Book #43 of 2019: Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel I love this book just as much as I remember, and upon this reading I’m particularly struck by the quiet tone of the work. It’s all too easy for a writer of this sort of world-ending saga to lean on the action and the …
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Book #249 of 2018: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J. K. Rowling (Harry Potter #7) And so my Harry Potter reread comes to an end with what I consider the weakest volume of the series (not counting oddities like the Cursed Child screenplay or the flimsy textbook tie-ins). The major problem in this …
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Book #236 of 2018: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J. K. Rowling (Harry Potter #6) I love plenty of individual moments in this penultimate Harry Potter book, but if I’m being truly objective, its flashback-heavy narrative arc is a bit of a step down for the series. As usual author J. K. Rowling …
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Book #228 of 2018: The Man Who Killed His Brother by Stephen R. Donaldson (The Man Who #1) Author Stephen R. Donaldson is best known for his fantasy sagas like The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, but his character work and intense internal struggles resonate more than the epic quests and magical worldbuilding, and …
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Book #224 of 2018: Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett I loved this book back in middle school, and it’s even better now that I get more of the jokes (thanks to being both older and more familiar with British culture). The story is a terrifically funny take on the Christian apocalypse, an …
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Book #222 of 2018: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J. K. Rowling (Harry Potter #5) The Harry Potter books are well-known for getting darker and deeper as they go along, aging up in target audience along with their main characters, but the hero’s surly teenage angst in this novel actually bothered …
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Book #215 of 2018: The Republic of Thieves by Scott Lynch (Gentleman Bastard #3) I have such mixed feelings about this book and what it portends for the rest of its series. In part that’s because it’s trying to do three very different things, and I think it accomplishes them with varying degrees of success. …
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Book 210 of 2018: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J. K. Rowling (Harry Potter #4) This middle volume marks a major shift in the Harry Potter series in a number of ways. It’s much longer than the previous novels, but it’s also significantly darker and more mature. The title wizard and his …
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Book #196 of 2018: The Traitor Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson (The Masquerade #1) A fascinating character and culture study, most reminiscent of Ann Leckie’s Imperial Radch books. Baru Cormorant is a young woman whose homeland gets annexed by an expanding empire, after which she privately vows to rise through her conquerors’ ranks to take …
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Book #195 of 2018: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by J. K. Rowling (Harry Potter #3) This has always been my favorite book in the Harry Potter series, and it is no less excellent even now that I’m closer in age to the second title character than the first. Harry and his friends …
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