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 …
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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 …
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Book #225 of 2017: The Fifth Season by N. K. Jemisin (The Broken Earth #1) Great fantasy worldbuilding and effortless diversity of race, gender identity, and sexuality, but it bothered me a little that the three different storylines felt so isolated from one another (even after I developed a suspicion about how they were connected …
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Book #216 of 2017: Feet of Clay by Terry Pratchett (Discworld #19) Terry Pratchett’s City Watch novels have been steadily improving as the Discworld sub-series goes along, and this third book continues that happy trend. Whereas the introduction of nonhuman characters into the Watch in the previous volume felt largely like an unfunny joke about …
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Book #214 of 2019: Harry Potter and the Cursed Child by Jack Thorne On both a plot and a writing level, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child falls far below the previous Potter books — perhaps reflecting the fact that J. K. Rowling was not involved in the actual writing process. (She’s merely one of …
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Book #211 of 2017: The Fate of the Tearling by Erika Johansen (The Queen of the Tearling #3) There are a lot of scenes in this final novel of the Tearling trilogy that feel intended to be climactic but have little narrative build behind them – either in this book or the two before it …
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Book #205 of 2017: Daughter of Smoke & Bone by Laini Taylor (Daughter of Smoke & Bone #1) My feelings about this book are all over the place! I ended up really liking it, and I can’t wait to read the rest of the trilogy, but it was sort of a rough journey to get …
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Book #203 of 2017: Hollow City by Ransom Riggs (Miss Peregrine’s Peculiar Children #2) I don’t know if Hollow City is any worse than Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children, but it certainly doesn’t improve on that first book’s problems. There are the same under-developed characters, the same sketchy romance between a sixteen-year-old and his …
Book #200 of 2017: A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms by George R.R. Martin (The Tales of Dunk and Egg #1-3) This book is a collection of three novellas from George R.R. Martin, set in the century before his major series A Song of Ice and Fire. Presenting these stories in a single volume is …
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Book #195 of 2017: Royal Assassin by Robin Hobb (Farseer #2) This middle book in the Farseer trilogy was formative in my teenage years, speaking to the idealism and anger that most young people probably feel to some degree. There’s something universal in youths chafing against authority figures who will not see reason, and author …
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