Ryan
This was a fun novella that helped flesh out the culture of Innistrad really well, as well as introducing some interesting new characters in Tacenda and Davriel. Hopefully they weren't created just for this story, and will continue as part of the larger Innistrad mythology.
I can't imagine anyone being really interested in this is they aren't already invested in the lore of Magic: the Gathering, but if you are it's a great read.
This was an incredible, heartfelt alternate history story that took two separate historical events - the Radium Girls of the early 20th century, and the elephant that was sentences to the electric chair - and winds them together in a way that makes complete sense and is at the same time completely fantastic.
I want more of this story. There's this entire other world that Bolander is only able to hint at here, and I'm completely fascinated by it.
Brown Girl in the Ring is the story of a dystopian, futuristic Toronto that's falling apart from the neglect of the larger authorities around it - in other words, it's very contemporary, only with added elements of Caribbean supernatural folktales added in.
All that is background, though. The story that really matters here is that of a young woman coming into her own, taking the beliefs and responsibilities of her ancestors' culture and making them work for her in a modern, contemporary way. It's a complex and interesting character-based work, and it's hard to describe what makes it work as well as it does.
This was a fantastic extension and expansion of the world that Chakraborty created in City of Brass. We learn a lot more about the Daeva world, as Nahri attempts to adjust to the position she was placed in at the end of the first book. It feels like this volume has a much tighter grip on her as a focal character, and it makes it a stronger narrative because of it; through her eyes, we can see not only the wonder of the fantastical world she exists in, but also the frustration over the rules that it tries to impose on her.
This was a great continuation of the series started with Son of a Trickster. Robinson does a great job of presenting a protagonist who faces relatable challenges that would be difficult for any young person to cope with - Jared has to deal with issues about identity and belonging, escaping cycles of violence and dysfunction, and trying to stay connected to his heritage while building a life for himself.
The fact that he's the son of a trickster spirit, and is living in a house filled with otherworldly beings, is an extra layer put on top of all that, but one that doesn't define Jared's experience, and the story is stronger for it.
The new setting and supporting cast are all interesting and enjoyable, and add a lot of depth to the book.
Over the past few years, I've started a winter tradition - when we have the first real cold snap of winter, I read a Carl Hiassen novel. They're always fun, popcorn-for-dinner style crime novels, and most importantly, they're all set in warm, sunny Florida. I dive into the book and let the descriptions of beaches and everglades keep me warm while the slush piles up around my winter boots.
This one's set in the middle of Florida winter, which counteracts that a bit. But it's not something I can really hold against it.
Razor Girl was a fascinating experience in situational ethics because EVERYONE in the book is running a scam. Some of those scams are legal, and some aren't; some of them could even be argued to be ethical, from a certain point of view. But scam, scam, everywhere's a scam; Hiassen's Florida is a place that's nice to visit from a distance, but you definitely wouldn't want to live there.
I'm sorry, Kushiel's Dart, it's not you, it's me. You're a well-written novel, and I can see why so many people fell absolutely in love with you - but we just didn't click. Your alternate-history Europe setting was interesting, your protagonist was fascinating, but at the same time I felt cold and unmoved by you.
This was an interesting companion piece to Martin's abandoned Song of Ice and Fire series*. It's written from an in-universe perspective, chronicling the history of the earliest Targaryen rulers of Westeros. Written as a history book, it initially feels dry and lifeless, but as you get more engaged with it (and as Martin gets to the more interesting parts of Westerosi history), it becomes sometimes fascinating. On the whole, the Targaryens are a great argument against hereditary monarchy, and it's interesting to see the Westerosi narrator struggle to attempt to justify their failings and present them as beneficial parts of the development of his society.
Due to the scope of the material that Martin's going over, he unfortunately doesn't have space to include all the parts of the history that fans are most interested in - there's no Aegon the Unlikely or Rhaegar Targaryen here, which is a bit of a shame. On the other hand, he does include a comprehensive look at the Dance of Dragons that is epic in scale and rivals anything he's written in this world.
This story was an interesting mix of small-scale and large-scale crime: a man is found dead after falling from the Scarborough bluffs, possibly due to foul play. As investigators Esa Khattak and Rachel Getty investigate him, though, they start to suspect he may be connected to the war crimes of the Srebrenica massacre during the Bosnian War of the early 1990s. Through both of these events Ausma Zehanat Khan explores ideas surrounding justice, loyalty, and the lasting effects of crime on a community. The war crimes Khan writes about are shocking, and for some are hard to read about, but Khan contrasts the events with characters that are deeply humane (if flawed), which makes it easier to read about.
The Unquiet Dead is a very slow-burning novel - in the early sections it feels very slow and cold. If you stick with it, though, it is and incredibly rewarding and haunting piece of literature.
This one felt a little more enjoyable than the first one - del Toro feels more comfortable with writing for the page as opposed to the screen, and it was interesting to see the story of a society slowing sliding into an apocalypse (rather than the usual post- or pre-apocalyptic stories one tends to get).
This was a fantastic story, both as a creepy horror story and as a look at institutionalized racism. LaValle takes the tropes and elements of traditional weird horror and looks at them from the perspective of outsiders. Throughout the novella, he contrasts the corrupt, racist environment of 1920s New York, and the threat of impending doom on the part of the Deep Old Ones. As the injustices pile on, he starts to see less of a distinction between the two.
LaValle is reimagining an old Lovecraft story in this novella, so the endgame of the characters are a bit of a fixed point for him. However, he manages to work in and around that framework in such a way that the end result stands alone as a great example of what a modern horror story is capable of.
This was a useful resource for thinking about how to approach conversations with your children, and how to help them build a sense of mastery and control over their own lives.
A lot of the content and examples skewed towards teenagers; the title would be a little more accurate if it clarified that it's talking about young/near adults, rather than “kids” (which makes me think of the under 10 crowd).
This was a surprisingly heartfelt and poignant end to the Murderbot saga.
Murderbot would have hated it.
In all seriousness, though: this was a great end to the series of novellas. Things come full circle, and we see the ways in which autonomy and culture have made Murderbot more “human” than it was at the beginning. Which is thought-provoking about how we define humanity, although Wells writes it in such a way that those themes aren't explicitly brought to the forefront. Good reads all around, though.
One thing that I absolutely loved about this work was Demchuk's ability to create and sustain a mood of unease and horror throughout the different stories that make up The Bone Mother. It's hard to do that consistently across different stories in an anthology like this, so kudos to the author for that!
On the whole, though, I found it hard to connect to the stories. Many of them were just too short - there was no time to establish the characters in a way that made their fates interesting. I think I would have enjoyed this more if it had fewer stories that were more fleshed out.
A book like this really highlights the limitations of using star systems to rate books (as Goodreads does).
On one hand, this isn't an example of beautifully-written prose. It's exposition heavy, the characters are fairly flat and stereotypical, and the “reimagining” of the vampire myth is given a lot more hype than it really lives up to. It's easy to see why this would be a low-rated book.
ON THE OTHER HAND, Guillermo del Toro has such affection and enthusiasm for vampire stories, pulp fiction, and horror, and it shines through on every page of this book. He manages to take the fairly wooden contents and breathe enough fresh air into them that it the book frequently had me grinning. It's easy to see why this would be a highly-rated book.
If you're a fan of vampire fiction, you should probably check this out. It's too much fun to leave unread.
“Who knew being a heartless killing machine would present so many moral dilemmas?”
Murderbot continues to be its sassy, sarcastic self in another highly entertaining dark comedy novella. In addition, this chapter starts to show the development of some plot threads that were sown back in All Systems Red. A must read if you enjoyed the others in the series.
Science fiction has a history of glamourising science to a certain extent - for centuries stories have focused on that one big culminating moment in an experiment, and dealing with the fallout of those BCMs. On a dramatic level that's understandable, of course, but it leaves one with the impression that big dramatic moments are what science is about.
Kelly Robson's Gods, Monsters, and the Lucky Peach veers strongly away from that tradition, to interesting effect. It's one of the few stories I've read in the genre that looks at things like responding to a RFP, data collection, and discussing funding sources, and a lot of the day-to-day stuff that keeps real scientists occupied but never seems to be a concern to fictional ones. It's a refreshing change, and one that's balanced nicely with more traditional sci-fi elements like time travel,dystopia, and body modification.
In this novella Robson manages to tell a story that's both mundane and fantastic, while giving hints of a larger and more complex world that the story is existing in. Reading it, it's clear that she's someone with a deep love and passion for sci-fi as a genre, and has thought long and hard about both what makes time travel stories work, and where they sometimes don't. I look forward to seeing more work from her in this setting in the future.
This was an interesting read, but not one that I can really say that I loved. Reading it, you can definitely see how influential it was on other detective stories of the era. I think the serialized nature of its publication hurt it a bit, though? There were lots of cliffhangery moments, especially in the second half, and they eventually became trying rather than intriuging. If you're already a committed fan of 19th century detective stories you'll want to make sure you've read it, but beyond that you'd probably want to give it a pass.
This was an interesting academic exercise for Tolkien fans. Christopher looks at the different versions of the story that his father worked on over the decades, as well as how they exist in relation to Lord of the Rings and the Silmarillion. Don't come to this expecting a compelling narrative or particularly engaging story; these unpublished drafts were that way for a reason. But as an insight to how Tolkien's writing process developed over the decades it's a worthwhile read.
This was an absolutely fantastic, captivating, and exciting story. Set in the city of Janloon, Jade City looks at the rival organized crime groups that rule the city through mastery of jade, and the magical abilities that it grants those that have the ability to wield it. Tensions rise as the power starts to shift within the city, leading to the threat of a full-out gang war in the city streets. Fonda Lee has created a fascinating blend of wuxia, urban fantasy, and modern crime fiction that opens us up to a world and a story that is as unique as it is epic.
More of a coda than the knockout punch that trilogies usually end on. Much of the same thematic elements exist as in the first two parts, with the question now being what one does when the corruption and rot of facism has settled around them? What do you do when you have no more principles left to sell? They're interesting questions, and the Carmichael parts of the story explore them well. Eliza, on the other hand, isn't quite up to dealing with those questions, and the parts of the narrative that she leads suffer for it.
