Books

Written by Michelle Paver, Dark Matter is a by-the-books horror novel that could have used many more pages to develop its characters and themes. The protagonist is Jack Miller, a middle-class young man who hates his job as a clerk and is in desperate need of a purpose. So, when the opportunity of becoming a wireless operator in an expedition …

Written by Raymond E. Feist, Magician: Apprentice is a fantasy novel that presents a familiar universe, built on genre tropes, with a story with wasted potential, suffering from some shallow worldbuilding and a highly problematic climax. The book follows a young orphan named Pug and his best friend, Tomas, who see their lives drastically change the moment they come across …

Memories of Ice, the third volume of The Malazan Book of the Fallen series, further expands the scope of the main story. Although the narrative is less careful about exposition than in previous volumes, it makes up for this with the complexity of its storylines and character arcs. The story returns to the main characters of Gardens of the Moon at …

This review contains spoilers. A crime thriller written by Stephen King, The Outsider has a great start, pushing its characters to their limits while making them face questions regarding the limits of reason and, paradoxically, the terrible consequences of acting based on emotions alone. Its second half, however, brings the pacing to a halt, with the introduction of an uninteresting …

Shift is a pointless prequel to the great dystopic world of Wool, choosing to put its focus on all the wrong places: instead of building on the fascinating discussions of its predecessor and crafting an engaging story, it decides to spend a lot of time explaining pointless things about its worldbuilding and grinding the pace to a halt with fan …

Set during the Hundred Years War, The Archer’s Tale, the first book in the Grail Quest trilogy, is much more concerned with describing the great battles of the time than with telling a proper story, whose main plot is so uninteresting that it gets ignored even by its own characters. Thomas, the protagonist, is the son of a priest in …

At a time when the current president of the United States is known for frequently making xenophobic statements and policies, a work like American Gods becomes even more relevant: by presenting a pluralist America, this urban fantasy novel unveils the hypocrisy and monstrosity of those positions, tracing an overview of the multiplicity of peoples and beliefs that make up the …

Mechanique: A Tale of the Circus Tresaulti, Genevieve Valentine’s first novel, is a different and ambitious book, presenting a strange world with a fascinating style. The Circus Tresaulti is known for its extraordinary members: people who have had various parts of their body – such as their legs, eyes, or even their heart – replaced by gears, scrap metal, and …

Deadhouse Gates, the second volume in Steven Erikson’s The Malazan Book of the Fallen fantasy series, is an even better book than the first one. Beautifully structured and written, the novel offers an incredibly pessimistic story with a wide range of tragic characters, whose arcs always come back to the same question: how to face the horrors of violence? The story …

The Damned, a horror novel written by Andrew Pyper, works better than the author’s previous foray in the genre: although it’s still full of problems, the book at least has a better protagonist than The Demonologist and a more efficient structure. The story follows Danny Orchard, a man who was pronounced dead for a few minutes during a fire when …