Ricky Pine's Blog, page 12

Review: Angel of Vengeance

Angel of Vengeance by Douglas Preston
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The Leng Quartet (as it were) comes to its conclusion in this latest Pendergast novel, which goes full Alienist with its near total immersion in the 1880s setting for most of our favorite characters. All respect to the late Caleb Carr, though, but Preston and Child outdo Dr. Laszlo Kreiszler with the typical hypercompetence of the Pendergast brothers - both Aloysius the agent and Diogenes the devil, the latte...

Review: Some Desperate Glory

Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Once again, I find myself picking up the Hugo winner for Best Novel and come up disappointed. And just like last year with T. Kingfisher's Nettle and Bone, there wasn't a sudden long line at the library for it - which should've been a sign to me that the book wasn't going to impress me.

I get that this book is trying to be one of those about a character who has to unlearn how horrible her society is when she real...

Review: Disquiet Gods

Disquiet Gods by Christopher Ruocchio
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

So it turns out that Ruocchio's original contract for this series with DAW was unexpectedly ended after the fifth book, and the only reason he was able to publish the sixth (and thankfully move past that brutal ending in Ashes of Man) was because his old employer Baen Books came to the rescue. Seems that Baen made the right call, and DAW decided they would get back in the game with this series and soon reissu...

Review: The Light of All That Falls

The Light of All That Falls by James Islington
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

The end...or is it? Because the very end of the book acknowledges that a couple of characters developed a side story of their own that would've been enough for a full length novel in its own right. Definitely not as big a book as any in this series - maybe half the length if that. But I don't think I'd be picking up that spinoff if and when it ever happens, because I love Islington's other series, T...

Review: The Seventh Veil of Salome

The Seventh Veil of Salome by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I'll just say it: Evelyn Hugo walked so Vera Larios could run. SMG shies away from her typical supernatural style in this one, but it's no less sharp in its commentary or grand in its story for it. Focusing heavily on race in 1950s Hollywood just like Taylor Jenkins Reid's signature book does (and arguably more authentically since it comes from an author of Mexican descent), this book is short bu...

Review: The Mars House

The Mars House by Natasha Pulley
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

I admit I kinda thought this would be an interesting sci-fi romance, a sort of Red, White, and Royal Blue in space situation (I say having not read RWRB beyond checking out little snippets of it during my bookstore days when the book was first super popular). Boy oh boy oh boy was I wrong, and when I checked back against the blurb and realized that this was more akin to a romance between an oppressed minority and ...

Review: Ashes of Man

Ashes of Man by Christopher Ruocchio
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Ruocchio's fifth novel of the Sun Eater would have been a three star comedown for me based on the first 400 pages or so, where the plot really slows down and grinds its gears while setting up the next match on the 4-D chess board. This book does bring great promise of the villains behind the villains, the Cielcin gods who want to truly lay waste to everything and everyone in the known universe, but it takes fo...

Review: Wildwood Imperium

Wildwood Imperium by Colin Meloy
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Portland's Narnia concludes in a third sprawling, nearly 600-page brick of paper - with some of those pages, as usual, thicker than usual in order to accommodate Carson Ellis's color prints. It does add a little something new for texture - the Chapeaux Noir, a group of French anarchists with plans to bring down the big old Fantastic Mr. Fox style Industrial Wastes, who ultimately give this book some eerie similari...

Review: Take Flight

Take Flight by J L Pawley
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I guess Pawley is making some steady progress on getting the revamped Generation Icarus series reissued in this new format - I don't think the third book is out yet? But hopefully by the end of this year at least. In the meantime, though, it was great to once again get a throwback to the old Wattpad days with one of the best angel books you're not reading, now in a new form, with a hell of a lot more focus on Tui than I ...

Review: The Reformatory

The Reformatory by Tananarive Due
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is my first time reading a book by Tananarive Due, which is definitely going to have to change. While Stephen King trod similar ground with his book The Institute a few years back, Due goes back to 1950s Florida, taking some inspiration from a real-life ancestor of hers who perished in such a "school" as the one depicted in this book. Not only is the full scope of Jim Crow laws in effect, but the Gracetown S...