Ricky Pine's Blog, page 14

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...

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...