When the Moon Hits Your Eye John Scalzi I found myself disappointed by  John Scalzi 's  When the Moon Hits Your Eye . That's mainly because I was hoping for a novel and didn't quite get one. In his acknowledgments,  Scalzi  summarizes the structure of  Moon ...a book about the moon turning to cheese, have each chapter represent a day in the lunar cycle, each chapter with mostly different characters in mostly different places in the Unites States, reacting to it in ways specific to them alone... Now,  Moon  does in fact have a coherent story with a beginning, a middle, and and end. The problem is that, told as it is, in short day-in-the-life stories with mostly different characters each, it doesn't have the stakes that make a novel really interesting. We don't spend enough time with any of these characters to really get to know and care about them. That at least, was how I felt. Instead, it felt to me like a themed short story collection. Some of the st...

A Darkness at the Door Intisar Khanani ** spoiler alert ** Intisar Khanani  finished book 2 of her  Dauntless Path  series with a cliffhanger. Rae, investigating the snatchers and their slave trade, was betrayed by Prince Garrin. The book ended with Rae being locked into a hidden chamber in a slave slip with half a dozen children bound for slavery. It's a kind of success! It's the tribute evil pays to competence. Rae now knows she's been on the right track all along, and was getting close enough to be dangerous to the slavers. And now she has the best possible opportunity to investigate how the slave trade works from the inside. It was, in fact, a very dangerous step for Garrin to take, although he probably didn't see it so. He's placing a lot of trust in the slaver captain and his other subordinates. That friendless children cannot escape the slavers does not guarantee that someone who's proven herself as competent as Rae has can be safely put away. Besides, Ga...

Sunrise on the Reaping Suzanne Collins I read  Suzanne Collins 's main  Hunger Games  trilogy years ago, when it was first published. Consequently, while I remembered Panem and the structure of the Hunger Games, I had forgotten most of the minor characters. When I began  Sunrise on the Reaping  I had no idea who Haymitch Abernathy was. That worked to my advantage, because I didn't know the most important thing about Haymitch -- that he would survive. Indeed, Haymitch's death felt like a real possibility almost to the end.  Sunrise on the Reaping  could, I think, be read as the first book of the  Hunger Games  series. Haymitch is a minor but important character in the novel  The Hunger Games , where he appears as the only surviving District 12 victor, and thus as Peeta and Katniss's mentor. He's an old drunken reprobate, but crafty. (In the movie, which I watched last night after finishing  Sunrise , he is played by the reliable Wood...

His Mortal Demise Vanessa Le His Mortal Demise  is the second novel of  Vanessa Le 's  Last Bloodcarver  duology. If you've read the first novel,  The Last Bloodcarver , then you'll recognize the dude on this cover    : it's Ven Kochin, who appeared likely, at the end of  The Last Bloodcarver , to be the last Heartsooth, which is the proper word for what Kochin and Nhika (the heroine of  The Last Bloodcarver ) are. "Bloodcarver" is a slur. His Mortal Demise  has a clever structure. The first chapter is titled "NOW" and begins with Nhika, who is supposed to be dead, having sacrificed herself to save Kochin at the end of  The Last Bloodcarver . The second chapter is titled "SIX MONTHS AGO", and is about Kochin, who is trying to figure out how to bring Nhika back to life. The chapters continue thus, in rough alteration between "NOW" and "SIX MONTHS AGO," except that time creeps on in the past chapters -- before long it'...

Don't Sleep with the Dead Nghi Vo Nghi Vo 's  Don't Sleep with the Dead  is a sequel to  The Chosen and the Beautiful , her brilliant retelling of  The Great Gatsby .  The Chosen and the Beautiful  is, in my opinion, an improvement on  Gatsby . (However, to evaluate that claim properly you need to understand that I have never liked  Gatsby , so improving on my estimation of it is not a great feat.)  The Chosen and the Beautiful  was told from the point of view of Jordan Baker.  Vo 's version of Jordan is a far more attractive and interesting character than Jay Gatsby ever was. Also, there is magic in  The Chosen and the Beautiful . Aside from the ordinary, utility kind of magic everyone knows about, characters of Southeast Asian descent (including Jordan) practice magics based on folding and cutting paper. Don't Sleep with the Dead  takes place some 22 years after the end of  The Chosen and the Beautiful , in a New Yo...

The Theft of Sunlight Intisar Khanani Intisar Khanani 's  The Theft of Sunlight  reminded me of two other books that I really liked. The first is  The War That Saved My Life , by  Kimberly Brubaker Bradley . The central character of  The War That Saved My Life , Ada Smith, is a brilliant person, bold, smart, and overflowing with ambition and initiative. The heroine of  Theft of Sunlight , Amraeya ni Ansarim (Rae) is similarly brilliant. There are also superficial similarities: both suffer from talipes (clubfoot), and both love horses. There is, however, one big difference. Ada is a child who grew up abused by her mother because of her foot. She is, in many ways that matter, a broken person when the story begins. Rae's family, in contrast, supports her. She is a strong person, and her foot is just a cross she bears. The second book  Theft of Sunlight  reminded me of is a longer stretch:  All the President’s Men , by Washington Post reporters...

Mihi Ever After: Home Sweet Home Tae Keller Off the Rails , book 3 of  Tae Keller 's  Mihi Ever After  series, ended on a cliffhanger. Mihi, Savannah, and Reese rain into the Evil Librarian Ms Lavender, who informed them that they had destroyed the three gates from the Rainbow Realm. So, when we begin  Home Sweet Home , they're trapped there, with no way to go home. Will they find a way home? Well, you would probably guess the answer, even if the title didn't give it away. Yes, of course they get home. But it's a fun story. Also, it ends with a little plot twist that I didn't see coming. This is, I think, the best book in the series. Mihi Ever After: Home Sweet Home  on Amazon Goodreads review