Summary: Joe Abercrombie’s Before They Are Hanged is the middle book in The First Law Trilogy. As Collem West enters a bitter war in the north for the Union’s holdings in Angland, Sand dan Glokta is sent to the southern port of Dagoska to root out a conspiracy and coordinate the city’s defense against the Gurkish Emperor’s […]
Summary: The purpose of David Brooks’s How to Know a Person is to help readers learn to become “Illuminators,” which he defines as folks who “have a persistent curiosity about other people” and are experts in “the craft of understanding others” (13). In service of this goal, Brooks explores his personal history, the life stories of other […]
Summary: The Blade Itself is the seductive and brutal opening act of Joe Abercrombie’s The First Law Trilogy. Set in a vast fantasy world of kingdoms vying for power in an ever-shifting geopolitical landscape, Abercrombie introduces a host of characters from different regions who appear to have nothing in common. He then proceeds to slowly draw them together, […]
Summary: Stories of Your Life and Others is the first collection of short stories by Ted Chiang, a man who will surely be remembered as one of this era’s finest writers. Ranging from reimagined biblical fables to ethical examinations of near-future technology, Stories contains a batch of bizarre narratives brimming with emotional poignancy and intellectual depth. With […]
Summary: Dorothy Baker’s Cassandra at the Wedding is a captivating work of 20th century fiction. The narrators are identical twins––Cassandra and Judith––who return home to their family’s ranch in California to celebrate Judith’s wedding. Most of the story is told from Cassandra’s point of view, revealing her fraught internal conflicts over what her sister’s imminent marriage means […]
Summary: Charlie D. Hankin’s Break and Flow examines the language, culture, history, and politics of hip hop in Cuba, Brazil, and Haiti. Organizing his chapters around a series of themes––yearning, raplove, uprooting, scale, writing, and violence––Hankin invites the reader to consider the many ways that hip hop culture and rap music have influenced (and been influenced by) […]
Summary: Lisa Damour’s The Emotional Lives of Teenagers provides a handy crash course for parents and mental health professionals who are seeking to understand and support the teenagers in their lives. Drawing from her career in clinical psychology and contemporary research, Damour lays out the reasons why adolescence is a particularly challenging and special time in a young […]
Since they were released around the same time and are both very short, I decided to write just one review covering my thoughts on Magic Tides and Magic Claims. I’m going to assume that readers are already familiar with the basics of this series, so if that doesn’t apply to you, do yourself a favor and go […]
Summary: Naomi Novik’s The Golden Enclaves is the third and final book in her Scholomance trilogy. Still reeling from the chaos of graduation day, Galadriel and her companions are tossed into a complex tangle of international conflicts threatening to disrupt the lives of magic users everywhere. Through providing aid to compromised enclaves across several continents, they learn […]
Summary: Naomi Novik’s The Last Graduate is the second book in her Scholomance trilogy. Now in their senior year at the Scholomance, Galadriel and her classmates are generating every bit of mana they can muster and practicing to take on the horde of maleficaria that awaits them on graduation day. As the end of their final term approaches, […]