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If you’ve been looking for asexual representation, pick up this fun YA novel where the MC and most of the supporting cast are all asexual. There is a love story, but it’s a refreshing change from insta-love, stays ace-style, and takes a back seat to the heist. When Jack’s mom is arrested because her fellow casino owner sold her out, of course he’s going to assemble his friends and take down the bad guy. I enjoyed watching them do it.
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A solid 3 stars! This was a reread. I first read it back in 2003 and I was pleased the book stood up to me returning to it decades later. While it wasn’t as tense and on the edge of my seat as the first read—it was so vivid that I remembered many plot points—it was still enjoyable. I love the symbology, watching the clues come together, and the multiple meanings. I also enjoy the emphasis on goddess worship and returning dualism to Christianity. If you are not okay with that, I suggest skipping this book. I did get annoyed with Sophie being such an ingenue. To an extent she needs to because she is the proxy for the audience, but I think Dan Brown could’ve given his readers more credit and that a cryptanalyst agent would’ve made smarter moves. I still enjoyed it enough to give it a 3 star rating, however.
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Godkiller was not for me. I read it as part of my guild’s book club for the Orilium Magical Readathon (go House of the Arcane! 💜) and if it wasn’t for the readathon I would’ve DNFed. The book has a lot of fire and fire injuries. It came close to being too much for this burn survivor. I did love the disabled rep, but since I have an amputee parent, that aspect struck close to home, too. This could have enhanced my connection to the characters, but I felt like there wasn’t much to connect to. It was rather boring. The romance and sex scene are way out of character. My favorite character was Skediketh, the little flying jackalope god of white lies. The narrator constantly sounded like she was catching her breath, making me feel anxious when I wasn’t supposed to. She also whispered all the god voices. There were several people in my guild who agreed with me, but others loved the book, so your mileage may vary.
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House of Earth and Blood is the first book in Sarah J. Maas‘s Crescent City series. It starts off slow with heavy world building and is so dense with characters I felt like I needed a chart to keep them all straight. Thankfully it picks up about a third of the way through the book once the major world building is out of the way. I loved that the primary focus is on a detective story with plenty of twists and turns. The romance takes a backseat and is allowed to grow naturally. In fact, there’s only one smut scene and the word “erection” only pops up once, 98% of the way through the book. There are engaging action sequences, the dog-like creature does not die, and there is plenty of snark. On the other hand, this is obviously a cisheteronormative world. This is emphasized by constant use of the terms male and female to the exclusion of more natural synonyms like man and woman. There is momentary queerbaiting between the main character, Bryce, and her best friend, Danica. (I loved Danica so much!) There’s also a very brief throwaway mention of a minor character being gay. And that’s it. As a nonbinary, pan- and greysexual person, it grated on me. So even though this book made me cry twice (LIGHT IT UP! —IYKYK), it gets only 4 stars. I will be continuing with the next book in the series.
This was a buddy read with the lovely Jadzeea . I also read it for the lore quest in the Orilium Magical Readathon.
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If you enjoyed Legends and Lattes but prefer a good cocktail to fancy coffee, Cursed Cocktails is for you! This cozy fantasy explores what happens when a blood mage retires to open a cocktail bar. It includes several delicious sounding drink recipes (and you can download a PDF that translates the magical ingredients to ones available in this realm) and slow burn, friends to lovers gay romance. Not exciting, but hey, that’s the point of the cozy genre. A solid three stars.
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The Collected Schizophrenias by Esmé Weijun Wang is a collection of essays about schizophrenia written by a woman with schizoaffective disorder. It’s fascinating! I was initially interested because schizophrenia is often conflated with one of my diagnoses, Dissociative Identity Disorder, so I wanted to learn more about the similarities and differences. This book was also recommended for Gemini readers and reading a book recommended for your zodiac sign is a prompt for this month’s Orilium Magical Readathon . There’s a lot packed into each essay and the book makes you think about topics such as involuntary commitment (when does the community’s right to safety take over an individual’s right to bodily autonomy?), whether the mentally ill should have children, and whether colleges and universities should be allowed to kick out the mentally ill to reduce liability or should have to accommodate them under the ADA. The last essay even brings up questions around mental illness and magic. I could really feel for a lot of what Esmé Weijun Wang has gone through. This is a great book for anyone interested in the topic and anyone that battles mental illness. The author reads the book and she is a bit monotone and sometimes mispronounces words, but the writing makes up for it. Definitely check this five star read out!
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The Faerie Games by Michelle Madow is a fun romantasy romp where romance takes a backseat to the main characters’ participation in the titular games. This is a good thing as, if you’re like me, you’ll roll your eyes every time the “I’m obviously destined to love you but I’m trying to hate you” trope comes up. It’s also a really fast read. I may continue the series because the games aspect is fun. But prospective readers should be aware it looks like the games will take up the entire series.
I read this for the Orilium Magical Readathon for the Art of Illusion prompt, which was a book with the word “play” or “game” in the title.
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I didn’t like the narrator for this audiobook, but Suzanne Collins’ writing pulled me through. This book is a worthy addition to the Hunger Games series and does a great job showing how Coriolanus Snow ends up the way he does in later books. It also provides plenty of food for thought. I did think the main “villain” was a bit of a cardboard cutout and there were several times I wanted to yell at the characters for being dumb. All the same, Collins’ writing is strong enough I enjoyed the ride anyway. If you’re a fan of the Hunger Games, do read this book.
This was the first book I read this month for the Orilium Magical Readathon! I read it for the Alchemy class prompt which was “has a circle on the cover”.
If you have no idea what I’m talking about, please check out this video by Orilium creator BookRoast:
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The Well of Ascension by Brandon Sanderson is a solid middle book in the Mistborn trilogy. It manages to still have some plot twists and turns and moves faster than book one because most of the world building is out of the way. I like the way Vin and the reader are led to believe one course of action is the moral thing to do only to find out it’s the absolute worst option. I’ll be reading book 3, but not until the Orilium Magical Readathon is over!
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I don’t typically like short stories, but I enjoyed most of The River of Silver by S. A. Chakraborty. It is a great addition to the Daevabad trilogy. I particularly enjoyed the last two stories, which gave me the ending I wanted.
Honeycomb's Hive 