Ricky Pine's Blog, page 111

Review: The Girl from Everywhere

The Girl from Everywhere by Heidi Heilig
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I've seen a lot of comparisons between this book and Alexandra Bracken's Passenger. Heidi Heilig, however, offers a superior alternative in The Girl from Everywhere, which takes readers on a more entertaining, more intense adventure across the world and across time.

Particularly important in this book is its focus on 19th-century Hawaii, in a time when the islands were an independent kingdom. Unfortunately, this isn't somethin...

Review: The Circle

The Circle by Dave Eggers
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

Opening this book for my Advanced Expository Writing class this fall, I thought it was going to be a pretty cool read. I mean, 1984 in the Silicon Valley, on a campus that's basically a mashup of Google and Facebook and Apple? What could go wrong?

A lot, as it turns out.

Eggers, from what I hear, is one of those writers who spends his time mostly doing "literary" things, usually grand visions of some personal significance to him, and some crea...

Review: Escape Clause

Escape Clause by John Sandford
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

The second Sandford mystery of 2016 proves a little less topical and a little more out-there than Extreme Prey and its take on an attempted assassination of a Hillary Clinton analogue. It sounds interesting at first - the story begins with the theft of two endangered Amur tigers, whose body parts are prized in traditional Chinese medicine - and soon morphs into a page-turning, but very crowded, story jam-packed with crime families (one...

Review: Guilty Minds

Guilty Minds by Joseph Finder
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I really, seriously wish Joseph Finder would give us more Nick Heller books...although seeing his tendency to go several years between new entries in this series as opposed to churning out one new book each year like clockwork makes them pretty special in the world of thriller novels. Guilty Minds is no exception, with its fast-paced, topical-as-hell exploration of politics and scandal and corruption. It's a world Heller's pretty used to...

Review: Night School

Night School by Lee Child
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Here we have another Jack Reacher prequel novel, this one set in 1996, before the real world even had one Reacher book to enjoy. It's a pretty high-stakes international adventure, even if it's set in a relatively peaceful time, between the Cold War and the War on Terror. However, Night School still feels quite topical for today, twenty years after it takes place, with its primary issues being international espionage and terrorism, as well as...

Review: Tales from the Shadowhunter Academy

Tales from the Shadowhunter Academy by Cassandra Clare
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I can't tell you how long I've been waiting for these ten Simon-centric stories.

Too long, that's how long.

Simon's always been my favorite character Cassie Clare ever created, and after the ending of City of Heavenly Fire, I knew there had to be a set of short stories in his future, the way we got The Bane Chronicles. Ten stories, following Simon's days in the Shadowhunter Academy, bridging the gap between CoHF an...

One, The Loneliest Number

Last week, I made the huge, huge mistake of telling a girl I liked her, and she said she was seeing someone else. Embarrassing as hell for both of us. It'll have been a week since that embarrassment tomorrow, Tuesday, and the more I think about it, the more I realize it's just part of an ongoing, increasingly unhappy pattern.

Unfortunately, largely thanks to my parents keeping me back and discouraging me from socializing and/or dating from my teenage years onward (not to mention me being stupi...

Review: Chaos Choreography

Chaos Choreography by Seanan McGuire
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Finally, I'm back in the InCryptid world, and more importantly, Verity's back in the driver's seat after two Alex-led books in a row. Not that Alex's books aren't as good, but I did miss Verity, that kick-ass danger dancer - and this book takes that side of her to new heights by having her investigate some paranormal cryptozoological shenanigans on the set of a TV dancing competition, aptly named Dance or Die.

Coming up next, I bel...

Review: Last Seen Leaving

Last Seen Leaving by Caleb Roehrig
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I wanted to read this book after taking part in a Twitter book chat a few months back with the author.

I was not disappointed.

Going into Last Seen Leaving, I saw quite a few comparisons to Gone Girl, which gave me reservations because I was one of the few who didn't like that book at all. After reading it, I see that the comparisons were pretty spot-on in terms of storyline - girl goes missing, boy who loves her reevaluates their rel...

Review: Black Widow: Red Vengeance

Black Widow: Red Vengeance by Margaret Stohl
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

There are a few things in the Marvel multiverse that I'm forever salty about. Like the fact that Andrew Garfield isn't playing Spider-Man anymore, but he'll always be Spidey for me, and always my number-one storytelling inspiration. Or the fact that we were introduced to Alexei in Forever Red, only to see him get killed off after only one book. (Yeah, Margaret Stohl, I'm still never forgiving you for that.)

Or the fact that...