Ricky Pine's Blog, page 18

Review: The Spear Cuts Through Water

The Spear Cuts Through Water by Simon Jimenez
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

This one unfortunately is a classic case of not only "interesting premise but poor execution," but also "just not for me." I wanted to like this one, but when the book immediately launches into a long winded second person POV narrative (which is historically off putting for a reason; I'm still surprised to this day I managed to read N.K. Jemisin's entire Broken Earth trilogy, but then at least she did...

Review: Most Ardently

Most Ardently by Gabe Cole Novoa
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Gabe Cole Novoa's been hyping up this book for a while, and it's a pretty sharp departure from his past work because it's the first non-speculative fiction book he's published. No sci-fi, no fantasy, and by his own admission, no magic...but definitely he's still got his usual gifts of unexpectedly twisty romance well in hand as he contributes to Feiwel & Friends's lineup of Remixed Classics. This gender-bending ta...

Review: All This Twisted Glory

All This Twisted Glory by Tahereh Mafi
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Last year, when I read the second book of Tahereh Mafi's current series, I expected that that book was the middle of a trilogy - hadn't it been announced as such at first? But since then, Mafi not only announced that this new book would not be the end of the series after all, but that she's planning as many as five books total in the series. Now, as much as I love Mafi's work, and she's never losing her posi...

Review: Sky's End

Sky's End by Marc J. Gregson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

For this hella hyped new series opener, I'm going to give it a 3.5 rounded up to a 4. Other reviewers have pointed out how much this book is a throwback to the YA dystopian boom of the 2010s, combining a lot of well known stylistic hallmarks - a protagonist joining one of a large number of postapocalyptic factions, a certain fascination with the number twelve in the structure, first person present tense narrative, and...

Review: The Atlas Maneuver

The Atlas Maneuver by Steve Berry
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Not my favorite, but still a far better Atlas-titled book than any of Olivie Blake's BookTok overhype.

(There, I said it.)

Cotton Malone's back again, and this time, taking on a bizarre multipronged conspiracy to hack the world's economy with a combination of lost Japanese World War II gold and conning numerous countries around the world into adopting bitcoin as legal tender. Sure, this book already feels a bit da...

Review: The Tainted Cup

The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Robert Jackson Bennett returns with the start of a brand new series, although this book is pretty standalone in its unique new world. Imagine if Rian Johnson in the midst of his Knives Out era collaborated with Jasper Fforde in the midst of his Shades of Grey era, and you'd have something approximating this book - biopunk fantasy murder mystery with creeping vines and spores out to kill everyone (so a bit...

Review: Lucero

Lucero by Maya Motayne
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It's been over two full years since Motayne published the second book of this trilogy, but I'm very glad that she got the chance to publish the whole series, because it's truly one of the most underrated in the YA sphere. While the first book and especially the second book dealt a lot with colonialism and its effects on linguistically attuned magic in universe, the diabolical cliffhanger ending of Oculta ensured that this b...

Review: The Might

The Might by Siri Pettersen
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

The third book of The Raven Rings took a little while to arrive for me at the library after reading the first two in relatively quick succession, but unfortunately it did keep the series' downward trend going. While the first two books had constant action over their hundreds and hundreds of pages and led to some wild cliffhangers on each one, this time, the story manages to move super fast and still take forever to wra...

Review: The Spy Coast

The Spy Coast by Tess Gerritsen
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Ahh, finally, a breath of fresh air to take me out of my current reading slump. Gerritsen says that this book, the start of a promising new series, took some inspiration from the fact that apparently the small town in Maine where she moved in her golden years is also full of golden-years people...and many of them have some secrets in their pasts that they can't talk about even to their doctors. Thus was the genesis...

Review: A Plague of Giants

A Plague of Giants by Kevin Hearne
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I thought I might have attempted to read this book once when it first came out, but I guess this is my first time leaving a review here for it. Oh well. Unfortunately, if I did read it back then, I must not have remembered it well at all. And this time, I'm remembering it for the wrong reasons. Normally, I would have expected I'd love a fantasy novel with a bard in the center of it all, but the disjointed narrat...