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Month: October 2018

Your Favorite Band Cannot Save You

Your Favorite Band Cannot Save You

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ARC provided by the publisher—Tor.com—in exchange for an honest review.

Your Favorite Band Cannot Save YouYour Favorite Band Cannot Save You by Scott Alan Moore
My rating: 2.5 of 5 stars

Your Favorite Band Cannot Save You would’ve been a better novella if I was the right audience for the genre.

I’ll keep this review very brief. If it weren’t due to the fact that I was given an ARC for this book, I honestly wouldn’t have read it. It’s not that the novella sounds bad but more because it’s totally outside of my usual SFF read. In fact, it was so different from my reading preferences that I don’t even know what genre this novella actually belongs to; maybe thriller and supernatural but you might want to take my review for this book with a grain of salt. However, despite me being the wrong audience for the novella, I still had quite a good time with it. …

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The Black Lung Captain (Tales of the Ketty Jay, #2)

The Black Lung Captain (Tales of the Ketty Jay, #2)

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The Black Lung Captain by Chris Wooding
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was more or less on the same quality of fun and entertainment of Retribution Falls; except that it was imbued with great characterizations right from the start.

The Black Lung Captain is the second book in the Tales of the Ketty Jay quartet by Chris Wooding. A year since the events of the last book has passed and the plot began with Frey being offered a mission that will make him extremely wealthy and as usual, the mission immediately went completely wrong. Sounds familiar? Yup, I practically copy pasted my plot description of the first book. In terms of storytelling structure, there was close to zero differences with the first book. This doesn’t mean that the book wasn’t entertaining or fun to read, because they were. However, if you’re binge reading the series as I did, you’ll notice even more just how similar the structure of the story was and at times it can felt a bit draggy. The plot and actions were still engaging overall but moving forward, I really hope Wooding offers something new to the series rather than just similar storytelling structure rehashed with different names and places. …

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Vigilance

Vigilance

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ARC provided by the publisher—Tor.com—in exchange for an honest review.

Vigilance by Robert Jackson Bennett
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A powerful and terrifyingly necessary novella; I sincerely hope that it’s not prophetic.

Gun violence and mass shooting, we’ve all heard about it; it has happened way too many times for the past couple of years. I’m not American, I never lose someone close to me to gun violence or mass shooting. Even then, I found that this book was dark, terrifying, and powerful because looking at the state of the world now, I can’t dispute the chance that Vigilance would never happen. I envision this book will be even more terrifying for American or anybody who has lost someone to gun violence or mass shooting. There’s a lot of violent and strong content here. Please remember, this is a work of fiction. Try to be open-minded and let it be a wakeup call instead. …

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The Dead Zone

The Dead Zone

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The Dead Zone by Stephen King
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I finished this book over a week ago. Why haven’t you reviewed it and moved on already, you may ask? Well, I have this compulsive thing about reviewing a book immediately, so I’ve just been totally ignoring the fact that I completed it. This delay is partly due to the fact that I’ve been insanely busy and too tired to read more than a handful of pages a day, much less having time to properly formulate a response to what I’ve read. But the other cause for the delay is that mediocre books are the hardest to review. And as much as I’ve been loving King the past few years and have enjoyed binge-reading his work every October, that’s what this book was for me: mediocre. …

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Retribution Falls (Tales of the Ketty Jay, #1)

Retribution Falls (Tales of the Ketty Jay, #1)

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Retribution Falls by Chris Wooding
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

An entertaining and fun beginning to a steampunk fantasy series filled with great characters.

A few months ago when I finished Wooding’s newest book, The Ember Blade, my review was flooded with comments along the line of “I can’t wait for this one. I loved his Tales of the Ketty Jay series!” and because I absolutely loved The Ember Blade, knowing that there’s so much love for Wooding’s previous series immediately seal the deal that I MUST give this series a try; and I’m glad I gave it a go. …

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The Test

The Test

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ARC provided by the publisher—Tor.com—in exchange for an honest review.

The Test by Sylvain Neuvel
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The Test is simple in concept and smart in execution.

I’m not a stranger to Neuvel’s work. I loved Neuvel’s Themis Files trilogy and I found the last book of that trilogy, Only Human to be highly enjoyable due to the philosophical discussions that Neuvel implemented. I’m glad to find that The Test retained his relatable and thought-provoking philosophical discussions. I didn’t know anything about this book when I received it, I was only going to take a peek, and I ended up reading through it in one sitting because it was so hard to put down. …

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The Crippled God (Malazan Book of the Fallen, #10)

The Crippled God (Malazan Book of the Fallen, #10)

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The Crippled God by Steven Erikson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Epic, masterful, and scintillating in every sense of these words; The Crippled God is an unforgettable magnum opus that concludes Steven Erikson’s genre-defining series: Malazan Book of the Fallen.

11,216 pages (Bantam paperback edition) and 3.3 million words read in exactly two months and two weeks; I’m done, it’s finally over. The entire ten-volume of Malazan Book of the Fallen has been in my TBR pile for almost two years long, and now it has been read, dusted and shelved. Erikson has raised the benchmark for Epic/military fantasy ridiculously high with what he created in this series. Together with Wrath by John Gwynne and Assassin’s Fate by Robin Hobb, The Crippled God stands among the top of the best final book of a series I’ve ever read, and there’s a definite probability that it will always stay on that list.

“I have enjoyed our long conversation. What’s three and a half million words between friends?” – Steven Erikson

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Heir of Novron (The Riyria Revelations, #5-6)

Heir of Novron (The Riyria Revelations, #5-6)

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Heir_of_Novron

Heir of Novron by Michael J. Sullivan

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Heir of Novron is without a doubt one of the most emotional and rewarding re-reads I’ve ever had the chance to experience. But most of all, it’s a book that put together all the things I love about Fantasy and about reading in general: Magic, legends and myths, unforgettable characters, duel scenes, chivalrous and heroic moments and emotions. Lots of emotions.

Just take a moment to look at the book’s dedication…
…

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Dust of Dreams (Malazan Book of the Fallen, #9)

Dust of Dreams (Malazan Book of the Fallen, #9)

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Dust Of Dreams (The Malazan Book of the Fallen, #9)Dust of Dreams by Steven Erikson
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Dust of Dreams lived up to its name, the book sent me to dreamland almost every chapter.

Erikson mentioned at the beginning of the novel that his idea of a finale was so huge that the story had to be done in two books: Dust of Dreams for the first half and The Crippled God for the second half of the story. I haven’t read The Crippled God yet and because of that, I simply have no idea how all the plotlines will converge and concludes in the last entry of the series. However, I’m going to say this, Dust of Dreams to me is easily the weakest book within the entire series, even weaker than House of Chains. If it weren’t due to the fact that marks the ninth and penultimate installment of the series, I would’ve DNFed the book/series; it was that painful and boring to read. …

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Blood of Heirs (The Coraidic Sagas, #1)

Blood of Heirs (The Coraidic Sagas, #1)

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ARC provided by the author in exchange for an honest review.

Blood of Heirs by Alicia Wanstall-Burke
My rating: 4.5 of 5 stars

Emotionally gripping and enthralling, Blood of Heirs will leave a mark on character-driven fantasy fans.

I have rejected a lot of ARC and review requests (Sorry authors and thank you for the understanding) over the past three months due to my commitment to thin my TBR pile. I knew literally nothing about this book when the author approached me; there wasn’t even any reviews or cover art yet. Regardless, my gut told me to accept it and I’m gratified I did. I finished the book in less than 24 hours due to how addictive it was, and now I’m hoping that this review will be able to convince more readers to give this book a go. …

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