Amanda
A prequel to Wicked covering Galinda's backstory.
It's been years since I've read Wicked, but I remember Galinda as being shallow and annoying at the start and gaining some depth and maturity as the novel progressed. In her self-titled prequel she is as shallow and annoying at the end as she is at the beginning, which I suppose isn't surprising since we already know her character growth happens after the events of this book.
I think it's safe to give this one a miss unless you're a die-hard Wicked fan.
Received via NetGalley.
So Let Them Burn has a Jamaican-inspired gloss that makes it feel a bit original, but there's little else to distinguish it from the seas of YA fantasy currently being published.
I got this in the Hugo voter packet and while I don't think it's deserving of a savage review, it doesn't deserve awards either.
A detective investigating a string of grisly murders comes across a young boy connected to both the murders and a mysterious fire at an orphanage.
This was a great read! It's got great atmosphere and an excellent story that is both self-contained and hints at a larger world to be explored. I'll be picking up Miro's Talent series, to which this story is related, on my next trip to the library.
Received via NetGalley.
A royal inquisitor investigating two mysterious deaths seeks to enter the temple of a proscribed religion; the goddess has other ideas.
Most of the story was wryly amusing, but the last few pages took it to somewhere that isn't out of place, but seems to me unimaginative.
Received via NetGalley.
A Black family seeks sanctuary in 1871 Kansas.
This story has a lot of layers for its length! Due did a terrific job writing what felt like an epic Western in sixty-odd pages. My only quibble—and it's a *very* minor one—is the dollop of the supernatural in the tale; it doesn't detract from the story, but it feels slightly out of place.
Received via NetGalley.
A mysterious death is investigated by a mysterious investigator.
If you mixed The Name of the Rose with the witches of Discworld and threw in a dash of Calvino, you'd end up with something like this short story. It's not a deep read, but it is entertaining and that last line is a corker.
Received via NetGalley.
Your estranged mother calls you out of the blue and tells you her evil tech corporation will give you an obscene amount of money for very little work if you sign a stack of papers. If the driver the company sends repeatedly urges you to read the papers before signing, do you: A) read the papers? B) ask to be taken back to the airport and forget the whole thing? C) decide he's being "patronizing" and "patriarchal" and quickly sign everything out of spite?
If you answered C, then you will probably love Julia, one of the POV characters of Dead But Dreaming of Electric Sheep. I think Tremblay thinks she's an intelligent and complex character, but I think she's a collection of pop culture references who is as dumb as a box of rocks.
The chapters from the other POV character, called You, are what keep me from giving this book an even lower rating. They are disorienting, a little frightening, and compelling. I probably would have have given the book four stars if it had been reworked to be solely from You's POV.
Received via NetGalley.
A detective solves a historical murder mystery.
The murder that's being solved happened roughly two centuries earlier, so it's just the detective telling a story rather than doing the actual investigating. I didn't find it an engrossing read, but it was an entertaining diversion.
Received via NetGalley.
Fifteen years after the events of Sleepy Hollow (1999 film), Ichabod Crane returns to Sleepy Hollow to investigate a string of suspicious deaths.
As a sequel to Tim Burton's film, this comic is a failure: Ichabod has forgotten all the lessons he learned and Katrina has somehow acquired a twenty-first century mindset. Although I think the book might have been okay as an original story, trying to tie it to the movie makes it seem like a pathetic attempt to ride the coattails of a popular work.
I'm also unimpressed by the art. The forest is appropriately creepy, but the people have a bizarre, almost batrachian look to them. The dull colors do not help the book at all.
Received via NetGalley.
Two women try to return a holy relic while enduring the horrors of the Thirty Years' War.
After reading two books by Johanna van Veen she became a "must read" author for me; her latest book has cemented my opinion of her as one of the finest of current horror writers.
In Bone of My Bone, van Veen once again shows her skill at combining deeply disturbing horror with realistic depictions of historical eras and writing fully realized characters.
Received via NetGalley.
This review refers to the audiobook read by Daphne Kouma.
I am so glad there was an ebook of The Raven Scholar included in the Hugo voter packet because I couldn't even make it through part one of the audiobook. Daphne Kouma was a poor match for this book: this is a book with some intense themes and violence, but she read it in a way that would be more appropriate for an upbeat children's book. Blech.
I had a much more enjoyable experience once I switched to the ebook, even though I found this a *very* slow starter; I feel that the first four chapters could have been dealt with in about half the number of pages with no loss to the story.
I didn't become really engaged by the book until about 20-25% in, but I was wholly invested after that and resented every interruption that took me away from reading. I was entranced by the combination of the trials, intrigue, and the supernatural. By the end of the book I had largely forgotten my frustration with its beginning and was looking up the release date for book two.
My recommendation: skip the audibook if possible, because it is a one star production of a four star book.
Audiobook received via NetGalley.
The least liked guest at a country estate is murdered and an innocent man will hang for it if Liam Cuthbert doesn't uncover the real killer.
All through reading this book I had the overwhelming feeling that the setting is not quite right: everything from some of the food being served to the characters' behavior struck me as slightly more American than English. I never felt like I was reading about people in England during the 1950s, but rather a Hollywood version filled with stock characters.
I also never warmed to Liam; I think the author was going for charmingly eccentric, but he read as kind of sketchy to me. His hinting that he might be gay to a police inspector investigating the murder struck me as reckless since that was very much illegal at the time and could be seen as a motive for murder strikes me as reckless, and the way he treats Bruce upon their meeting makes me think he was looking for a sugar baby instead of a tenant.
Received via NetGalley.
Two employees of a magical apothecary shop have a contentious relationship and each is unaware the other is the pen pal with whom they've fallen in love.
I enjoyed the story, but I found it too drawn out: it's over a hundred pages before one of the protagonists realizes the other is their correspondent, and then there still a couple of hundred pages left in the book. The anticipation that had been building up petered out by the time things actually started happening.
The world building isn't super detailed, but it's solid and the magic system is nifty and shown well.
Letters from the Last Apothecary is a three star read for me, but it will probably be higher for people who enjoy romances more than I do.
Received via NetGalley.
A retelling of Hamlet set at a magic school.
A Dark Academic retelling of Hamlet strikes me as completely appropriate; even a fantasy one seems right—the original has a ghost, after all. Unfortunately, Thoughts Be Bloody misses the mark: it reads more like a knockoff of The Magicians with a Hamlet veneer.
Thoughts Be Bloody is also wordy as all get out, which, to be fair, can also be said of the original, but at least the original has some sublime blank verse going for it.
So, high marks for the premise, but low marks for the execution.
Received via NetGalley.
A wizard indentured to a wicked king and a hunter under a curse seek a phoenix in hope of escaping their fates.
I was shocked to discover this is a debut novel; I've read books by veteran authors that show less imagination and skill than Kiser displays here. They've created a dark, dangerous world and filled it with characters who are talented, intelligent, flawed, and have complex motivations.
Hunt the Ever Wild is a book I will reread and I look forward to seeing what S. E. Kiser writes next.
Oh, and whoever wrote the line about this book having "the whimsy of Howl's Moving Castle" is doing both it and its potential readers a disservice: Hunt the Ever Wild is not whimsical and it shares little with Howl beyond a fantasy setting.
Received via NetGalley.
I wasn't in love with Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries, but I did enjoy it just enough to be interested in reading the next book in the series.
As with the first book, I enjoyed the story more than the characters; although I thought they came off a little better here—especially Emily, who wasn't making so many amateurish mistakes.
Fawcett once again did a good job at incorporating faerie lore into the story, although I still think the journal format is a pointless affectation.
I'm not just interested, but eager to read book three.
Received via NetGalley.
The first episode of season two serves as a refresher for season one, reintroducing the world of Tremontaine and getting the reader acquainted with both established and new characters.
Even though it functions as a recap, this episode is still furthering the story and developing characters. Kushner shows intrigue and gossip being wielded with the skill and flair of a swordmaster.
Received via NetGalley.
A collection of recipes inspired by popular horror movies.
This themed cookbook is well laid out and has a good variety of recipes, with required skill level ranging from utter novice to moderately skilled home cook. The recipes are easy to follow, and there are several lists—recipes by movie, movies by theme, movies by year—and themed menu suggestions that would make this handy for entertaining.
There are some really clever movie/recipe match-ups, like grilled prawns for Beetlejuice and pumpkin soup for It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, but some of them feel like quite the stretch—I can't imagine the girls in The Craft whipping up an artichoke dip with gruyère and spinach for their slumber party!
The Halloween Movie Cookbook would be a fun addition to the library of horror fans who enjoy entertaining.
Received via NetGalley.
A man dies in a car accident and finds himself reincarnated as a character in a fantasy role-playing game.
I know showing characters working to level up is an integral part of LitRPG novels, but I think Ryan Rimmel takes it too far. It seems like nearly every chapter in the book follows the same formula: recap stats, do a briefly described activity to acquire points, then spend several pages reviewing the new stats and deciding what to upgrade.
For all the time Jim, the main character, spends on character upgrades, there's very little actual character development. Add in the limited, hand-wavey worldbuilding, and I'm left wondering if an editor even looked at this book after it was acquired.
Despite my criticisms, I didn't mind reading The Mayor of Noobtown; it's brainless, but it didn't insult my intelligence. I'm just invested enough in the story to want to read book two, which I hope will have fewer freaking stats in it.
Received via NetGalley.
A vampire and a werewolf become infatuated with each other despite their species being bitter enemies.
As I was reading this one thought kept running through my mind: "Exactly how many times has the author read Twilight?"
The story is unoriginal and the two leads are juvenile assholes. Skip this and go read Anne Rice instead.
Received via NetGalley.
The inhabitants of a generation ship nearing their new planet must contend with invasive aliens in this sequel to A Hole in the Sky.
Hamilton did this really cool thing in the first book where he presented the world by showing how the characters' assumptions about everything were wrong, and how they were manipulated by an alien force. Here, there's a lot of rehashing the previous book and fighting aliens.I'm still invested in the series and want to know how it ends, but book two felt a bit like filler.
Received via NetGalley.
Two outsiders with traumatic pasts forge a strong relationship.
God, this is like peak 90s' teen melodrama. There is so much drama, angst, and floppy hair that I felt like I was mainlining Dawson's Creek.
Kidding aside, this is actually pretty good. The characters have depth and experience growth, and the art is strong. If you're looking for a well written book or just some 90s nostalgia, give Mars a try.
Received via NetGalley.