Book #71 of 2016: Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo (Six of Crows #1) I still don’t quite understand the title, but Six of Crows was a really fun fantasy heist novel, featuring a gang of criminals breaking into (and back out of) a high-security prison to rescue a captured scientist with the chemical formula …
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Book #63 of 2016: Terrier by Tamora Pierce (Beka Cooper #1) This was only my second ever Tamora Pierce book — counting the four-part The Song of the Lioness as a single volume, as my edition was — but I liked it even better than the first. This prequel world feels very lived-in, with fun …
Book #58 of 2016: The Hum and the Shiver by Alex Bledsoe (Tufa #1) The Hum and the Shiver was a really interesting premiere – although it definitely reads more like the pilot to an ongoing (but probably episodic) series than a standalone tale in its own right. This novel introduces us to the Tufa, …
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Book #51 of 2016: The Star-Touched Queen by Roshani Chokshi (The Star-Touched Queen #1) The Star-Touched Queen is about a young princess who gets saved from death through a marriage to a mysterious stranger, followed by her quest to save him from a force of evil once his secrets finally come out. It’s really a …
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Book #48 of 2016: The Arrivals by Melissa Marr People from throughout earth’s history find themselves mysteriously transplanted to another world, where they awaken in bodies that do not age and can come back to life when killed. If that sounds interesting… then I strongly recommend To Your Scattered Bodies Go and its sequels in …
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Book #44 of 2016: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke This is at least the third time that I’ve read this book, but the last time was more than five years ago (which is why I wanted to do another reread before I watched the recent BBC miniseries adaptation). It remains an astonishing …
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Book #42 of 2016: The Raven King by Maggie Stiefvater (The Raven Cycle #4) The Raven Cycle is a series that defies narrative conventions of the fantasy genre in a lot of ways. There’s no big bad for the series; this final book’s villain was introduced at the end of the previous novel and is …
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Book #31 of 2016: The Talisman by Stephen King and Peter Straub (The Talisman #1) I’m normally a sucker for stories about parallel universes, but the mechanics of the magic (particularly the world-hopping) in this one were so unclear that it was a pretty frustrating reading experience. I do like that there was plenty of …
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Book #28 of 2016: Mistborn: Secret History by Brandon Sanderson This novella is honestly not one of Brandon Sanderson’s best pieces of storytelling. But that’s fine, because it’s not aiming to be. It’s instead more of a behind-the-scenes sort of deal, showing what one particular character was up to during the second and third Mistborn …
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Book #27 of 2016: Lifeboats by Diane Duane (Young Wizards #9.5) Lifeboats is an “interim” novella in the Young Wizards series, taking place in the narrative gap between main novels A Wizard of Mars (#9) and Games Wizards Play (#10). There are two other stories by Duane that also fall in that gap, “Not on …
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