It may help to understand human affairs to be clear that most of the great triumphs and tragedies of history are caused, not by people being fundamentally good or fundamentally bad, but by people being fundamentally people. I cannot emphasize enough how much of a treat Good Omens is. Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett will also tell you how much of a treat it is. They will tell you in their introduction and their afterward how much they wrote it for the love of it […]
Not Your Sunday School Angel
Raphael by R.A. MacAvoy (1984) – Satan, disgusted at being cast out of heaven and forced to dwell on the lower planes among humans, blames his brother Raphael. He has a plan to bring him to ruin by using a young lute-player and friend of Raphael’s to force the angel to lower his heavenly defenses. Saara, a powerful witch watching over Gaspare, holds the Liar to blame for killing Gaspare’s teacher and her lover, and attacks when Satan shows up in her lover’s form. She […]
Too much old, not enough new in the Box
The Everything Box got a lot of attention when it first came out, but I’ve only just now gotten to it. I don’t quite understand what all the hype was about. Yes this is an entertaining adventure story with amusing characters, but I didn’t love it. I enjoyed it, but it just wasn’t as awesome as I was hoping. 3.5 stars. First, it’s so strongly reminiscent of Good Omens (by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman) in terms of characters and plot that it comes off […]
The continuing adventures of the freakishly beautiful supernaturals
3.5 stars This is book 9 in a series. It’s really not the place to start. If you want to join in at the beginning, start with Angels’ Blood. Two years have passed since the last book in the series, and Elena is slowly growing stronger, even though she’s virtually a baby in angel terms. The Cascade seems to be on hold, and all the archangels are trying to investigate what exactly is going on in China in the murderous Lijuan’s territory. Has she gone […]
The Blandest of Ashes
This review is for the audiobook version of The Beautiful Ashes, by Jeaniene Frost. It’s the first in a series by the same author as The Night Huntress series, which was a fun read. The new one, not so much. The heroine is kind of blah. She’s really young, really inexperienced, and kind of wishy washy sometimes, which I guess I was too when I was 20. Following the disappearance of her younger sister and the sudden death of her parents, Ivy Jenkins goes searching […]
The stupidity we need right now, but maybe not the stupidity we deserve
So, arguably not the timeliest of reads, considering this is a Christmas-themed novel and it’s February. But there’s no way I’m going to remember to review this come December, and it’s not my fault I read it in February. I can only read what the audiobook people send to me when they do; and despite how I order my list, they seem determined to fulfill it on their own whim! However, despite it being unseasonable, this book is so great it doesn’t matter. If […]