The nitty-gritty: A magical and thrilling adventure into the world of dreams. It looks as if someone has attempted to build a clock but did not know when to stop. It is a cataclysm of clockwork parts in synchronized motion arranged in the shape of a frigate. The ship has no sails, barely any hull […]
The nitty-gritty: An imaginative Pride and Prejudice retelling that will delight readers with its incredible world-building, deft characterizations and thrilling action. When I heard this book described as “Pride and Prejudice with dragons,” my first reaction was “Yes!” But then I thought, “Huh? That sounds…weird?” This was an odd book for me because of the […]
The nitty-gritty: A short but emotional story about life and death, with ghosts and witches and cats. And rats. We talk about the knives in her kitchen. She agrees to lock them in the closet for the night. Too readily: she’s not a knife girl, not Vicky. I listen to the despair and weariness in […]
The nitty-gritty: Heart-pounding horror meets a touching story about friendship and family bonds. It’s an odd thing that I start 2017 off by reading three very similar books in a row (and those reviews will all be up in the next week or so). It wasn’t planned, it just shook out that way. If you’ve […]
The nitty-gritty: A strong concept that should have worked, but for this reader, there just wasn’t enough emotional connection for me to enjoy the story. Alex was a survivor. Alex wanted the fix, and that was the deal, the box of Turkish delight to sweeten the work of professional betrayal: half a century. Standard offer […]
The nitty-gritty: Weird and wild, this is one alien invasion story you don’t want to miss. “Give him a change of clothes,” says Oyin Da. She code-switches into Yoruba where her speech is not so devoid of emotion. “I’m not going to see potential adversaries smelling of meat.” “Touch these clothes and you die,” I […]
The nitty-gritty: A fast-paced adventure, back in the exciting world of the quasing, with some new characters, old friends, and plenty of cons, deals and double-crosses. “I’m surprised a man of your qualities managed to find a woman to produce an offspring.” “For every ugly and desperate man, there is an equally ugly and desperate […]
The nitty-gritty: A luminous story filled with magic, friendship, love and diversity, beautifully written. The idea of being called Miss or Ms. or, worse, Mrs. The thought of being grouped in when someone called out girls or ladies. The endless, echoing use of she and her, miss and ma’am. Yes, they were words. They were […]
The nitty-gritty: A strange and thought-provoking story about loneliness and what it means to be human. For me, memory is not only at times flawed and corrupted but also overlapped and confused, one personality hiding parts of another, blending too, so that the selves within my head sometimes seem many-headed and monstrous or deformed and […]
The nitty-gritty: A unique tale with glimmers of magic and wonder, but with some writing inconsistencies that distracted from the story. The city was a huge place of death with very little life. He could not sense the ghosts of the dead, but they had to be out there. And what about the ghosts of […]