Did you think I’d dropped this post? Because I did, haha. Especially when I saw that the last time I did this was like eight months ago. But I was feeling it, so here’s another one!

Anyway, welcome back to Popular Books That I’ve Read Never!

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!

(Also, I just noticed that I’ve done over 300 blog posts. Um wow, that’s a lot.)

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ONE:

Outlander by Diana Gabaldon

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NOW A STARZ ORIGINAL SERIES

Unrivaled storytelling. Unforgettable characters. Rich historical detail. These are the hallmarks of Diana Gabaldon’s work. Her New York Times bestselling Outlander novels have earned the praise of critics and captured the hearts of millions of fans. Here is the story that started it all, introducing two remarkable characters, Claire Beauchamp Randall and Jamie Fraser, in a spellbinding novel of passion and history that combines exhilarating adventure with a love story for the ages.

One of the top ten best-loved novels in America, as seen on PBS’s The Great American Read!

Scottish Highlands, 1945. Claire Randall, a former British combat nurse, is just back from the war and reunited with her husband on a second honeymoon when she walks through a standing stone in one of the ancient circles that dot the British Isles. Suddenly she is a Sassenach—an “outlander”—in a Scotland torn by war and raiding clans in the year of Our Lord… 1743.

Claire is catapulted into the intrigues of a world that threatens her life, and may shatter her heart. Marooned amid danger, passion, and violence, Claire learns her only chance of safety lies in Jamie Fraser, a gallant young Scots warrior. What begins in compulsion becomes urgent need, and Claire finds herself torn between two very different men, in two irreconcilable lives.

Confession: I actually bought this a couple of years ago, intending to read it. I even started watching the Outlander TV series to get me hyped up about it.

But, I dunno, I guess it’s just not for me, ’cause I only made it through the first episode of the first season, and I never so much as cracked the spine on the novel. And then, later that year, I ended up donating it along with several other books I had bought but either didn’t care for or never ended up reading.

So yeah, at this point, I don’t think I’m gonna read it. Outlander and all of its sequels are very long. And, after looking into the series, I just don’t think it’s for me.

TWO:

Bookshops & Bonedust by Travis Baldree

An Instant #1 New York Times, USA Today, and Indie Bestseller

A Barnes & Noble Best Fantasy Book of 2023
An Amazon Best Science Fiction and Fantasy Book of 2023

When an injury throws a young, battle-hungry orc off her chosen path, she may find that what we need isn’t always what we seek.

Set in the world of New York Times bestselling Legends & Lattes, Travis Baldree’s Bookshops & Bonedust takes us on a journey of high fantasy, first loves, and secondhand books.

Viv’s career with the notorious mercenary company Rackam’s Ravens isn’t going as planned.

Wounded during the hunt for a powerful necromancer, she’s packed off against her will to recuperate in the sleepy beach town of Murk—so far from the action that she worries she’ll never be able to return to it.

What’s a thwarted soldier of fortune to do?

Spending her hours at a beleaguered bookshop in the company of its foul-mouthed proprietor is the last thing Viv would have predicted, but it may be both exactly what she needs and the seed of changes she couldn’t possibly imagine.

Still, adventure isn’t all that far away. A suspicious traveler in gray, a gnome with a chip on her shoulder, a summer fling, and an improbable number of skeletons prove Murk to be more eventful than Viv could have ever expected.

Around the fall of 2022, after hearing about all the endless hype and love for Legends & Lattes, I decided to give it a go and downloaded it into my Kindle. Spoiler Alert: I thought it was suuuper boring and ended up DNF-ing it, I think at around 16%. And I never looked back.

So, as you can imagine, when I heard about a prequel / companion novel to it being released last year, you can guess that I wasn’t at all interested. And I’m still not. As of now, I have no plans to give Legends & Lattes another shot, not do I ever plan on trying our Bookshops & Bonedust. And that’s all there is to it.

THREE:

Red Queen by Victoria Aveyard

The #1 New York Times bestselling series!

Red Queen, by #1 New York Times bestselling author Victoria Aveyard, is a sweeping tale of power, intrigue, and betrayal, perfect for fans of George R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones series.

Mare Barrow’s world is divided by blood—those with common, Red blood serve the Silver-blooded elite, who are gifted with superhuman abilities. Mare is a Red, scraping by as a thief in a poor, rural village, until a twist of fate throws her in front of the Silver court. Before the king, princes, and all the nobles, she discovers she has an ability of her own.

To cover up this impossibility, the king forces her to play the role of a lost Silver princess and betroths her to one of his own sons. As Mare is drawn further into the Silver world, she risks everything and uses her new position to help the Scarlet Guard—a growing Red rebellion—even as her heart tugs her in an impossible direction.

One wrong move can lead to her death, but in the dangerous game she plays, the only certainty is betrayal.

I’m going to keep this one short and sweet. The cover looked cool on this one, so I checked out the synopsis. But, it didn’t hook me, so I never picked it up. And I still don’t have plans to – I’m just not interested in the Red Queen series.

FOUR:

A Storm of Swords by George R. R. Martin

THE BOOK BEHIND THE THIRD SEASON OF GAME OF THRONES, AN ORIGINAL SERIES NOW ON HBO.

Here is the third volume in George R. R. Martin’s magnificent cycle of novels that includes A Game of Thrones and A Clash of Kings. As a whole, this series comprises a genuine masterpiece of modern fantasy, bringing together the best the genre has to offer. Magic, mystery, intrigue, romance, and adventure fill these pages and transport us to a world unlike any we have ever experienced. Already hailed as a classic, George R. R. Martin’s stunning series is destined to stand as one of the great achievements of imaginative fiction.

A STORM OF SWORDS

Of the five contenders for power, one is dead, another in disfavor, and still the wars rage as violently as ever, as alliances are made and broken. Joffrey, of House Lannister, sits on the Iron Throne, the uneasy ruler of the land of the Seven Kingdoms. His most bitter rival, Lord Stannis, stands defeated and disgraced, the victim of the jealous sorceress who holds him in her evil thrall. But young Robb, of House Stark, still rules the North from the fortress of Riverrun. Robb plots against his despised Lannister enemies, even as they hold his sister hostage at King’s Landing, the seat of the Iron Throne. Meanwhile, making her way across a blood-drenched continent is the exiled queen, Daenerys, mistress of the only three dragons still left in the world….

But as opposing forces maneuver for the final titanic showdown, an army of barbaric wildlings arrives from the outermost line of civilization. In their vanguard is a horde of mythical Others–a supernatural army of the living dead whose animated corpses are unstoppable. As the future of the land hangs in the balance, no one will rest until the Seven Kingdoms have exploded in a veritable storm of swords….

This one’s another case of me attempting to read other novels in this series before ultimately deciding to drop them. I actually somehow made it through A Game of Thrones when I read it like ten or so years ago, but I only got about a third of the way through A Clash of Kings before DNF-ing it.

I really, really wanted to like this series. I’d been told over and over again that GRRM was the king of fantasy and that these books (and, at the time, the HBO TV series) was amazing. So I picked up the first two books (I always like to have another book queued up), and started reading. And, I thought they were waaayy too slow. And I was bored.

But I’d been told multiple times that you just have to keep reading and wait for it to get good, so I continued reading and ended up finishing the first one. But I could only make it through about a third of the second before I had to call it quits. I just couldn’t wait till two or three hundred pages into the third book for action to happen. Altogether, that’s over two thousand freaking pages I’d have to slog through in order for me to read the good stuff. And I was not going to wait that long, nor was I willing to waste any more time on the series.

FIVE:

The Wrath and the Dawn by Renée Ahdieh

#1 New York Times Bestseller

A sumptuous and epically told love story inspired by A Thousand and One Nights.

Every dawn brings horror to a different family in a land ruled by a killer. Khalid, the eighteen-year-old Caliph of Khorasan, takes a new bride each night only to have her executed at sunrise. So it is a suspicious surprise when sixteen-year-old Shahrzad volunteers to marry Khalid. But she does so with a clever plan to stay alive and exact revenge on the Caliph for the murder of her best friend and countless other girls. Shazi’s wit and will, indeed, get her through to the dawn that no others have seen, but with a catch… she’s falling in love with the very boy who killed her dearest friend.

She discovers that the murderous boy-king is not all that he seems and neither are the deaths of so many girls. Shazi is determined to uncover the reason for the murders and to break the cycle once and for all.

So, real talk, I’d actually never heard of this book until about two years ago, when I started more BookTube. And the stuff I heard about it didn’t make me interested in reading it. Still not interested, by the way. So yeah, that’s kind of all there is to it.

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So yeah, that’s another post where I talk about books I’ll probably never read. And wow, they were all novels that were part of a series. Sorry it’s been so long, if anyone was actually waiting on another one of these posts. I’ll probably continue this series, though it’ll definitely be another few weeks.

What popular books have you never read? Why haven’t you read them?

Have a wonderful day/night, and happy reading!

See ya ~Mar