Revisiting Corus: Nawat

In the Revisiting Corus series, I’ve been revisiting all of Tamora Pierce’s stories set in the Tortall universe. Today, I’ll be talking about the short story “Nawat,” which follows up the Trickster duet.

Note: I will be taking a break from this series over the Christmas/New Year’s break. The first post on the Provost’s Dog series will be debuting on January 12th.

From a crow point of view, to childbirth, to disability, Tamora Pierce is tackling a lot of subjects in this short story that we haven’t seen her tackle before.

artemis review

REVIEW: Artemis by Andy Weir

Andy Weir exploded onto the literary scene with The Martian, a book that had such huge crossover appeal that Matt Damon played its protagonist in the film version. Sci-fi and fantasy books that have crossover appeal are becoming less rare, but Weir’s grounded, tech-explanations-heavy, roller coaster ride is unique–it’s one of those books that’s uniquely perfect in execution. It contains within itself a perfect beginning, that by necessity maintains drama and heart–even a middlingly good writer could make that work. Weir is more than middlingly good, and so the book absolutely soars. Everyone I know who’s read it cried at least once.

So the big question is, can his next novel live even halfway up to that standard? The Martian was so massively good that it was hard to expect something that perfectly done, but going into Andy Weir’s new novel, Artemis, is the real test of whether Andy Weir will be able maintain the loyalty he’s gained from so many fans.

a spy's guide

Revisiting Corus REVIEW: Tortall: A Spy’s Guide

Revisiting Corus is normally a series of posts reviewing the books set in the Tortall universe. However, Tortall: A Spy’s Guide just came out on October 31st, so we’ll be interrupting our scheduled posts to review it!

I didn’t really know what to expect going into this; all of the pithy online descriptions call it “a great gift for Tortall fans!” Which gives the impression that it’s more of a fanbook than a book, without anything new to offer. It’s also presented in a library binding style (cover printed directly onto a hardback surface), which is generally done with these sorts of ancillary books. These types of books have become popular: There’s Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Ultimate Guide, The TARDIS Handbook and Sherlock: The Casebook, among many, many others. These books are generally smaller and cheaper than art books or making-of chronicles, and are written in-universe, with characters compiling files for one reason or another.