Frostbite (Ian Boothby)

Frostbite

Ian Boothby, illustrations by Pia Guerra
Graphix
Fiction, YA Graphic Novel/Horror
***+ (Okay/Good)

DESCRIPTION:

A busload of high school hockey players, on the way home from a winter game, takes a wrong turn and slides off the road in the middle of the snowy woods... and is never seen again. This is just the latest disappearance in the valley between the two rivers.
Teen influencer siblings Jen and Dante have a popular channel filming themselves doing outrageous stunts - including jumping out of a helicopter to snowboard down a mountain. But they find themselves in way over their heads when they end up in the dangerous valley as night falls, and something dark and deadly begins to stir beneath the snow.

REVIEW:

A hidden valley, a secret danger, half-seen beasts lurking unseen, a desperate plan to survive a freezing night in the woods... Frostbite may not be the most original of tales, but it's a quick, clean, reliable concept, and it's not badly executed or rendered, but there were some issues that held it down in the ratings. For one, sometimes it was a bit tough to tell a few characters apart as they're bundled in snow gear. For another, the in-story logic feels weak and stretched at times. The monsters themselves have clear patterns and rules, but the people, especially the ones who have lived next door to the monsters for generations and the subset who have dedicated themselves to protecting others from the danger, really should have more situational awareness, particularly regarding the final "twist" in the last frame. I realize that many horror/monster stories require the odd bout of plot-enabling numbskull moments, but this one stretched credulity at a couple or three places. It doesn't overstay its welcome, though, and in the moment it produces some tense moments and startles.

You Might Also Enjoy:

The Girl in Red (Christina Henry) - My Review
Run (Patti Larsen) - My Review
Rough Draft (Michael Robertson Jr) - My Review

(Delayed) July Update

Another delayed update, but the two books I managed to finish in July have been archived over on the main Brightdreamer Books site. Rather a pathetic number, but at least the books were good, even if life distinctly is not.

Enjoy!

This Inevitable Ruin (Matt Dinniman)

This Inevitable Ruin

The Dungeon Crawler Carl series, Book 7
Matt Dinniman
Ace
Fiction, Fantasy/Humor/Sci-Fi
****+ (Good/Great)

DESCRIPTION:

The Faction Wars are traditionally a place where the galactic elite get to play at war, capturing castles and seizing territory, sending countless mercenaries and NPCs to their dooms and picking off most of however many unfortunate crawlers manage to survive to the ninth floor of the dungeons. But there hasn't been a crawl like this season before. Now, instead of being outside the carnage as usual, the warlords are now themselves vulnerable to the maiming and death they usually inflict on underlings. There's also a new wrinkle: the changeling NPCs, now wakened to their true nature, have claimed a seat at the table. With an AI that's well and truly beyond anyone's control now calling the shots, the only guarantee is that nobody is safe - making everyone that much more desperate, and dangerous.
Carl and Donut have managed to help keep a record number of crawlers alive this far, but the Faction Wars are going to be a bloodbath no matter what they do. They get unexpected help from offworlder allies - former crawlers, each of whom endured the devastation of their own homeworlds and indentured servitude in crawls to earn some semblance of freedom. But these new allies also bring new complications, not to mention old vendettas. Top that off with further entanglements with the volatile dungeon gods, and the slender thread of luck that's kept Carl and Donut alive this far may finally snap.
This book includes the seventh installment of "Backstage at the Pineapple Club," a bonus story set elsewhere in the dungeons.

REVIEW:

What more can I possibly say about this series? Once again, Dinniman manages to maintain the addictive magic that sucked me into this series, its mixture of humor, cultural callbacks, and cutting moments of trauma and depth. The cast and associated interpersonal complications (and lore, both in the greater galaxy and within the dungeons) continue to grow, sometimes bordering on unwieldy, but it all comes together enough to ride out any moments of confusion. Victories are hard-won and not at all guaranteed; Carl, Donut, and their allies make some mistakes along the way with serious repercussions. Carl also has to learn to step back and let other people help out, including Donut. Still, they remain determined in their mission to bring the pain visited upon Earth to the people responsible, though their vow to remain unbroken by the torments of the dungeons faces some serious threats; it is not truly possible to remain unbent or unaltered, physically or mentally, by the dungeons, as their interactions with the former crawlers reveals all too clearly. There's a saying among them, that everyone who enters the dungeons ultimately dies there, and one way or another that seems grimly true. Yet there is still hope, and more than a few humorous moments to keep the darkness from overwhelming the characters (or the reader).
Like the previous books, the central premise of the floor itself is different enough to keep monotony from setting in. The war "games" of the ninth level demand new tactics, particularly if Carl and Donut want to keep not only themselves alive, but save the NPCs who have helped them so much already (even if calling them true allies might be a bit of a stretch; the changelings still have their secrets and their own agenda, as does everyone involved in the Faction Wars). There's also the matter of the curse Donut inherited when she first donned the purple tiara at the start of the dungeon, the one that obligates her to eliminate all heirs of the naga Blood Sultanate in order to leave this floor of the dungeon... further complicated when fellow crawler and close friend Katia revealed that she, too, ended up with the same curse, meaning only one of them can survive. And Carl still carries the burden of the Eye of the Bedlam Bride, which constantly threatens to break free of his control and destroy everything he has tried to build, every plan he has attempted to put into action to get as many people through the Faction Wars alive as possible. It all makes for a very high-octane installment, after some slower setup at the start of the dungeon floor, building to yet another spectacular, complication-riddled finale.
As for the bonus story, this installment is notably shorter, but marks a very sharp turning point in the plot.
All in all, I quite enjoyed this outing, and will be queueing up the eighth book (the last currently published, as of late July 2026).

You Might Also Enjoy:

Red Rising (Pierce Brown) - My Review
The Daughters' War (Christopher Buehlman) - My Review
The Butcher's Masquerade (Matt Dinniman) - My review

Houses With a Story (Seiji Yoshida)

Houses With a Story: A Dragon’s Den, a Ghostly Mansion, a Library of Lost Books, and 30 More Amazing Places to Explore

Seiji Yoshida, translated by Jan Mitsuko Cash
Harry N. Abrams
Fiction, MG? Fantasy/Graphic Novel/Sci-Fi
**** (Good)

DESCRIPTION:

From the mountaintop sanctuary of a dedicated astronomer to a modern bookshop whose proprietor is more than he seems, from a Victorian mansion with a playful young ghost to the dwelling of a dragon tamer who carries the mail across the mountains, artist Seiji Yoshida presents numerous fantastical homes with hints of the stories behind them and the people (or spirits) who live within.

REVIEW:

With strong shades of the whimsicality of Studio Ghibli films and the fantastical locales that feel so real you could step into them presented by James Gurney in his Dinotopia series, Houses With a Story is precisely what the title promises: a series of pictures and cutaways presenting all manner of imagined homes and imagined characters in imagined yesterdays, todays, and tomorrows. These are the kind of imagination-stirring, thought-provoking images that one could pore over for hours, inspiring tales and perhaps compelling one to draw original homes and characters of one's own. At the end, Yoshida includes some sketches and a walkthrough of his art process for further inspiration.
That said, there were a few quibbles - nothing truly awful, but a few little nits and itches that held it down a bit in the ratings. For one thing, the "stories" are uneven; some locales have plenty of extra images and ideas about them, while others are there and done in a single page, as though the artist were less invested or interested. For another, I borrowed this via my library and the Hoopla app, and digital was perhaps not the best choice. Though my tablet is not top-of-the-line, it's not underpowered or underpixeled by any means, yet some of the "zoom" images included to show details had poor resolution, and navigation was sometimes confusing. Also, there was a certain sameness that settled in; there were a few outliers that were wildly imaginative, but many of the others started feeling... I suppose "safe" and "familiar" are the best words, not exploring the far corners of imagination but sticking to what was clearly familiar territory for the artist.
On the whole, though, this is a fun, undemanding book to page through on a lazy afternoon.

You Might Also Enjoy:

Drawing and Painting Fantasy Worlds (Finlay Cowan) - My Review
Dinotopia: A Land Apart from Time (James Gurney) - My Review
Castle (David Macaulay) - My Review

(Delayed) June Site Update

Another day-late/dollar-shot update marks the halfway point in a year that has yet to demonstrate a redeeming quality that isn't qualified and asterisked and otherwise simply "not quite as bad as the absolute worst case scenario just yet." Anyway, June's five reviews have been archived and cross-linked at the main Brightdreamer Books site, as usual.

Enjoy!