The Refrigerator Monologues by Catherynne M. Valente is a super meta, feminist, hilariously sarcastic novella about women in comic books. I’ve said before that Valente can be hit or miss with me, I love her and even the misses are still fantastic but sometimes her books don’t resonate with me. This one though? This one I devoured and I am considering going back for a second helping. It’s… great. If I’m really honest, it’s probably more of a four and a half star read (partly […]
Conflicted. Still, till death.
I love the rat queens. The first book was amazing, fresh and funny. The second book was fast paced and hilarious. Before I read the third volume I went back and re-read the second one. That when I realized it was like a whole new book. I couldn’t remember anything about it at all. Apparently this series quality is deteriorating. And fast. It’s been a week since I read the third one. And I can’t really tell you what it’s about. There is a bunch […]
Girl has to fall in love with boy, and kill boy, or girl gets killed
The premise of this book, as summed up in the title, is the ultimate quandary: Pyrre has to kill seven people, including her one true love, in order to pass her final Trial to become a priestess of the death-god Ananshael, or else she must die. The problem is, she has to fall in love first. As a priestess of Ananshael, death comes easily to Pyrre and her fellow priest-assassins. She sees the beauty in it, and after all, everyone must die someday. She does not […]
More Tales of the Ketty Jay
In my last review, I talked about my experiences reading Retribution Falls, the first in a series of steampunk (or some similar -punk) novels about the pirate crew of the ship Ketty Jay. I have now read the rest of the books in the series, and will be reviewing them as a unit. Brief plot summaries of each book (each would work as a standalone adventure, I think, but of course it’s better to read them in order–and the last one relies more heavily on what has gone […]
One for Sorrow, Two for Joy
Danger in the air. Lovers on the brink. And we’re back for another magical, dangerous and hot as sin story with Lucien and Stephen in the third book of the Charm of Magpies trilogy. If you haven’t read the first two books in the series, you really need to do so or you would be rather lost – plus they are well worth reading! Lucien, Lord Crane, continues to be one of the hottest, most intelligent, carelessly elegant heroes I’ve had the pleasure to read […]
Don’t ask me silly questions, I won’t play silly games. I’m just a simple choo-choo train, and I’ll always be the same.
This is a “children’s” book that I would never, ever recommend to any child. Written as a companion piece to Uncle Stevie’s The Waste Lands, this is an illustrated version of the story that Jake Chambers buys at The Manhattan Restaurant of the Mind from Calvin Tower. He had it when he was a boy. So did Susannah Dean. And so did Eddie Dean. And none of them liked it. They all wondered if the illustrations of Charlie and Engineer Bob showed a happy train […]