Note: I received this ebook from the publisher via NetGalley, in exchange for an honest review. Nobody ever warned me about mirrors, so for many years I was fond of them, and believed them to be trustworthy. The beginning: That’s the first line of Boy Snow Bird, and doesn’t it remind you of how much you’ve missed Helen Oyeyemi? In her newest book, a girl named Boy runs away from her abusive father, a rat-catcher, to a small town called Flax Hill. There she meets a man called Arturo Whitman, and maybe she falls in love with him, and she…
17 CommentsCategory: 4 Stars
Am I just reading a lot of good speculative fiction lately, or is speculative fiction being extra awesome recently? The beginning: Pandemonium has a killer premise in a lot of ways. First, the basic premise baldly stated — a world exactly like ours except that starting in the 1940s/1950s, random acts of demonic possession started happening — is awesome. Second, the particulars of the premise — there are only about 100 known demons, who possess people for brief periods of time (a few minutes to a few days, usually), act out fairly consistent scenes, and then jump to another victim…
5 CommentsThe beginning: Tana wakes up after a party to find that everyone else is dead. She’s surrounded by the bodies of kids she’s known since kindergarten, and there’s a scrape of a bite on her leg that might mean she’s going to become a vampire. When she goes upstairs, she finds two people still alive: Her ex-boyfriend, Aidan, who has been bitten and is in the process of becoming a vampire, and a vampire boy called Gavriel, chained to a bed. When Tana finds them, this is what she thinks: No one else was going to get killed today, not…
34 CommentsWho among you recommended Those across the River to me? Anyone a fan of that book? I checked it out months ago, couldn’t get into it, and returned it unread to the library with a mental asterisk to return to it someday. I haven’t yet, but I did read The Necromancer’s House (affiliate links: Amazon, B&N, Book Depository), the newest book by that same author, and I thought it was great. This is lucky because historically when I’ve read a different book than the recommended one by the recommending person, it hasn’t turned out well for me. The beginning: A…
8 CommentsOne of my resolutions for the New Year was to read more nonfiction, and I have happily gotten off to an excellent start. As far as personal development goes, this is splendid, but often not so good for writing reviews. For all the extra time it takes to get through a nonfiction book, I never know what to say about them in the end. If you are a frequent nonfiction reviewer (hi, Kim!), I would be interested to know how you conceptualize and structure your reviews. Bad Pharma is my first book for Long-Awaited Reads Month, hosted by the very…
32 CommentsHappy 2014, lovely readers! I hope everyone has had a pleasant holiday. I schedule this post in the sincere hope that by the time it posts, I will be safely ensconced in my nice new apartment, having undergone no serious furniture mishaps in the process. I am terribly fond of my couch and would not like to see it harmed. The beginning: While on vacation in Majorca, Mia’s husband Frederik yells at her furiously, then falls down. When they take him to the emergency room, they learn that he has a brain tumor, which triggered an epileptic seizure. The tumor…
12 Comments