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Alex Cabe

CitizenCabe@books.theunseen.city

Joined 2 years ago

It's not like I'm a preachy crybaby who can't resist giving overemotional speeches about hope all the time.

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Alex Cabe's books

Read (View all 66)

F. C. Yee: The Dawn of Yangchen (Hardcover)
Courtney Summers: Sadie (EBook, 2018, Macmillan Audio)
Courtney Summers: The Project (Hardcover, 2021, Wednesday Books)

2024 Reading Goal

Success! Alex Cabe has read 31 of 30 books.

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reviewed The Brightness Between Us by Eliot Schrefer (The Darkness Outside Us, #2)

Eliot Schrefer: The Brightness Between Us (2024, HarperCollins Publishers) 3 stars

In this sequel to The Darkness Outside Us, a Stonewall Honor Book, New York Times …

Conflicted Between Looking Back and Looking Forward

3 stars

The biggest challenge here was to come up with a new threat or mystery, and the sequel mostly succeeds, although I wish it spent more time on Minerva and less explaining the first book. I did think it was an interesting choice to have the surviving characters from the last book never be the point of view characters in this one.

I liked the Owl chapters best, followed by Ambrose. The Kodiak chapters were a bit of a chore and Yarrow didn't have a lot of personality.

This wasn't more sexually explicit than the first one, but it felt less "YA" in a way that's hard to define. One of my points on the first book was that writing it as YA felt unmotivated, and this one course-corrected a bit.

The Devon Mujaba stuff was kind of silly. It felt like kind of a bad "Hey, I recognize that" instinct …

reviewed Conclave by Robert Harris

Robert Harris: Conclave (2016, Alfred A. Knopf) 4 stars

The pope is dead. Behind the locked doors of the Sistine Chapel, one hundred and …

Page Turner with an ending twist that doesn't quite work

4 stars

I had kind of a sick day Saturday and read this whole thing over a period of two days. It had that special magic where you can't wait to get to the next page.

The author did a very skilled job of drawing different characters and political factions, and the psychological portrait of Lomeli was well done and unexpected.

The author said that the unnamed prior Pope wasn't Francis, but he definitely felt like Francis.

The twists in the last 20% of so left me kind of cold and felt dated. Obviously they'd be emotional events for a faithful Catholic, but the fact that they were presented as shocks felt kind of 2000s.

Will definitely see the movie.

reviewed Reckoning of Roku by Randy Ribay

Randy Ribay: Reckoning of Roku (2024, Abrams, Inc.) 3 stars

From National Book Award finalist Randy Ribay comes a gripping new chapter—starring Avatar Roku—in the …

Generally Played Safe and Felt Like the Show

3 stars

Overall pretty average, with a few standout moments. I thought the scene with the sandbenders was a good character moment for Sozin.

This was notably less experimental than the Yee books. Yee tried to experiment with genres, this felt like a treatment for a prequel season of the cartoon.

I appreciate that the author was handed a difficult task with "your protagonist must be a good person and likeable, but is also best friends with teenage Hitler".

The author had a strange tic where he didn't entirely avoid the word "kill" or "die", but would often substitute "end" or another euphemism. It felt like the publisher only allocated him a certain number of uses.

The lengthy reading time wasn't due to length or quality of the book, I just got very busy at work and reading election news, and fell out of the habit of reading.

reviewed Among the Bros by Max Marshall

Max Marshall: Among the Bros (2023, HarperCollins Publishers) 3 stars

A brilliant young investigative journalist traces a murder and a multi-million-dollar drug ring, leading to …

Good look at 2010s Frat Culture, Without Much Catharsis

3 stars

Kind of an anticlimatic ending. You can't change the facts, but the author could have engaged with the legal side more. On the fraternity life parts, though, he really did the legwork. I felt grimy after reading those, which was effective.

I would have like to have seen more background on Patrick Mofley and more integration between his story and Mikey and Rob's.

I disagree with some of the other reviews here that seemed to want the author to explicitly condemn fraternity culture. I think the reader can figure that out themselves.

Every once in a while I'll read something about drugs and remember how glad I am to be straight edge.

reviewed The Darkness Outside Us by Eliot Schrefer

Eliot Schrefer: The Darkness Outside Us (Hardcover, 2021, HarperCollins) 5 stars

Two boys, alone in space. Sworn enemies sent on the same rescue mission.

Ambrose wakes …

Good Mystery and Character Study, a Little Shallow on the Worldbuilding

4 stars

This was very enjoyable sci-fi that wasn't quite as "hard" as it thought it was. The author consulted with NASA and gave a pretty good look at what long term space travel would be like, but some issues were pure magic or were handwaved. I agree with one of the prominent reviews here that there was no story reason for the characters to be 17 years old.

Making this a US/Soviet retro-futuristic conflict was an interesting choice that I'm thinking over.

Choosing the name "Cusk" was unfortunate.

This was good enough that I'll read the sequel when it comes out, but I wonder where the sequel can go. This is a pretty closed loop of a story. Seems difficult to come up with a new mystery for the next book.

Also, if you're going to have sex on a spacecraft, and there's a zero G area, you're going to try …