Ricky Pine's Blog, page 47

Review: The Hand on the Wall

The Hand on the Wall by Maureen Johnson
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I said it from the beginning, after I read all of Truly Devious in the winter of 2018, that Maureen Johnson was planning to stretch out a single mystery novel into a big trilogy. After reading all of this, I'm feeling a lot the same way that I did about Rick Yancey's The 5th Wave - that the second book was filler as hell and totally unnecessary, but that a single large volume comprised of the first and third book would be the...

Review: Chain of Gold

Chain of Gold by Cassandra Clare
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

First off: Cordelia Carstairs on that cover OMG

And hey, at least it's not another 700-900 page opus this time. Not that I'm complaining about, say, the Dark Artifices novels having such daunting lengths, but it's great that Cassie's not going NEARLY to the level of overwork for which SJM's become known in recent years. Especially since, like SJM, Cassie's had her share of health issues lately too...

But yeah. Chain of Gold, the...

Review: The Iron Will of Genie Lo

The Iron Will of Genie Lo by F.C. Yee
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It's been two years and change - or is it three? Either way, F.C. Yee took quite some time to deliver a much-needed, long-awaited follow-up to The Epic Crush of Genie Lo, and The Iron Will to wait for it helped make this second book pretty well worth it. Though I found the opening of this book a little bit confusing - since it made reference to certain events that I didn't remember, and then jumped ahead several more months,...

Review: Burn the Dark

Burn the Dark by S.A. Hunt
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Easily comparable to the work of Stephen King, this sizable chunk of paranormal goodness boasts some downright horrifying literary set pieces. However, the best by far comes in the prologue. I remember once hearing on the radio about a little thing Netflix did to calculate how long it takes to get hooked on most shows (like, two episodes for Breaking Bad, three for The 100, that sort of thing.) With this book, if it were to be made into a TV...

Review: Race to the Sun

Race to the Sun by Rebecca Roanhorse
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

While I'm sure Rebecca Roanhorse isn't quite done with her work on the postapocalyptic Sixth World series, here we get another little detour away from that, into something new from her - contemporary fantasy for kids, under the Rick Riordan Presents imprint no less. Bringing Navajo legends to life from the point of view of young Nizhoni Begay, Roanhorse immerses us in a world that stretches from today's Albuquerque to mountains so...

Review: Crooked River

Crooked River by Douglas Preston
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Yeah, I hate to say it, but this is for sure...not one of the more memorable adventures of Agent Pendergast. That's not to say it's a bad book, but in a series with such world-class thrills as Relic and Reliquary, The Cabinet of Curiosities, the Diogenes and Helen Trilogies, and of course White Fire...yeah, Crooked River, I'm sorry to say, doesn't measure up all that well. I mean, it starts off strong with a morbid beginning - hundreds...

Review: Spellhacker

Spellhacker by M.K. England
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

It's been a little over a year since M.K. England's first novel dazzled the hell out of me, and now they're back with another unique, and uniquely cool, piece of sci-fi. But it's got a lot of fantasy too, a world where magic (called "maz") is commonplace and some are able to wield it with all sorts of elemental effects - there are fourteen types, officially, listed at the start of the book. I might have to go back to The Disasters and see...

Review: Infinity Son

Infinity Son by Adam Silvera
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Hmm. Well, I can see why this book hasn't been doing as well on GR as I've come to expect every time Adam Silvera puts out something new. To be honest, a bit of it might stem from the world building not being the best - but then again, has Silvera ever been a particularly detailed world-builder? Look at how much he actively doesn't explain where the Death-Cast app gets its information in They Both Die, for instance. He's much more...

Review: Blood Heir

Blood Heir by Amélie Wen Zhao
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It's a little hard to rate this book and/or review it without thinking about the controversies that erupted around it roughly this time last year, leading to the book first being pulled from release, then rescheduled for almost six months later. It's especially unfortunate that a lot of major plot points (though mercifully not all of them) got spoiled in the name of exposing what some perceived as severely problematic content. Given,...

Review: All the Stars and Teeth

All the Stars and Teeth by Adalyn Grace
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I can see now why Tomi Adeyemi not only blurbed Adalyn Grace's instant-bestselling debut, but also accompanied her on the first West Coast leg of her book tour as well. Adeyemi and Grace are, in a lot of ways, cut from the same cloth, both writing lavishly detailed fantasies with whip-smart on-point social commentary and complex magic systems taking lots of inspiration from Avatar: The Last Airbender (fittingly, Grace was an...