Ricky Pine's Blog, page 77
January 25, 2018
Review: SuperMutant Magic Academy
SuperMutant Magic Academy by Jillian TamakiMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
Another one for my book club at work, and this was a bit of a strange one to rate for me. Knowing that it all began as a webcomic helped matters, because when I started to realize that almost every page was its own brief story largely disconnected from each adjacent page (with a few exceptions, most of these loaded more towards the back of the book when there's about fifteen pages or so of a continuous conversation and some...
January 24, 2018
Review: End of Days
End of Days by Susan EeMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Holy crap, this was an intense little finale. In this final entry to the trilogy, we, along with Penryn and Raffe, are literally taken to Hell and back. And all of that leads up to a nasty final battle on the Golden Gate Bridge. There's been a lot of GG Bridge action in the movies lately, but this one takes the cake away from all of those, because of the way it begins (talent show, anyone? And it's especially funny because the place where the...
January 22, 2018
Review: Morning Star
Morning Star by Pierce BrownMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Bloodydamn goryhell.
Red Rising mashed up all the games: Ender's Game, The Hunger Games, Game of Thrones.
Golden Son went for more all-out Thrones.
And finally, the (original) trilogy reaches its conclusion in Morning Star, best described as the unholy and freakishly, outrageously awesome love child of Star Wars and Thor. No, seriously. The Roman inspiration for the first two books takes a backseat throughout much of this one to make room fo...
January 21, 2018
Review: World After
World After by Susan EeMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
First off...that cover. I like it a lot, way more than the Angelfall cover. The bat-wings are much more evocative and memorable than the traditional bird-wings (which makes sense given that these books have angels killing us all and being in-general quite unspeakably rude, if I do say so myself.) Not to mention it's perhaps the cover that best reflects the series in general, in my opinion. I am also happy to report that this book is way better...
January 15, 2018
Review: Golden Son
Golden Son by Pierce BrownMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
The sequel to Red Rising subtracts a lot of the Ender's Game and Gladiator elements, but retains many of the elements of The Hunger Games (imminent revolution across this pseudo-Roman future society) and Game of Thrones (families at war, either winning or dying with no middle ground) that made the first one so good. And, just like its predecessor, it keeps up the war themes in such ways that it manages to feel scarily more relevant in this...
January 14, 2018
Review: The Demon Crown
The Demon Crown by James RollinsMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Scary coincidence that the day after an accidental Emergency Alert went out to the citizens of Hawaii that ballistic missiles were coming, I read this book, in which a major biological threat gets Sigma Force seriously contemplating nuking the same islands for quarantine purposes.
For the thirteenth Sigma Force novel, Rollins seriously pulls out all the stops, giving us monster-movie horror on the level of Jurassic Park (the original,...
January 13, 2018
Review: Whichwood
Whichwood by Tahereh MafiMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
When I first read Furthermore, I said that I was eagerly awaiting a potential sequel to that book, as well as the #ownvoices Persian fantasy Tahereh Mafi had also promised. Naturally, Mafi being Mafi, she couldn't help but get us a book that could be both - and Whichwood delivers very well as both. Slightly less surreal than its predecessor owing to its nature being less of an Alice in Wonderland retelling, this book is still no less richly...
January 12, 2018
Review: The Ghost Brigades
The Ghost Brigades by John ScalziMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
So this one's a sequel to Old Man's War...but a very loose one, set in the same universe but exploring all-new characters with much of the same tech and of course a similar Scalzi sense of humor. It's just too bad that rather than keep on going with the story of the titular "Old Man" - though I understand he returns in the third book - Scalzi decided to take a detour, exploring a whole new set of characters who just plain lack John P...
January 10, 2018
Review: Unearthed
Unearthed by Amie KaufmanMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Thank God this is going to be the first in a series, because after that ending, if there wasn't to be a sequel, I'd be enraged as all get-out. Amie Kaufman and Meagan Spooner's latest collaboration, while set in the Starbound universe - as evidenced by a mention of Francois LaRoux - is a little closer to Kaufman's collaboration with Jay Kristoff, The Illuminae Files, in style. It's a ton more action-packed, though not sacrificing any of the...
Review: Red Rising
Red Rising by Pierce BrownMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Nearly four years after first reading Red Rising, I've returned to this trilogy, this time with my own copy, which I'm hoping to get signed by Pierce Brown himself next week. Rereading this first book has allowed me to discover a ton of details and moments that I managed to either miss the first time around or forget all about, somehow. But thank God I've gone and re-read this book, because it's bloodydamn awesome and compulsively readable...
