Book #39 of 2017: Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire (Wayward Children #1) Seanan McGuire isn’t the first author to wonder what happens to the children who have visited a fantasy world after their return, but she brings a rare warmth to this story of a boarding school built to shelter such travelers. McGuire’s …
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Book #38 of 2017: This Savage Song by Victoria Schwab (Monsters of Verity #1) Author Victoria Schwab has described this story as “Romeo and Juliet minus romance plus monsters,” and that’s actually not a bad summary. Kate and August are from rival ruling families under an uneasy truce dividing up their city, but when the …
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Book #37 of 2017: Talking as Fast as I Can: From Gilmore Girls to Gilmore Girls (and Everything in Between) by Lauren Graham A quick read and a fun way to spend a little time with actress Lauren Graham, whose interior monologue sounds very much like her breakout role of Lorelai Gilmore. Graham shares a …
Book #36 of 2017: The Reader by Traci Chee (Sea of Ink and Gold #1) I was intrigued by the notion of a world with practically no written language, but I wish that the author had committed more fully to exploring the implications of that premise instead of just making reading be a form of …
Book #35 of 2017: Little Brother by Cory Doctorow (Little Brother #1) As the title implies, Little Brother is something of a modern update to George Orwell’s authoritarian surveillance classic 1984. But whereas Orwell was constructing his totalitarian state as a potential future that unchecked modern trends could eventually bring about, this novel feels like …
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Book #34 of 2017: Infomocracy by Malka Older (Centenal Cycle #1) A fun spy thriller, set in the near future where corporations compete in “microdemocracies” to be the new government rulers of thousands of small territories around the world. It’s more amusing than strictly plausible, and it took a good 10% of the novel before …
Book #33 of 2017: My Life, My Love, My Legacy by Coretta Scott King as told to The Rev. Dr. Barbara Reynolds An eye-opening, heartbreaking, and inspiring memoir from Martin Luther King’s widow Coretta Scott King, herself a leading figure in the civil rights movement. Indeed, this book helps shine a light on Coretta’s own …
Book #32 of 2017: Messenger by Lois Lowry (The Giver #3) The Giver series definitely offers diminishing returns as it goes along. This third book at least proves that the books are a single series by tying together the otherwise unconnected first and second novels, although once again there’s a new sort of magic that …
Book #37 of 2017: The Traitor Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson (The Masquerade #1) A fascinating character and culture study, most reminiscent of Ann Leckie’s Imperial Radch books. Baru Cormorant is a young woman whose homeland gets annexed by an expanding empire, after which she privately vows to rise through her conquerors’ ranks to take …
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Book #30 of 2017: Arcanum Unbounded: The Cosmere Collection by Brandon Sanderson A great collection of short stories and novellas in the cosmere, the larger setting that links many of Brandon Sanderson’s individual book series like Mistborn and The Stormlight Archive. Sanderson plans for these series to eventually intersect directly, and there have been growing …
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