Ricky Pine's Blog, page 28

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...

Review: Stars and Smoke

Stars and Smoke by Marie Lu
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

It’s rare, I think, that I read a book by one of the best and most under appreciated writers in the business, Marie Lu, and I’m not super jazzed about what I’ve read. I mean, don’t get me wrong, Lu is still one of the best in the business for a verifiable ton of reasons, including her ability to write books that demand to be read in one sitting (as my old reviews of the Warcross duology can attest.) Stars and Smoke is,...

Review: Last Violent Call

Last Violent Call by Chloe Gong
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Bridging the gap between the two duologies of Secret Shanghai, as well as the gap between the two books of the second duology, is this collection of two beautifully bound novellas from Chloe Gong, sold in a lovely box set that apparently is too tall for the shelves at Barnes & Noble (at least, the newly opened and oddly very small store at Cascade Station in Portland.) The two stories focus on a pair of couples who...

Review: Rust in the Root

Rust in the Root by Justina Ireland
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Though it’s not a spin-off of her signature alternate historical horror series Dread Nation, Justina Ireland says in the acknowledgements for this standalone novel that her research for those two books led her to a digitized Library of Congress archive of photos of Black Americans in the Depression era, which helped catalyze her into writing this novel. These photos are featured between chapters, much like Miss...

Review: Bonds of Brass

Bonds of Brass by Emily Skrutskie
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I’ll be honest, this is a generous two star review. I vaguely remember when this book first came out and there was some buzz because it was kinda sorta basically a FinnPoe fanfic when everyone from Oscar Isaac on down was salty at Disney for not giving that m/m ship the time to sail. In practice, while the book does draw pretty heavily on the instant bromantic humor and chemistry of Finn and Poe’s copiloting adve...

Review: Song of Silver, Flame Like Night

Song of Silver, Flame Like Night by Amélie Wen Zhao
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It’s good to see that far from the attempt to cancel Zhao before she even got published in 2019, she’s already got one completed trilogy under her belt, and this promising start to a new series that’s very well rooted in the stories of her ancestral land. Picture, for this book, an alternate China where European-coded colonists have taken over sometime paralleling the 20th century, but there sti...