Man, this book was not good. Maybe not terrible (although, maybe terrible), but really not good. The premise was okay, but the writing was almost painfully bad. No, it wasn’t as bad as the dumpster fire that is Lola Montez Conquers the Spaniards (I’m linking to it not so you’ll read it, but so you can see the cover & know to never, ever pick it up). And it was marginally better than the very poorly written America Pacifica (again, please don’t read, just be aware […]
Is it possible to outthink yourself?
When I was reading Dark Matter, I said to a friend who was worried that I was bored (long story, irrelevant to this review), “no way, because I love my book right now! It’s got car chases, and alternate universes, and multiplicity, and science, and action, and adventure!” I’m not kidding, I had a total blast reading this book, and couldn’t wait to get back to it every time I had to put it down. It’s not life-altering literary fiction. But they can’t all be. […]
Never get involved in a land war in Asia
I will admit, I thought I might be out-smarting these books, with the formula all figured out, but this one, the third in the “Temeraire” series, totally took me on a ride. Delightful, surprising, and exciting. Well played, Novik. Black Powder War bothers with barely any passage of time after Throne of Jade. The company is still in China, preparing for travel back to England, when natural disaster and politics coincide and intervene, causing Laurence and Temeraire to take their scrappy crew of aviators overland […]
Pardon Me, My Curmudgeon is Showing
Arghhh. If this book hadn’t been on my I-pad, I would have thrown it across the room as I read the last line. I know that I’ve said this before, but I’m really getting tired of YA books that simply stop mid-storyline—to be continued. It feels alternately like a money grab (instead of giving you one longer book, we’re going to split this puppy into three parts—otherwise known as The Hobbit effect) or simply lazy storytelling. I want to simply say, “Go watch the first […]
If you read this, see if you can spot the character DWJ based off of her friend Neil Gaiman.
I love fantasy. I love stories about parallel universes or the multiverse. I love Diana Wynne Jones. So why, exactly, did I not hear about this book until February of last year? (Which is when Goodreads tells me I added it to my stupidly enormous to-read list.) I can only fathom that a Magid was at me, maybe effing around with my fate-lines or something. Oh, what’s that? You don’t know what I’m talking about? Well, I have a pretty easy way to fix that. […]