Ricky Pine's Blog, page 50

Review: A Kingdom for a Stage

A Kingdom for a Stage by Heidi Heilig
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

In the middle of Heidi Heilig's second series, the sophomore entry in her first trilogy, it took me a few moments to remember a lot of details from For a Muse of Fire - details that were plenty, even if that ARC I read in summer 2018 was a little short of finished artwork, maps, sheet music, etc. Reading A Kingdom for a Stage in finished form was a real improvement over that "maps TK" ARC for sure, though the story, this time, has a tendency to drag. Tha...

Review: Rebel

Rebel by Marie Lu
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

One more Legend novel? Not the start of a new trilogy, but a single coda?

It's Marie Lu. Of course I'm in.

When last we left off with Lu's first and star-making series in the YA sphere, Champion infamously ended on a bittersweet but still pretty saddening note, at which point the story picked up with a ten-years-distant epilogue showcasing the spark of hope that perhaps the future would be a little brighter for June and Day.

Now we get the c...

Review: Loki: Where Mischief Lies

Loki: Where Mischief Lies by Mackenzi Lee
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

More of a 3.5 for me, but I'll round it up to a four - which is pretty par for the course when it comes to Mackenzi Lee, I guess, even when she isn't writing an official Marvel novel. And while there are no planned sequels to this one, it's at least supposed to be the first in a three-book lineup centered on some lesser-known stories of certain Marvel characters who break the usual rules of heroes and villains. And who better to start wi...

Review: Capturing the Devil

Capturing the Devil by Kerri Maniscalco
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The fourth and final novel of Kerri Maniscalco's debut series throws a few unexpected twists into the mix, while giving all us fans some much-needed and much-beloved closure. While the "Devil" is promised to be the same one who's been the subject of at least one popular nonfiction book set in a certain White City, there are other candidates for that Devil's identity brought up - candidates that actually make a surprising amount of sense. And while...

Review: A Dream So Dark

A Dream So Dark by L.L. McKinney
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Well, of course this sequel's happening. Tell us something we don't know. *insert Sherlock Holmes responding how a pig's orgasm lasts up to thirty minutes*



But seriously. I'm super overjoyed that this book has finally graced our shelves.

Review: Gideon the Ninth

Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This one might take me a reread or two to properly appreciate all the extensive world-building that Tamsyn Muir puts into this debut novel, and it's such an amazing one that I'm going to love digging deeper into this strange necromantic space mythos. Though deadly dark and full of terrors, the space-opera world of Gideon the Ninth is also a rollicking and adventurous one. After all, Gideon has tried to escape the skeletal order of the Ninth House (try no...

Review: Darkdawn

Darkdawn by Jay Kristoff
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Almost exactly three years to the day when I reviewed Nevernight.

Almost exactly two years to the day when I reviewed Godsgrave.

And now, in November 2019, I finally reach the end of Jay Kristoff's best series of all, his wild and terrifying Venetian-Renaissance-inspired dark fantasy of increasingly demonic terrors, the old gods of Itreya fighting again through their newest champions, and of course Mia Corvere. Mia, that devilish little murdery one we all know and lo...

Review: When She Reigns

When She Reigns by Jodi Meadows
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Well, well, well. The finest series Jodi Meadows has yet written, and it's capped off in just as epic a fashion as I've come to expect after reading the stories of Mira and her dragons in The Fallen Isles Trilogy for two years now. After As She Ascends ended with the first of the seven Isles rising up in an unprecedented cataclysm - the Great Abandonment, with all the Idrisi survivors stuck as refugees, and no way to predict when any of the remaining Isles will suffe...

Review: The Tyrant's Tomb

The Tyrant's Tomb by Rick Riordan
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Well, we've had well over a year to properly process all that happened in The Burning Maze, and now Uncle Rick returns with the penultimate part of Apollo's adventures in The Tyrant's Tomb. The stakes were already high enough in Book 3, with that huge and unexpected major character death, but here, Apollo himself is in greater danger than ever. Maybe if he weren't still stuck in a mortal body, things would be better - but when a cut from a particularly nasty...

Review: Ninth House

Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This latest from Leigh Bardugo, her first new adult book...well, really, can we call King of Scars an actual YA novel? No, honestly, we can't. But it's pretty clear that as dark as that book could have been, Bardugo was saving her darkest for the back half of this year, a book that's most certainly not PG-13 in its content. Beware all the trigger warnings - there's plenty of violence to be had in this book, of satanic, sexual, sanguine, and even shitty natures....