Ricky Pine's Blog, page 39

Review: In the Wild Light

In the Wild Light by Jeff Zentner
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is, by far, the best book by Jeff Zentner that I've read since his auspicious debut in The Serpent King - not only because of how much it gets all the feels in all its pages, but also because of how many references to Zentner's previous novels this book has, confirming that all of them are set in the same 'verse. Lydia's an NPR host now, Midnite Matinee is a bigger hit show than ever, even the concept of Goodbye...

Review: Livingston Girls

Livingston Girls by Briana Morgan
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The third season of American Horror Story may have had a certain iconic Coven, but it's Briana Morgan who brings us a better one in a better school, one with more than a few shades of Dead Poets Society (the frequent quoting of Walt Whitman and Robert Herrick helps), but also a lot more queer (this book boasts a pretty good f/f pairing, I'd say.) But also, it's a pretty timely and punchy little book, short but full o...

Review: The Bands of Mourning

The Bands of Mourning by Brandon Sanderson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

As much as I rather like the characters of Wax and Wayne, I do feel like Sanderson kinda dropped the ball on this particular novel of theirs - which makes a tad bit of sense when I look back at the release dates for this one and its predecessor, not even a year apart. And then the fourth and final novel of this particular cycle of Mistborn...well, Sanderson did say it would come along after Oathbringer and t...

Review: The Taking of Jake Livingston

The Taking of Jake Livingston by Ryan Douglass
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I'm a little sad that this book, a debut that I feel like it's been pushed off for at least two years again and again, is starting with a shockingly low GR rating. On the one hand, I can kinda see why at times, since Douglass doesn't shy away from imbuing his characters with flaws and messiness enough that I could see a lot of YA readers running for the hills. The fact that half the book is in a surprisi...

Review: Shadows of Self

Shadows of Self by Brandon Sanderson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Having finally read this far in the Mistborn saga...well, I did get up to the first Wax and Wayne book a few years ago, only to stop not because I didn't like the books well enough, but because I'd unfortunately fallen victim to the then-latest recurrence of the whole "Brandon Sanderson is a raging homophobe" canard when someone brought up old comments he'd made about Dumbledore. (Oh if only they could see how muc...

Review: The Night Has Teeth

The Night Has Teeth by Kat Kruger
My 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 ...

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...

Review: City of Reckoning

City of Reckoning by Brianna da Silva
My 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...

Review: Witchshadow

Witchshadow by Susan Dennard
My 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...

Review: Ace of Spades

Ace of Spades by Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé
My 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...