All in Book Reviews
Every now and then you see one of the self-publishing success stories, the book that did so phenomenally well that a big press will offer to print and promote it even more. Senlin Ascends, book one of the Books of Babel series, is one of these unicorns. I was excited to pick up the Orbit edition of Senlin Ascends, especially since I like off-the-wall, strange fantasies.
It's that time again readers - time to review the second book in a trilogy. Will The Well of Ascension pass the test with flying colors? Or will it succumb to the doldrums of middle book syndrome?
It's always nerve-wracking when a series you loved gets a sequel series. Will the sequel series live up to the first one? With Iron Gold, the answer is yes - though it's a radically different world we're now in.
I was told by several people that if I wanted to start reading Sanderson, I should start with the Mistborn series. If you're a regular reader, you'll know I didn't listen. The Way of Kings just appealed to my epic fantasy loving self more than the thief-with-heart-of-gold vibe I got from reading Mistborn jacket copy. But now that I'm finally caught up with Stormlight Archive, I needed a new Sanderson fix.
Much like many other millennials, I'm sure, Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials was a formative work of literature for me. Lyra was a brave, strong heroine, the kind that makes a mark on a young girl. So imagine my great surprise - and delight - at the release of La Belle Sauvage, first book in a companion series to His Dark Materials.
I almost didn't pick up The City of Brass for the very YA-feel the jacket copy gave me. I can only read so many stories of "chosen" or "special" teenagers each year. But much to my delight, The City of Brass hooked me and drew me in, and I finished the book almost in a single day.
Humor is a hard thing to write and write well, in part because you lose tone of voice and body language as means for conveying hilarity. Despite those limitations, Joe Zieja will make you laugh time and again in Communication Failure.
The books in The Stormlight Archive keep getting longer - and yet somehow they keep getting better too. I picked up Oathbringer right after its release in November, and it's my favorite Sanderson story yet.
Guess what? I've finally watched season one of The Expanse.* You know, about the same time as I finished book four of the series. Which was, like all its predecessors, a really enjoyable ride.
I saw a lot of buzz for this one, especially as it centered on a f/f relationship set in an Asian-inspired setting. Such things are rare in fantasy, so I decided to have a go. The results were...mixed.
If you enjoy strange stories and stories with a bizarre, sometimes absurdist sense of humor, you'd better be listening to the Welcome to Night Vale podcast. And if podcasts aren't your thing, then you had better be reading the books.
I've been putting Words of Radiance off because I wanted to get closer to the release of Oathbringer, the third Stormlight Archive book which released in November. Also it's huge and rather intimidating. But I finally read it in October and discovered that I enjoyed it much more than The Way of Kings.
This one kinda snuck up on me, seeing how I only recently finished the Imperial Radch series. I was able to go almost directly into Provenance, which is set in the same universe although not in the Radch itself. It's a very different animal, but it still bears Leckie's indelible stamp.
The Harry Potter books were how I realized I love fantasy, and Lev Grossman's The Magicians remains one of my favorite novels to this day, a grown-up version that was released while I was in college. So the blurb of An Unkindness of Magicians was immediately appealing to me.
So Ancillary Mercy did...not quite go where I was expecting. But I still loved it, and it's an excellent conclusion to a strong, memorable series.
When you find yourself consistently picking up the same book every time you browse the shelves at your bookstore, eventually you buy it. This is the rule of the universe that I've just made up, and also why I ended up purchasing Dark Run, a fun space opera romp.
Ancillary Sword is one of those rare books that's very different from its predecessor and yet still an utterly enjoyable sequel - in fact, I think I might've enjoyed it more than Ancillary Justice.
Fun story: in a roundabout way, I managed to acquire a copy of Godsgrave before its release. A friend from college also reviews books (though in a more official capacity for an actual publication), and she received a review copy in the mail. She decided to give this away to any of her friends who wanted it. Flash forward a week, and a lovely signed edition of Godsgrave showed up in my mail.
This week, we're revisiting the islands of Dara and Ken Liu's Dandelion Dynasty series, because I finally tracked down a copy of The Wall of Storms.
I missed posting a review last week because I knew I wanted to review The Stone Sky next. But I've been struggling to find the right words to express how I feel about this book. What follows will inevitably be inadequate, but I'm going to try. I think this book should be taught in schools across America.
