Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell

Author:  Brandon Sanderson

Begun: June 21st 2025

Finished: June 22nd 2025

Type: e-book on Libby

Rating: 9/10

Silence tries to keep free, and keep her children fed.  To do so she must undertake dangerous work in a terrifying landscape.  When someone attempts to scupper her plans, all hell breaks loose.  

A fascinating, short novella.  Silence is one tough lady, and her daughter, William Ann, is shaping up to be the same.  

Piranesi

Author:  Susanna Clarke

Begun: June 6th 2025

Finished: June 16th 2025

Type: e-book on Libby

Rating: 9/10

A young man, Piranesi, lives in a labyrinth; a house with infinite rooms containing thousands of statues.  The ocean invades the house, sometimes causing floods.  The tides ebb and flow.  There is only one other living human in the house, The Other.  

Mysterious and intriguing.  There is clearly something going on here, which is slowly revealed.  Piranesi himself is a delight.  SO dang smart, with a phenomenal memory, and an ability to logically think through problems.  

The whole thing was fabulous.  

The Wild Robot

Author:  Peter Brown

Begun: June 5th 2025

Finished: June 5th 2025

Type: Audiobook on Libby

Narrator: Lupita Nyong'o

Rating: 3/10 Hard DNF

Warning!!!  Spoilers ahead!  This review is extremely spoilery!

This came highly recommended, so I was excited.  It's written for ages 8 and up so I thought it would be a sweet, fast read.

Nope.

I got about 1/4 of the way through, and my salient emotions were horror, disgust, boredom, and irritation.  Even my younger self would have hated this book.  I feel a great swell of pity for any child who has had this read to them, or who has read it themselves. 

I went online to see if it were worth sticking with.  Not only did the book get WORSE, it ends on a cliffhanger!!  

I. Hate. Cliffhangers.

1. I like the robot.  Dislike the name though.

2. I am horrified that the book begins when robots - remember the main character is a robot so we're meant to feel attached to them - are graphically smashed to pieces on rocks.  WTF?

3. I was disgusted by the overt carnivorous behaviour of the fox.  Yeah, I know that's life, I just don't want to read about it thank you.  Made me nauseous.

4. The rejection of the robot in the beginning was really negative.

5. Opossums gross me out.

6. The death of the geese and eggs.  WTaF??????

7. Then I read at the end that the robot leaves the baby goose behind????  WHAT???

So let's look at the themes in this "kids" book:

- graphic death

- killing of live animals

- rejection by society

- killing of innocent things

- abandonment by parental figures. 

FAUGH!

I hard DNFd the book and returned it immediately.

Naturally YMMV.  I think many people love this book.  I'm just the weirdo who hated it.  

Storm Front

Author:  Jim Butcher

Begun: May 28th 2025

Finished: June 4th 2025

Type: Audiobook on Libby

Narrator: James Marsters

Rating: 7/10

Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden is a wizard who works in modern Chicago.  He's the only wizard in the yellow pages.  He struggles to make rent, so when a housewife comes and asks for his aid in finding her husband, he takes the job.  Meanwhile, there's some really weird murders going on, with people clearly killed by magic.  Furthermore the White Council think Dresden's a bad guy and have set an anal retentive magic-sword wielder to watch his every move.  

Written like a hardboiled detective novel with the added spice of magic, Storm Front has some really fun scenes of arcane power.  

The story itself was good in the beginning, really dragged from about 40 - 80%, and then picked up in the last bit.  I had the speed up to 1.5x to get through the boring bit, but slowed it back down to 1x at around 95%.  

The whole book itself was fine.  For most people I think this would be an easy 8 or 9/10.  For me it was just ok.  

The ending, however, was EXTREMELY satisfactory in the way that a lot of books aren't these days.  Everything was tidied up nicely and I LIKE that very much.  The ending itself brought the book up from a 5 or 6/10 to a 7/10.  The ending was, in fact, so well done, I'm not discounting the possibility of reading a sequel at some point. 

James Marsters was excellent as the narrator.