Ricky Pine's Blog, page 30

Review: Chain of Thorns

Chain of Thorns by Cassandra Clare
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Hey, there are actually some peeps who do want more Shadowhunters stories. This boy included. Bring it on, Cassie! Don't let the negativity and teh angryzorz get you down.

By writing these words, Clearly I Have Made Some Bad Decisions.

And those words helped, for years and years as Clare kept steadily working her way through the world of Shadowhunters up to this point, to make my pre review of Chain of Thorns one of m...

Review: The One Impossible Labyrinth

The One Impossible Labyrinth by Matthew Reilly
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The biggest series Matthew Reilly has written yet comes to its long awaited Grand Finale. Even as the first three books formed a Two Part Trilogy, it was still pretty clear that there would be more to come given the countdown nature of the books' titles, and when Reilly began work on the middle entry in the series, the fourth novel, he made it clear that that would be merely the first of a four-part narr...

Review: The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi

The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi by S.A. Chakraborty
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Shannon Chakraborty returns with a new series set in the Indian Ocean of the 11th century, and in the same universe as her star-making Daevabad Trilogy - unsurprisingly, a Daeva or two makes a cameo appearance in this story. But here, we focus instead on a more unconventional heroine than Nahri ever was: Amina Al-Sirafi, once a pirate, now a mother, and once again called to action, this time to he...

Review: The Cabinet of Dr. Leng

The Cabinet of Dr. Leng by Douglas Preston
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Only now, after reading the whole thing, is it clear that this latest Cabinet from Preston & Child, The Cabinet of Dr. Leng, is part of an official new sub-series of the Pendergast novels, now to dubbed the Leng Quartet. It began in The Cabinet of Curiosities and continued quite subtly in Bloodline, whose surprise cliffhanger led to this book and its peculiar story in Four Lines, All Waiting format. Constanc...

Review: The Cradle of Ice

The Cradle of Ice by James Rollins
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Rollins has big, big plans for his high fantasy MoonFall series for sure. When the first book came out, and a bookseller at Klindt's in The Dalles told me that there were already plans for four books in the series, I did wonder at the time how Rollins would stretch out an apocalyptic scenario that long. With this book, it's pretty clear that Rollins is playing a long game on the level of A Song of Ice & Fire, but un...

Review: Hell Bent

Hell Bent by Leigh Bardugo
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It's been over three years since Leigh Bardugo began her twisted journey into the secret societies of Yale with Ninth House, riding the wave of dark academia long before it started cresting to the heights seen today. Her deadliest book yet by far, certainly not at all for kids or even teens with its violent hellish scares. And now, after a long, long hiatus, Bardugo is back with the long-awaited sequel, promising to resolve...

Review: Nine Liars

Nine Liars by Maureen Johnson
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Maureen Johnson hooked me with the Shades of London series back in the 2010s, but having left that series hanging high and dry for years, and the diminishing returns on this series to which she’s spent half a decade instead, are really starting to unhook me as a reader of hers. I mean, it was a bold move to write a single mystery stretched out into a trilogy of novels, then a fourth novel all standalone, and this one wit...

Review: These Infinite Threads

These Infinite Threads by Tahereh Mafi
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Tahereh Mafi returns to her lush and lovely Persian-inspired fantasy world in the middle novel of this planned trilogy, and as beautiful as this novel is, it does unfortunately feel like she's caught a bit of a case of Sophomore Slump in this one. At the very least, it picks up pretty quickly from its predecessor's massive burning cliffhanger, with some unexpected resolution thereof. But that, unfortunately, mea...

Review: Fledgling

Fledgling by Octavia E. Butler
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is now the fourth Octavia E. Butler book I’ve read, after her two highly prescient Parable novels and the harsh time bending classic Kindred, and this, one of her last novels (the last to be published in her lifetime, I believe) is one of the most memorably unique novels I’ve ever seen. Depicting a vampiric species in mutualistic and yet saddening symbiosis with humanity, Butler reminds us all how highly she raised...

Review: Memoria

Memoria by Kristyn Merbeth
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Compared to its predecessor, this one is a bit of a slight Sophomore Slump, but it still works well as a blazing fast fun sci fi read. Scorpia and Corvus and their misfit allies start learning a bit more about their Primus precursors than they bargained for, including that they may have been some pretty squishy wet amphibians (which just about everyone concerned agrees is gross as they have to navigate the moisture they lef...