Valerie
I cracked open my copy of the Dark Tower and found a piece of my high school AP English assignment inside. That's how long it has been since I've reread the Dark Tower. I think I have a lot of associations with this series and that period of my life, as it was one of my favorite pieces of King's work. Particularly this first novel, really this collection of five short stories, resonates so differently with me now than then. King laid so many foundations, many of them he admits unconsciously, for so many of his later works. It's a classic of dark fantasy, and while it is really more prologue than novel, it is an important prologue.
I was lucky enough to get an ARC of this at Denver Comic Con. Seriously, Tattered Cover just gave me a free Kevin Hearne book. Amazing! I'm a big fan of the Iron Druid series, and I was really excited to see Hearne writing in a high fantasy style rather than an urban one. The thing about Iron Druid is, it reads like popcorn, but popcorn with a ton of research, mythos, plotting, and work put into it. It is high quality popcorn. Gourmet. Plague of Giants makes the effort that goes into it more recognizable as you get to see the whole world created from scratch, and it's great.
I love the magic system: the idea that you risk your life to earn magic and then spend your life to use it. I love the variety of magic and cultures Hearne creates. I love the serial storytelling in novel form. And I love bards. I've been playing a lot of D&D lately, and 5E bards are badasses.
There's an incredible cast, diverse without being a statement on diversity, and while some stories are more interesting than others (I would've been happy just to read Abhi's story, honestly), they all tie together nicely.. It's also a book with incredibly high stakes, as the characters make lethal mistakes over and over, and cope with the loss and guilt they incur. Loss, guilt, and survival are really the strongest themes, and some chapters hurt, and that hurt is cathartic.
The only criticism I really have is that this book is very obviously the first of a series, and it does not feel particularly ended when you get to the end. I'm ready to pick up the next book now, but this book hasn't even been technically released yet. Hopefully, by the time Blight of Blackwings is out, I'll still have all these stories close enough to my mind to read it.
I picked this up at Denver Comic Con this year and had a chance to talk to Jeremy Whitley about the age level at which you could give a kid Raven. Raven is a kissing book and a fighting book, and so really it should e at any age when kids start to appreciate kissing/fighting books. What it really boiled down to though, was whether or not said kid's parents are ok with queer characters, and it's sad that that is what it boils down to, which I guess means that we should give more kids these books. This series is not about being queer; it's about swash-buckling pirate adventures with love triangles built in as they are built into 90% of YA (btw, is it wrong that the more it looks like Raven/Ximena is a thing, the more I want RavenShine to be a thing? Am I just contrary? Probably). This characters just happen to be queer, and I think a lot more kids are smart enough to realize that is not a big deal than their parents.
I was really surprised to learn that this last in the series was actually the first book written. The five stars is really for the series as a whole because it sweeps its themes of humanity, slavery, and tradition from pre-colonial Africa to a distant and terrifying dystopia of a future. Three strains of humanity, one cast aside as prey for one group and pack animals for another, struggle to survive in a world where even your mind isn't safe. This is what Doro's great labor wreaks, and it is definitely nothing like I would have predicted. Butler was a master, and even when I find myself getting angry at the characters for their bizarre notions, I see how their inclusion in the story highlights themes that are sadly always relevant.
Princeless is one of my most stolen books in my classroom, so that always bodes well. This latest volume features Adrienne coming to terms with her hair, Bedelia coming to terms with her mom, and frank discussion about how you discover your own attraction to others and how no one quite figures it out the same way. Princeless is a comic with diverse enough cast that it is easy to find someone with whom to identify, and few things are more important in children's literature than that.
I didn't see how this fit into the Patternmaster series much at all until I finished the fourth book, but damn did Octavia Butler know how to write aliens. The invading species hybrid with humanity is eerie and very clearly foreign, yet it assimilates so completely with humans that even the reader ends up on its side some of the time. Some of it. Which is exactly how the kidnapped family feels, I imagine. Making the two daughters bi-racial is a brilliant move too, emphasizing the two worlds the characters already inhabit. This book asks us to look a humanity and what its survival really means.
I read Wild Seed ages ago, and it was great to have the opportunity to revisit this world. I can't say I liked Mary as much as Anyanwu, but it was fascinating to watcher her struggle through moral crisis after moral crisis, to move from used to user. I'm only sad it is of an era when sci-if novels needed to be so bite-sized.
I first read this book in college, and I'm really glad that book club gave me a chance to re-read it as a more developed person. At nineteen, this was an interesting book but very new to me. At 35 having been a working woman in a society that has real trouble dealing with non-gender conformity and “aliens”, the relevancy and intelligence of this book is just so much more striking. Passages like how differently society works when anyone can be struck by pregnancy any given kemmer are a bit saddening when I look back into my own world. I think this is a book that everyone should read and if you read it as young as I did, you should probably read it again. It just gets better.
I was in the mood for classic high fantasy, and this book certainly captured that. It's a pretty straightforward quest story about a boy discovering his mysterious past and how the fate of the world hangs in the balance. It is very obviously the first of a trilogy, and as such primarily feels like exposition, but I think it will probably feel better as part of a whole rather than a stand alone. This book was written before 900 page fantasy novels were a norm, so I'll cut it some slack there. The series has been sitting on my shelf for a while in the “classics what I should have already read” section, so I'll likely finish it out.
I was sadly a little disappointed in this book. I love The Hum and the Shiver so much, and I really enjoyed the world building and concept, but this volume felt a bit clunkier. Mostly, I think the romantic plot lines just threw me off and felt a little squicky. Actually, Bronwyn's romantic plot lines were my only issue with the first book too, so maybe I just don't enjoy Bledsoe's style with romance. I was much more interested in Bliss and would have liked to explore her character more. I will probably continue the series cause the world is such an interesting and unique one, but I think I'll take a break first.
This book is a brilliant little piece of magic realism. Modern life with classic mythology. Beagle's style always strikes me as more literary than a lot of my favorites, which lends this solid grounding to his fantasy. The characters in this book are strikingly vivid and unique, and at this point in my life, people I really need to read about. Del and Abe have been together 22 years, but live literally on different islands and never married. This concept alone is intriguing even before a literal goddess enters the scene.
This is a book about habits and routines, about the comfort they bring and the danger of being too comfortable. The ability of humans to change stands in stark contrast to the inability of myths. Consequences are real both for stagnation and risk, and the characters have to decide over and over again which is their real priority. This is not a story that gets told with such delicacy very much, and I found the whole thing touching at a time when I needed to hear that humans are never too old to change.
While I didn't love this as much as I loved the first one, I still had a great time reading it, especially as the action builds towards the end. In this volume, Sigurd becomes the primary POV character, and the journey he has taken, the planning that Bennett must have been putting into this character from the very beginning, transform Sigurd from one-dimensional overpowered bruiser to a multi-farted plot point and perhaps our only hope in the face of this new threat.
Shara, too, while less present in this book, is a shadow whose influence stretches wide over the story as we see the impact her life had on her country, her friends, and the family she chose for herself. if nothing else, this series is one of the few books written by men that I know of which include incredibly complicated and unique female characters.
More so than City of Swords, the Divine elements of this book are back in focus. This is the aspect that most sucked me into this series, and Bennett's creativity and exploration of this world where hey, miracles happen, make it well worth any mythology nerd's time. If you enjoyed the other two books, you will be right at those here.
This book reads like a blend of American tall tales and European faerie talkes along with a style of magic realism that puts me in mind of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Hatfields and McCoys meet Midsummer Night's Dream. It's a haunting story that is not afraid to string the reader along with hints and guesses of what is truly happening and what we might be just imagining. It's a story about homecoming, trauma, and finding out who you are within and outside of your family. It's hard to say more without giving too much away, but if you like any of the above, I encourage you to read this book. I'll definitely be continuing in the series.
This book was interesting and in a vein with Doctorow's philosophy and body of work. I picked it up when he was speaking at my FLBS, and he referred to it as his novel about abundance, about what we would do if there was enough for everyone. The setting is a world were the very rich control the world, abandoning people, places, and things the moment they cease to be profitable. Other people pick up othose things and through miraculous advances in 3D printing, are able to live quite comfortable. They walk away from society and live without norms of ownership.
Oh, and with their unlimited time and research materials, walkaways “cure” death.
Parts of the book were hard to get into (Doctorow is very smart and occasionally gets really into the nitty gritty which I could take or leave, but the characters are interesting and include complex portrayals of trans and bisexual (male and female) characters from a variety of ethnic backgrounds. It's a utopia of sex, drugs, and simulated human bots. While the concept is a bit hard for me to see as a viable future, it is a cool thought experiment and definitely worth the read.
I was pretty disappointed in this book, sadly. It had been on my “To read” list for a while, but it just didn't grab me the way I'd hoped. Chambers does an awesome job envisioning aliens, and the reptilian society was particularly interesting and unhuman without being a cliche. The parasitic Ohan was also pretty fascinating. The rest of the characters, though, felt extremely one-dimensional. Kizzy in particular just irritated me every time she opened her mouth in the space version of manic pixie dreamgirl. It felt like the novelized version of a pretty bad Syfy space opera, something I've just seen to many times to really get into.
I'm a huge fan of Saga, and I wanted to try a new series on Free Comic Book Day when everything was on sale. I heard the hype about Vaughan's new work, and I don't think it was overestimated at all. Paper Girls is eerie, unsettling, and fascinating. It takes place in what appears to be a near future, but a lot is left unclear and adds to the haunting feeling of the story and art. The heroes, for paper delivery girls who have to be seriously hardcore to do their job, are all great examples of complex kids, being forced into adult roles and decisions. I'm eager to pick up the next volume.
This was a really brilliant memoir. I got it randomly as a blind date book, and it's pretty amazing how well it aligned to my own philosophy. West writes candidly of her life growing up as a woman with all of the shame American society places on that. She shares the story of her career and how that career turned into a miniature crusade against intolerance for women, fat people, and people of color. She calls out even her heroes on behavior that is damaging to society, and she does it all with a set of Disney references that made me spit milk out my nose. Yes! Brother John is played by the actor bear Baloo who also plays himself in The Jungle Book. OBVIOUSLY!
After I read the book, I immediately passed it on to share the sit and philosophy it gave me. I think anyone could enjoy reading it, but it is particularly meaningful to other shrill women who will not be boxed in.
While it doesn't top Xenogenesis as my favorite Butler writing, I think I read this book at a very apt time. It is one of those stories that is becoming relevant yet again. You think we humans would figure out ways to avoid dystopian apocalypse instead of continuing to follow every fictional plotline leading up to that apocalypse ever, wouldn't you? Butler's is particularly grim as the thesis behind this dystopia isn't a zombie plague or alien invasion, but a simple matter of too many otherwise intelligent people ignoring major problems until it it too late to fix them, over and over again.
Of course, since it is Butler, one difficult to tackle theme is not enough. This book exlores race relationships, the nature of empathy vs, survival, and a philosophy of embracing “shit happens” to a religious level. I can get behind the philosphy of Earthseed. I definitely want to continue on to the next parable as soon as I take a break to go back to ignoring the problems of my own society. Life is a cabaret, old chum.
This book has been on my to-read list for a while, and I'm glad I finally sat down to read it. It is billed as one of the foundational books for urban fantasy, so while the tropes in it might seem a little tired now, I think that's only because so many people have copied it. Overall, I enjoyed the story and characters as a popcorn-filled adventure of Fey rock and roll. Personally, I was delighted and overjoyed that it was set in Minneapolis, and all of the local references made me love it more than if it were set in a more standard city. It's incredibly amusing to me that the kingdoms of Faerie would fight over Como Park territory.
It's maybe a little simple in places, but that isn't always a bad thing. If you like hardcore fey and eighties rock music, I think you will be similarly delighted by this book.
This was a pretty fun book overally, though maybe not to my taste. The literary references are by far the most enjoyable part, and you can tell it's written by a book lover, for book lovers. It's a fun homage for Sherlock Holmes fans in particular. The action gets a little non-sensical at times (why would anyone use cyborg alligators for a land attack? Why? There are so many better predators for a land-based attack!), but it's a solid as a popcorn adventure romp.
I really couldn't get into this book, and parts of it I found downright irritating. About the only thing I enjoyed was the setting. The dystopian future where risking horrific death is preferable to living with no or little medical insurance while working in strip-mined fields growing vitamin sludge is pretty terrifying. Add to that the idea that the main goal of getting rich is being able to afford Full Medical so you can add years to your life, and we have a poignant and timely tale.
That said, the idea that this technology is not being so much researched as test-driven (often at the expense of losing the technology) is a little hard for me to believe. I also really couldn't stand the Freudian robot psychotherapy. Pohl seems to have done very little researching into how therapy works (or therapy was way different in the seventies). Most importantly, the main character is absolutely reprehensible. Every choice he makes, every snide comment, it all builds to showing just how awful he is. I'm not one to say main characters have to be likable, but this guy is just not enjoyable to read and spending time with him is pretty repellent.
I recognize that the book was written 40 years ago, but at times, it felt even more dated than that. Not my cuppa.
I like Neil Gaiman. I like Norse myths. I like this book.
Honestly, Neil Gaiman and Kevin Hearne are responsible for pretty much everything I know about Norse myths, so most of my knowledge is second hand filtered through other, more modern stories. This collection is nice because it reads in that signature Gaiman style of modern prose soaked in classical themes. I'd be curious on the take of someone who has actually read the Poetic and/or Prose Edda, but as a layman, I really enjoyed the sense of humor and pacing in Gaiman's retellings. It's a short read, and certainly well worth your time if you are at all a mythology fan.
This book is full of good strategies, although not many of them were terrifically new to me. It's good advice that is much more difficult than the little vignettes make it seem to implement. Something about the author's tone is a little accusative, and made the non-strategy parts hard for me to get through. The author puts a lot of justifiable pressure on teachers to be the one thing that changes students lives. I get what he is saying, but at the same time recognize teachers need release too and making excuses is different from venting complaints about the odds stacked against us. Jensen leaves no room for that, and is pretty abrasive in his claim that kids are not the problem, you are.
I took a lot of notes, wrote down some strategies I thought might work with my kids, but at the end of the day, it didn't present me with the most achievable vision of success. He advises choosing one strategy and honing it until it's right, which I think is the best advice in the book.
This is a rare book. I've never heard anything but praise for Nalo Hopkinson, and now it's easy to see why. This book is a trilogy of stories about women of color enslaved, both literally and figuratively, by the worlds around them. The characters are united by the presence of a goddess who is trapped within and between them. If that isn't a perfect image for the struggles faced by women of color today, I'm not sure what is. The stories take place in three time periods and places: Alexandria era Egypt, a Haitian slave plantation just before the slave revolt, and turn of the century Paris. It's hard for me to pick one story over the others as a favorite because all three are intriguing and unique. Jeanne, the Parisian dancing girl, is the one that actually made me burst into tears at one point, so I would say that's the one I connected with most strongly.
It is not a typical fantasy novel, maybe closer to magic realism in tone and form. Chapters are fluid in length and style, pieces of poetry are interwoven into the narrative, and the narrator shifts between humans and goddess within each chapter. Personally, I find the uniqueness and elegance makes it well-worth the challenge of reading. It is occasionally very graphic, sometimes a bit too graphic for me, but that graphicness is never gratuitous. We are living these women's lives as they lived them, exactly. As long as that doesn't drive you away from a story, I'd say The Salt Roads is a necessary book to take up.