Book Review: Golden Son by Pierce Brown

Book #5 of 2018: Golden Son by Pierce Brown (Red Rising #2) This is my second time reading this novel — although the first time as an audiobook — and I think my original review from 2016 mostly stands: “Given their common themes of dystopian wargames and rebellion against a corrupt government, The Hunger Games …

Book Review: The Waste Lands by Stephen King

Book #260 of 2017: The Waste Lands by Stephen King (The Dark Tower #3) This third book in my reread of Stephen King’s Dark Tower series is just as great as I had remembered. If Book 1 mostly serves to introduce the weird world of this story, and Book 2 serves to recruit the supporting …

Book Review: Something from the Nightside by Simon R. Green

Book #240 of 2017: Something from the Nightside by Simon R. Green (Nightside #1) I loved Simon R. Green’s Nightside series back in high school, when it was my first introduction to the urban fantasy genre. These books tell hardboiled detective stories in a weird world of gods and monsters, sort of like a cross …

Book Review: The Drawing of the Three by Stephen King

Book #213 of 2017: The Drawing of the Three by Stephen King (The Dark Tower #2) Although this second novel in the Dark Tower series takes place just after the first, author Stephen King hits the ground running with immediate deadly peril and a propulsive cross-dimensional adventure. It’s a dramatic shift in pace from the …

Book Review: Royal Assassin by Robin Hobb

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 …

Book Review: Heir of Sea and Fire by Patricia A. McKillip

Book #194 of 2017: Heir of Sea and Fire by Patricia A. McKillip (Riddle-Master #2) This middle volume in the Riddle-Master trilogy is probably the strongest, but it still moves to the strange internal logic of a dream, often leaving its readers grasping after oblique shades of meaning in under-explained references to this world’s history …

Book Review: The Gunslinger by Stephen King

Book #163 of 2017: The Gunslinger by Stephen King (The Dark Tower #1) It’s probably been a good decade or more since I last read this book, and I was surprised to find it better than I had remembered. I still stand by my usual advice for the Dark Tower series, which is that you …

Book Review: Assassin’s Apprentice by Robin Hobb

Book #132 of 2017: Assassin’s Apprentice by Robin Hobb (Farseer #1) This fantasy novel was a staple of my high school shelves, the start of a favorite series that I would read over and over again. I was a little worried that it wouldn’t live up to my memories when I revisited it now, but …

Book Review: Red Rising by Pierce Brown

Book #107 of 2017: Red Rising by Pierce Brown (Red Rising #1) Just as great as when I first read it last year, so I’ll just quote from my earlier review: Red Rising at its heart is telling a story like The Count of Monte Cristo or Gattaca, where someone from a lower class has …

Book Review: 1984 by George Orwell

Book #24 of 2017: 1984 by George Orwell 1984’s vision of a dystopian future has only grown more eerily prescient since I first read it back in high school, foretelling a rise in the surveillance state and government efforts to repress reality through propaganda. The storyline and the characters are honestly not so great, but …

Design a site like this with WordPress.com
Get started