Book Review: The Giver by Lois Lowry

Book #116 of 2016:

The Giver by Lois Lowry (The Giver #1)

I remember really liking The Giver when I was growing up, but I was still a teenager at the oldest the last time I read it, so I only really had fuzzy memories of its specifics. Of course, it more than lived up to my recollection, as the story of a repressive utopia and the lone preserver of its forbidden memories is quite deservedly a classic. On this read-through I was particularly struck by how immediate and immersive Lois Lowry’s world-building is. The Giver is not that long of a book, but the society she creates within its pages is striking in its details, and the novel unfolds beautifully with the readers’ growing understanding of how it differs from our world and Jonas’s growing despair and horror over the hollowness at its core. I’ve never gone on to read any of this novel’s sequels before, but now I feel like I might have to.

★★★★★

Find me on Patreon | Goodreads | Blog | Twitter

Book Review: Desperation by Stephen King

Book #115 of 2016:

Desperation by Stephen King

Desperation is a decent Stephen King story, flavored with hints of Dark Tower connections but never really connecting with that other mythos. This novel features King at his scariest, but only for its first hundred pages or so, when it appears to be just about a deranged police officer jailing, attacking, and killing strangers who pass near his small Nevada town. It loses a bit of the terror when the threat is revealed to be a supernatural one of an ancient evil unearthed in the nearby mine, now possessing the cop and others to wreak havoc. The story that unfolds is a fine one, if a bit derivative of other King novels, but I can’t help but wish the author had just stuck with the original human horror instead of escalating the issue to a battle between good and evil.

★★★☆☆

Find me on Patreon | Goodreads | Blog | Twitter

Book Review: The Last Policeman by Ben H. Winters

Book #114 of 2017:

The Last Policeman by Ben H. Winters (The Last Policeman #1)

Apocalyptic fiction and detective stories are two genres that I particularly enjoy, but I believe this is the first time I’ve ever seen them blended. The result is The Last Policeman, a novel about a detective trying to solve the case in front of him despite the fact that a humanity-ending asteroid has been detected on an unavoidable collision course with Earth. Six months before the impact, as society crumbles and many people are either killing themselves or quitting their jobs to pursue their bucket lists, Hank remains intent on doing the police work he always has. It’s an interesting take on the stoic upright lawman character, and a decent detective story amid a very distinct setting.

★★★★☆

Find me on Patreon | Goodreads | Blog | Twitter

Book Review: Alcatraz Versus the Scrivener’s Bones by Brandon Sanderson

Book #113 of 2016:

Alcatraz Versus the Scrivener’s Bones by Brandon Sanderson (Alcatraz #2)

Another fun YA novel from Brandon Sanderson, who blends his usual high fantasy style with something closer to Harry Potter and then adds a snarky narrator offering meta-commentary on the nature of stories throughout. Book 2 in this series fleshes out the history of its setting a little bit more, although we won’t get serious worldbuilding until the next novel when Alcatraz finally leaves the Hushlands behind. It also adds several fun new characters with their own wacky magical talents that sound bad but are actually highly useful (like Alcatraz’s uncle whose ability to get lost allows him to escape from a crashing plane without a scratch). These books are quick and entertaining, and I’m quite enjoying this reread.

★★★☆☆

Find me on Patreon | Goodreads | Blog | Twitter

Book Review: A Whole New World by Liz Braswell

Book #112 of 2016:

A Whole New World by Liz Braswell (Twisted Tales #1)

This novel offers a “what-if” spin on Disney’s animated Aladdin movie: what if the evil Jafar made wishes with the genie’s lamp before the hero got the chance? The result has some interesting moments, especially with Aladdin and Princess Jasmine leading a populist uprising against Jafar, but on the whole it’s rather flat. It’s also incredibly dark, to the point where I kept wondering whether Disney’s lawyers had read through the final draft before signing off on the official licence. (At one point, Jasmine’s narration points out the section of the palace dungeon where rapists are held. I was personally a lot happier before knowing Agrabah had that problem.)

Plus the first 20% of the book is essentially just a faithful novelization of the movie up until Aladdin finds the lamp, which is a huge waste given that pretty much any interested reader will already know those events. There’s potential for a good story here, and I particularly enjoyed the new female characters that Braswell adds, but in the end it’s a bit of a mess.

★★☆☆☆

Find me on Patreon | Goodreads | Blog | Twitter

Book Review: The Runaway King by Jennifer A. Nielsen

Book #111 of 2016:

The Runaway King by Jennifer A. Nielsen (The Ascendance Trilogy #2)

This book is the Catching Fire to its predecessor’s Hunger Games – a sequel that faces the tricky task of recapturing what readers loved about the very particular scenario of the first book. The plot mechanics that get the orphan-turned-king from The False Prince back in his rags and living on his wits again are slightly smoother than a Quarter Quell, but as a whole The Runaway King stands in the shadow of the previous story. The adventure with the pirates offers some much-needed worldbuilding, but Sage seems to have fewer cards up his sleeve this time, yielding a more straightforward and predictable narrative. He’s still a fun character to read, but the plot just doesn’t crackle as much this time around.

★★★☆☆

Find me on Patreon | Goodreads | Blog | Twitter

Movie Review: Hamilton’s America (2016)

Movie #21 of 2016:

Hamilton’s America (2016)

This documentary is a fun look at the Broadway musical sensation as well the real-life history of US Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton. It’s informative enough on that last count that I could see schoolteachers getting away with playing it to their classes, and it’s charmingly bipartisan in having Elizabeth Warren, Paul Ryan, Barack Obama, and George W. Bush all talk about Hamilton’s political legacy. But the real draw here is for fans of the show, with behind-the-scenes insights and plenty of footage from the stage production. It’s no substitute for seeing the play – or even listening to the soundtrack – but it’s a lovely sampling of moments that always stays accessible to the part of its audience just now hearing about the musical.

★★★☆☆

Find me on Patreon | Goodreads | Blog | Twitter

Book Review: Ancillary Mercy by Ann Leckie

Book #110 of 2016:

Ancillary Mercy by Ann Leckie (Imperial Radch #3)

A tremendous end to the Imperial Radch trilogy, following several threads from the first two books to their natural conclusions in a way that still manages to surprise. Author Ann Leckie clearly has a lot of thoughts on the notions of consciousness, sentience, and identity, and she foregrounds those issues in this novel far more than in its predecessors. I was concerned when the second novel took such an abrupt turn away from the action of the first to focus on a small backwater planet on the edges of the war, but this third book shows why that pivot was necessary to set up the series conclusion. This isn’t how I thought Breq’s story would resolve back when it began, but it all ties together rather nicely.

This book: ★★★★☆

Overall series: ★★★★☆

Book ranking: 3 > 2 > 1

Find me on Patreon | Goodreads | Blog | Twitter

Book Review: Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver

Book #109 of 2016:

Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver

The concept of a teenager reliving the same day over and over again (like in the movie Groundhog Day) is intriguing, and high school is a great setting to explore as a sprawling interconnected community that Samantha would ordinarily never get to see in its entirety. But she and her friends are so obnoxious and cruel that this book is legitimately hard to get through at times. Yes, Sam reforms like Bill Murray as the story goes along, and her mean girl friends do get some important shading along the way. But they’re still pretty odious, and the way the plot ultimately resolves is supremely unsatisfying. The middle of this novel was much better than either the beginning or the end.

★★☆☆☆

Find me on Patreon | Goodreads | Blog | Twitter

Book Review: The Man in the Brown Suit by Agatha Christie

Book #108 of 2016:

The Man in the Brown Suit by Agatha Christie (Colonel Race #1)

A fun, droll adventure elevated by the wit of its plucky heroine. Agatha Christie’s thrillers aren’t as beloved as her mysteries, but the author’s intricate plots with their well-disguised twists are just as enjoyable in this format. (This particular novel even features a proto-version of the narrative device that would win her such acclaim two years later in her mystery The Murder of Roger Ackroyd.) I don’t know that I’d recommend a book like this to someone just starting to read Christie, but it’s a great overlooked gem for fans of her detective stories.

★★★☆☆

Find me on Patreon | Goodreads | Blog | Twitter

Design a site like this with WordPress.com
Get started