Archive for the ‘Reviews of books’ Category
The Unbound Empire
{4.5/5} “She had been La Contessa for my entire life, powerful and inexorable as the tide, standing in the doge’s shadow, holding up the Empire and subtly molding it all the while. I had never really thought about what she might have been before she became such a potent and terrible being, or what choices […]
The Defiant Heir
{4.5/5} “Take this with you, and when you’re thinking of doing something dangerous, I want you to hold this button and think what I would say to you… Then you can tell the button to be quiet and go and do it anyway, but at least you’ll be thinking of me.” The Defiant Heir by […]
Star Trek: Voyager — Distant Shores
{5/5} “Neelix may have been the nominal morale officer, and Tom Paris was clearly the life of the party hereabouts… but as she watched the crew interact, Marika sensed that Harry Kim was the true heart of Voyager, a stalwart, gentle, optimistic anchor keeping the crew from losing faith or growing embittered, as their counterparts […]
The Tethered Mage
{4.5/5} “The warlock’s challenge is to keep your control. The Falconer’s is to recognize when the warlock has lost it and to make a quick and calculated judgment as to when to seal their power.” The Tethered Mage by Melissa Caruso, published in 2017 Amalia is the daughter of one of the most powerful people […]
The Story of More
{5/5} “If we can refrain from overestimating our likelihood of failure, then neither must we underestimate our capacity for success.” The Story of More: How We Got to Climate Change and Where to Go from Here by Hope Jahren, published in 2020 Jahren uses her birth year of 1969 as a marker to compare how […]
The Forgotten Garden
{5/5} “It’s going to be ours, Rose, yours and mine. A secret place where we can be together, just the two of us, just as we imagined when we were younger. Four walls, locked gates, our very own paradise. Even when you’re unwell you can come here, Rose. The walls keep it protected from the […]
The Doors of Eden
{5/5} “There were places you did not go casually that could transform you or vanish you away. There were valleys where monsters might brush your elbow, from the other side of a divide incomprehensible to the human mind. There were clawed tracks that led off in directions they had no name for, into impossible distances […]
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds III
{5/5} “When the bad memories rear up, I check to see if they have any relevance to my present circumstances. If they do, I learn whatever lesson they have to teach me. If they don’t, I summon happy thoughts and overwhelm the sadness, drowning my sorrows in joy.” (from “Dorian’s Diary”) Star Trek: Strange New […]
The Raven Tower
{4.5/5} “The office of Raven’s Lease offered many privileges and a share (along with the Council of the Directions) in the rule of Iraden, as well as the rule of Ard Vusktia across the strait. But there was a price: two days after the death of the Raven’s Instrument — the bird embodying the god […]
Ninefox Gambit
{4.5/5} “She was looking out of the window as they arced into the sky, so she saw the waiting Kel bannermoth drop two bombs, neat and precise, on the site they had just left. A day’s worth of hard battle and the entire objective rendered irrelevant by high explosives. She kept watching until the explosions’ […]