Whoa boy. I’ve read all three books of Jeff VanderMeer’s Southern Reach trilogy, and I still don’t know how to describe them. I heard about them after they won some fantasy award, but they’re not quite fantasy. They’re in part sci-fi, dystopian and mystery, but those labels don’t really mean much to the book. The people tasked with solving the puzzle of the mysterious Area X know that they’re never going actually solve the mystery. They’re just hacking away at what they can. And we […]
Not a very shiny star…
Nora can usually be counted on for a halfway decent trilogy. Sure, it’s predictable. Sure, the timeline of true love is sped up. Sure, there’s always some Horrible Danger. Sometimes it’s an otherworldly type of danger, just to mix things up, like a werewolf or a witch or something. Sure, the men are always perfect physical specimens, tall and lanky, funny, totally at ease with women in distress, and not at all freaked out at the thought of marrying what amounts to a total stranger. […]
Dreams of more Laini Taylor to read
Though not really reflected in my earlier (rather superficial, in retrospect) review, I have had a whirlwind of emotions with this series. I wrote said prior review as one piece for both of the preceding novels, Daughter of Smoke and Bone and Days of Blood and Starlight probably to avoid spoilers but also because I read them literally back-to-back: I finished Smoke and Bone and began Blood and Starlight with the same breath. As such, it became difficult to separate them for the purposes of thematic or ‘first impression’ review […]
A Fitting Conclusion to An Amazing Trilogy
This is actually book 41 for me, but I’m several reviews behind. But this book was so good, and I want to post about it, so I’m going to go ahead and post here, and then post it to my blog when I’m actually caught up because I want to keep things in order over there. I try not to reveal too much, but spoilers for earlier parts of the series. I pre-ordered this book back in January, so when I got home on yesterday, […]