Ricky Pine's Blog, page 37
July 14, 2021
Review: The Night Has Teeth
The Night Has Teeth by Kat KrugerMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
A beautiful little tale of werewolves, the wonders of Paris, and weird, weird science. Funny at times, feels-making at others (if you'll excuse my use of Uglies-speak), and downright freakish the rest of the time. Luckily, now that I'm a little more financially independent than I was in my Wattpad days (and able to order physical copies through a variety of indie bookstores!) I'll be able to read the sequels someday ...
July 11, 2021
Black Widow: Marvel Takes Us Back To The Movies
**MINOR SPOILERS FOR BLACK WIDOW, PLUS MAJOR SPOILERS FOR PREVIOUS MCU FILMS - ESPECIALLY CIVIL WAR, INFINITY WAR, AND ENDGAME - ABOUND WITHIN. YOU'VE BEEN WARNED.**
It's been a minute.
After most of 2020 saw the movie theaters closed for months at a time (depending on where you live, of course, but I still lived in California at the time so maaaaaaaybe one or two months open was the best we got, and I didn't even go back there then, not even for Tenet like I'd really been hoping), 2021 is looki...
July 7, 2021
Review: City of Reckoning
City of Reckoning by Brianna da SilvaMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
First off, Brianna...how dare you.
No, but of course you dare.
It's been a long, long time since I was lucky enough to get an ARC anywhere. Most of those came from my time working at the Stanford Bookstore, and all of them were physical ARCs. So now, I've been lucky enough to get ahold of an ebook ARC of a sprawling, epic debut from one of my dearest friends, and I'm calling it right now - I don't expect any othe...
July 2, 2021
Review: Witchshadow
Witchshadow by Susan DennardMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
It's been a while since Susan Dennard gifted us with a new novel in this series - and this one, perhaps the darkest and deadliest yet, has been delayed tons of times for tons of reasons. Like a lot of her fellow YA fantasy authors, Dennard's had a lot of health scares in recent years, as I understand it...and apparently she also had to rewrite a huge chunk of the book after sensitivity readers said she'd run into some off...
July 1, 2021
Review: Ace of Spades
Ace of Spades by Faridah Àbíké-ÍyímídéMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
I've been keeping an eye out for this book for a while for a lot of reasons - the title, the amazing cover, the promise of a Gossip Girl-Get Out mashup...and while I've never seen a single episode of Gossip Girl (and still don't think I ever will), any comparison to Jordan Peele's horrifying masterworks is an automatic YES as far as I'm concerned.
Deliberately set in an ambiguously Anglosphere country - Àbíké-Íy...
June 26, 2021
June 18, 2021
June 10, 2021
Review: Mister Impossible
Mister Impossible by Maggie StiefvaterMy rating: 2 of 5 stars
Yeah, I'm sorry to say that Maggie Stiefvater's insistence on sticking to the world of The Raven Boys is, for me, coming up with diminishing returns. I mean, at least this book is perhaps her fastest read yet, and the cast of characters - Ronan, Hennessey, and Farooq-Lane especially - feel a little more fleshed out, especially given that it's been a couple of years almost since Stiefvater last published a book i...
June 9, 2021
Review: Hurricane Summer
Hurricane Summer by Asha BromfieldMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
I picked this up just because of...was it in Jaroda's book haul? I think it was, and on that level I reached out to my local library to pick it up. They delivered it pretty quickly too - Fort Vancouver has some of the most efficient library service I've ever seen! And then of course I only realized after I picked the book up that its author was one of the stars of Riverdale - though, having never even finished the f...
June 8, 2021
Review: Oculta
Oculta by Maya MotayneMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
It's been a couple of years since Maya Motayne debuted with her tale of linguistic magic and thievery and royal intrigue, but I'd like to think she took that time to really serve up a sweet sequel to the best of her ability. Long like its predecessor, but not as fast-paced this time, because here we get into a hell of a lot more royal intrigue now that Alfie's got to host the incoming monarchy of Englass. The former colonizers'...
