I don’t know if it’s satisfying to call the ending of twists anymore.  I usually can, cause I’m savvy and a writer.  And I called this twist.  It’s still decent.  Everything comes to a head and eventually Jazz must face down Billy Dent and the truth of his existence.  And it’s a doozy.  And though I dug the ultimate ending, the epilogue was Harry Potter and boring as fudge.  I felt slightly cheated, but Lyga at least left the door open for more shenanigans.  Maybe […]

It comes in threes.  This nicely parallels the first two books in the trilogy, in that Allanon the Druid forces a child of the Ohmsford clan to save the goddamn world.  This time, with magic.  And this time, it’s a glorious downer, killing practically everybody.  Even ending with the whole love will conquer all, it manages to work and it’s a decent enough if rambling story. My favorite of the trilogy.

For the second book in High School Dexter but Better, Lyga goes the full Empire Strikes Back with the ending.  I like that he goes dire, although to get there, he has to take some stupid, stupid leaps.  There are a ridiculous number of players in the Game, but the reveal is clever and worth it.  I guessed it, but didn’t believe it, but still felt satisfied.  Plus, Jasper fucking hates New York, and it’s ABOUT TIME.  FUNYC.

I just recommended this series to another friend.  The Laundry Files keep getting more intriguing and clever, mining jokes out of bureaucracy and Cthulhu.  This one’s particularly captivating, as we hear a story from the perspective of Dominique O’Brien, wife of Bob and wielder of the demon-possessed bone violin.  We get into superheroes and somehow more The King in Yellow.  They must have had a fucking sale on Robert W. Chambers in entertainment these past years.  This was a great way to finish up my […]

Ugh. The Michael Bennett series.  This has some of the best villains in the Patterson franchises.  I’m talking nursery rhymes Alex Cross here.  And this one’s particularly juicy — even when the scheme goes to cartoonish proportions.  The action’s great, the mystery intense.  It’s just, they steep this series in so much rah-rah Irish Catholic, rah-rah NEWYAWK.  It gets painfully saccharine, and painfully…can you get jingoistic for a city? Because yeah, this one is so far up the Statue of Liberty’s ass, he can smell […]

These four I kind of packaged as one book, because there’s about enough to merit one single tome.  Lyga claimed a lot of these were backstory he chose to keep out of main books.  And for some of the stories — Career Day, Neutral Mask — they should have stayed on the cutting room floor.  But Blood Boy gets pretty deep and intriguing, and Lucky Day is simply excellent.  Lyga suggested reading them after I Hunt Killers (I tweeted him to ask!) and I agree. […]