Reviews and Comments

Tak!

Tak@reading.taks.garden

Joined 1 year, 10 months ago

I like to read

Non-bookposting: @Tak@glitch.taks.garden

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Just Like Home (2022, Doherty Associates, LLC, Tom) 5 stars

“Come home.” Vera’s mother called and Vera obeyed. In spite of their long estrangement, in …

Just Like Home

5 stars

This is my third Sarah Gailey book, and every single time I finish one, I think "That woman has lived through some shit, I hope she's ok."

Just Like Home is a book about good and evil and belonging and terror and growing up and death and family, but not in the ways I expected.

Hell Bent (Hardcover, 2023, Flatiron Books) 4 stars

Wealth. Power. Murder. Magic. Alex Stern is back and the Ivy League is going straight …

Hell Bent

4 stars

A satisfying continuation of the series, but whereas Ninth House was gritty, dark, contemporary supernatural fantasy, Hell Bent is verging into YA supernatural. Which is fine, but the gritty darkness was what I liked most about Ninth House.

Children of Memory (2022, Pan Macmillan) 4 stars

Earth is failing. In a desperate bid to escape, the spaceship Enkidu and its captain, …

Children of Memory

4 stars

Content warning plot arc metaspoilers maybe? also for Nona the Ninth

The Twisted Ones (Hardcover, 2019, Saga Press) 5 stars

When a young woman clears out her deceased grandmother’s home in rural North Carolina, she …

The Twisted Ones

5 stars

This is the best/worst book to have just gotten into when a bout of insomnia strikes, so you can lie reading in a dark, silent house while the level of creepiness steadily builds, and something outside makes a tok-tok-tok noise

What Moves the Dead (Hardcover, 2022, Tor Nightfire) 4 stars

From T. Kingfisher, the award-winning author of The Twisted Ones, comes What Moves the Dead, …

What Moves the Dead

4 stars

I'm sure I read The Fall of the House of Usher at some point, but I didn't retain enough that I had any particular expectations for the direction of the plot, etc.

However, I did read Mexican Gothic relatively recently, so I spent a good deal of What Moves the Dead, once the overall shape of the story became apparent, nodding along and waiting for the characters to catch up - it gave me a chuckle to see the reference to Mexican Gothic in the author's note.

Great writing, an intriguing reimagination of the classic.

City of Last Chances (2022, Head of Zeus) 4 stars

Arthur C. Clarke winner and Sunday Times bestseller Adrian Tchaikovsky's triumphant return to fantasy with …

City of Last Chances

4 stars

There were a lot of scenes I loved, and the sequence in the beginning where the narrative is passed along a chain of serially coinciding characters is wonderful. When I read the reunion near the end, I literally exclaimed "Hahaha, yes!" As a whole, it felt a touch rambly, but I have no regrets. One area where Tchaikovsky excels is departing from (or maybe just ignoring?) genre tropes, and this is no exception.