Book #72 of 2018: Agents of Light and Darkness by Simon R. Green (Nightside #2) I’m rereading this urban fantasy series that I loved when I was younger, and while it isn’t quite living up to my memories, this second novel is a vast improvement over the first. The worldbuilding offers a steady stream of …
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Book #67 of 2018: The Wind Through the Keyhole by Stephen King (The Dark Tower #4.5) This book was written after the conclusion of the author’s main Dark Tower series, but it takes place squarely in the middle, just after the fourth novel Wizard and Glass. (As with the prequel novella The Little Sisters of …
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Book #59 of 2018: Catch-22 by Joseph Heller I fell in love with this satirical novel back in high school, and I wish I could say it holds up just as well today. And on some levels, it absolutely does: it remains a brilliant skewering of military doublespeak and the absurdity of war, and author …
Book #58 of 2018: Mad Ship by Robin Hobb (Liveship Traders #2) Overall, I would say that this sequel is an improvement over the first Liveship Traders book. The plot moves a little more quickly, and there’s great character work turning the most insufferable figure from the previous story into a compelling protagonist. These features …
Book #47 of 2018: Ship of Magic by Robin Hobb (Liveship Traders #1) As always, I have mixed feelings about this book and its sequels. On the one hand, you couldn’t ask for better atmosphere in a fantasy yarn of pirates, sea serpents, and talking figureheads, and the rich worldbuilding wonderfully fleshes out an area …
Book #39 of 2018: Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates This slim volume by Ta-Nehisi Coates reflects on the author’s experiences growing up as a black American and what he sees for his fifteen-year-old son coming of age in the time of Black Lives Matter. Presented as an open letter to the boy, …
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Book #38 of 2018: Assassin’s Quest by Robin Hobb (Farseer #3) On the whole I love the Farseer trilogy (and the wider series that it begins), but every time I read this particular book, I find myself losing patience about halfway through. It’s one of those fantasy novels that consist mostly of characters walking across …
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Book #23 of 2018: The Little Sisters of Eluria by Stephen King I like this Dark Tower prequel novella, but it’s admittedly pretty extraneous to the regular series. The Mid-World setting makes it seem more primary, but it’s really closer in nature to a tangential Stephen King book like Black House than anything particularly essential …
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Book #21 of 2018: Wizard and Glass by Stephen King (The Dark Tower #4) This was always my favorite novel in Stephen King’s epic sprawling Dark Tower series, and although I’m a bit longer in the tooth now than when I first read it, I’m excited to see that the story is just as great …
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Book #20 of 2018: Harpist in the Wind by Patricia A. McKillip (Riddle-Master #3) The Riddle-Master trilogy has always suffered from author Patricia A. McKillip keeping us at a distance from its world, and this concluding volume finally collapses under that weight. It isn’t a worldbuilding issue per se, since this reality has always felt …
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