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Silence of the Soleri by Michael Johnston
I gave a 2½-star rating for Michael Johnston’s Soleri, and was hoping to see some improvement in the sequel, Silence of the Soleri (2021). Unfortunately, the book tipped in the other direction, so much so that I gave up at the halfway point. As usual with DNF reviews, this will be brief.
The problems here were pretty much the same as I noted in my review of book one.
February 9th, 2021. Bill Capossere´s rating: 0.1 | Michael Johnston | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
The Absolute Book by Elizabeth Knox
The Absolute Book by Elizabeth Knox has a lot going on in it, but too little of it, unfortunately for me, captured my interest or attention and so I ended up giving up about 40% of the way through.
Taryn Cornick’s sister died years ago after being struck by a car — apparently purposely, though it’s unclear. Now, with the driver soon to be getting out of prison, Taryn meets a strangely compelling hunter known as The Muleskinner,
February 1st, 2021. Bill Capossere´s rating: 0.1 | Elizabeth Knox | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | no comments |
Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo
Galaxy “Alex” Stern (the name courtesy of her hippie mother) seems an obvious misfit at prestigious Yale University. Wealth, athletic talent and academic stardom are nowhere to be found in Alex’s life. Instead she’s a high school dropout with a history of dead-end jobs and drug use, and the survivor of a traumatic multiple homicide. But she has a rare talent that to date has brought her nothing but grief: Alex sees the ghosts of dead people.
As it turns out, that talent is highly useful to Yale’s eight elite secret societies,
December 29th, 2020. Tadiana Jones and Marion Deeds´s rating: 0.1, 4 | Leigh Bardugo | Horror | SFF Reviews | 4 comments |
How to Fracture a Fairy Tale by Jane Yolen
One year after Tachyon Publications published The Emerald Circus, a collection of Jane Yolen‘s fantastical short stories based on various fairy tales and legendary people (both fictional and real), it has followed up with a similar collection, How to Fracture a Fairy Tale (2018). Like The Emerald Circus, this is a compilation of Yolen’s older, previously published stories, spiffed up with new author’s notes in which Yolen briefly discuss each story and how she “fractured” it with significant departures from its original source material.
December 4th, 2020. Tadiana Jones and Skye Walker´s rating: 0.1, 3 | Jane Yolen | Short Fiction | SFF Reviews | 2 comments |
Vagabonds by Hao Jingfang, translated by Ken Liu
I really tried to give Hao Jingfang’s Vagabonds (2020; translated by Ken Liu) a fair shake, pressing on even though I’d had problems with the book relatively early. And I think, given that I just about reached the halfway point (48% according to by Kindle), I did give the book a decent enough chance to win me over. But I just couldn’t push myself past that 50%, despite some intriguing ideas.
In the world of Vagabonds,
April 14th, 2020. Bill Capossere´s rating: 0.1 | Hao Jingfang | Stand-Alone | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
A Heart of Blood and Ashes by Milla Vane
A Heart of Blood and Ashes (2020) is the first book in Milla Vane’s A GATHERING OF DRAGONS, a supposedly romantic fantasy about a barbarian warlord named Maddek who is searching for a princess named Yvenne who appears to be responsible for his parents’ death. Maddek’s council has instructed him to stay out of the matter because they value the alliance between their country and the princess’s, but Maddek wants revenge, so he ignores his council.
March 26th, 2020. Kat Hooper´s rating: 0.1 | Milla Vane | Audio | SFF Reviews | no comments |
The Broken Crown by Michelle West
I listened to 19 hours (60%) of the new audio version of Michelle West’s The Broken Crown before giving up. The Broken Crown (1997) is the first novel in West’s SUN SWORD series which contains six books that add up to a whopping 4,803 pages. After getting through 458 of these pages and feeling absolutely nothing, I was dreading the remaining 4,345. I decided to quit.
Many readers love long,
February 24th, 2020. Kat Hooper´s rating: 0.1 | Michelle Sagara West | Audio | SFF Reviews | 6 comments |
Wild Country (2019) is the seventh book in Anne Bishop’s series THE OTHERS and, also, the second book in her THE WORLD OF THE OTHERS series.
In Bishop’s fictional universe, the world is made up of humans — who, near as I can tell, are mostly descended from white Europeans — and the “terra indigene,” also called The Others, monstrous creatures with the outward appearance of human beings and who are, apparently, the indigenous peoples of the American continents,
March 5th, 2019. Jana Nyman´s rating: 0.1 | Anne Bishop | SFF Reviews | 9 comments |
Archenemies (2018) is the second installment in the popular YA trilogy RENEGADES, by Marissa Meyer. The story revolves around a team of superheroes who police Gatlon City against crime. In Gatlon, superhuman powers abound and their possessors have polarized int two antagonistic groups — The Renegades and The Anarchists. With names like that, you may have a difficult time knowing which are the good guys and which are the bad — and that’s kind of the point.
February 13th, 2019. Taya Okerlund´s rating: 0.1 | Marissa Meyer | Young Adult | SFF Reviews | 3 comments |
Legendary (2018) is the second novel in the CARAVAL trilogy. The third novel, Finale, is due out in May of 2019. I entered this series midstream, after sisters Donatella (Tella) and Scarlet have escaped their father’s controlling grip and freed themselves from the hold of their first Caraval competition. Now Tella is about to dive back into the stream for the sake of a debt she incurred in Caraval.
December 4th, 2018. Taya Okerlund´s rating: 0.1 | Stephanie Garber | Young Adult | SFF Reviews | 1 comment |
Pretty challenging book. Cut by half, speed up the cadence. Trying to figure out the plot, the main point of…
Thanks for the kind words, Marion! Coming as they are from a professional writer, they are much appreciated!
Wonderful review, Sandy.
The "body count" bothered me a bit less because being dead seemed more like an inconvenience than anything else... unlike…
Detailed, thoughtful review, Bill. I'm going to read it for two reasons. First, Karen Russell wrote it, and second, it…