Ricky Pine's Blog, page 68
July 27, 2018
Review: Wildcard
Wildcard by Marie LuMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
PINECONE GENERAL'S WARNING: This book is not to be read, listened to, or otherwise consumed if you have a heart condition, are pregnant, or have recently downed a Triple Mocha Frappuccino. Literary cardiac arrest may ensue.
Yes, I had to bring back my earlier warning for Warcross, but now with the extra Frappuccino caveat because this time, it took a hell of a lot more caffeine to blaze through this book. Last year, I drank an espresso con panna e...
July 26, 2018
Review: The Smoke Thieves
The Smoke Thieves by Sally GreenMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
It's been a couple of years since Sally Green gifted us with a good YA fantasy book - and in that time, I've seen a lot of fellow queer people smash the reputation of Green's first trilogy, especially Half Lost, to smithereens. Me, though, I always did like that book as an #ownvoices bi reader, and I still commend Green to this day for expert-level fanbase trolling. Rick Riordan could never! Lol.
But for this series...not unlike Half B...
July 24, 2018
Review: Smoke and Iron
Smoke and Iron by Rachel CaineMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
In the fourth and penultimate volume of Rachel Caine's Great Library saga, we get things a little shaken up as Caine tries her hand at juggling multiple POVs - previously, Jess had pretty much monopolized the POV for the first three books. But now, after everything and everyone's all broken apart and split up like the cast of a horror movie, Caine's gotta pull a little somethin-somethin out of Rick Riordan's House of Hades playbook, jum...
July 23, 2018
Review: Bright We Burn
Bright We Burn by Kiersten WhiteMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
Well, nobody's perfect. I picked this one up only because my library had extra copies on the Lucky Day shelf - otherwise I had no intention of placing a hold on it or anything, not after I found the first two books to yield such diminishing returns. I can tell you that this final entry in the trilogy is an improvement over Now I Rise. For one thing, it's a shorter book - which is great because the nearly 500-page first two books, espe...
July 22, 2018
Review: Fugitive Six
Fugitive Six by Pittacus LoreMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
I think this might be the first time I've read a Pittacus Lore book and not been super-duper invested in it. Don't get me wrong, I still really enjoyed Fugitive Six for what it was worth, but it was considerably harder to enjoy at times than previous books in this 'verse. Even more third-person POVs clamor for dominance here, and just like Generation One, it leaves me feeling more than a bit disconnected from the characters compared to t...
July 18, 2018
Review: We Sold Our Souls
We Sold Our Souls by Grady HendrixMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
My people at the Stanford Bookstore, when we got our latest shipment of ARCs, thought this one would be tailor-made for me. After all, I liked My Best Friend's Exorcism, certainly well enough to try and hand-sell it a lot of the time, right? Well, this latest from Mr. Hendrix deviates a bit from the culture of the 80s and moves into a culture I'm far less well-versed in: metal. Perhaps not being the metalhead I know a lot of my frie...
July 17, 2018
Review: Legendary
Legendary by Stephanie GarberMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
The first book in this series was a little hype-damaged for me, and I'm sorry to say that the hype damage continues in the second part - not the final part, though, not when both books have been as wildly successful as they have. No way is Garber gonna end it here, and she's already promised us one more book, aptly called Finale. This middle entry, though, is on the level of Michael Grant's Hunger or Susan Dennard's Windwitch in terms of...
July 15, 2018
Review: The Pharaoh Key
The Pharaoh Key by Douglas PrestonMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
Two years after Beyond the Ice Limit, here we are again with Gideon Crew, except he's no longer got the backing of Eli Glinn. That ol' Musk knockoff (dating back to before Elon Musk was even a thing) has decided to screw over all his people, Gideon included, by shutting down his company. Luckily, though, Gideon and his old friend Manuel Garza get to go off on one last mission together, based on the findings of one of Glinn's side pr...
July 12, 2018
Review: The Legacy Chronicles: Trial by Fire
The Legacy Chronicles: Trial by Fire by Pittacus LoreMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
Just like with the Lorien Legacies parent series, so Lorien Legacies Reborn gets itself a series of ebook novella spinoffs, and just in time for the latest entry in the series, Fugitive Six, we finally get the first three novellas in this series bound up in print together for those of us, like me, who don't do ebooks. Man, I'm always super happy that Pittacus Lore can print-publish these stories in such a timely m...
Review: Only Human
Only Human by Sylvain NeuvelMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
At last, I reach the end of Sylvain Neuvel's kick-ass, increasingly apocalyptic trilogy, and as expected, Neuvel goes more all out for the finale than ever before. And I didn't think he could possibly top the War of the Worlds-level alien nightmarishness of Waking Gods...oh, but you kid. Well, ten years have passed in-universe since that game-breaking cliffhanger, and now we get to see where Rose and team went. And what happened on Earth...
