Libromancer's Apprentice

Alright ya'll. Spoilers ahead. And a bunch of grousing. If you want my spoiler free and more neutral review, please check out my original review here: https://libromancersapprentice.blogspot.com/2020/03/book-review-peace-talks.html Alright... spoilers and complaints below the cover art. What I can say about Peace Talks  is that I did race through it, but I need to mitigate that with the fact that I kept finding my eyes sliding over whole passages without really absorbing any of it.  The writing isn't quite as tight or as connected as his last few novels, with the parts struggling to add up to a whole that led to unintentional skimming.  This was most noticeable in the power fantasy level descriptions of Harry and in a lot of the combat scenes.  By "power fantasy" descriptions I mean the fact that it's mentioned that he can now bench press a truck, which sure, is super strong, but there's been so many other better "show, don't tell" examples of ho...

Harrow the Ninth (Locked Tomb #2) / Tamsyn Muir This book people. This book. Where to start? At the beginning, I suppose.  Or a little bit further than that with Gideon the Ninth . "In the myriadic year of our Lord -- the ten thousandth year of the King Undying, the kindly Prince of Death! -- Gideon Nav packed her sword, her shoes, and her dirty magazines, and she escaped from the House of the Ninth." Gideon is sarcastic, irreverent, and stubborn.  She's in your face and demands your attention, tempestuous and bold.  We start with a laugh as we dive into this twisting murder mystery adventure about lesbian necromancers in space.  We end with tears. "One flesh, one end." The prologue is titled "The Night Before the Emperor's Murder," told from a second person narrator that makes it very clear that something is rotten in the state of Denmark. Next we get the parados (from Merriam-Webster : "t he first choral passage in an ancient Greek dram...

A Deadly Education (Lesson One of the Scholomance) / Naomi Novik You ever finish a book and end up furious that it's over?  That there's not more?  That you have to wait for the next book to come out? Yeah, that's me with this book. The fact that I got to read this book several months early just makes it worse, because it means I have to wait that much longer for book two. I wanted to throw my phone across the room in frustration that I'd read the last page and there was no more to read. Don't get me wrong.  I knew there was going to be at least a second book, if not more, and not just because the cover says "Lesson One."  You can tell early on that this is a story too big for a single book. When the story gets started you're OK that it's not going to be contained to this single volume, but then before you know it the story is barrelling forward and you're caught up in the action.  You can see the end coming, the story arc is utterly satisfy...