Just as fun as the first one and resolves most of the story lines, good look at an alternate history (but with zombies).
chukg.bsky.social
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August 2026
Nice to see the story solidly wrapped up in just two books, this one really did feel like just the second half of the first one in some ways (but that would be a very large book). Fun character viewpoints, I don't know where some of this stuff is coming from though.
I liked the general concept of this but I thought it would be more of a genre novel, like a fantasy, and really it ended up more like one of those glurge type books like "The Five Dogs You Meet In Heaven". Three stars because the main character's life was drawn really well and the versions of it she visited were interesting, but the wrap-up was not very enjoyable. I think I was confusing the author with a different author named Matt. Anyway it was pretty short.
Excellent, hard to put down and seems very relevant these days. Felt a lot smaller scale than some pandemic/zombie books, also a lot more 'realistic' and personal. Very well drawn characters, especially the main two.
These are so well done and very powerful, if sometimes kind of distant -- there's history happening just off screen, but we are mostly in the narrator's head. The last hundred pages or so picked up very quickly and it almost ends on a cliffhanger...it takes me a while to read these though so I'll probably give it another few months to marinate in my head before finishing the series.
Good, slightly less horrific than the previous books of hers that I've red. Interesting setting and characters, lots of flashbacks, hardly anyone is all good or all bad.
Way too much like the Da Vinci code, but the writing isn't as good. Lots of info dumps about 'giants', some of them are 'real' and some are made up, and the characters are super cardboard for the most part. There were a few neat bits like some of the older couples, but I'm not going to hunt down any of the rest of this author's books.
This looked like a kind of generic fantasy to me, and then it started out with a huge pronunciation guide for the first several pages -- I almost put it back down. But the actual story was fairly intriguing, and it kept getting better and better as it went along. Interesting world, "elves" and "orcs" that aren't called that and aren't much like the standard ones, and a well-developed protagonist. I'm not sure what a next book in the series would be like, but I'll read it.
This was great -- I remember hearing that [a:Elizabeth Bear|108173|Elizabeth Bear|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1422586829p2/108173.jpg] was going to be writing a book inspired by James White's Sector General books and I couldn't wait. Now it's here and it absolutely lives up to that description...cool giant hospital in space with patients and staff from dozens of different alien races, but with a 21st century sensibility and with Bear's excellent character development and prose. The first book in this series was good but I like this one even more.
Amazing book, great setup and the story explores it in a satisfying way, flashing back through Addie’s history and an equally compelling modern day story. The characters are very well drawn, even ones who don’t get much screen time. I liked some of Schwab’s other books, but this is her best so far.
This was like an old-school SF novel in some ways -- a great deal of it is about future technological and societal (and economic) developments, but not very far in the future. There are a few viewpoint characters and probably one who would have to be considered a 'main' character, plus we get to see several chapters from (often unnamed) narrators in different situations, and there are some (frankly kind of weird) metaphorical seeming chapters 'narrated' by some kind of abstract concept or other. Luckily those are short and not super frequent.<br/>Mostly the book presents a lot of excellent things we can do to help slow, stop, and reverse climate change (and several less excellent but possibly necessary things), in a wide ranging narrative over several decades of this century. Several of them I'd never heard of before, and many of them are presented with 'up close' kinds of looks at the people implementing them. It is definitely overall hopeful.
This was fun but maybe a little more YA than I was looking for...it has a similar feel to Harry Potter, but luckily is much shorter (and moves faster), plus the culture it's set in is a country in Africa and it is interesting to see all the unfamiliar magic systems and supernatural creatures. (I don't know how much is taken from actual superstitions/beliefs and how much is made up for the books, but it felt real.)<br/>I probably won't look at the sequels but now I'm even more interested in reading the author's adult SF.
A bit of a change for her, in that the viewpoint character is not a police officer. I still quite liked it although I'm thinking about the ending, not sure if it was the right way to go or not.
I read an excerpt of this once that really made me not want to read the rest of it, then I eventually saw it at my local library and picked it up. The excerpt was really not very representative of the rest of the book and I enjoyed this quite a bit, some excellent "big ideas" in it, almost like old-school SF, plus the setting (real world China, mostly) is unfamiliar to me. I will pick up the sequels too.
Just as fun as most King, nice and short. Tiny little tie-in to some of his other work but stands alone on its own just fine. Doesn't really fit the Hard Case publisher very well, it literally says right in it a few times that it is a horror story.
I didn't like this as much as most of his series books, especially the ending was very unsatisfying. Had some good bits and the backstory and characters are well developed.
I am probably not the audience for these -- they seem more like young adult urban fantasy, but they are very fun to read. The main character and her friends are 'cool' but in the book protagonist way and the book goes into detail sometimes about their fashion and music, but then there are also demons and magic and family mysteries. I'm looking forward to the next one.
Enjoyable read about some things I didn't know about before -- I didn't really recognize the name of the main 'protagonist'. Seemed like there wasn't quite as much discussion of history and connections as in some of his earlier books.
This is fun, it's mostly not a serialized story, more kind of 'strip of the day' with a few 2 or 3 page stories. Then near the end there's a longer storyline (about prom). There is continuity to it and recurring characters, and the art is simple but good. The student's powers or magical abilities are mostly vaguely defined (some don't seem to have any), but some of the characters are physically unusual too. Mostly high school problems.
This was if anything even better than the author's previous book. Great story set in the early 20th century, in a world where fairy tales usually have witches, many things are more female centred, and there are secret spells hidden everywhere. Three sisters share the viewpoints, there are also labour issues, a few romances, and it all wraps up in a unique way. It doesn't seem like there could be a sequel, but I am looking forward to [a:Alix E Harrow|21154150|Alix E Harrow|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png]'s next book.