Cinder – 3.5 stars (13 reviews, 4.23 avg) I’m going to start off by saying that I’m probably not the demographic for this novel. This book has an excellent rating on Goodreads, and has gotten great reviews here on CBR. My wife loved the book, and enthusiastically encouraged me to read it. I thought it was okay. But I’m not really a fan of fairy tales, and have struggled in the past both with the romance genre and young adult fiction. So, while I wasn’t […]
Masters Programs Ruin You for Genre Reading
So I finished Scarlet during my first Creative Writing Masters’ Residency a few weeks ago, which may be part of the reason this book got 2.5 stars. True, I was having a hard time swallowing Wolf and Scarlet’s interactions before I went to the program, but after 9 days of intense seminars on nothing but writing and the craft of writing, my disappointment in these two characters solidified. But because I loved Cinder so much, and feel really terrible giving this book 2.5 stars, let’s […]
These fun fairy-tale retellings are feminist as f*ck.
The Stepsister Scheme Jim C. Hines is honestly one of my favorite authors, even though he’s never written a book that I’ve lost my mind* over. What he writes is solid, fun fantasy with a strong feminist backbone. He also seems to have a thing for championing the underdog, and writing stories that subvert traditional story-types. The Princess series, of which I’ve read all but the last book at the time of writing this review, is particularly notable as all the main characters are ladies, […]