HALF CANNONBALL!! I don’t usually finish a book and then immediately pick up the sequel. Now usually that’s because I don’t yet own the sequel but also I tend to want a change of pace genre-wise. But in the case of The Queen of the Tearling by Erika Johansen, I had to know what happened next. Fortunately, I had the first two books in the series already on my kindle (and I’m currently kicking myself for not picking up the third when I had […]
Transgender superhero YA.
Dreadnought (Dreadnought, #1) by April Daniels
Danny Tozer has always known she should have been born a girl, and we know this on the first page. The first scene of this book features her hiding in an alley, dressed otherwise like a male, and painting her toenails; this is the only outlet she has as a closeted trans fifteen year old in an emotionally abusive household (her dad is a colossal asshole). But everything changes when her toenail painting session is interrupted by a superhero/supervillain fight. Dreadnought, one of the most powerful superheroes, is shot […]
Solid fantasy with a comfortable feel
It has been months since I last reviewed a book! Shock, horror. Partly, it’s the fault of the PhD–I’ve had some busy deadlines for my thesis, as well as the teaching that comes with it. (Marking 80 essays in essentially 2 weeks is not recommended, nor is it conducive to a happy, relaxed mindset for reading.) I also am happy to report that I finished (the first draft) of a novel myself in that time (don’t try writing a novel while writing a PhD, peoples; […]
Over there, inside the Smoke, pain was joy and anger peace. Violence was love.
The alternative world presented in Smoke is a fascinating idea, and a mix of ideas I was thrilled to be spending time with. In Vyleta’s altered Victorian England sinful thoughts and feelings are manifested as smoke that rises from your skin and leaves a unwashable soot behind. Breathing in the smoke of another can spread their feelings into you, and breed more and darker thoughts. The cleanest of people, who happen also to be the wealthiest, are seen as morally better people, and spend their lives learning […]
“Color our world blackened”
My honest rating would be more like 3.5 but since I liked the book enough to read the next one in the series, I bumped it up to 4. Brandon Sanderson does a lot of things really well. He spins a hell of an epic yarn and he writes great fight and battle scenes. However I often find his characters fall a little flat for me, which I’ll address later in the review. Overall, the first book in the Mistborn series was engaging and fun […]
The sort of book I would have liked more had I read it 20 years ago
I’m giving this book 3 stars, and I feel guilty about it. I feel guilty because I know it’s a classic, because it’s 50 years old and still going strong, because the writing is really beautiful, and because I KNOW that if I had read this 15-20 years ago, I would have adored it. 8-13 year old me, who reread books about Narnia and Prydain and various retellings of King Arthur legends year after year (and read a crapload of mediocre Catholic historical fiction in the […]