Started: 12/1/18
Finished: 12/2/18
Third in the Wayward Children series. The first book set up the premise (which is great). The second and third explore some of the worlds and follow some of the first book’s characters. I still love these books, both for the ideas and the characters. These are some real teenagers going through some real emotional issues.
Started: 11/27/18
Gave up: 12/1/18
Someone visits people before Death does. Could have been good, but there’s no plot (I got a quarter of the way in – nothing) and the main character isn’t interesting enough to carry the book without a sense of purpose to what action there is. Gave it up.
Started: 11/23/18
Finished: 11/27/18
Young adult novel with a little time travel, a little magic, and some linked narratives. Mostly set in East Germany in the late 80s, which is a setting I don’t think I’ve ever read before. Pretty good!
Started: 10/11/18
Gave Up: 10/13/18
I’d been looking forward to reading this – grimdark fantasy series with a mercenary army – but the writing style was impossible. I wasn’t getting any information about the characters, the action scenes were muddled. I couldn’t tell what was happening, who it was happening to, or why I should care. Good reasons to give up reading it.
Started: 10/10/18
Gave Up: 10/11/18
This sounded like fun – the gates of Hell open, demons possess most humans, and the only ones saved are those who make it to cathedrals which are being guarded by the gargoyles who came to life. I couldn’t get into it. The characters didn’t grab me and the dialogue was annoying.
Started: 9/5/18
Finished: 9/7/18
A well-off Victorian teenager with a bad attitude goes on an adventure with his best friend (who he’s secretly in love with) and his sister (who is awesome and gets her own sequel).
Started: 8/17/18
Finished: 8/24/18
Sequel to Six of Crows, nice wrap-up to that story. Adventure, heists, magic, plots within plots – good stuff.
Started: 8/16/18
Gave up: 8/17/18
Interesting premise: Victorian missionaries travel to the lands of the Fae to try to convert them to Christianity. Our protagonist’s brother never returned, so she heads there to try to find him. And then nothing happens. For a long time. So I gave up.
Started: 8/7/18
Finished: 8/11/18
LOVED this. The Civil War got interrupted by the zombie apocalypse, and while slavery technically ended (because everyone is needed to fight zombies), really all the former slaves got drafted to be the front line in the fight against the zombies. Young adult, really strong voice, great main character. I think (I hope) there will be a sequel.
Started: 7/29/18
Finished: 8/7/18
Really good, really interesting, but a little tough to start. Once I was in, though, I was all the way in. The magic is super weird but in a good way, and at the same time, this is set in our future.
Started: 7/17/18
Finished: 7/21/18
I’m really not sure if I liked this. It was interesting, and there’s an open question about the abilities the kid had (Did he actually have them? Did those things really happen?), but aside from that, it’s about a teenager, his relationships, and his eating disorder.
Started: 7/12/18
Finished: 7/17/18
Entertaining, but not great. Superheroes are a thing, but the main character is the assistant to one of the heroes because she’s afraid of her own powers and blah blah blah. It wasn’t exactly gripping.
Started: 7/6/18
Finished: 7/12/18
It’s a Baba Yaga story, it’s an Alice in Wonderland story, and of course it’s neither of those, but it was really good, and I really enjoyed the characters.
Started: 7/4/18
Finished: 7/4/18
I’m not sure I liked this novelette. The magic was odd, the setting was interesting, but I didn’t get enough background or explanation to get into the story.
Started: 7/1/18
Finished: 7/3/18
I loved this book. It’s fantasy – boy finds himself in a land with elves and mermaids and so on, which is always good for me – but the characters (all teenagers, followed from age 13 to 18) are written so realistically it’s easy to forget this is fantasy. (Fantasy novels don’t always do characters justice.)
Started: 6/24/18
Finished: 6/26/18
This version of Snow White is Native American and lives in the American West, around the Gold Rush period. It’s a neat way to look at the story, but I can’t say I really liked it. It’s more a style issue than a story issue for me.
Started: 6/17/18
Finished: 6/23/18
First book in the October Daye series. I love all things Seanan McGuire, so it’s no surprise I enjoyed this. There are at least 10 books in the series already, and I’m looking forward to reading them all. Fairies, detectives, alliances, set in the present day. My cup of tea.
Started: 6/13/18
Finished: 6/15/18
This is silkpunk, which I believe is Asian steampunk, with some tech, some magic, a twin fated to die with the other determined to save them both. It’s an intro to the author’s novel-length series, but I’m not in a hurry to read those. Good, but not for me.
Started: 6/10/18
Finished: 6/12/18
Second book in The Withrow Chronicles. Withrow has a mystery to solve. More enjoyable than the first, since it wasn’t broken up into three distinct parts.
Started: 6/4/18
Finished: 6/7/18
This starts out kind of like a Beauty and the Beast story, but it gets weirder fast and in a very good way.