Ricky Pine's Blog, page 5

Review: Badlands

Badlands by Douglas Preston
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The fifth Nora Kelly novel feels like a throwback to some of Preston & Child’s best scary stories, especially way back in their earlier days like in Still Life With Crows. It also verges on X Files territory, particularly with its emphasis on the ruins and artifacts of Indigenous peoples in New Mexico, from the Chaco to the Ancestral Pueblo to the Gallina, and of course the Navajo, with an old woman of that tribe getti...

Review: Anji Kills a King

Anji Kills a King by Evan Leikam
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

It starts with Exactly What It Says On The Tin, and builds from there. And where it builds is to Anji getting abducted by the Hawk, one of the five assassins tasked with protecting this land, except she's a crabby old lady past her prime physically. Mentally, though...she's gotta stay ahead of her fellow Menagerie members, especially if she's to claim the bounty on Anji all for herself. While this book is, for som...

Review: A Burning in the Bones

A Burning in the Bones by Scott Reintgen
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The trilogy ends with a tale as old as time: a plague comes, and those in power seek to weaponize it for their own ends. The in universe politics get quite complicated on this one, because no one knows who’s gonna get sick, who might be immune, and what the effects on society at large will be…except for the fact that there is going to be a seismic shift in power no matter what. And then there’s the dragons...

Review: A Whisper in the Walls

A Whisper in the Walls by Scott Reintgen
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The second novel of Reintgen’s Waxways trilogy shifts away from dark academia in favor of a dark apprenticeship as Ren enters the service of House Brood, with the goal to take them down from within. Pretty classic setup, but there’s more to the story than that, as another family wronged by the Broods in the past, House Tin’Vori, prepares their own long game of revenge. Dahvid Tin’Vori, in particular, is a ...

Review: A Door in the Dark

A Door in the Dark by Scott Reintgen
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The first book in a YA fantasy trilogy that somehow slid under the radar despite coming from the same publisher that used to present all the Cassandra Clare books, from an author who’s long been skilled at sliding under the radar with good material. I happened to see the complete trilogy on a shelf at B&N, so my mission, and I choose to accept it, is to read them all. This first book is a very unusual combinat...

Review: Never Flinch

Never Flinch by Stephen King
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I had high expectations for this one, even after I was a little less impressed than I'd been hoping for with Holly, because Holly Gibney is a fan and creator favorite for a reason. But here we have Holly's latest case - or, more accurately, cases. There's a lot going on in this book, and it's so convoluted that it proves very difficult for the whole story to coalesce cleanly, and even King himself admitted that...

Review: The Eye of the Bedlam Bride

The Eye of the Bedlam Bride by Matt Dinniman
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

When I first noticed this series had blown up to the point of getting almost all the books reissued in humongous hardcovers, I thought ACE had gotten all seven that has been self published up to 2024 or so. Nope. Turns out this is as far as they’ve gotten, but the seventh book will be reissued by ACE this fall, and promises to be even bigger and bloodier than any of its predecessors. And given that thi...

Review: Faithbreaker

Faithbreaker by Hannah Kaner
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Sorry to say that while this series started out strong, in the end, it kinda fizzled out for me. Not that it was an awful and unreadable book, not by a long shot. But the heavy focus on tons of POV characters in a relatively small space, it made the series increasingly slow and unfocused, bogged down with characters and ships I couldn’t get behind (although I do love how the series has always been good at including qu...

Review: Coldarius: The Betrayal

Coldarius: The Betrayal by D.L. Hannah
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The first book of Coldarius was a fighter punching above its weight class for sure, but this second half of D.L. Hannah’s Platirius prequel duology really saves its most devastating moments for last. Even after reading all her previous books in quick succession this year, it was still tough to predict exactly how this book would unfold, and as I read it in one sitting, Hannah’s narrative threw every curvebal...

Review: The Survivor Wants to Die at the End

The Survivor Wants to Die at the End by Adam Silvera
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Silvera was starting to lose me a bit with his increasingly sprawling Infinity Cycle and its focus on too many obnoxious and unlikable characters in its ensemble, but with this return to the world of Death-Cast, he starts to un-lose me, because this book is where he starts getting right again, much of what he messed up in his other series. While this book is a great big brick of a book, just ov...