I was so, so about this book until literally the last three pages. Don’t read them. Skip the Epilogue, it’ll just ruin the previous 300 pages. Why am I so angry about 3 pages? Because the rest of this book was so freaking good and so absolutely timely and necessary, that to be so stupendously let down in 3 short pages just felt wrong. Where was the editor on that one? But I digress, A River of Stars follows Scarlett Chen as she finds herself […]
Peony in Love
Peony in Love was, well, more the story of how a girlish obsession could turn into a one-note bit of character development. Sadly, Peony is a boring young lady, rich and well-bred, and betrothed to a rather mushy-headed young man. They meet once, never once trading identities (it’s once a night for three nights, actually, but they do so little they could have done it all in one night) and based on that, Peony is In Love. Her mild obsession with the Chinese opera “The […]
She’s a working girl/She’s single and free
All right, I haven’t reviewed in ages, so I’m just gonna jump right into it. I read Factory Girls months ago – in April, to be exact – and it has just been stuck in my craw. The book is the work of Leslie Chang, a Wall Street Journal reporter who was based in China, and spent years following the lives of women working in factories in Guangdong province. As Westerners, much of what we know about these factories come from stories about exploitation in […]
In Russia, dragon flies you
(note before I start this review: HALF CANNONBAAAAAAAAAAAAAAALLLLLLLLLL!!!!!!) At this point, Blood of Tyrants being the eighth book in the Temeraire series, I am still very much on board the Temeraire train, but reading all of them in a row without the benefit of waiting between books (other than brief stints when the library is out of copies of whatever’s next) has meant that a certain fatigue has set in. I think I said in an earlier review that Novik has an incredible way of […]
Temeraire Down Under
Let’s be real: Temeraire is the Forrest Gump of dragons. He goes everywhere, just when the action where he happens to be is most important. World history hinges on his behavior. He meets all the famous people and gets to be on a first name basis with all of them. And we get to go with him and see the entire world. THE ENTIRE WORLD! This time, we get on a dragon transport and travel with Will Laurence and Temeraire to Australia. Having had a […]
Never get involved in a land war in Asia
I will admit, I thought I might be out-smarting these books, with the formula all figured out, but this one, the third in the “Temeraire” series, totally took me on a ride. Delightful, surprising, and exciting. Well played, Novik. Black Powder War bothers with barely any passage of time after Throne of Jade. The company is still in China, preparing for travel back to England, when natural disaster and politics coincide and intervene, causing Laurence and Temeraire to take their scrappy crew of aviators overland […]
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