but I don’t think I’ll be putting it on the “why isn’t this a bloody movie yet” list, only because it’s a powerful book that would be even more difficult to stomach in visual form. But let’s be honest, Ribay is a shoo in for the National Book Award again on this one. Back in his Filipino-American contemporary milieu for the first time in five years, this book combines a lot of aspects...

Review: Vilest Things

Vilest Things by Chloe Gong
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I wasn't as impressed with Immortal Longings last year as I was with Gong's Secret Shanghai novels, and the GR ratings reflect that a lot of others were similarly unimpressed. But this book, I do have to say, is a noticeable improvement. By this time, we're a little past the weird not-quite-cyberpunk game aspect of Book 1 and much more into fantasy politicking, with a detailed world map showing how San-Er is located at...

Review: Godkiller

Godkiller by Hannah Kaner
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I can see why this book has been such a hit, and it’s a shame I’ve been sleeping on it as long as I have. It’s a surprisingly small book, but still packs a punch well above its weight class, channeling the likes of Samantha Shannon, L.R. Lam, and Brianna da Silva. It’s a world where the gods are NOT good, but the goddess of beauty has to be the worst by far - the brief snippets of story we get about her are some pretty o...

Review: The Chronicles of Viktor Valentine

The Chronicles of Viktor Valentine by Z Brewer
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

When I was in high school, senior year, I got to volunteer behind the librarian's desk, and the librarian recommended me a lot of good books to try out - including The Chronicles of Vladimir Tod, which had flown under my radar until that time. Now, fourteen years after ending the original series and ten years after ending the first spinoff Slayer Chronicles, Z Brewer is back with their latest legacy ...

Review: Sunrise Nights

Sunrise Nights by Jeff Zentner
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

I'm really starting to feel like I'm outgrowing Zentner here, between this book and how I was whelmed at best with Colton Gentry's Third Act. To be fair, this one is very different for Zentner, not only a collaboration with another author (and I've never read anything by Brittany Cavallaro yet, though her solo books do seem interesting), but also partly a novel in verse (half verse and half dialogue, but still somew...

Review: The Reckoning of Roku

The Reckoning of Roku by Randy Ribay
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Randy Ribay hasn't published any new novels since at least pre-Covid, but this year, he's got two of them - including this start to a new Chronicles of the Avatar duology, taking over from F.C. Yee after his work on duologies for Kyoshi and Yangchen. Here, Ribay gives Roku a slightly similar storyline of self-doubt to Kyoshi, whose having been mistaken for a false Avatar has become the stuff of legend by the t...

Review: The Extraordinary Disappointments of Leopold Berry

The Extraordinary Disappointments of Leopold Berry by Ransom Riggs
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Ransom Riggs is baaaaaaaaaaack! And I am 100% all in for this.

Like Miss Peregrine before it, this latest series opener from one of the best authors in the YA business follows a boy whose family trauma has shaped him into a depressed young man who doesn’t think he stands a chance in the world. But that’s because the world doesn’t respect him like he deserves, except for his buddy w...

Review: The Mercy of Gods

The Mercy of Gods by James S.A. Corey
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

I wouldn’t be surprised if this book was a stealth sequel to The Expanse. I mean, it’s pretty clear from the fact that the human civilization of Anjiin is pretty strongly implied to have come through the protomolecule portal to colonize that world, only to then be colonized themselves by a fearsome super-Borg hive mind. But coming from the same authors as The Expanse, this book was nothing short of disappoint...

Review: The Wren in the Holly Library

The Wren in the Holly Library by K.A. Linde
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

If ACOTAR and Crescent City had a baby and raised it on a steady diet of Deborah Harkness novels, it'd be somewhat close to what this book is, and yet a more charitable description than it deserves. I'm definitely a sucker for a bookish kind of leading lady - Belle was always my favorite Disney Princess as a kid - but even Kierse, the Belle of this ball, couldn't carry this book beyond two star territor...

Review: Arkangel

Arkangel by James Rollins
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Even for a Sigma book, this one's got everything, and I mean EVERYTHING, that makes me demand there be a film adaptation of this series immediately.

Yes, I know by now Amazon has a TV series adaptation planned, but call me cynical but I strongly suspect the streaming world isn't gonna be as kind to this series as it deserves, unless it's anywhere near as much of a hit as the books' bestseller status ought to afford it.

But...