This was another novel that I read because it was up for an award (The Locus, if I recall correctly). Comparisons to Susannah Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell seem to turn up in the description, but other than being set in the 19th century and meticulously researched, they don't have all that much in common. Clarke wrote an honest to goodness Victorian novel, despite not having been born to the time. Hobson did a good job setting her novel in the 1800s, but did not recreate the era stylistically.
In terms of setting and world building, Hobson's novel is quite good. She has a great handle on what the world her characters were living in would have been like and, while there are the inevitable moments of 21st century feminist sensibilities that creep in, they fit fairly well in context of the novel and can be explained by its alternate universe aspect.
What annoyed me the most was when I realized I was reading a trashy romance novel. This critique independent of whether or not there is any romance in the story. While there was all this great, creative stuff going on with magic and the magical aspects of this America, there was this incredibly predictable and banal love story blocking my view. I use the term trashy romance novel because those novels almost always follow a certain pattern and the rate at which the heroine meets the hero, hates the hero, comes to respect the hero, loves him, finds out something horrible and decides to give him up only to be united happily with him in the end is pretty consistent from one book to the next. There are exceptions, and I love when a good (especially a good trashy) romance novel subverts my expectations, but this book, at least for the romance plot, trod neatly along the well-worn path and it bothered me. I felt a bit cheated - here was this new book that had these great ideas and research and the author couldn't even borrow a little of that creativity for the love story? Just a little? There were so many excellent sf&f books up for an award this year that had, or even focused on the development of a romantic relationship between the main characters, and they felt new and fresh and brilliant.
Native Star was definitely a good offering and, if I'd known what I was getting into, I might have enjoyed it more because I would not have had all these expectations that were disappointed.
This was not a bad book, not by any stretch of the imagination. It just wasn't as good as I was expecting.

Another beautiful retelling of a class fairy tale courtesy of Robin McKinley. I was even more impressed by this one than by Beauty, since Sleeping Beauty is such a flat and boring character in her own story. That doesn't stop McKinley, though, from turning her into a heroine worthy of having her tale sung.

This was my bus book for the past month or so (i.e. the book I pull out on public transportation) and, while I'm not entirely sure it was meant to be read in 40 minute chunks, I certainly enjoyed it.
Davidson is brilliant at being inviting, engaging and inspiring--the stories and research she weaves together throughout this book make me want to leap up and change the world. Without ever falling into the realm of obscurity, she tackles complex concepts and, most important to my mind, provides solutions.
Davidson presents a compelling view of how the world needs to change and, through clean prose and clear enthusiasm, invites her readers to help. If you're interested in psychology, education or just knowing a bit more about the world we're living in, I highly recommend picking up this book.

Jasper Fforde is definitely back, especially after the almost-good-but-not-quite novel that was "First Among Sequels". His humor is as effervescent and everpresent as ever (I apologize for the wordsmithing on this post) and he had found a way to make Thursday feel fresh and deserving of a sequel. The plot was ridiculous, the characters even more so and the map at the beginning of the book deserves to be hung on my wall.
Well done, Mr. Fforde, I salute your latest effort.

I enjoyed this installment even more than the previous book; The Magician King felt just a bit better put together and cohesive than its predecessor.
As always, playing "spot the Narnia reference" was great fun, along with "spot the beef with children's fantasy".
Grossman has a feel for the perfectly wrong turn of phrase (this is a good thing, hear me out) in that he knows how to turn mystery and traditional fantasy feel into droll post-realism with a phrase. Mentioning USA today horoscopes in the middle of an enchanted sea, for example. His language and its ability to, not to ground you in the real world but to careen you wildly back and forth between Narnia and a 20-something's apartment in NYC is amazing.
I thought that this book was a bit less Holden Caulfield-y than its predecessor (and since I think Holden is a sanctimonious little $#*^, that's all for the good) and a bit more aware of what is true and always true about good fantasy. It's always nice to see the second book surpass the first; it makes you really look forward to book three.

A very fun read, especially after the first fifty pages when the story really picks up and Trussoni manages to draw you in to the mythology. Adroitly handled, fast-paced and an excellently conceived background conspiracy. That was my favorite part, the history of Angelology.

This is a confusing book to rate because it's definitely a four star book, but that doesn't mean I liked it. It made me think and feel and hate and want to scream and it was an excellent book, but I'm not sure if that means that I liked it in the strictest sense.
It was, in many ways, a book about the betrayal of fantasy - about Susan Pevensie and all the kids who never go to Hogwarts; a book about all the myths in fantasy that sneak under the radar - the hero as everyman, the good versus evil dichotomy, the idea that everyone is okay in the end. It's a response to Narnia on an emotional level (rather than Pullman's philosophical response in His Dark Materials).
And I loved it for being dark and gritty and horrible and hated it at the same time, because it was a darkness not only inimical to fantasy as I remember it, but to the real world as well. It's a familiar angst to anyone who has ever been between the ages of 13 and 30 and a world that bears out that angst is almost as surreal as one in which it doesn't exist.
This is not a book about the real world, it's a book about shattering the rules of fantasy, even those rules that are true outside of fantasy as well.
But it was still awesome.
The characters were deliciously fun to love and hate, even when they subverted archetypes, they felt familiar. You knew exactly who they weren't. Brakebills, the wizarding school, was equally fun and very well thought out.
My only real complaint is that it felt like two completely different stories were crushed together to make one narrative, but that don't necessarily fit together. Part one and Part two never quite felt like an organic whole.
Otherwise, it was a great read and I'm looking forward to the sequel. Even if I still want to punch Grossman in the face, just a little, for writing the anti-fantasy.

I have a sticky relationship with short story anthologies, because I find them difficult to review. There were the stories I loved and the authors I loved and the ones I just reacted to with an "ehh".
Part of the reason is because, sooner or later, I get bored with the variations on a theme style of storytelling inherent in themed anthologies, and just want to read something that isn't another perspective, but is actually new.

That being said, I've also learned that if I stick to anthologies about things I'm really interested in (like magical animals in fairy tales, for example), I do a much better job of getting through them.

It didn't hurt that I found almost all the stories in here to be really good. They were powerful and compelling retellings or creations that I felt got towards many of the ideas behind the beast in fairy tales. And they were good! They were characters you could identify with even in five pages and the people were people, not archetypes despite being in short fairy tale stories.

And, of course, the best of all this is that I now have some new writers to get into.

This was a very good and incredibly accessible look at how our minds cannot quite wrap themselves around the idea of numbers and the lies told by scientists, governments, journalists, Antonin Scalia and ourselves that take advantage of that inability (Scalia got a whole chapter to himself).
I found Seife's style very easy to read and enjoyable. He writes simply, rarely couching his point in incomprehensible terms or moving beyond a fairly basic vocabulary. This is very much a book meant to educate the masses and his exasperation at the tricks people get away with is palpable and left me just as eager to start looking for errors of proofiness.
I really recommend this book to anyone who wants to think critically about the news they are given, not to mention anyone who enjoys a well written and educational rant.