This one started out strong and intriguing, but rather than growing as time went on, it ultimately got a bit muddy throughout the second half. Overall, the tone of this collaboration between Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett is quick-witted and quirky, and would you expect anything else? However, it ultimately didn’t quite live up to the potential I felt was established within the beginning of the novel. Good Omens is centered on the apocalypse, which is to be brought about by the antichrist. But things […]
Intellectually interesting, not so much enjoyable for me.
Well, I think I’ve put this review off long enough, and it will be a short one, since our fantastic discussion last month covered a LOT of ground. The Devourers is certainly an original take on werewolves, I’ll give it that, but this book was just not for me. I get intellectually what it was going for, and in parts I was engaged, but overall, I just didn’t care. At the beginning of the book, I actively disliked it. As many have said in their […]
She said nothing. She kept on staring…
I know Gwendolyn Brooks mostly from her poetry, like most of us, and that she wrote one novel and it was this one makes a lot of sense. This is not a traditional novel. It’s mainly impressionistic, meaning meditations of a various set of ideas and vignettes and moments in the life of her protagonist Maud Martha Brown. We begin at the beginning with Maud Martha growing up and experiencing the joys of childhood, confusions at how the world works, seeing a gorilla at the […]
The Past Continues to be a Foe in the Chamber of Secrets
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J.K. Rowling, Jim Dale narrator
*Note: This review was completed in 2017 before the author’s views towards our trans siblings began to be widely known. My reading experience was what it was and these reviews will remain up, but it should be noted that I find her TERF values abhorrent, which have only become more clear over time, and her doubling down in Summer 2020 has made the decision to walk away from her as a creative force the only acceptable choice for me. I will no longer be supporting […]
Does a unique premise outweigh a flat story?
Of Fire and Stars is the sort of book I wanted to like more than I actually did. An Onion AV Club writer listed it as something she was reading and piqued my interest, as she noted that the story was a typical fantasy tale made more complex by its protagonist falling in love not with the prince she has been promised to in an arranged marriage, but his sister. The book treats the romance between Denna, the princess destined to marry Mare’s brother, and […]
Too much dry travel writing, not enough DRAGONS for my taste
3.5 stars Purported to be the first of Lady Isabella Trent’s journals, chronicling her life-long exploration of the world and its dragons, this book is a historical novel set in an alternate universe, where dragons obviously exist. I’m unsure of whether the time period in these books would be the Regency or more like Victorian times in our history, but the fictional country that our protagonist, Lady Isabella is from, is clearly modelled on historical England. We follow our heroine from childhood, where we learn […]