Book #225 of 2018: Someday by David Levithan (Every Day #3) This novel has a messier plot than the first book in its loose trilogy — as well as the second one, which retells that same story from a different character’s perspective — but it further fleshes out the world and provides some more fascinating …
Author Archives: Joe Kessler
Book Review: Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett
Book #224 of 2018: Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett I loved this book back in middle school, and it’s even better now that I get more of the jokes (thanks to being both older and more familiar with British culture). The story is a terrifically funny take on the Christian apocalypse, an …
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Book Review: White Sand, Volume 2 by Brandon Sanderson, Rik Hoskin, and Julius Gopez
Book #223 of 2018: White Sand, Volume 2 by Brandon Sanderson, Rik Hoskin, and Julius Gopez (White Sand #2) As with the first volume, this continuing comic adaptation of an unpublished Brandon Sanderson manuscript utterly fails to bring his usual vivid imagination to life. There are glimmers of an interesting story here, but character motivations …
Book Review: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J. K. Rowling
Book #222 of 2018: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J. K. Rowling (Harry Potter #5) The Harry Potter books are well-known for getting darker and deeper as they go along, aging up in target audience along with their main characters, but the hero’s surly teenage angst in this novel actually bothered …
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Book Review: The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith
Book #221 of 2018: The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith (The Ripliad #1) The plot to this mid-century crime thriller is admittedly thin, but it’s an outstanding character study of the insecure and sociopathic Tom Ripley. His author Patricia Highsmith paints Ripley as almost pedestrian in his casual amorality and petty jealousies, and while …
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Book Review: Love & War by Melissa de la Cruz
Book #220 of 2018: Love & War by Melissa de la Cruz (Alex & Eliza #2) This novel, which spans from Alexander Hamilton’s wedding through his time as a lawyer after the Revolutionary War, has taken fewer liberties with the historical record than its predecessor — other than delaying the births of the Hamilton children …
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Book Review: Woken Furies by Richard K. Morgan
Book #219 of 2018: Woken Furies by Richard K. Morgan (Takeshi Kovacs #3) There’s great potential in the idea of downloading human consciousness into different bodies, but none of the books in this loose trilogy have really lived up to it. This last novel feels especially disappointing, with its vengeance-obsessed protagonist coming across more like …
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Book Review: It Devours! by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor
Book #218 of 2018: It Devours! by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor (Welcome to Night Vale #2) Even more so than the first Welcome to Night Vale novel, I can’t imagine this book appealing much to any readers who are not already fans of the original podcast. The plot is brand-new, but it relies heavily …
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Book Review: The Girl with the Red Balloon by Katherine Locke
Book #217 of 2018: The Girl with the Red Balloon by Katherine Locke (The Balloonmakers #1) I have a hard time investing in this novel’s central romance, which consists of two frequently blushing and stammering teens who basically fall for one another at first sight. I also sometimes want more from the prose, which doesn’t …
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Book Review: Dread Nation by Justina Ireland
Book #216 of 2018: Dread Nation by Justina Ireland (Dread Nation #1) This novel offers a great character voice and an intriguing world: a version of Reconstruction-era America in which the Civil War has ended prematurely due to a sudden zombie uprising. Unfortunately, the plot is fairly uneven, and the tone is all over the …
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The Lesser Joke: book reviews and more 