Book #92 of 2017: A Monster Calls by Patrick Ness A powerful novel of grief and guilt, where a boy struggling to come to terms with his mother’s cancer must also face down the primeval creature that has crawled out of his dreams with harsh truths of its own. There’s a reading of this story …
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Book #89 of 2017: White Sand, Volume 1 by Brandon Sanderson, Rik Hoskin, and Julius Gopez (White Sand #1) White Sand is an unpublished manuscript by author Brandon Sanderson, and this graphic novel is an adaptation of the first part of that unreleased novel, with two more planned volumes to follow. I had hoped that …
Book #85 of 2017: Ever by Gail Carson Levine I’ve liked Gail Carson Levine’s other works, but Ever was a bit of a misfire for me. The ancient Mesopotamian setting felt very surface-level, as though Levine had only a cursory understanding of the area and its culture when she decided to use it for her …
Book #82 of 2017: Wolf-Speaker by Tamora Pierce (The Immortals #2) An okay follow-up to Tamora Pierce’s earlier novel Wild Magic. I liked that Pierce went out of her way to emphasize that not all creatures who look like monsters are evil, but this was kind of a weird message in a novel where the …
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Book #81 of 2017: Games Wizards Play by Diane Duane (Young Wizards #10) This tenth book in the Young Wizards series is also by far its longest, which gives the characters a little bit more time to breathe before the usual crisis hits. The main plot revolves around a wizarding competition, and author Diane Duane …
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Book #80 of 2017: The Sudden Appearance of Hope by Claire North Another wildly inventive thriller from author Claire North, this one about a woman who fades from people’s memory as soon as she’s out of their sight. That concept leans a bit close to North’s earlier novel Touch, since the characters who forget their …
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Book #77 of 2017: Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs (Miss Peregrine’s Peculiar Children #1) Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children is basically about an X-Men sort of school populated by the children from creepy vintage trick photography, all of whom have real superpowers. (The actual photos that inspired particular characters or …
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Book #76 of 2017: Mark of the Thief by Jennifer A. Nielsen (Mark of the Thief #1) I loved Jennifer A. Nielsen’s Ascendance trilogy, but this book (the start of a new series) felt really under-baked to me. The main character mostly just reacts to the decisions of others, his relationships nearly all seem plot-driven …
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Book #75 of 2017: Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie Completely deserving of its status as classic literature, with an appropriately timeless archetype at its center. I’m really glad I finally got around to reading this; the familiar story is so much deeper and weirder in its original form than I’d ever imagined. There’s a …
Book #73 of 2017: Inkdeath by Cornelia Funke (Inkworld #3) This was an okay adventure story, but it dragged a lot in the middle, and the returning characters felt nothing like the people they were in the first two books. This trilogy has really offered diminishing returns as it went along, so as much as …
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