Book Review: Down Among the Sticks and Bones by Seanan McGuire

Book #235 of 2017:

Down Among the Sticks and Bones by Seanan McGuire (Wayward Children #2)

This is a dark little fairy tale about twin sisters who fall into a world of vampires and mad scientists and must make choices about who they want to be as they grow up. It’s technically a prequel to the author’s earlier novella Every Heart a Doorway, but the two plots are largely independent and can really be read in either order. As with its predecessor, I wanted this to be a full novel instead of a novella, because there are some abbreviated moments that I would have liked to see fleshed out in more detail. Nevertheless, it’s a powerful look at how stifling parental expectations can be, and at the lengths children might take to escape them, if they could only find the right door.

★★★★☆

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TV Review: House of Cards, season 5

TV #45 of 2017:

House of Cards, season 5

We had watched all but the last two episodes of this season before the Kevin Spacey news broke, and we finally got around to finishing it up. Even if you set aside everything we now know about the star actor, this was a pretty awful season of television (hence why it took us so long to get through it). Characters have no stable motivations or relationships with one another, the Underwoods can somehow see every political move coming a million miles away and still make really really senseless missteps, and the plot makes no sense and carries no weight. I really liked this show for the first season or two, but it had become a shell of itself even before Netflix fired its lead. Maybe the next (final) season will reinvent itself without Spacey, but I’m not exactly holding my breath.

★☆☆☆☆

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Movie Review: Thor: Ragnarok (2017)

Movie #19 of 2017:

Thor: Ragnarok (2017)

By far the best Thor movie, and one of the better Marvel Cinematic Universe movies overall. Lots of humor, neat worldbuilding, and actual character growth for Thor and Loki! It could have done better by its female characters, but all in all it was a fun ride and a reminder of why we all fell in love with Marvel movies in the first place.

★★★★☆

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Book Review: The Book of Swords edited by Gardner Dozois

Book #234 of 2017:

The Book of Swords edited by Gardner Dozois

This is a collection of short stories in the “sword and sorcery” genre, which as far as I can tell is fantasy on the smaller scale, with no evil overlords threatening the world. (I’d say the stakes are lower than epic fantasy, but if a story is well told, it should still mean everything to its characters.) Not every story in this book has swords, and not every story has sorcery, but they all share a general focus on scrappy adventurers dealing with the problems immediately in front of them. It’s probably not a book I’d reread, but it introduced me to some new authors to watch and featured some new material from old favorites like Garth Nix, Robin Hobb, and Scott Lynch. Some stories are better than others, but it’s an overall solid collection.

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: The Obelisk Gate by N. K. Jemisin

Book #233 of 2017:

The Obelisk Gate by N. K. Jemisin (The Broken Earth #2)

As this series goes along, it’s starting to feel like author N. K. Jemisin is more interested in showing off her admittedly awesome and intricate worldbuilding than in telling a story with compelling emotional stakes for her characters. It’s still a good read, but a large portion of the plot is just people figuring out their world’s mysteries, and that’s keeping the series from becoming truly great. (This middle book in the trilogy also suffers in comparison to its predecessor, which took greater stylistic and narrative risks than this more streamlined and conventional sequel.)

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: The Realms of the Gods by Tamora Pierce

Book #232 of 2017:

The Realms of the Gods by Tamora Pierce (The Immortals #4)

This is the final book in Tamora Pierce’s Immortals Quartet (within her larger Tortall series), and it sort of resolves the ongoing storyline from the previous books. But most of the novel strands its main characters away from the central conflict for no real reason, giving them some episodic tasks to complete on their way back to the war. The flaws from the previous books are also on full display here: both Daine’s overpowered magic abilities that render all of her obstacles trivial and her really gross romance with a magic tutor who’s twice her age.

(It was already uncomfortable to read about these characters’ sexual tension in the earlier books when their feelings were largely subtext, but Pierce makes the indefensible choice here to uncritically present the attraction of a man in his thirties towards his sixteen-year-old student as a romantic love story. Thankfully they only ever make out, but they do so heatedly, on multiple occasions, none of which are at all necessary for the plot.) Tortall is always a fun place to visit, but this story as a whole was a big misfire.

This book: ★★☆☆☆

Overall series: ★★☆☆☆

Book ranking: 3 > 1 > 2 > 4

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Book Review: The Field Guide by Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black

Book #231 of 2017:

The Field Guide by Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black (The Spiderwick Chronicles #1)

This was cute, but very short and way below my preferred reading level. I felt like I hardly got a chance to know the characters before the book came to a rather sudden end. I could see myself reading the rest of the Spiderwick books someday as bedtime stories for my future kids, but I don’t feel particularly compelled to seek them out on my own.

★★★☆☆

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Book Review: We Were Liars by E. Lockhart

Book #230 of 2017:

We Were Liars by E. Lockhart

The biggest flaw in this novel about a teenager returning to her family’s vacation home two years after an accident there that she can’t remember is that there’s basically no plot to it. Author E. Lockhart paints a lovely idyllic picture of Cady, her cousins, and the friend who always summers with them, but there’s no real story here beyond Cady struggling to recall an incident no one will talk to her about. (The second biggest flaw is the eventual resolution to that mystery, which frankly seems unearned and a little gimmicky.) Lockhart nails the endless feeling of a teenage school break, but she doesn’t scaffold that with enough of a story to really make us care about these characters.

★★★☆☆

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TV Review: Marvel’s Inhumans, season 1

TV #44 of 2017:

Marvel’s Inhumans, season 1

Oh, my god. This show was so awful that it retroactively makes Iron Fist look pretty decent by comparison. We’re never given any reason to care about the characters or their situation, the villains have no clear motivation at all, and the plot basically spins its wheels for the entire season (which is only eight episodes long, thankfully). What an absolute misfire on every level imaginable. I can’t believe Marvel canceled Agent Carter only to greenlight this garbage, or that they still trust Scott Buck now after his back-to-back trainwrecks.

★☆☆☆☆

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TV Review: The Handmaid’s Tale, season 1

TV #43 of 2017:

The Handmaid’s Tale, season 1

Very powerful and difficult-to-watch television. To be honest, I wasn’t really blown away when I read the book this show was based on – it’s definitely a solid dystopian nightmare, but I didn’t find it especially gripping or haunting. This adaptation was all of that and more, though. Visually arresting, filled with intensely personal performances, and impossible to look away from. The writers and designers also really emphasized how this society got the way it is (whereas I felt like the book largely took the 1984 approach of just presenting everything as the new status quo) and the parallels to our own world are terrifying.

★★★★☆

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