Ricky Pine's Blog, page 6

Review: Autopsy of an Ex-Teen Heartthrob

Autopsy of an Ex-Teen Heartthrob by Avan Jogia
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

As a teenager, I always wished I could be half as cool as Beck Oliver. His rockstar aesthetic, down to his majority black wardrobe (especially the boots) and dear God did he have perfect hair. I tried to grow my hair long then too, but unfortunately it ended up resembling the wrong Canadian, being more Bieber-style. All that would’ve needed to complete the image of perfection was Beck to finally wise...

Review: The Sacred Datura

The Sacred Datura by J. Evan Ramos
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

J. Evan Ramos’s indie dark fantasy feels like if Stephen Graham Jones wrote an episode of The Twilight Zone, with a dash of Welcome to Night Vale in the DNA as well - seriously, I can only see that Ramos named a character Cecil as a Night Vale reference. Centered on a teenage girl named Sam who drinks her sorrows away, it soon becomes clear that a certain poison prized by Indigenous peoples might be the only con...

Review: The Dark Mirror

The Dark Mirror by Samantha Shannon
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Four years ago, The Mask Falling was the last book I was reading before I left California, which seemed fitting to tie in to Paige having finally left Britain in that book after so many years. But with this book, we're taken even further afield to see how the last great bastion of resistance to Scion in Europe is doing. But first, a little trip into Eastern Europe to meet some pan-Slavic Domino agents before...

Review: The Medici Return

The Medici Return by Steve Berry
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This week, a doctor I work with told me the story of how allegedly the Catholic Church began its tradition of fish on Friday as part of a past Pope’s involvement in controlling the Italian fishing industry. While it’s an urban legend that proliferated very well without my knowledge, it nevertheless pairs very well with this latest Cotton Malone novel from Steve Berry, in which Malone investigates reports of an unp...

Review: Mister Magic

Mister Magic by Kiersten White
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I’ll be generous with an extra star on this one, but I’m honestly not sure why. Kiersten White has historically been one of those authors whose books, every time I’ve tried one, I’ve come up disappointed, and this was no exception. I get that she’s using this one to work through breaking away from the Mormon world where she was born and raised (and to think I was one of those who found her attempts at queer rep in p...

Review: The Adventures of Tim & Fluff

The Adventures of Tim & Fluff by Firdaus Ahmed
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This one is for the kids, and for the animal lovers of all ages. Another reviewer compared it to Studio Ghibli, but I’d say if another animation studio could adapt this book, it’d be Aardman. (I may or may not have just gotten around to watching the new Wallace and Gromit movie last weekend in honor of its Oscar nomination…) But this book of animals learning to work together in the face of adversity ...

Review: The Sicilian Inheritance

The Sicilian Inheritance by Jo Piazza
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

It’s a tale of two Sicilian ladies, one a modern day American visiting her ancestral homeland, while the other is one of her ancestors, who found herself in a serious series of unfortunate events. Teen pregnancy, a patriarchy that flat out disrespected her, and a mafia murder whose truths are only now about to come to light…truth is stranger than fiction, and to hear Piazza say it, this book was inspired a lo...

Review: Play On: Now, Then, And Fleetwood Mac

Play On: Now, Then, And Fleetwood Mac by Mick Fleetwood
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

To hear Mick Fleetwood tell it in his memoir, the first of the many Fleetwood Mac biographies that I've found to be in the first person, if there was one unifying theme about the band and its many members, it's that none of them were classically trained...but especially not the blockbuster Buckingham Nicks incarnation of the band. Even Fleetwood himself, being dyslexic, came to learn the dru...

Review: All Better Now

All Better Now by Neal Shusterman
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Neal Shusterman returns with his latest thought-provoking YA SFF thriller, this one a standalone piece set in a near future with a new pandemic, a bit deadlier than Covid at a 4% mortality rate, one in twenty-five...but those who recover from the Crown Royale virus lose all negative emotion and live in a state of blissful contentment. Happiness might be the perfect antidote to the endless negativity and division ...

Review: Death of the Author

Death of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It somehow escaped my notice all these years that Nnedi Okorafor is disabled, in a similar way to Zelu, the protagonist of her latest novel. With that in mind, however, it makes this book feel like not only a reflection of Okorafor herself, but also an exercise in how to make a protagonist who is in so many ways not her creator.

The book presents itself as a novel within a novel with a similar structure to Sco...