Book Reviews Archives

Thriftin’ for Gamebooks: 7 Good and Great Titles

A gamebook: you can read it and play it.

Whenever I go to a thrift store or find a Little Free Library, I am on the prowl for playful, gamey fiction. While I haven’t found much, I have uncovered some surprisingly nice titles.

Hide No More: The Masquerade Trope in Fantasy Fiction (And How Elatsoe Kills It)

When people recommended the young adult novel Elatsoe to me, it was never as a quirky take on a fantasy world. That’s what it is, though: a modern America with spirit summoners, vicious vampires, and fairy children as its typical citizens. Magic is a known factor that makes travel convenient, complicates crime scenes, causes fantastical global warming.

Rather, the book was introduced to me as a story about grief, healing, and ghosts that features a Native lead. This is also a true statement about what Elatsoe is. What interests me about the discrepancy is how people don’t see a need to mention the setting, bizarre though it may be. Seemingly nobody is saying, “Brace yourselves, because this story has kind of an unusual world…”

That must be because the setting’s not so weird after all. Not since approximately 2005.

Review: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Pt. 2/2)

Pt. 7.5 of The Harry Potter Readstravaganza

Intro (Pt. 0)
Reviews:
Book 1 · 2 · 3 · 4 · 5 · 6 · 7 (pt. 1 + 2)
Book Covers:
Special Editions · International (pt. 1 + 2)

Thank you for tuning in once more to read my words galore. I have a little something-something to show you before I go on. Something I missed.

Review: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Pt. 1/2)

Pt. 7 of The Harry Potter Readstravaganza

Intro (Pt. 0)
Reviews:
Book 1 · 2 · 3 · 4 · 5 · 6 · 7 (pt. 1 + 2)
Book Covers:
Special Editions · International (pt. 1 + 2)

When I opened this book, I had a strong feeling that I’d already seen the best this series has to offer. But I was wrong, because this book contains what I believe to be the best joke in the entire series.

This book is the first (and therefore only) one in the series where the characters are allowed to curse. The character who throws the first (and only) “bitch”: none other than Mrs. Weasley.

Review: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

Pt. 6 of The Harry Potter Readstravaganza

Intro (Pt. 0)
Reviews:
Book 1 · 2 · 3 · 4 · 5 · 6 · 7 (pt. 1 + 2)
Book Covers:
Special Editions · International (pt. 1 + 2)

“That old man’s still not dead?”

Just one of my reactions to this epic tome.

Review: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

Pt. 5 of The Harry Potter Readstravaganza

Intro (Pt. 0)
Reviews:
Book 1 · 2 · 3 · 4 · 5 · 6 · 7 (pt. 1 + 2)
Book Covers:
Special Editions · International (pt. 1 + 2)

It turns out that the first major consequence of Lord Voldemort’s return to power is the institution of the No Wizard Left Behind program.

Review: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

Pt. 4 of The Harry Potter Readstravaganza

Intro (Pt. 0)
Reviews:
Book 1 · 2 · 3 · 4 · 5 · 6 · 7 (pt. 1 + 2)
Book Covers:
Special Editions · International (pt. 1 + 2)

If Prisoner of Azkaban was “darkness to light,” then Goblet is a search for balance.

First Impressions: Pyrebound (A Web Novel)

Since time before record, the worlds of Ki and Kur have been entangled. Every fourth day, the boundaries of space and time are disturbed, so that each world is seemingly transposed with the other, and an alien sun rises in its sky, with catastrophic results. The light of Kur’s star is deadly to the life of Ki, and vice versa; every contact between the creatures of the two worlds likewise produces only violence, corruption, and decay. Yet contact is frequent enough, on the fourth day when the barriers put up by nature are thin and porous. Over many years each world has been colonized by invaders born under its enemy’s sun, spreading disease and death.

Civilized life still exists on Ki, but only at great cost. For those who are unwilling or unable to pay that price, there are other ways to live as well—but they are far from pleasant.

This is a review of chapters 1-3 of Pyrebound, a fantasy novel originating as a web serial. When this post was first written in May 2019, it was still publishing

Review: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

Pt. 2 of The Harry Potter Readstravaganza

Intro (Pt. 0)
Reviews:
Book 1 · 2 · 3 · 4 · 5 · 6 · 7 (pt. 1 + 2)
Book Covers:
Special Editions · International (pt. 1 + 2)

I was wrong. This isn’t Matilda: The Fantasy YA Series. It’s Rugrats: The Fantasy YA Series.

Think about it.

Review: Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (…or Sorceror’s)

Pt. 1 of The Harry Potter Readstravaganza

Intro (Pt. 0)
Reviews:
Book 1 · 2 · 3 · 4 · 5 · 6 · 7 (pt. 1 + 2)
Book Covers:
Special Editions · International (pt. 1 + 2)

Disclaimer: I don’t like J. K. Rowling, nor do I endorse her. I’m analyzing, critiquing, and mocking a book series which remains relevant because it’s been a pop cultural tour de force as long as I’ve been alive.

Never again will I wonder what Matilda would be like as the first book of a seven-part series. It is here before me: Harry Potter and the Sorcerolosopher’s Stone.

This is a good, upstanding, morally upright adventure. It gives me the impression that J. K. Rowling respects kids’ intelligence and urges them to trust their instincts, even when their hunches aren’t totally right.

There’s a part, though, where the narration says something like “maybe Harry was imagining things, but Slytherin didn’t seem very nice.” In this case Harry’s instincts are totally right, because all of Slytherin is so evil and awful. Prove me wrong.