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The Dark Half

The Dark Half

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The Dark Half by Stephen King
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

There will be light spoilers in this review, but I tried to keep them on par with what would be revealed by the synopsis of the book. There was simply no way for me to review this while keeping every detail concealed.

King crafted something both horrifying and utterly fascinating from his frustration over the loss of Richard Bachman. For those who aren’t familiar with Bachman, he was King’s pseudonym, under which he wrote Rage, The Long Walk, Roadwork, and The Running Man before accidentally outing himself in his fifth publication, Thinner. …

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The Ace of Skulls (Tales of the Ketty Jay, #4)

The Ace of Skulls (Tales of the Ketty Jay, #4)

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The Ace of Skulls by Chris Wooding
My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars

The Ace of Skulls gave mostly a satisfying ending to the Tales of the Ketty Jay but as a volume, this was a slight step back in quality.

Tales of the Ketty Jay has always been consistently good from the first book; the third and penultimate book was a huge step up for the series in which almost every element from the previous books was improved efficiently. That’s why it saddened me to say that even though I still loved this one, I didn’t enjoy reading the majority of this book as much as I did before with the previous three books. …

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The Twilight Pariah

The Twilight Pariah

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

The Twilight PariahThe Twilight Pariah by Jeffrey Ford
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

The Twilight Pariah by Jeffrey Ford has an interesting premise and ideas but unfortunately they were quite poorly executed.

In their last college vacation, Maggie, Russell, and Henry wanted to get drunk and play archaeologist in a mansion located in the woods outside of town. During their excavation, the found a disturbing skeleton of a horned child which lead to their lives becoming a living hell wherever they go. Sounds quite good right? But in my opinion, the writing didn’t deliver any of the suspense and creepiness that books in the horror genre delivers. …

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The Iron Jackal (Tales of the Ketty Jay, #3)

The Iron Jackal (Tales of the Ketty Jay, #3)

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The Iron Jackal by Chris Wooding
My rating: 4.5 of 5 stars

The Iron Jackal greatly built upon the foundations that have been well-established in the first half of the series.

Despite having enjoyed the first half of the quartet, I was getting a bit scared that the fun and enjoyment of the series would start to dwindle in the third and penultimate installment of the series. I’m so glad to be proven wrong, The Iron Jackal ended up being the most fun book in the series so far. Unlike the storytelling structure in the previous two books, The Iron Jackal progressed a bit differently and it’s something I immensely appreciate. Where the first two books were about getting a mission to gain wealth, this book was more of a race against time to save Frey’s own life. It was more intense, more action-packed without neglecting the crucial and great characterizations, and I highly enjoyed reading the book. Don’t get me wrong, as far as predictability, the story was still highly predictable despite the higher stake; no argument from me there. However, everything was just so well-written and well-executed that I just want to continue reading regardless of knowing the outcome. …

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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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