This last week was so much more productive than the ridiculous week before, and I’m so happy. Now, I’m back in the groove! (Yes, I know this is technically a day late. Shut up.)
I haven’t had the best start so far this current week, but I’m hoping I can pick up the momentum a little bit nonetheless. And yeah, I’ll go into it a bit more closer to the end, but I’m not expecting to post like last week. I’m hoping to have almost as much proclivity as usual, but we’ll just have to find out how much together.
Anyway, on with the wrap-up!
Monday 5/29: Majestic Monday
Last Monday, I did the first Majestic Monday that I’ve done in a long time. It felt great, and I’m excited to post more of these in the future. For those who don’t know, Majestic Mondays are when I gush over covers that I like.
Thursday was when I finally posted my review for The Stardust Thief by Chelsea Abdullah. It’s an excellent Middle Eastern fantasy that I absolutely adored. I gave it ★★★★★.
Last Friday, I participated in First Line Fridays. It’d been a bit since the last time I was able to (courtesy of the power so generously deciding to go out the week before), but I managed to do it last week. First Line Fridays is a weekly feature for book lovers (formerly) hosted by Wandering Words.
On Sunday, I finally got around to posting my monthly reading wrap-up for May 2023. It’s no later than I usually get to it, but I usually take a bit to get to it sometimes. I didn’t read and post as much as I’d have liked last month, but what can you do? Sometimes life just gets in the way.
This week I’m aiming to be almost as productive as last week. The key word here being almost. See, there’s sort of a vacation-y kind of thing going on at the moment, so my spouse and I are doing some stuff this week, which means I’m gonna be distracted. Like, a lot. So I’m hoping to post at least four times, but we’ll see.
But yeah, not a lot specifically planned this week. I just want to post a few things of anything really.
Anyway, thank you so much for reading, and have a great day/night!
Sooo… this is a bit later than I hoped it’d be, but here it finally is – my monthly wrap-up with my May 2023 Reading statistics!
Anyway, talking about May – I’m not super happy with how much I read last month. My statistics were meh on The StoryGraph. It was the least amount of reading that I’ve done yet this year. But I kinda get that a lot of stuff went down this past month, so I didn’t have the time or the mental energy to get the stuff done that I wanted to.
Anyway, I’ve prattled on enough. On with the stats!
May 2023 Reading Stats
I read 3 books and 1171 pages
😐 MOODS:Adventurous was the biggest slice of pie once again. But there are a lot of different kinds of pie on the Moods graph this time. And they’re all pretty equal, which I found kinda funny.
👢 PACE: Unlike pretty much all of the previous months, fast-paced books were the biggest part of the pie. There’s still a chunk of medium-paced, though.
🔢 PAGE NUMBER: I read a lot of shorter books in May, similar to what I read in April. 300 to 499 was the only kind of pie here.
📖 FICTION/NONFICTION: I read a nonfiction book this past month! Yay, finally! This is probably gonna be a once in a blue moon kind of thing though, as I rarely read it.
🎭 GENRES:Fantasy was the biggest part of the graph this time, as per usual. Science Fiction was also on here like it normally is, but Memoir also made an appearance this time… cuz I read a memoir.
📄 FORMAT: The little StoryGraph pie chart for this is wrong once again. (Yeah, I’m never gonna fix it, lol.) 33% (one book) were printed copies, and 66% (two books) were digital.
⭐ RATING: My median star rating for the month of April was 4.33. I wasn’t all over the place with my ratings in May. I gave two books 4 stars and one book 5 stars. (According to my StoryGraph stats anyway. Once again, I didn’t add any of the manga I read to it. Otherwise there would’ve been two books with 5 star ratings.)
📉 PAGES READ DAILY: I read quite a bit during the first week and a half, but dipped down a ton in the middle. During the last few days of May though, I read a bunch.
So yeah, May 2023 reading was kind of a bust. I know that a crap-ton of stuff occurred that I couldn’t control, but I’m still irritated with the reading and blogging that I was able to do.
I’m determined for June 2023 to be different. I’m going to read more books than I did in May, and then I’m gonna write reviews and post them. I’ve had an okay start so far, and I’m determined to keep up the momentum. And the May 2023 Reading Wrap-Up comes to a close.
Thank you so much for reading, and have a wonderful day/night!
Sooo… it’s been a couple of weeks… Not my fault! The power was out last Friday! But it’s been a few weeks nonetheless, since last I participated in a First Line Friday.
First Line Fridays is a weekly feature for book lovers (formerly) hosted by Wandering Words, but I saw it over at One Book More.
What if instead of judging a book by the cover, author or most everything else, we judged it by its content? Its first lines?
If you want to join in, all you gotta do is:
📚 Take a book off your shelf (it could be your current read or on your TBR) and open it to the first page 📝 Copy the first few lines, but don’t give anything else about the book away just yet – you need to hook the reader first 📙 Finally… reveal the book!
Here are the first lines:
Even as the only home Charlie had ever known burned to the ground, he couldn’t bring himself to regret it. His plan had worked and that’s what mattered.
D’you know what book it’s from? Look at the pretty book pics while you think about it…
Annnd the book is 🥁🥁… The Never Heir by Courtney Millecam!!
Charlie ‘Tootles’ Tulane risked everything to break the spell binding the lost boys to Pan and escape Neverland. Now seventeen and living in 1923 London, Charlie’s freedom from the land of Faerie has never felt better. But even the noblest of actions have consequences. Neverland demands a leader, and without one, chaos spills into the mortal world.
Spending his nights as an amateur boxer, Charlie meets the ‘Bright Young Things’ of London’s upper class. Part of that group is Evie, a girl whose ravings about mermaids abducting her sister got her sent to an asylum. Now that she’s back among polite society, Evie’s under strict orders from her mother to avoid any further scandal and to attract a suitable match. But that proves difficult when Evie’s friend and confidant from Faerie turns demanding and sinister, forcing her into a deal she can’t refuse: In exchange for locating Pan’s lost relics of power, the Fae will return the one thing Evie wants most.
When Charlie learns his past betrayals set off a chain reaction resulting in the abduction of Evie’s sister, the two must return to the place of Charlie’s nightmares in an attempt to set things right. But this time, the price for rectitude might prove too steep for either one of them to pay.
As always, thank you so much for reading, and have an excellent day/night!
Inspired by stories from One Thousand and One Nights, The Stardust Thief weaves the gripping tale of a legendary smuggler, a cowardly prince, and a dangerous quest across the desert to find a legendary, magical lamp.
Neither here nor there, but long ago…
Loulie al-Nazari is the Midnight Merchant: a criminal who, with the help of her jinn bodyguard, hunts and sells illegal magic. When she saves the life of a cowardly prince, she draws the attention of his powerful father, the sultan, who blackmails her into finding an ancient lamp that has the power to revive the barren land—at the cost of sacrificing all jinn.
With no choice but to obey or be executed, Loulie journeys with the sultan’s oldest son to find the artifact. Aided by her bodyguard, who has secrets of his own, they must survive ghoul attacks, outwit a vengeful jinn queen, and confront a malicious killer from Loulie’s past. And, in a world where story is reality and illusion is truth, Loulie will discover that everything—her enemy, her magic, even her own past—is not what it seems, and she must decide who she will become in this new reality.
My Review
“Go to her, go to her, they say,
The star of your eye.
Go to her, go to her,
The compass of your heart.”
Haha, so it’s been a few weeks since my last book review. Whoops. Honestly though, there was a ton of stuff going on last week and the week before, and I seriously had no time to read.
But I’m finally back with another! And what an absolutely stunning book to come back with!
Though it had a bit of a slow start, I ended up absolutely loving The Stardust Thief. The story and the characters were so compelling and interesting. By the halfway point of the book, it was difficult to tear my eyes away from the pages.
Anyway, let’s get into what I liked and didn’t like as much about the novel.
Stuff I Liked
Loulie had buried many things since her mother last told her that story.
Her name. Her past. Her parents.
But the story, she had never forgotten.
The characters were definitely my absolute favorite thing about the book. Loulie al-Nazari was a very interesting and compelling protagonist. I really liked her – she wasn’t like other MC girls that I’ve followed in the best way. She’s rough and jaded, with a tragic past (like several of my least favorite MC girls), but she’s also vulnerable and can’t do everything on her own. And this was a really big part of her character arc, which is something that I really enjoyed following.
Mazen bin Malik was a great deuteragonist, a great foil to Loulie, and had a fun personality. I really liked his character, and he was the first one that I connected with, even before Loulie. His insecurities and desire to break free from his isolation was very relatable to me.
Qadir was excellent, and I loved, loved, loved his and Loulie’s relationship. It was an entirely platonic, wonderfully written found family. I loved how he acted as another foil to Loulie – but in a different way that Mazen was. He was calmer and more contemplative than Loulie was, and it really balanced out their partnership, and helped them work seamlessly as a team.
He curled her fingers around the coin. “Not alone,” he said. “Not anymore.”
Aisha bint Louas was probably my least favorite of the protagonists, but I still really enjoyed her. Most of my character moment and character development tabs went to her, and for good reason. Out of all of the characters here, I feel that she had the most growth.
The thing I liked the most after the characters was definitely the short stories inserted throughout The Stardust Thief. They were told in a very engaging way, and were also expertly woven in to embellish on the actual plot.
The plot itself was also excellent. I loved all of the nods to A Thousand and One Nights, and Abdullah’s writing style. The whole thing was a super engaging adventure story.
Stuff I Didn’t Like
“We all start as cowards. We’re all afraid, Prince. The only difference between a hero and a coward is that one forgets their fear and fights, while the other succumbs to it and flees. Your fear of death does not make you weak. Only human.”
There were only a couple of things that I didn’t care for in the novel. First off – and this is more of an issue with a choice that the publisher made – the pages with the short stories were almost too dark to read the text off of. And as someone who already has some vision issues, it was extremely annoying. If these pages had just been a little bit lighter, it would’ve been fine.
The other thing I didn’t like was how whipped Loulie was about a particular character. Like, she was constantly simping over this man, particularly when they were in the room together. It was all just so awkward and annoying to me, mostly because I don’t feel like we saw enough of them together to justify all of the simping. But yeah, that was really the only other thing that I didn’t care for.
I did find some twists a little predictable (particularly those concerning Qadir), and I figured out most of them before they happened, but I didn’t mind that. It always feels good to get to these parts and find out that I was right. Also, I loved the twist on the title. I feel like you’re led to believe that Loulie is the eponymous Stardust Thief, but it ends up being someone else.
Final Thoughts
“The sun, it warms the sand
And set the sheikh’s heart aflame.
She waits in the shade, the sun says,
The beloved of your dreams.
She waits in the shade. The shade.”
So yeah, I really enjoyed The Stardust Thief and I absolutely recommend it to any and all fantasy fans. It’s so well written, with great characters and a great story. Just read it. Please.
As always, thank you so much for reading, and have an amazing day/night!
This past weekend! Again! The power went out, and I couldn’t get any reading done because all of my reading spots were too dark! Argh!! So I still haven’t made a lot of book progress, unfortunately. (But that’s gonna change this week!)
Anyway, WWW Wednesday is a weekly meme that used to be hosted at A Daily Rhythm, but has been taken over by Sam @ Taking on a World of Words. Now, without further ado, let’s get into the 3 Ws!
Enter the brutal and elite world of a war college for dragon riders from New York Times bestselling author Rebecca Yarros.
Twenty-year-old Violet Sorrengail was supposed to enter the Scribe Quadrant, living a quiet life among books and history. Now, the commanding general―also known as her tough-as-talons mother―has ordered Violet to join the hundreds of candidates striving to become the elite of Navarre: dragon riders.
But when you’re smaller than everyone else and your body is brittle, death is only a heartbeat away…because dragons don’t bond to “fragile” humans. They incinerate them.
With fewer dragons willing to bond than cadets, most would kill Violet to better their own chances of success. The rest would kill her just for being her mother’s daughter―like Xaden Riorson, the most powerful and ruthless wingleader in the Riders Quadrant.
She’ll need every edge her wits can give her just to see the next sunrise.
Yet, with every day that passes, the war outside grows more deadly, the kingdom’s protective wards are failing, and the death toll continues to rise. Even worse, Violet begins to suspect leadership is hiding a terrible secret.
Friends, enemies, lovers. Everyone at Basgiath War College has an agenda―because once you enter, there are only two ways out: graduate or die.
Book Cover Rating: 🪽🪽🪽🪽 • 4 / 5 wings
To start off, this is a gorgeous cover. We all know by now how much I like contrasting complementary colors in my covers, and this one has it, classic black on gold style. It’s very pleasing to look at.
I also like how the cover looks both geometric and natural at the same time. I love both things in my cover art, so both of these things together is just *chef’s kiss.*
It’s also not pictured here – as well as technically not part of the book’s cover – but I also love the edge art on the pages. It’s just beautiful, as well as being a reverse of the cover: as it’s gold on black. The bird imagery all over everything is just stunning in general, and my favorite thing about the book cover art.
Anyway, thank you so much for reading, and have an absolutely amazing day/night!
So… These last couple of weeks haven’t been super great on the blog. But real life has also been quite the wild ride as well. Last weekend and early this past week, all kinds of crazy and unfortunate life stuff. And this weekend the power went out! Grrr. So much sucky stuff!
Anyway, I’m hoping that this week is gonna be more productive, and just better in general. And hey, summer has essentially started now, and that always feels great!
But yeah, I’m not gonna waste any more time. Let’s wrap-up the (very small) past week!
Wednesday was when I finally got my crap together, and found myself to be mentally ready enough, and enough time to post. And I double posted!
First I participated in WWW Wednesday. WWW Wednesday is a weekly feature hosted by Sam @ Taking on a World of Words. I then also participated in Can’t-Wait Wednesday. Can’t-Wait Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Tressa @ Wishful Endings.
Thursday 5/25: Popular Books That I’ve Read Never #2
On Thursday, I finally got around to posting another Popular Books That I’ve Read Never. Popular Books That I’ve Read Never basically describes itself – it’s a blog post where I discuss popular books that I’ve never (and most likely won’t ever) read.
This week I’m definitely gonna do more. Post more, read more, get more stuff done in real life. I’ve adjusted from last week, and the power’s back on, so productivity is gonna be a lot easier to keep up with.
Considering specific goals: I’m finally gonna finish The Stardust Thief, which I’m very excited to do. I haven’t finished it yet cuz I haven’t been enjoying it – on the contrary, I’m enjoying it a lot! – it’s mostly because I haven’t had any free time, or I didn’t have any light to read.
For other specific goals, I’m planning to post another Majestic Monday later, I’m planning on participating in the weekly bookish posts that I usually do, and I’m going to post at least a couple of book reviews. Oh, and I’m also going to post my monthly reading wrap-up for May 2023.
But yeah, that’s what I’m planning on for this coming week. As always, thank you so much for reading, and have a great day/night!
So, it’s a week or so later than I wanted to post another one of these, but life has just been nuts for the past two weeks or so. But welcome back to Popular Books That I’ve Read Never!
(And yeah, I know I worded it a bit odd, but you can probably still figure out what this post is about, lol.)
Now, as I’ve said before, it’s not that I only read unpopular books, it’s that I don’t only read the popular books. I also don’t read hardly any of the really popular books, because those are usually nonfiction or memoirs (which I don’t usually like), or they have a TON of romance (which I also don’t usually like).
This post is primarily going to focus on SFF novels, mostly because SFF is primarily what I read. It’s gonna be of five books, because I don’t want it to get too long. So, without further ado, let’s get into it!
My whole world changed when I stepped inside the academy. Nothing is right about this place or the other students in it. Here I am, a mere mortal among gods…or monsters. I still can’t decide which of these warring factions I belong to, if I belong at all. I only know the one thing that unites them is their hatred of me.
Then there’s Jaxon Vega. A vampire with deadly secrets who hasn’t felt anything for a hundred years. But there’s something about him that calls to me, something broken in him that somehow fits with what’s broken in me. Which could spell death for us all.
Because Jaxon walled himself off for a reason. And now someone wants to wake a sleeping monster, and I’m wondering if I was brought here intentionally–as the bait.
GENRES: Science Fiction, Fantasy, LGBTQIA+, YA, Fiction
PUBLISHER: Penguin Teen
RELEASE DATE: 21 September 2021
BOOK DESCRIPTION:
Pacific Rim meets The Handmaid’s Tale in this blend of Chinese history and mecha science fiction for YA readers.
The boys of Huaxia dream of pairing up with girls to pilot Chrysalises, giant transforming robots that can battle the mecha aliens that lurk beyond the Great Wall. It doesn’t matter that the girls often die from the mental strain.
When 18-year-old Zetian offers herself up as a concubine-pilot, it’s to assassinate the ace male pilot responsible for her sister’s death. But she gets her vengeance in a way nobody expected—she kills him through the psychic link between pilots and emerges from the cockpit unscathed. She is labeled an Iron Widow, a much-feared and much-silenced kind of female pilot who can sacrifice boys to power up Chrysalises instead.
To tame her unnerving yet invaluable mental strength, she is paired up with Li Shimin, the strongest and most controversial male pilot in Huaxia. But now that Zetian has had a taste of power, she will not cower so easily. She will miss no opportunity to leverage their combined might and infamy to survive attempt after attempt on her life, until she can figure out exactly why the pilot system works in its misogynist way—and stop more girls from being sacrificed.
They killed my mother. They took our magic. They tried to bury us. Now we rise.
Zélie Adebola remembers when the soil of Orïsha hummed with magic. Burners ignited flames, Tiders beckoned waves, and Zélie’s Reaper mother summoned forth souls.
But everything changed the night magic disappeared. Under the orders of a ruthless king, maji were killed, leaving Zélie without a mother and her people without hope.
Now Zélie has one chance to bring back magic and strike against the monarchy. With the help of a rogue princess, Zélie must outwit and outrun the crown prince, who is hell-bent on eradicating magic for good.
Danger lurks in Orïsha, where snow leoponaires prowl and vengeful spirits wait in the waters. Yet the greatest danger may be Zélie herself as she struggles to control her powers and her growing feelings for an enemy.
Chosen from birth to usher in a new era, Poppy’s life has never been her own. The life of the Maiden is solitary. Never to be touched. Never to be looked upon. Never to be spoken to. Never to experience pleasure. Waiting for the day of her Ascension, she would rather be with the guards, fighting back the evil that took her family, than preparing to be found worthy by the gods. But the choice has never been hers.
A Duty…
The entire kingdom’s future rests on Poppy’s shoulders, something she’s not even quite sure she wants for herself. Because a Maiden has a heart. And a soul. And longing. And when Hawke, a golden-eyed guard honor bound to ensure her Ascension, enters her life, destiny and duty become tangled with desire and need. He incites her anger, makes her question everything she believes in, and tempts her with the forbidden.
A Kingdom…
Forsaken by the gods and feared by mortals, a fallen kingdom is rising once more, determined to take back what they believe is theirs through violence and vengeance. And as the shadow of those cursed draws closer, the line between what is forbidden and what is right becomes blurred. Poppy is not only on the verge of losing her heart and being found unworthy by the gods, but also her life when every blood-soaked thread that holds her world together begins to unravel.
What if you fell in love with the one person you’d sworn to destroy?
Lara has only one thought for her husband on their wedding day: I will bring your kingdom to its knees. A princess trained from childhood to be a lethal spy, Lara knows that the Bridge Kingdom represents both legendary evil – and legendary promise. The only route through a storm-ravaged world, the Bridge Kingdom controls all trade and travel between lands, allowing its ruler to enrich himself and deprive his enemies, including Lara’s homeland. So when she is sent as a bride under the guise of fulfilling a treaty of peace, Lara is prepared to do whatever it takes to fracture the defenses of the impenetrable Bridge Kingdom.
But as she infiltrates her new home – a lush paradise surrounded by tempest seas – and comes to know her new husband, Aren, Lara begins to question where the true evil resides. Around her, she sees a kingdom fighting for survival, and in Aren, a man fiercely protective of his people. As her mission drives her to deeper understanding of the fight to possess the bridge, Lara finds the simmering attraction between her and Aren impossible to ignore. Her goal nearly within reach, Lara will have to decide her own fate: Will she be the destroyer of a king or the savior of her people?
So that’s it for Popular Books That I’ve Read Never. For now at least. You can bet that it’ll return again, though. I haven’t read nearly enough popular books for that to be the case.
As always, thank you so much for reading, and have an amazing day/night!
There’s a book that’s coming out next week that I’m extremely excited for – actually, no, beyond excited for is more accurate – so I thought I’d participate in another Can’t-Wait Wednesday.
Can’t-Wait Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Tressa @ Wishful Endings (and was previously hosted by Jill @ Breaking the Spine where it was known as Waiting on Wednesday) to spotlight and discuss the books we’re excited about that we have yet to read. They’re usually books that have not yet been released.
This week’s book is:
Witch King by Martha Wells!!
It’s a new book from the Murderbot Diaries genius herself!
From the breakout SFF superstar author of Murderbot comes a remarkable story of power and friendship, of trust and betrayal, and of the families we choose.
“I didn’t know you were a… demon.” “You idiot. I’m the demon.” Kai’s having a long day in Martha Wells’ WITCH KING….
After being murdered, his consciousness dormant and unaware of the passing of time while confined in an elaborate water trap, Kai wakes to find a lesser mage attempting to harness Kai’s magic to his own advantage. That was never going to go well.
But why was Kai imprisoned in the first place? What has changed in the world since his assassination? And why does the Rising World Coalition appear to be growing in influence?
Kai will need to pull his allies close and draw on all his pain magic if he is to answer even the least of these questions.
He’s not going to like the answers.
WITCH KING is Martha Wells’s first new fantasy in over a decade, drawing together her signature ability to create characters we adore and identify with, alongside breathtaking action and adventure, and the wit and charm we’ve come to expect from one of the leading writers of her generation.
Thank you all so much for reading, and have a wonderful day/night!
This past weekend. Ugh, this past weekend. I’m not gonna get into it, but there were a ton of unfortunate events that occurred, that led to other stuff. I can’t really talk about it, cuz there’s a very toxic person involved, and I’m not sure if they read my blog or not. But I thought you guys deserved to know why I’ve been MIA the past several days. Sorry about that.
Anyway, WWW Wednesday is a weekly meme that used to be hosted at A Daily Rhythm, but has been taken over by Sam @ Taking on a World of Words. Now, without further ado, let’s get into the 3 Ws!
