Ricky Pine's Blog, page 131

Review: The Isle

The Isle by Jordana Frankel
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The first book in this series came out...three years ago, I think? And for a long time, Goodreads had an entry up for this sequel, but it remained mostly empty because The Isle was just such a long time coming.

Come it did, though. And while it's been long enough that I've managed to forget huge chunks of The Ward, I also managed to remember a lot of stuff all over again while reading this book. I like how this one largely does away with th...

I'm An Overjoyed Flash Fan Today!

You would NOT believe how much I fanboyed when my friend @SpeedyElite gave me this today.

I've never been to a con, never met any celebrities in person. Speedy has, because she's cool like that. And this weekend, when she met The Flash's very own Jay Garrick, Teddy Sears himself, she got autographed pictures of Earth-2's favorite speedster.

Including one made out to me.

Yeah. I totally flailed and cried and screamed at this. No shame. No bloody shame.

Had I thought to wear my Flash shirt to go wi...

The Analog Kid: Alex and Fionna Meet For The First Time

Recently, my school held a flash fiction contest, with the winning entries being guaranteed certain cash prizes and publication in the school's literary journal. Naturally, I submitted an entry - a short story created from the Red Rain 'verse, never before seen. Naturally, I didn't win any of the top prizes or honorable mentions. (My friend and I agreed that it was because I did my own style and didn't go for the sort of stereotypical MFA-type crap people usually associate with literary...

The 100: An Open Letter To Jason Rothenberg

***WARNING TO ANYONE ELSE WHO MAY READ THIS: MAJOR SPOILER ALERT***

Dear Mr. Rothenberg,

Recently, I put out my list of the top 5 of everything of 2015, and The 100 (which holds the additional distinction of being the first and only CW show my dad will watch with me, which speaks volumes about its widespread crossover appeal) had no problem making the list. Unfortunately, I've fallen behind by two episodes, but because of the recent internet explosion revolving around last week's epis...

Review: Raging Sea

Raging Sea by Michael Buckley
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I compared the first book to The Vicious Deep, but this one takes a far more apocalyptic turn more reminiscent of Falling Skies. The East Coast is gone (and, in at least one case straight out of the first Independence Day, a city gets nuked - "may our children forgive us"), and now, Lyric and her friends are traveling west, into more desert-y parts of the country - exactly what you would NOT expect for a story about war between humans an...

Review: The Eternal World: A Novel

The Eternal World: A Novel by Christopher Farnsworth
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I've been waiting for a long time for another Christopher Farnsworth book - and while this isn't the Nathaniel Cade continuation I've been really dying to read, this standalone thriller, based on the same Fountain of Youth legend that inspired the fourth Pirates of the Caribbean movie, is a nice little piece of wild and crazy action to tide us Cade fans over. It makes all the sense in the world that the Spanish exp...

My Life In Poetry

While looking through my Google Docs for old essays I wouldn't need anymore, so I could use those files to put together the beginnings of my vomitous critical theory essay (which I need to start today, blecccch), I found this gem from two years ago - the final essay I wrote for a poetry class. That class, I took in spring 2014, a time of massive reinvention in my life. I'd just changed majors from computer science to English, I'd finally made my first real friend in God knows how long, I'd st...

Review: Glass Sword

Glass Sword by Victoria Aveyard
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Rise, red as the dawn.

A fair few of my friends, who have better connections than I do, were lucky enough to acquire this long-awaited Red Queen sequel in advance, but many of them confessed themselves quite disappointed. Based on this less-than-stellar reception, I was scared that I wouldn't enjoy the book either.

Well, I guess I didn't read the same book my friends did, because Glass Sword, for me, skips the Catching Fire prelude to the...

Review: This Shattered World

This Shattered World by Amie Kaufman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I was a little disappointed when I learned that Tarver and Lilac wouldn't be the focus of this book, but considering the premise behind this next star-crossed couple of Jubilee and Flynn (military girl and rebel dude), I kept my hopes up. These two romantic leads are quite different from their counterparts in These Broken Stars, but certainly have a similar opposites-attract-after-so-much-tension dynamic. While the story isn't qui...

Review: Hellraisers

Hellraisers by Alexander Gordon Smith
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It's been a while since Alexander Gordon Smith gave us a new book, and so I went into this one with high hopes based on my previous experience with Escape From Furnace and The Fury. Maybe it's not quite as good as those books, but for what it's worth, you get exactly what you ask for going into this book - horror, action, explosions, and a creepy new mythos combining aspects of demons and djinn.

The romantic part of the story feel...