Ricky Pine's Blog, page 25

Review: Age of Vice

Age of Vice by Deepti Kapoor
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

I’m sorry to say that while I did go into this book with good expectations, I should’ve heeded Jaroda’s not so dazzling rating. This book, in addition to getting plaudits and blurbs from Marlon James and Lee Child both (when was the last time that happened? Or will it ever happen again?), also manages to be both compulsively readable and yet so unrelentingly downbeat and vicious to its own protagonist that after a whi...

Review: The Sun and the Star

The Sun and the Star by Rick Riordan and Mark Oshiro
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

If I'd finished this book a few days earlier, I'd have been able to cap off Pride Month with this review. But alas, time was not on my side, so we'll have to settle for, as the citizens of cyberspace may say, Gay Wrath Month instead. Lol.

It's not that it doesn't happen, but it is very rare for me to come across a Rick Riordan book that I read and don't super enjoy. Then again, I'm definitely we...

Review: Dragonfall

Dragonfall by L.R. Lam
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

L.R. Lam's long awaited return to the fantasy genre gives a lot of similar vibes to their debut trilogy with Micah Grey, but also a lot more of the epic fantasy influence of one of their favorite authors, Robin Hobb, to whom this book is dedicated. There's also a fair amount of N.K. Jemisin influence with the wide variety of POV styles: Arcady gets a first person POV, Everen gets second person (with "you" in this instance ...

Review: My Heart Is a Chainsaw

My Heart Is a Chainsaw by Stephen Graham Jones
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I hadn't read any Stephen Graham Jones books before, but this one had a mildly longer wait time at the library than I expected, and I still have The Only Good Indians waiting a little further down my to-read pile from the library. But for this one, I'm afraid I'm definitely not continuing the trilogy.

I guess I'm a sucker for foresty mountain settings - it's part of the reason I moved up to the Pacifi...

Review: Silver in the Bone

Silver in the Bone by Alexandra Bracken
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I was honestly ready to give up as an Alexandra Bracken reader entirely after Lore - for me, that book was such a misfire, a coalescence of all of Bracken's biggest faults (stories bloated with dead air, characters with shockingly little appeal) - that I gave it a rare one star that wasn't a DNF. For this book, the first in a planned trilogy rooted in Arthurian legend, I'm going to be generous with an extra...

Review: The Spare Man

The Spare Man by Mary Robinette Kowal
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I found this book at the library and picked it up on the basis of A) that it was by the author of one of the best Hugo winners in recent memory, and B) that it had a pretty striking Art Deco cover, and the little dog too! That, plus Andy Weir's blurb hinted that, like Kowal's signature Lady Astronaut series (for which I've been waiting since 2020 for the next book!), it was an alternate history kind of sci-fi...

Review: Damsel

Damsel by Evelyn Skye
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Though the cover art comes with a Netflix sticker claiming that this book was adapted by Evelyn Skye from Dan Mazeau’s screenplay for the upcoming film, I do have to wonder how much of that is true. Certainly Skye claims to have had her kid help her devise the language of the dragon, known in universe as Khaevis Ventvis. Basically, it’s a sort of dragon Esperanto, combining Slavic and Germanic harsh sounds (and the former’s ...

Review: Antimatter Blues

Antimatter Blues by Edward Ashton
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

At this point, I'm convinced that this series is just one that publishing decided, arbitrarily (as it's wont to do, as insinuated in R.F. Kuang's Yellowface), to hype up with a film deal ready to go before the first book was even published. And what a way to hook all the cinephiles with the promise of a film adaptation (retitled Mickey 17) written and directed by Bong Joon-Ho as his follow up to one of the best m...

Review: Yellowface

Yellowface by R.F. Kuang
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

R.F. Kuang has established herself these last several years as a new genre titan in fantasy, but now she takes a sharp left turn into contemporary metafictional satire with her fifth novel, one which managed to go viral in a lot of literary circles - including, of course, Book Twitter - months in advance of its publication. And it's easy to see why. Yellowface is, yes, a searing satire of the publishing industry and its t...

Review: The Iron Vow

The Iron Vow by Julie Kagawa
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

For the third time, Julie Kagawa brings her longest running saga, the world of The Iron Fey, to an end...or does she? Well, even if the ending stays just a bit open, it definitely has an air of finally wrapping things up on this particular story world. Since each book in the Evenfall trilogy thus far has had a different primary POV character - first Puck, then Ash - this time, we have Meghan as the primary POV charact...