Posts tagged with action-and-suspense
Misfit City, Issues 3 - 8, by Kiwi Smith and Kurt Lustgarten
When I reviewed the first two issues of Kiwi Smith and Kurt Lustgarten's 8-issue miniseries Misfit City, I groused about the flimsiness of the plot, but felt the characters and setting made up for it. Unfortunately, as the series progressed and less of each issue...
Weekly Book Giveaway: Misfit City, Volume 1, by Kiwi Smith and Kurt Lustgarten
This week we're going to be reviewing issues 3 through 8 of the comic book miniseries Misfit City, so our Book Giveaway pick this week is the graphic novel compilation Misfit City: Vol. 1, which includes the first four issues. Our review of the rest of the series will be up shortly...
The Unknown Ajax, by Georgette Heyer
First published in 1959, Georgette Heyer's The Unknown Ajax is one of my all-time favorite books. It has a lot in common with The Grand Sophy—both are stories about a previously unknown relative showing up and taking charge of a troubled family—but The Unknown Ajax, happily, doesn't feature a scene with an offensive Jewish stereotype...
Grey Sister, by Mark Lawrence
Grey Sister, the second book in Mark Lawrence's Book of the Ancestor series, combines the magical schools and super-powered children of Harry Potter, the mystical sisterhood of Dune's Bene Gesserit, and more violence and looming ice than Game of Thrones. The various elements don't fuse together perfectly, but there are some A+ ideas in play...
Weekly Book Giveaway: Grey Sister, by Mark Lawrence
This week's Book Giveaway is Mark Lawrence's Grey Sister, the second installment in his Book of the Ancestor series. I was unexpectedly impressed by the first book in this series (so good, despite a lot of stomach-churn-y bits), so I'm looking forward to this sequel. A full review will follow shortly...
Weekly Book Giveaway: Burn Bright, by Patricia Briggs
This week's Book Giveaway is Patricia Briggs's latest Alpha and Omega novel, Burn Bright. I'm hoping this cover art isn't literal, because the idea of being tangled up in thorns is legit creepy. A full review will follow shortly...
Not If I Save You First, by Ally Carter
Ally Carter's Not If I Save You First sounded like a PG-13 version of Meg Cabot's 2002 romance novel She Went All the Way, and since that's one of my favorite contemporary romances, I was pretty stoked to read it. Carter's take isn't quite as funny as Cabot's, but there's more than enough charm and action to satisfy her many fans...
Weekly Book Giveaway: Not If I Save You First, by Ally Carter
This week's Book Giveaway is Ally Carter's latest YA thriller, Not If I Save You First. I usually like Carter's books, but I'm a little confused about this cover art. Are those letters... popsicles? Candy? Jello shots? It's a mystery. A full review will be posted shortly...
I don't know about strangEST, but strange, sure.
Crimereads recently posted a list of "Fiction's 10 Strangest Crimes". I'm not sure I agree with their choices (most of which sound like they fall obnoxiously close to "...and it was all in his head!" territory), but it serves as a reminder that I do want to read Tana French's The Likeness...
Warcross, by Marie Lu
When I first picked up Marie Lu's Warcross, my hopes were simple: I wanted a less aggressively self-indulgent version of Ernest Cline's Ready Player One. This definitely qualifies (of course, it's hard to imagine a more self-indulgent version of Ready Player One), but Lu's story has problems of its own...
Weekly Book Giveaway: Warcross, by Marie Lu
This week's Book Giveaway pick is Marie Lu's Warcross, which I chose because I've been wanting to read one of Lu's books for a while, and I mistakenly thought this was a standalone. (You win some, you lose some.) A full review will follow shortly...
Tricks for Free, by Seanan McGuire
This is a unusual thing to say about the seventh book in an ongoing series, but Seanan McGuire's Tricks for Free surprised me. This story is much different in tone and content from McGuire's previous installments, but plenty entertaining in its own right...
Weekly Book Giveaway: Tricks for Free, by Seanan McGuire
This week's Book Giveaway is Tricks For Free, the seventh book in Seanan McGuire's wildly entertaining InCryptid series. After a brief but welcome detour into non-sexy cover art, my mother will be disappointed to see that the cover model is back to a bulging, ripped tank-top, but one cannot have everything...
An Extraordinary Union, by Alyssa Cole
Alyssa Cole's An Extraordinary Union is ambitious: it's a Civil War-era action/romance featuring a biracial couple, both of whom were inspired by real historical figures. (The heroine is based on Mary Bowser, the hero on Timothy Webster.) Cole doesn't stick every landing, but her story succeeds on an impressive number of fronts...
Don't understand
And the first trailer is out for the upcoming Jack Ryan TV show, based on the Tom Clancy novels and starring John Krasinski. I find Krasinski far more charming than Tom Cruise, but was this series really crying out...
Runaways: An Original Novel, by Christopher Golden
I'm not totally sure what “Original Novel” means to the bigwigs at Marvel, but that's the slightly misleading phrase they're using to describe Christopher Golden's new book Runaways. (I guess “Transparent Cash Grab” didn't fit on the cover.) Golden's book doesn't seem to be a direct relation of either the rebooted comics or the recent TV adaptation, but rather a story that branches off from an early volume of Brian K. Vaughn's original series...
Renegades, by Marissa Meyer
I've been reading Marissa Meyer's work for a long time. She got her start writing fanfiction, then wrote a series of fairy tale adaptations, then followed those up with an origin story for a famous villain...
Farewell, Ms. Grafton
I was very sorry to hear of the death of mystery/suspense writer Sue Grafton, who died last week at age 77 after a two-year-long battle with cancer. According to her family, Ms. Grafton did not wish for her books to be made into movie or TV adaptations, and would absolutely not approve of a ghostwriter...
Red Sparrow, by Jason Matthews
If you are a big John le Carre fan, but have always wished that his books featured more female characters, Jason Matthews's Red Sparrow is the book for you. I, however, am not a le Carre fan, and as far as I'm concerned adding female characters just expands the scope of a fundamentally unpleasant story to include a bunch of new targets...
Weekly Book Giveaway: Red Sparrow, by Jason Matthews
This week's Book Giveaway is Red Sparrow, the first book in Jason Matthews's espionage trilogy. If you're looking for a heartwarming holiday read... you should probably keep looking. (Sorry.) But if you need a lot of literary violence to get through the season, you're in luck! A full review will follow shortly...
I've finished my shopping for other people, so...
I was stoked to recently run across this review of Mary Stewart's The Wind Off the Small Isles, a "long-lost novella" that has recently been republished for the first time in 40 years...
Red Sister, by Mark Lawrence
Let me start with a word of warning: Mark Lawrence's latest fantasy novel Red Sister is really, really violent. Scenes include (but are by no means limited to) the execution of a child, the torture of an older woman, and the fatal beating of an animal. There's a lot to admire about this book, but readers with delicate sensibilities should take heed...
Weekly Book Giveaway: Red Sister, by Mark Lawrence
This week's Book Giveaway pick is Mark Lawrence's Red Sister, the first installment in his new Books of the Ancestor fantasy/adventure series. I'm only a few chapters in, but thus far things are looking promising (albeit massively grim). A full review will follow shortly...
This looks massively stressful.
There's a new trailer out for the upcoming miniseries Waco, which apparently is relying heavily on the accounts of two nonfiction books: Stalling for Time: My Life as an FBI Hostage Negotiator, by Gary Noesner, and A Place Called Waco: A Survivor's Story, by David Thibodeau...
Meddling Kids, by Edgar Cantero
Edgar Cantero's novel Meddling Kids is clever, creative, and funny. It is also profoundly self-indulgent and only occasionally creepy. Individual readers' mileage will vary, based on their tolerance for pointless stylistic quirks and their love for the book's many pop-culture sources...
The House of Binding Thorns, by Aliette de Bodard
Aliette de Bodard's The House of Binding Thorns is the sequel to last year's The House of Shattered Wings, a book I described as “more The Godfather than... sword-and-sorcery adventure”. In this installment, a handful of characters from the first book are still struggling to survive the mafioso-style wars between the various Houses of Paris...
As long as the John Wick movies keep making money...
The trailer is out for Red Sparrow, the movie adaptation of Jason Matthews's 2013 novel of the same name. The film will star Jennifer Lawrence, and while it frankly looks a little cheesy (and a lot like someone decided to take advantage of the popularity of Marvel's Black Widow character), I am...
Weekly Book Giveaway: The Empty Grave, by Jonathan Stroud
This week's Book Giveaway is Jonathan Stroud's The Empty Grave, the last book in our beloved Lockwood & Co. series. I'm strangely reluctant to start this book—it's a little painful to accept that this will be the last time we get to celebrate the beginning of autumn with a new Lockwood book. Where will I get my only-technically-G-rated scares now?!? Anyway, a review will be posted as soon as I accept the inevitable...
Ash and Quill, by Rachel Caine
Ash and Quill is the third installment in Rachel Caine's The Great Library series. In these books, the world's knowledge is jealously hoarded by the all-powerful Great Library. Caine's protagonist is a book smuggler-turned-Great Library soldier named Jess Brightwell. Jess and his small band of allies have recently escaped from the Library's clutches, but soon find themselves in an even worse situation...
Women in refrigerators (or snow, in this case)
The trailer is out for the upcoming film adaptation of Jo Nesbo's The Snowman. I have a policy of avoiding movies with trailers that start off with an attractive young woman being chased through a dark/snowy/isolated landscape by an unseen assailant*, so...