I sit down to read A Breath of Snow and Ashes over a year after finishing the last Outlander book, A Fiery Cross, which for the uninitiated is literally just a tolerance test for how long a reader can stand the unabridged minutiae of unremarkable 18th century backwoods living, plus a sprinkling of UTTERLY BONKERS NONSENSE to trick them into believing much more is happening than is actually happening. That last sentence should hopefully provide some understanding as to why it took me so long […]
“Football is a wargame of land acquisition.”
In previous reviews of Ilona Andrews books, I’ve commented on the general superiority of both their world- and character-building. I am more impressed with their skill in this than ever upon finishing Sweep in Peace, which cleverly crosses over the Innkeeper universe with that of their Edge series. With one neat trick and a handful of universe-hopping characters, Andrews teases the insinuation that all of their series might plausibly be connected. It’s not enough for them to have those three other established series, each with […]
“You don’t feel like smiling? Then what? Force yourself to smile. Act as if you were already happy, and that will tend to make you happy.”
This book is tough. It’s centered around an emotionally devastating premise — the untimely death of a teen girl — and the tension of that mystery unfolding is coupled with a stark examination of gender politics and middle-class family dynamics. It’s the type of story that doesn’t let the reader breathe easily, as it seems too real, and, for many of us, too relate-able in a lot of ways. One minute, you feel deeply for James or Marilyn Lee, struggling with being an outsider and […]
“Here, tell me which scent you prefer. Lilies and whale vomit, or lemon balm and beaver’s arse.”
I like Tessa Dare. I know her books are derisively considered by many to be HINO (Historical In Name Only) but that’s something that’s never bothered me, personally. I like that her characters have modern sensibilities, because I don’t want to read about a hero with traditional Regency-era attitudes toward women. I like that her books each tend to have a designated Element of Silliness (see: Romancing the Duke‘s cosplayers, Any Duchess Will Do‘s terrible knitting) and in this one it’s the recurring joke of […]
Spooky and snoozy
This is the second Brenna Yovanoff novel I’ve read that, to my taste, didn’t quite stick the landing. She really knows how to set a scene around an intriguing premise. Here, that idea is that our main character, Mackie, is a replacement, a fae child that was left behind with a human family after their own was taken. In Mackie’s town, this sort of thing happens every seven years, except that most of the time, the replacement doesn’t live — it becomes sick and dies. […]
“Kate Daniels in Space”
Hoo-RAH! The Paradox series is so, so fun and so good. It’s basically Kate Daniels In Space, and as a huge Ilona Andrews/Kate Daniels fan and sci-fi/space opera fan, these books were like catnip. They center around a merc-for-hire named Devi Morris, who is the most competent, take no shit, battle trained soldier around. She’s a native Paradoxian, which makes her human but distinct from other humans called Terrans who are more closely connected in lineage to the original Earth. Paradoxians and those in Paradoxian […]
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