This was a solid three star book for the first half, but it had me by the end. It’s probably unfair to judge this book so heavily in comparison with another, as if it’s not its own thing, but it’s inescapable for me. Like many people, I absolutely fell in love with Semple’s second novel, Where’d You Go, Bernadette, when I read it back in 2012. My love was perhaps stronger because the book came out of nowhere. I hadn’t been planning to read it, […]
And so, lesbian Macbeth.
K, so first if you haven’t read Macbeth, um, why? Go do that. Second, this book is a pretty good adaptation of it, though not perfect. Talley translates the Scottish kings, lords, and various witches into the haunted setting of a boarding school that used to be a plantation in the antebellum south. Kings become teenage girls, witches become spirits, and what was straightforward murder in the original play becomes something more complicated here. Ultimately, this book was enjoyable, but I thought the first half […]
Thor needs to keep track of his shit.
What a silly book. At this point I think I’ve given up expecting to see anything new from Rick Riordan, and yet I’m going to keep reading his books, so I think I shall make a vow to not talk about how repetitive they are, and how he just keeps doing the same thing over and over again with variations. After that sentence I mean. In the future I shall call this The Riordan Factor and link back to this review as an explanation. It […]
Indescribably mediocre YA steampunk.
I don’t know what happened here. How a book about an alternate history steampunk WWI where one side has Clankers, and the other genetically engineered flying beasts that double as airships could be so exceptionally uninteresting and generic, I really don’t know. Also one of the MC’s is the son of the murdered Archduke Franz Ferdinand. And the other is a girl who dresses as a boy! Also, also it was narrated by Alan Cumming! And yet, my mind wandered constantly while listening, and I […]
Triple Cannonballing with Tana French
It’s almost ridiculous how easy she makes it look, writing a book this good. I don’t even know what to say anymore about her books. They are all just so, so good. And the way she jumps from character to character each book gives her room to play around with different structures and themes, and yet still stay within the framework of a murder mystery novel. I love murder mystery novels, but I don’t love these books because of the mysteries (although I don’t think […]
Saving the world for dogs.
The Android was always one of my favorite Animorphs books when I was a kid because, even before I knew what it was, I loved worldbuilding in fiction. This is one of the reasons I love serialized storytelling so much, because serialized stories (no matter the medium) are the ones that have the most room to deepen and define their fictionalized worlds without sacrificing character or theme. And The Android does quite a bit of worldbuilding in a short period of time. We’re introduced to […]
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