The ideas of humanizing monsters and monstrous humans seems to be a big theme with Victoria (V.E.) Schwab. This would normally annoy me, except that she does it so well, and with variety each time. This is my third series of hers that I’ve started, and each one is different in terms of world and characters. I’m saving the conclusion of one series, A Conjuring of Light, until the end of the current semester in 3 weeks; if I don’t I’ll be buried by grading […]
Attack of the Bigfoot Werewolves
This is a much better story than some of the novels for several reasons, but suffers from some of the same old weaknesses too. First plus: Cinder stays on Luna. It turns out watching her try to learn politics is much better than her trying to save the day as an action heroine. Iko is more interesting and relatable in that role. On the other hand, the gang does not get back together; instead, we see bits of each of them, some not enough. The […]
The Art is Better Than the Story
I think a few Cannonballers reviewed the Monstress series last year, and when I saw volume one at the local comic book store, the art was so beautiful I decided to make the purchase. The art is truly stunning, a combination of anime and Art Deco (the blurb on the back says Art Deco, but I think it looks a bit Nouveau; maybe elements of both). The story itself is complicated and involves a variety of races of creatures that have a complex history together. […]
Write more, and quickly!
Damn. It’s only April and I’ve already fallen behind in my reviews, so this one’s a two-fer as I try and catch up. I read these back-to-back during some sleepless nights in Rome (which was actually a plus as far as I was concerned – I got to do tons of sightseeing while also racking up some serious reading time), safely ignorant of the fact that there aren’t any more in the series yet until I got to the end of The Hanging Tree and […]
“She was a Librarian, and the deepest, most fundamental part of her life involved a love of books.”
This book was a lot of fun, if not quite as good as I expected. I think a lot of that is due to it being consumed by world-building, as the first book of a series, so I’m eager to see if the second one improves on that as far as plot goes. “And she didn’t want great secrets of necromancy, or any other sort of magic. She just wanted—had always wanted—a good book to read. Being chased by hellhounds and blowing things up were […]
And call Alice, when she was just small…when the men on the chessboard get up and tell you where to go
I feel like I start every Insanity book with “I have no idea what’s happening”, or something along those lines. It’s just true for every one of them. Alice travels backwards and forwards in time. She’s trying to prevent the main thing that started all of this madness – the bus accident. The beginning of book 1 talks about Alice going to the Radcliffe Asylum because she crashed a bus and killed all of her classmates (including her boyfriend). Alice travels forward in time to […]