Well, I failed at my goal of finishing this series before the movie came out on August 15th*. Perhaps Ashley of past years could have finished the remaining three books in the next thirteen days (as of actually finishing the book), but Present Ashley is certainly not capable of it. *Will not now be seeing movie. Very upset at genius casting of Idris Elba entirely wasted. I was still going to give it a chance until I read they’d made Jake the protagonist and dumbed […]
Next time the Library, not Bookstore
I put off reviewing this one because I didn’t want to get my first full intentional Cannonball with a mild disappointment. I’d picked it up because I wanted something to read on a trans-Atlantic flight but ended watching Moana (cute although the songs weren’t as awesome as advertised) and Assassin’s Creed (wow, was that a bad movie) instead. I picked it up to read a few days later because the premise sounded interesting and it was billed as the first installment of a best-selling series. […]
Splash down with Ninteenth Century Evil Science
The basic storyline is thus: a group of daughters/creations of infamous literary scientists band together for self-protection and sisterhood, have adventures, and solve crimes. We have Mary Jekyll, the leader, Diana Hyde the wild and bratty little sister, Beatrice Rappaccini the beauty, Catherine Moreau the fierce one, and Justine Frankenstein the strong one. They are assisted by Mrs. Poole the housekeeper, Alice the maid, and Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson as themselves. Their main target of investigation is Société des Alchemistes, a shadowy organization to […]
Sorry Kell, I’m all about Lila
It’s been a few months since the events at the climax of A Darker Shade of Magic, and Kell is back in Red London. Having saved his ‘brother’ by binding Rhy’s life to his own, Kell is now finding that his adopted ma and pa, the King and Queen of Red London, are loathe to let him out of their sight lest harm come to him, though not for his own sake but that of their heir. And so Rhy comes up with a scheme […]
The first one’s always free
A few years ago I challenged my husband to find me a new author. He came back with Brent Weeks’s The Black Prism, volume one of the “Lightbringer” series. I loved it and instantly became a fan. Looking into him I discovered that he had previously written “The Night Angel Trilogy”. While curious to read more outside of the Lightbringer books by this newly discovered author, my TBR is deep, so I passed on seeking it out and instead focused on the books physically in front of […]
Well, this is definitely a 1970s fantasy novel.
This is a strange book to me because on the one hand I know that, while it’s not entirely a new foray into a newish genre, it’s something of an early effort for Ursula K Le Guin, but it’s not a profound extension of the genre, and in fact, it’s even a solidly good novel. It’s good, and it’s fine. But it’s also an oddly out of balance book. It’s short. It feels short when you look at it and hold it, but it also […]