Ricky Pine's Blog, page 23

Review: Soulbrand

Soulbrand by Andrew Rowe
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The third book of Weapons and Wielders - and the last one to date - is where I'll have to stop my ongoing read-through of Andrew Rowe books for now, at least until one of my local libraries finally sees fit to acquire the fourth book of Arcane Ascension. But it's a good stopping point, I'd say. While it's far longer than either of its predecessors in this series, long enough to stand on par with the first two Arcane Ascen...

Review: The Mountain in the Sea

The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Nayler
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

This book got a pretty nice push in marketing a few months back from Barnes & Noble, if I remember correctly, selecting it as a Book of the Month. So when I placed an order for it at the library, it was a very long waitlist, over two months...and let me tell you, I'm sorry to say that it was not worth the wait. The premise is intriguing enough, with its idea of octopi whose language is just waiting for humans...

Review: Tides of Fire

Tides of Fire by James Rollins
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Seichan largely sat out the last Sigma Force adventure, but that was because Rollins had a lot more personal peril in mind for her in this latest installment. Following multiple lines of narratives throughout the South Seas and Southeast Asia not unlike previous adventure The Judas Strain, this time around, Sigma has to face a string of escalating geological cataclysms throughout the interconnected submarine trenche...

Review: Seven Mercies

Seven Mercies by L.R. Lam and Elizabeth May
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I'm very glad that I was able to read this fast-paced series conclusion so soon after finally getting around to its predecessor Seven Devils super late to the party. Normally, I'm not much for the duology trend - I've complained about it numerous times - but reading the two books in such quick succession is exactly what the doctor ordered. It may have technically taken me many days, but that's only bec...

Review: Forging Divinity

Forging Divinity by Andrew Rowe
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

While waiting for the third book of Weapons & Wielders, I took a little side trip through Andrew Rowe's backlist to the first book of another series with a tangential connection at best to the other two series of his that I've been reading on my coworker Tory's rec. I think Tory might've read these books too, but it was Arcane Ascension that he liked the most, followed by Weapons & Wielders, and this series barely ...

Review: Dead Mountain

Dead Mountain by Douglas Preston
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The latest mystery for Nora Kelly and Corrie Swanson is quite an adventurous one, once again tackling some mysterious deaths high in the mountains - this time, in the Manzano Mountains of central New Mexico. Tackling a cold case - in more ways than one - of dead missing hikers in one of the highest caves in the range quickly leads to Nora running afoul of the long arm of the corrupt law, as a nastily racist sexist...

Review: Diamantine

Diamantine by Andrew Rowe
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Keras's little side story of capturing the Six Sacred Swords continues, with the lit-RPG world now taking on a lot of inspiration, as Rowe says, from shōnen manga and anime and their tournament arcs. He specifically cites the Hunter Exams from Hunter x Hunter and the Chunin Exams from Naruto, so yeah, now I can see where Rowe gets a bit of his long-term storytelling style from. I never really grew up on shōnen manga or a...

Review: Immortal Longings

Immortal Longings by Chloe Gong
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Normally I'm more than willing to go to bat for Chloe Gong, especially given the absurd and irrational hatedom she gets from Book Twitter types. But for this, her adult debut (when her previous books are pretty much YA in marketing only), inspired loosely by Antony and Cleopatra instead of Romeo and Juliet for Secret Shanghai, and set in a densely packed cyberpunk twin city inspired by the infamous Kowloon Walled C...

Review: Seven Devils

Seven Devils by L.R. Lam and Elizabeth May
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It's a shame it took me three years to read the first of L.R. Lam and Elizabeth May's sci-fi collaboration series - for a number of reasons, mainly that my hometown library in California never acquired it in the time of Covid, and then I moved to a town that didn't acquire it either, and Multnomah County and Fort Vancouver Libraries never acquired it themselves for the longest time...but I digress. Here...

Review: The Torch that Ignites the Stars

The Torch that Ignites the Stars by Andrew Rowe
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The Arcane Ascension series continues with a detour to another land on this vast continent of mana and magic, where Corin, Sera, and all their friends and allies are taking a break between school years to do some independent study, as it were. There could really be some hidden treasures in the secret magitek labs, some cures for various maladies our heroes may suffer, some hints about where the next...