Tag Archives: library book

Book Review of The Twilight Pariah, by Jeffrey Ford

I borrowed a copy of Jeffrey Ford‘s The Twilight Pariah from my local library.

Description from Goodreads:
All Maggie, Russell, and Henry wanted out of their last college vacation was to get drunk and play archaeologist in an old house in the woods outside of town. When they excavate the mansion’s outhouse they find way more than they bargained for: a sealed bottle filled with a red liquid, along with the bizarre skeleton of a horned child

Disturbing the skeleton throws each of their lives into a living hell. They feel followed wherever they go, their homes are ransacked by unknown intruders, and people they care about are brutally, horribly dismembered. The three friends awakened something, a creature that will stop at nothing to retrieve its child.

Review:
Not bad, but I wouldn’t say it covers any new ground or anything. I appreciated that, even with the narrator being male, the leader of the gang is obviously the women. Similarly, the inclusion of an incidentally gay man (and his boyfriend) with no need to include a homophobic encounter was nice. The writing was easily readable and the editing was good. But I finished the story with a shrug, rather than a shiver.

Book Review of The Stone in the Skull (Lotus Kingdoms #1,) by Elizabeth Bear

I borrowed a copy of Elizabeth Bear‘s The Stone in the Skull from my local library.

Description from Goodreads:
The Gage is a brass automaton created by a wizard of Messaline around the core of a human being. His wizard is long dead, and he works as a mercenary. He is carrying a message from a the most powerful sorcerer of Messaline to the Rajni of the Lotus Kingdom. With him is The Dead Man, a bitter survivor of the body guard of the deposed Uthman Caliphate, protecting the message and the Gage. They are friends, of a peculiar sort.

They are walking into a dynastic war between the rulers of the shattered bits of a once great Empire.

Review:
It took me a really long time to get into this and then, once I did, it ended on a cliffhanger. So, my overall experience was a bit meh. Apparently this is a followup to a previous trilogy; something I didn’t know when I started it and might have contributed to my feeling disconnected from it for so long.

Having said all that, and having had an overall less than compelling experience with the book in general, I have to admit that the writing is beautiful, the world seems like it’s probably interesting, and I liked the characters a lot. Bear is still and amazing writer.

The Rose and the Thorn

Book Review of The Rose and the Thorn (The Riyria Chronicles #2), by Michael J. Sullivan

I borrowed a copy of Michael J. Sullivan‘s The Rose and Thorn from my local library.


Description:

TWO THIEVES WANT ANSWERS. RIYRIA IS BORN.

For more than a year Royce Melborn has tried to forget Gwen DeLancy, the woman who saved him and his partner Hadrian Blackwater from certain death. Unable to get her out of his mind, the two thieves return to Medford but receive a very different reception — Gwen refuses to see them. The victim of abuse by a powerful noble, she suspects that Royce will ignore any danger in his desire for revenge. By turning the thieves away, Gwen hopes to once more protect them. What she doesn’t realize is what the two are capable of — but she’s about to find out.


Review:

I didn’t love it quite as much as The Crown Tower, which I gave a full 5 stars. But it is still a truly enjoyable book. We didn’t see as much of Royce and Hadrian as I’d have liked (and expected), and I felt like some important events were skipped between the end of book one and beginning of book two. (I wanted to see those relationships develop, damn it!) But I enjoyed the characters we did spend time with and I liked the foreshadowing for the future plot. I can’t wait to read more of it.