Book Reviews
5/31/2023‘Witch King’
Sometimes I just want to lose myself in a strange place, meet some interesting people with fascinating stories and forget about reality. Thankfully, Martha Wells is a master storyteller and has delivered an epic tale that is tailor-made to swallow me up. Her instantly relatable, always complex characters live in my head for weeks after I leave them, and her world-building is top notch.
Kai is a demon prince looking for answers after discovering he has been murdered. To find out what happened to him, why the world is so much different now than when he died, he’ll need the help of some unlikely allies and the grit to get messy, even for a demon. Vengeance isn’t supposed to be easy, after all.
I struggled to put this book down, even once. The best part, though, is the sharp, engaging and witty writing that captured me from the first sentence. I love an author who trusts me to figure out the story on my own. I dove into this one with high expectations, and it met every one. ♦
— Review by Julie Goodrich
‘Yellowface’
Unreliable narrators are a bit of a fad in the literary world, one that I don’t usually enjoy all that much. However, R.F. Kuang has this incredible habit of making me eat my words. She’s just so good at setting a scene and building a narrative that I don’t even notice when I’m hooked and devouring a story I forget I’m not supposed to like.
Athena Liu is a much celebrated debut author with everything going for her. Her friend June, however, is standing in her shadow, aching for the same glory. When Athena dies in a freak accident, June sees an opportunity she can’t pass up. Taking Athena’s manuscript and passing it off as her own quickly spirals into a tense and dramatic series of events that threaten everything June believes.
This is a dark bit of satire that is both hilarious and heartbreaking. It’s incredibly timely and powerful while also bringing up interesting questions of authenticity, the power of social media, and what culture really means. Read it, even if you don’t think it’s your kind of story. ♦
— Review by Julie Goodrich