Ricky Pine's Blog, page 23

Review: Air Born

Air Born by J L Pawley
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

As good as I remember from the old Wattpad days, and better. With some minor updates here and there after so many different rereleases, but that’s no surprise, really. I just can’t wait to finally get all three books on my shelf - for the first time, no less, because the last time this book was rereleased was before I even had a shelf, just an overstuffed drawer or two or three. But I’ll be ordering each successive book in ...

Review: Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone

Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone by Benjamin Stevenson
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

So this book tries to be the next Knives Out and make itself stand out on the basis of its tongue in cheek parody of the mystery genre, building on the Ten Commandments of the genre from Ronald Knox (well, nine, since one of them is redacted for racist language) and presenting a protagonist who's the black sheep of his criminal family, a mystery writer who's gotten at least one of t...

Review: System Collapse

System Collapse by Martha Wells
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

At this point, after seven books of varying size, haven't the corporations of the future learned by now that Murderbot just wants to be left alone to stream intergalactic soap operas all day? Yeah, right. Corporations never learn, in the present or in the future, and in this story world, they're so dangerously close to stepping into Weyland-Yutani territory with their sheer disregard for life that they ought to jus...

Review: The Hurricane Wars

The Hurricane Wars by Thea Guanzon
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

In recent weeks, Reylo fandom (of which I used to be a minor member thanks to a couple of my friends being really into it) has become something of a headline and punchline with the revelation that upcoming debut novelist and Reylo shipper Cait Corrain had review bombed several of her fellow 2024 debut novelists with sock puppet accounts, targeting a lot of authors of color in particular. Not a good look, and a s...

Review: The Hunting Moon

The Hunting Moon by Susan Dennard
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I'm gonna be honest, this one gets an extra star for cover love - seriously, that design with the hummingbird skeleton growing dangerous leaves and flowers has haunted me for months, ever since it was first unveiled. Helps that it reminds me a lot of the style of one of my old favorite 2000s YA series whose style Dennard has steadily emulated in this series - specifically, Lisa McMann's Wake trilogy.

But while De...

Review: Murtagh

Murtagh by Christopher Paolini
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I was never the biggest fan of Paolini or the Inheritance Cycle. Hell, I didn't even finish the first book when I was in grade school, and my sister enjoyed the video game a hell of a lot more than I did when I got it as a Christmas present. (I didn't watch the movie, because as I understand it, there is no Eragon movie in Ba Sing Se.)

The only reason I read the books was because my roommate a couple of years ago wa...

Review: Silver Nitrate

Silver Nitrate by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Silvia Moreno-Garcia definitely gets a lot of Guillermo del Toro vibes in some of her many Mexican-set period spec-fic stories, but never more than in her latest novel, which incorporates a lot of the same kind of elements that GDT loves to work with. Film history and Nazi occult scares, set in late 20th century Mexico City - in 1993, no less, the same year when GDT first came onto the scene with his auspici...

Review: Wish of the Wicked

Wish of the Wicked by Danielle Paige
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Danielle Paige made herself one of my favorite authors almost ten years ago when she debuted with Dorothy Must Die, and now, after a few years dabbling in the worlds of graphic novels and modern-day paranormal sisterhood, she now returns to the Fractured Fairytale style that made her name. She rose up during the heyday of the YA fairytale retelling craze, and while a lot of titans of that genre (Marissa Meyer...

Review: Foul Heart Huntsman

Foul Heart Huntsman by Chloe Gong
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This one goes out to all the people hopping on a ton of Chloe Gong hate bandwagons these last several years:

Sit there in your wrongness and be wrong and get used to it.

Yes, still.

"without the monster, there is no madness. without the madness, he goes out of business."
These Violent Delights

"nothing was ever as simple as 'my people' or 'your people...'"
Our Violent Ends

"don’t upset me in the future and it will be sw...

Review: The Art of Destiny

The Art of Destiny by Wesley Chu
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

“‘Goramh’s second Tenet of Humility. The mind should starve in victory and be ravenous in defeat,’ recited the duchess.

“‘Goramh must have lost a lot of wars,’ Qisami quipped.”

For me, this latest from Wesley Chu is more of a 3.5 rounded up to a 4 - the 3.5 owing to how long the book goes on and on and on even compared to its predecessor, but the rounding up because it doesn't lose its predecessor's delightfully sa...