Book Review: Bloodhound by Tamora Pierce

Book #81 of 2016:

Bloodhound by Tamora Pierce (Beka Cooper #2)

The second Beka Cooper novel continues her character growth nicely, settling her into her new role as a full Guardswoman with the assignment of a major counterfeiting case that sends her off largely on her own into a brand-new city. It’s a good way of making sure this book isn’t simply a retread of the one before, and it allows Pierce to introduce several new characters, including one who is trans (which is astonishingly rare in the fantasy genre). All in all, a quite enjoyable read.

★★★★☆

Find me on Patreon | Goodreads | Blog | Twitter

TV Review: Don’t Trust the B—- in Apartment 23, season 1

TV #42 of 2016:

Don’t Trust the B—- in Apartment 23, season 1

My favorite part of this sitcom is definitely watching James Van Der Beek play a heightened parody of himself. Plus Krysten Ritter is always fun and it’s cool to see Dreama Walker in a more comedic role after her stint as Zach’s manipulative girlfriend on The Good Wife. This is not a show I would probably keep watching if it was still on the air, but it’s both fun and short enough to be worth bingeing.

★★★☆☆

Find me on Patreon | Goodreads | Blog | Twitter

Book Review: Skeleton Crew by Stephen King

Book #80 of 2016:

Skeleton Crew by Stephen King

This is a mixed bag, as short story collections so often are, but three stories really stand out from the crowd. “The Mist,” like its film adaptation, is a tense thriller of man-versus-monster that captures the fragility of our everyday lives and how quickly a routine errand could theoretically escalate without warning. “Mrs. Todd’s Shortcut” is as reality-bending as anything by Lovecraft, but with a certain sweet charm to it. And “Survivor Type” really defies any description beyond ‘horrifying,’ but it’s one I’ll be thinking about (and shuddering over) for quite some time to come. The other stories don’t really rise to the level of these three, but they don’t have to. They are by-and-large solid works from a solid writer, and the whole collection is a worthwhile addition to the King canon.

★★★☆☆

Find me on Patreon | Goodreads | Blog | Twitter

Book Review: The Golem of Hollywood by Jonathan Kellerman and Jesse Kellerman

Book #79 of 2016:

The Golem of Hollywood by Jonathan Kellerman and Jesse Kellerman (Detective Jacob Lev #1)

The Golem of Hollywood reads like a Jewish version of American Gods, as written by someone like Michael Connelly. It’s a strange genre mashup, mixing a police investigation of a serial killer with elements of Judaic mythology and straight-up biblical flashbacks. Yet somehow it mostly all works. I’m not familiar with either of the Kellermans, but the father-son author team work well together here, especially at shading in the nuanced relationship between their detective hero and his father the rabbi. This was way more ambitious a book than it seemed at first, and not everything entirely succeeds, but it mostly hit the sweet spot for me.

★★★☆☆

Find me on Patreon | Goodreads | Blog | Twitter

Book Review: Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater

Book #78 of 2016:

Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater (The Wolves of Mercy Falls #1)

“Sexy teen werewolves” is usually not my genre of choice, but Maggie Stiefvater’s characters are so well-realized that I was hooked on this novel regardless. Even a character like Isabel Culpepper, who could easily have been just a mean-girl stereotype, gains real pathos in Stiefvater’s hands. I was drawn into the world of Mercy Falls and its strong female friendships, and I am so glad I decided to trust the author I like over the genre I don’t.

★★★☆☆

Find me on Patreon | Goodreads | Blog | Twitter

Book Review: The Book of Strange New Things by Michel Faber

Book #77 of 2016:

The Book of Strange New Things by Michel Faber

The obvious comparison here is Mary Doria Russell’s The Sparrow, another book about Christian missionaries preaching the gospel on an alien planet. And like that novel, this one uses their particular genre as an opportunity both to examine matters of faith and to imagine cultural assumptions so ingrained that neither side would think to explain them to another intelligent species.

The Book of Strange New Things further distinguishes itself with its focus on the relationship between its pastor hero on the alien homeworld and his wife back on earth in a time of great upheaval. In their letters back and forth, Faber captures all of the anguish and all of the love that fuels such a long-distance relationship, weaving the personal stakes into the pastor’s mission to understand his strange new congregation.

★★★★☆

Find me on Patreon | Goodreads | Blog | Twitter

Book Review: The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate

Book #76 of 2016:

The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate

A short but charming novel for young readers, Katherine Applegate’s The One and Only Ivan is as much an educational piece about great apes and animal captivity as it is a story. Any primatologist will recognize the emotional and cognitive complexity in the fictionalized gorilla Ivan, whom Applegate endows with real pathos while being careful not to anthropomorphize him too much. A few moments stretch credulity – this is still a children’s book, after all – but as a whole the novel is a great way to introduce kids to the wonders of animals like Ivan.

★★★☆☆

Find me on Patreon | Goodreads | Blog | Twitter

Book Review: Uprooted by Naomi Novik

Book #75 of 2019:

Uprooted by Naomi Novik

Uprooted is a beautiful story set in a fantastic version of medieval Russia and Poland. I rolled my eyes at its initial premise, which involves a village sacrificing its young women to a “dragon” who is actually a powerful wizard living in a nearby tower, but the plot grows organically far adrift of that, and the book is better for it. I particularly enjoyed the way our narrator Agnieszka (the latest sacrifice) uses magic, which she likens to picking her way through a forest rather than following someone else’s established path. In many ways it seems like Naomi Novik picked her own way through Uprooted, and I loved that I could never guess what the next step would be.

★★★★☆

Find me on Patreon | Goodreads | Blog | Twitter

Book Review: The Hostile Hospital by Lemony Snicket

Book #74 of 2016:

The Hostile Hospital by Lemony Snicket (A Series of Unfortunate Events #8)

I’m still reading A Series of Unfortunate Events for the first time, and I have to say, I’m getting a little frustrated at how slowly the overall plot details are getting revealed. I like that the series has diverged from its earlier formula of giving the children a new guardian every single book, but the stories are still very episodic with little progress made on the larger plot each time. On the plus side, I liked that this novel directly addressed some of the non-heroic things that its heroes have found themselves resorting to. That’s a darker note that suits this series well, and I hope that thread continues in the rest of the books ahead.

★★★☆☆

Find me on Patreon | Goodreads | Blog | Twitter

Book Review: Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld

Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld (Leviathan #1)

Leviathan builds up a neat alternate history of World War I, wherein Austria-Hungary and its allies wield massive steampunk war-mechs against the bioengineered Lovecraftian monstrosities of the UK, France, and Russia. The worldbuilding here was deeply cool, with the promise of even more to come in the sequels. On the other hand, I really didn’t like the two main characters, whose defining traits seemed to be “mean” and “whiny,” respectively. They got a little better near the end, but a book this imaginative shouldn’t have felt like such a chore until then.

★★★☆☆

Find me on Patreon | Goodreads | Blog | Twitter

Design a site like this with WordPress.com
Get started