Ricky Pine's Blog, page 124

Review: The Inquisition

The Inquisition by Taran Matharu
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

"Well, it would've been, could've been, worse than you would ever know..."
-Modest Mouse, "Dashboard"

I'm sorry to go there right off the bat, but that title is just begging for this point to be made:



And as for that cliffhanger Matharu left us with last time, along with the one he gave us this time, I hereby present my idea of what must be going on in his head:



So...The Inquisition. Mercifully, the title group only really appears during th...

Review: Demigods & Magicians: Percy and Annabeth Meet the Kanes

Demigods & Magicians: Percy and Annabeth Meet the Kanes by Rick Riordan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I haven't been able to read these stories with the rest of the world because, as usually happens when an author puts out bonus e-book novellas, I'm forced to wait for a print compilation because I have no e-reader. It's worked out well for me on, say, The Bane Chronicles, or I Am Number Four: The Lost Files.

For some reason, I was never as big a fan of The Kane Chronicles as I was of Percy Jackson...

Review: Once a Crooked Man

Once a Crooked Man by David McCallum
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

As Jethro Gibbs might say, "Don't quit your day job, Duck."

I probably wouldn't have picked up this book at all if not for the fact that its author stars on one of my favorite TV shows. Reading it, I found it to be a fairly enjoyable read, with the same sort of mix of crime and humor that I've come to expect from James Patterson, particularly in his NYPD Red series. However, this book was also strongly impacted, negatively, by its...

Review: The Last Mile

The Last Mile by David Baldacci
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Recently, my dad told me about a true-crime book by John Grisham he'd recently started reading, about a black man in Texas (I think) who'd been falsely accused of killing a white girl and found guilty. In between all his descriptions of the case and how the guy eventually got on track to getting justice, I kept interjecting increasingly salty, increasingly foul-mouthed comments to the effect of "because it's Texas, and there's a legacy...

Review: The Outsiders

The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

"Yes, I'm feeling a little bit nervous
Yes, I'm feeling nervous and I cannot relax
How come they're out to get us?
How come they're out when they don't know the facts?"
-Coldplay, "Hurts Like Heaven"

Glory hallelujah. Why didn't I read this one sooner?

Like a lot of teenagers, I tended to hate the books I had to read in high school English classes. One of the ones I hated the most was Catcher in the Rye, because it was just so hard to see what ma...

Review: 15th Affair

15th Affair by James Patterson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The murder that kick-starts this book is just the first taste of the real shock - which comes in the form of an incident eerily reminiscent of the infamous Asiana Air crash a few years back at SFO, but even worse. Patterson's plane crash is brought about by terrorists, and not only that, it impacts onto a high school campus - which happens to be the same one that my cousins have all attended in real life, where the youngest of them stil...

Review: The Blood Between Us

The Blood Between Us by Zac Brewer
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I've never read a book by Uncle Zac that I didn't like, and The Blood Between Us is no exception. It's a dark and raw book, and very matter-of-fact and honest about what it is. In coffee terms, it's a cup of espresso - a tiny but potent shot or two right to the veins. It reminded me a lot of James Patterson's Confessions of a Murder Suspect, especially with the familial bad blood (insert the Bastille song here) and the mysteriously...

Review: Alight

Alight by Scott Sigler
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Just like with the first book in this trilogy, my review for this one will be short, sweet, and spoiler-free. Let's just say that if you thought things couldn't get any less Aztec-like in their bloody, ancient-civilization-influenced sci-fi horror, you thought wrong. Life on this strange, desolate, faraway planet is far from a secure thing, especially with the threats constantly rising from within the jungle, within our heroes' camp, etc. etc.

E...

Review: Shadowplay

Shadowplay by Laura Lam
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

For some reason, while my local library has a pretty extensive collection, they seem oddly lacking in books from smaller publishers and books from Bay Area writers - of which the second Micah Grey novel qualifies as both. Thankfully, Berkeley Public Library had a copy which I could special order.

Micah and Drystan spend this book in the company of magicians - similar ilk to Pantomime's circus performers, so it's not too different from the first...

Review: The Magician's Land

The Magician's Land by Lev Grossman
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The thing about this trilogy is that it starts out with a decidedly dim view of its many worlds, and gets even darker from there. Finally, in the end, there's a glimmer of hope, but that end comes after a long, difficult, and often repetitive read. Grossman's books may be inspired by modern fantasy, but he goes so hard for genre deconstruction that it becomes a grimdark, gritty slog - something that, I think, the Syfy series is doi...