Synopsis: When Alice falls off a bike during spin class, she hits her head and promptly forgets the last 10 years–including her three kids and her ongoing divorce from the husband she believes she still madly loves. Review: I loved the premise of What Alice Forgot but unfortunately didn’t enjoy Alice. I found myself getting annoyed with amnesiac Alice, who seemed like a bit of a drip, and wanting to see more of the bitch she supposedly turned into.
Synopsis: As Quentin tries to make sense of a life without Fillory, a mysterious bird summons him to pull off the heist of a magical lifetime. Review: I got so much reading pleasure out of the trilogy that concludes in The Magician’s Land that I won’t wallow too much in my disappointment. Let me make one thing clear–my theological differences with Grossman have nothing to do with my criticisms of the ending of the story. Sure, his worldview is about as far from mine as…
Synopsis: In this book about Cormoran Strike, beleaguered amputee veteran turned private eye, an egotistical novelist has gone missing, and all signs point to a literary puzzle with potentially deadly consequences. Review: Listen, writing mysteries is harder than it seems. The best writers (Barbara Vine) conceal the works so deftly that you forget how necessary machinations and contrivance are to the genre. So don’t think I’m picking on The Silkworm just because I want to take JK Rowling down a peg (I don’t) when I…
Synopsis: Now a king in Fillory, Quentin Coldwater struggles with the same ennui that beset him at Brakebills, and wonders if he will ever be happy–and then he’s abruptly kicked out of paradise. Read my original review here. Review: Like with my reread of The Magicians, when I reread The Magician King I was both bowled over by the characterization and risk-taking, and overly aware of some of the contrivances and plot expediencies needed to make the story work. And again, I did not care…
Synopsis: After being hidden away for 19 years, the lawful heiress to the throne of the Tearling emerges from hiding, only to find her kingdom tarnished by an ongoing atrocity perpetuated by someone she always admired, and her life in danger from many sides. Review: Queen of the Tearling is a bold, skillful beginning to a promising series. The twist here is that the feudalism typical of epic fantasy is actually the fallout after all technology has failed. It’s futuristic and medieval all at once,…
Synopsis: Check out my review from three years ago. Review: What struck me most on my re-read ofThe Magicians was how hard Grossman was working to pull off the implausibility of his scenario. He needed Quentin & co. to be college age so that they could drink and then head out into the working world and suffer quarter life crises and all that, but he also wanted to play with the conventions of the classic boarding school story, which typically take place in high school.…
Synopsis: When Ava discovers that her autistic brother has been arrested for an unspeakable crime, she delves into her memories of their unusual upbringing by their father, an educator dedicated to radical unschooling. Review: No Book but the World had me flipping pages like a madwoman, even as I couldn’t shake the sneaking feeling that something was really hinky. The book was so well-written that the lapses really stood out, and when they culminated in a twist ending I didn’t feel surprise or relief, just…
Synopsis: Aspiring ballerina Theo’s best friend was kidnapped four years ago, and his miraculous return and the arrest of his abductor triggers Theo’s eating disorder because of a secret she’s keeping that may have been responsible for what happened. Review: Pointe is really, really powerful, not so much because of the issues it deals with (eating disorders, sex crimes against children), but because it has a plot independent of Theo’s inner journey. We’re not just watching Theo suffer, we’re caught up in the suspense over…
Synopsis: When a brilliant and ruthless scientist is asked by mutilated being to help it to fly, his research unleashes a deadly terror on the sprawling, rambunctious, decadent city of New Crobuzon, and only his belief in crisis theory may save the human and non-human inhabitants, including Isaac’s lover Lin, a khepri with the body of a beautiful woman and a scarab beetle for a head. Review: I have long passed over China Mieville out of a kind of reverse snobbery, assuming that a writer…
Synopsis: If you found a letter from your husband saying “do not open until I’m dead,” what would you do? Review: I think the fact that it’s taken me a week to write this review says all you need to know about how I felt about The Husband’s Secret. Bland, forgettable, lacking in narrative oomph… bummer.