This was an odd little read, but one that I really ended up enjoying. Strange to be laughing at a book with so much tragedy, but Crooked Hearts really embodies “gallows humor”. 10 year old Noel Bostock has been living with his grandmother, Mattie, in London — despite the fact that everyone else his age has been evacuated due to bombings. Mattie — a suffragette back in the day — teaches Noel new words every day, and fills his life with wonder and magic. Unfortunately, as […]
At least Graff gets a happy ending
Orson Scott Card wrote Ender in Exile eleventh out of the twelve books in the Enderverse (so far), but it actually falls between Ender’s Game and Speaker for the Dead, and runs alongside the events of most of the Shadow Series. Card says he wrote it to fill in the gaps between the war ending on Eros, and Ender becoming the Speaker that we see in Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide and Children of the Mind. However, it seemed more to me like Card had a list of all the endings he needed […]
Caitlin D — don’t read this one
A lot of y’all reviewed this one for CBR, and it seems like we’re pretty divided between loving it and hating it. I didn’t hate it, but I definitely fall in the “frustrated by this book” category. And I thought the twist was stupid, so I’m going to spoil it here — be warned. The happening and telling are very different things. This doesn’t mean that the story isn’t true, only that I honestly don’t know anymore if I really remember it or only remember how […]
Added a star just for Shadow
I feel really bad about this, but I didn’t love this collection of stories — I liked a few of them, but most of them left me feeling kind of meh. I feel like I’m betraying one of my favorite authors by saying so, but I’m sure he’ll survive. I did, however, love the final short story, which featured one of my favorite characters — Gaiman-created or otherwise — of all time. “I wonder, Are fictions safe places? And then I ask myself, Should they be safe […]