Ricky Pine's Blog

Blessed Water by Margot Douaihy
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The second Sister Holiday mystery benefits from a tighter pace and its Easter weekend setting - covering all three days from Good Friday to Easter itself - all in a package of less than 300 pages. And it ain’t no bunny hop of fun, not when we’ve got one priest dead, one missing (and being made to reenact stations of the cross out of order for maximum humiliation), and a mother of a rainstorm befalling New Orleans o...

House of Margins by Tlotlo Tsamaase
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book is an unforgettable masterpiece. A gripping gothic tale of colonization and cultural appropriation, set against the backdrop of an African writing fellowship that’s run by white people still hoping to capitalize on Black trauma, in a Huis that’s haunted beyond belief with the spirits slain in centuries of genocide, and presented in the style of a true crime podcast hosted by the one white Afrikaner se...

Scorched Grace by Margot Douaihy
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

The first in this series introduces a singular new protagonist to the world of the mystery genre: Sister Holiday, a rough and tumble New Orleans nun with a dark and troubled past, and still prone to various vices and sins - hell, she’s smoking right there on the beautiful cover art, an early indication of this book’s massively blasphemous style. It’s a mystery, to be sure, but it’s much less about the arson plot a...

Doing Time by Jodi Taylor
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I picked up this book thinking it would be a great time-travel adventure kind of story, and somehow...I don't know, it just fell flat for me, for some reason. The concept is a strong one - eerily predicting the TVA from Loki several years before that show first streamed on Disney+, and I'm surprised the notoriously litigious producers of El Ministerio del Tiempo didn't try to accuse Jodi Taylor of ripping them off the wa...

Remain in Love: Talking Heads, Tom Tom Club, Tina by Chris Frantz
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Talking Heads may be known for their chunky, complex music, but drummer Chris Frantz’s rock memoir is refreshingly unpretentious and straightforward. Primarily focused on the band’s early days - lots of dreadful NYC lofts to live in, grueling tours with the Ramones, Frantz meeting the love of his life in bassist Tina Weymouth - and eventually working up to Tom Tom Club as well, the...

We Are Legion (We Are Bob) by Dennis E. Taylor
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Not unlike Dungeon Crawler Carl in how a major publisher picked up the series years after it started out as an indie piece, this Bobiverse has now come to my attention as a wacky piece of sci-fi satire. Bizarrely managing to serve as the missing link between Old Man's War and Ancillary Justice, with its main character getting a new lease on life as an AI with many clones of himself in a ship's comput...

A Song Only We Can Hear: A novel about cancer, music & love by Elliot Wake
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

After ten years away from the scene, Elliot Wake has returned at last with a new book that plays just a little bit lighter than the dark thrillers he was known for when he was getting started, but it's also got a foot in the well of black comedy and a foot in the well of relationship drama. Centering on a musical young man named Cam who's been struggling to break away from...

Field Guide for the Formerly Villainous by Autumn K. England
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I didn’t realize until after I actually opened this book that it came from the author of one of my old faves from back in my bookstore ARC collecting days: The Disasters. Like that book, this one is a casually hyper inclusive narrative, this time in a cozy fantasy setting where queerness is accepted and encouraged. But there’s still a certain undercurrent of awfulness in the society of ...

The Caretaker by Marcus Kliewer
My rating: 1 of 5 stars

My friend, when he came back from Canada, bought this book at YVR Airport and recommended it highly. It seemed like it'd be perfect for me too, so I bought a copy from B&N - half price after working in my membership discount, 20% off, plus a $5 reward. After reading it, though? I'm glad I didn't pay full price, because as much as it looked like my kind of book, it really, really wasn't.

To be fair, the author includ...

Songs of the Dead by Brandon Sanderson
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This one definitely doesn’t feel much like Sanderson, aside from the presence of a strongly defined magic system. Otherwise, it feels like he’s the executive producer at best, and this is truly Peter Orullian’s brainchild, which makes sense given how hella metal it is. Laden with references to rock and metal music alike, with an angelic type character who feels like a knockoff of Castiel from Supernatural - ...