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 Carp is a small town with small town traditions and Panic is one of them. Every year, high school seniors take on dangerous dares in order to win a large monetary prize that will help them escape their town for good. Heather thinks she’s too sensible to get involved, but she finds herself caught up in the rush anyway with her best friend Natalie. Dodge, another student, has always known that he would participate in Panic, although for different reasons than Heather. The book alternates between the points of view of these two students while the game gets ever more dangerous.
I felt decidedly “meh” about this book. I had anticipated something more along the lines of Before I Fall and Delirium. Both of those struck me hard, especially the first; I love the concept of living over and over again and learning as you go (see also Life after Life by Kate Atkinson, another big hit with me). They were interesting and innovative and they made me excited to read Panic, too.
But as soon as I started I knew it was different – this is just an ordinary town. The concept of high schoolers taking on a life-or-death game isn’t really the same as a world without love or a girl who lives the same day over and over again. It’s something that could actually happen in the real world. I suppose for some that might be an advantage, but for me it was a drawback. Some of the games are ridiculously dangerous and outrageous, yes, but none beyond the realms of our actual real world. This wasn’t what I’d expected and I wasn’t as impressed with this as I was with the other two books I’d read by the same author. It didn’t suit my own personal taste and it wasn’t a book that I felt went above and beyond.
Is it worth your time? That’s a separate question, I think. This is more in the style of a thriller than the other two and I have seen positive reviews floating around. It has its positive points – I think the characters grow over the course of the book, the romance is okay, and it does keep a reader’s attention – but it just didn’t work for me. I would start with Oliver’s other books in any case.
I received this book for free for review.
 Like a lot of others, I reviewed last year’s reading and realized I was reading way too many white authors, and to be honest, have been for all of my life so far. This bothers me. I want to ensure I’m experiencing viewpoints of lots of different people, not just one specific type of person, and that means diversifying my reading by deliberately choosing to read more authors of color. It’s one of the ways in which reading helps us grow and learn – it’s impossible for me to experience how the world works for other people directly because of my own gender, ethnicity and viewpoint, but I can certainly read to experience as much of the rest as possible and come closer to understanding the worlds of others (and sometimes in fantasy worlds too). But, as Aarti puts in the #diversiverse intro post, sometimes finding those books is hard. Here are a few of the diverse books that I’ve enjoyed across genres to help you get started or just push my favorite books a little more into your hands:
- The Book of Unknown Americans and The World in Half by Cristina Henriquez – these are beautiful books and I have reviewed both of them. The first one in particular is getting lots of coverage at the moment, but Henriquez’s first book was just stunning too and blew me away.
- Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie – A fantastic book about finding roots and retaining identity in a completely different country populated with completely different people. I loved this so much, which struck me even more after I’d failed to connect with Adichie’s work in the past.
- A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki – I so loved this book. I had so much trouble leaving the train to go to work while I was reading it because I didn’t want to put it down and couldn’t wait to get back to it. It has a slight science fiction edge and is written extremely well, playing with the concept of time and space. I regret not reviewing this so I could actually share better what I thought but I’ll just recommend it extremely strongly.
- Throne of the Crescent Moon by Saladin Ahmed – Excellent swords and sorcery fantasy novel.
- The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms plus everything else by N. K. Jemisin – Seriously, everything. Jemisin writes deeply thought out fantasy worlds with complex, fascinating characters. I can’t wait for her next book to come out.
- The Iron King and rest of series by Julie Kagawa – I haven’t managed to write about these books, but they’re solid YA fantasy with a heavy dose of romance. I’ve really enjoyed them, enough to have the next two waiting for me to find time.
- Fledgling by Octavia Butler – I read this for this event two years ago and it has actually stuck with me – I have been meaning to read more Octavia Butler ever since, although she’s still on the copious TBR pile.
- Anything by Nalini Singh – In all honesty these books can be a little too steamy for me, but if you enjoy paranormal romance, you’re really making a mistake not venturing into her Psy/Changeling universe. I just returned to it and was surprised by how much I enjoyed sinking back into this world.
- The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro – Ishiguro is a pre-blogging discovery but I love this book so much that I have pushed it on literally every person I know who I think has even a chance of enjoying it. Never Let Me Go is probably more popular now, as it fits a bit better into a culture comfortable with science fiction, but I adored this book to absolute pieces. I have one book left that I haven’t read by Ishiguro (The Unconsoled) and I am not going to read it until a new one comes out. I can’t bear the fact that there isn’t any more.
There you go – 7 standalone books and 3 potential series for you to start with. If you read any of them, let me know and we’ll talk! I am still just starting out myself and diverse authors don’t make up nearly a large enough fraction of my reading, so if you have any suggestions for me to try next, fire them at me. I am always looking.
 I had so much fun actually getting through the books on my summer reading list that I thought I’d make it a bit of a seasonal ambition and put one together for autumn, too. I read all but one of those books and I’m reading the final one now, The Tropic of Serpents by Marie Brennan. The focus it added to my reading was really nice – I didn’t have to pick through the shelves to decide what I wanted to read next because I’d already done the job for myself. I would like to call that a bookish success, and so I thought I’d try and get some of the same success going for autumn, too.
Plus, this one was easy. This season we have #diversiverse, which starts today, and RIP IX, which started on the first of September. I have been gleefully thinking of books I’d like to read for both of these for weeks. Add a few books that I know I also would like to read soon, and we end up with this:
I got ambitious as I was putting this together, as you can see – the summer pile was a little bit smaller. I have however already read Lagoon so we’re on our way.
- Iron Kin by M.J. Scott – this is the third in an urban fantasy alternate world series I haven’t written anything about yet, but which I do like. It has vampires and similar types of monsters so I’m going to count it for RIP.
- Written in Red by Anne Bishop – this was actually an impulse purchase but again sounds like a new urban fantasy series (no, I clearly don’t read enough of these) and I thought it would be a good fit for autumn. Even the title reminds me of leaves and the cover has the heroine wearing a hoodie in a wintery environment.
- Timebomb by Scott K. Andrews – this is actually a review copy that turned up unsolicited but looks really intriguing. More dystopia, but I think I’ve avoided that for long enough to return to the genre a little bit refreshed.
- The Silvered by Tanya Huff – Werewolves! And I love Tanya Huff. I have read the latest book in her Gale series so it’s time to move on to the next book I have by her, which is this one.
- Midnight Alley by Rachel Caine – to be perfectly honest, I haven’t particularly enjoyed the first two in this series, The Morganville Vampires, but I bought all 4 of them years ago at a discount shop. I should probably just send them all to a charity shop but they’re short, fast reads and for some reason I keep thinking I should like Rachel Caine’s books. So I stuck it in the pile.
- Empress Dowager Cixi by Jung Chang – Jung Chang is the woman who wrote Wild Swans, which I read out of the library a few years ago, so picking this up recently felt natural. I haven’t read any Chinese history for a while now so I’m keen to get back into it. Also, #diversiverse.
- The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai – I forgot I had this in the UK with me until I was pulling various options out of my bookshelves. Right on the stack – this has been waiting far too long.
- Interpreter of Maladies by Jhumpa Lahiri – I read The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri earlier this year and, sadly, didn’t write about it, so remember very little other than how much I liked it. I thought it was time to read her first collection of short stories. I’m never sure how I’ll get on with short stories, but they are worth a try.
- Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo – I feel like everyone is talking about these books but me! I finally bought the first one last month and I do want to get to this one soon.
- A Kiss from Maddalena by Christopher Castellani – this is another book I’ve had for a long, long time but sounds very appealing. I’m going to Italy next month, so I thought it would be a great idea to actually get some themed reading in before that happens.
- The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters – this is purely in the pile because I can’t wait to read it.
- Lagoon by Nnedi Okorafor – believe it or not, after I took this picture I immediately took this book out and read it yesterday, as I’ve mentioned above. I just needed an excuse and it was very easy to give myself one!
I would like to get to all of these books before the end of December. I think I can – and then I can make a winter reading list!
What are you going to be reading over the next few months?
It’s that exciting moment in the life of a series reader – the book that you’ve been waiting for has finally come out, and whether it’s arrived in the mail or you’ve gone to pick it up from the bookstore or the library, it is in your hands and you can’t wait to open it. In fact, you start reading it immediately. Right?
Not so much.
I’m not going to deny that getting a new book in one of my favorite series on release day is genuinely exciting. I am a huge series reader. I love so much about books in a series; interconnected stories, characters I can continue to revisit again and again, the opportunity for expansive world-building that can rarely happen in a single book. Years before I blogged, I fell headlong into love with epic fantasy and invested hours of my life reading The Wheel of Time, A Song of Ice and Fire, Kushiel’s Legacy, and the Farseer books among others. I have always felt that a talented author can often do more with a series than they can with a single volume, although there are plenty of stand alone books that I love too.
But that very interconnectedness and world-building means that I am hesitant to start that new book. I always have a compulsion to reread the rest of the books in the series before I start the new one. You see, I am also a reader who likes to read books in one sitting. I like to experience everything as close together as possible, mainly because I am forgetful. If it’s been a year since I read the last book, multiple years since the ones before, I know I will miss something. I’ll be disappointed because I’ve forgotten how the author has managed to tie volume 7 into volume 3. There are recaps, but they are never as good as just reading the books again.
I also know that I’m going to love rereading that series. For instance, Robin Hobb has just released Fool’s Assassin, a book featuring FitzChivalry Farseer, a follow-up to what has to be one of my favorite series of all time – in memory. But I’ve forgotten so much about these books because I read most of them over a decade ago and I don’t actually think I’ve reread any of them, ever, despite mostly keeping up with the newer releases. I’m half excited to reread them and half daunted by the prospect of rereading at least 9 books before I can get to the beautiful hardcover I bought a month ago. I hope I’m going to love them again, but 9 books, and large ones at that.
 Seriously, it’s ridiculously gorgeous. The other two I have waiting? Magic Breaks by Ilona Andrews and The Winter Long by Seanan McGuire. I love these series. I want to reread them actively and they’re short, too, so I think I can just sneak them in between newer books.
I know I should just give in and read these books I so anticipate already, and in fact that’s probably what you readers are thinking. But there’s always that temptation, and this time I do want to give in to it.
I think I need a rereading month. What do you think? And am I the only one with this particular bookish dilemma?
 Books I have read recently that I would like to write some thoughts about:
Americanah, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie – I loved this. I loved how Ifemelu found her way back to herself, to her roots; that she needed her childhood and her identity to remember who she was, rather than giving it all away to be someone else. And even though my own immigration is really different, and came about for far different reasons, and resulted in different things, I could still identify with that clash of cultures in a way that spoke to me but also made me think about how this must be for others who don’t share my advantage of the same skin color as the native population (and a wider culture gap). I should have written a review for this book, but instead I’ll say you should go read it and leave it at that.
The Suffragette Scandal, Courtney Milan – I will continue to auto buy each and every book Milan writes. Such different topics, incredible characters, beautiful love stories. No exceptions here.
Skin Game, Jim Butcher – This book FINALLY went in a direction I’ve been waiting for since very early on and I was so pleased. It’s also got capers, and fantastic bad guys, and lots of Harry’s signature humor along with those answers. It was great fun to read. If you enjoy urban fantasy and haven’t read the Dresden Files, you should (along with my lengthy list of other favorite urban fantasy reads like October Daye and Kate Daniels).
 A Darkling Sea, James Cambias – This sat on my wishlist for a good few months before I fortuitously grabbed it at Forbidden Planet. Sci-fi is still a genre I’m not as familiar with, much as I’m coming to love it, and for the first few chapters I struggled to get into this book. You’d think I could assimilate other worlds easily enough due to my years of reading fantasy, but not so much. Eventually, though, I started to understand the characters and the culture clash and I found the book really interesting. It’s a first contact novel and the world that Cambias creates is truly bizarre but fascinating. It’s not first contact for humans, it’s first contact for the Ilmatarans, complete with their dissection of a human; it’s so cool to see this flipped and a human as a “victim” of a completely innocent group of Ilmatarans. Very well done.
Have you read any of these books? What are your thoughts?
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