Wow, it’s really late in the month again. Not quite as late as last September, though it’s pretty close.
Leslie @ Books Are the New Black created a fun monthly post called Birthstone Book Covers. Each month, she features book covers that are either the same color of that month’s birthstone or include the color in the title.
September has one birthstone – Sapphire. It’s a blue birthstone month!
Rules:
📚 Mention the creator (Leslie @ Books Are The New Black) and link back to her so she can check out your post. 📚 Pick 5+ book covers that match the current month’s Birthstone. 📚 HAVE FUN! 📚 Nominate people if you want!
A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin
The Frugal Wizard’s Handbook for Surviving Medieval England by Brandon Sanderson
Dark Moon, Shallow Sea by David R. Slayton
The False Prince by Jennifer A. Nielsen
The Dreadful Tale of Prosper Redding by Alexandra Bracken
The Bronze Key by Holly Black & Cassandra Clare
What are your favorite books with blue book covers? If you participated in Birthstone Books, which books did you choose this September?
Thanks for reading, and I hope you have the most amazing day/night!
Well this is late. I don’t even have a good excuse for it either; I’m just late with this post. Anyway, here’s my reading wrap-up for March 2025.
I’m happier with my reading last month than I was with my reading in February. Sure it was two books read instead of one, but it was still better. I think my activity on the blog was also higher than the month before last, but I’m not quite sure about that.
Since this is already super late, I don’t really want to keep the rest of the post any longer. Let’s get into my StoryGraph statistics from last month!
March Reading 2025
I read 2 books and 621 pages
😐 MOODS: I had four Moods in March. That’s an extra Mood from February, which is cool. The Moods from this past month were: Adventurous, Mysterious, Dark and Emotional.
👢 PACE: The books I read last month were both fast and medium-paced.
🔢 PAGE NUMBER: The novels I read last month were between 133 and 407 pages.
📖 FICTION/NONFICTION: It was once again all fiction. As usual.
🎭 GENRES: There were two Genres in the books I read in March. They were Fantasy and LGBT+.
📄 FORMAT: This pie chart was once again incorrect – both of the books I read last month were digital. Whatever.
⭐ RATING: My median star rating for last month was 3.5, as I rated both novels I read 3.5 stars.
📉 PAGES READ DAILY: My reading for March basically sucked for the first half. It spiked some on the 16th, but then dipped for the next week or so. Then, during the last week of the month, I read on and off, peaking on the 30th and the 31st.
So yeah, even though my reading for March could’ve been better, it was still better than February, so I’m counting it as a win. I’m also generally happy with most of the blog posting I did, too.
April has at least one new book I’m definitely playing reading, and I’m also hoping to get to one or two of my anticipated new releases from March that I have gotten around to reading yet. We’ll see. At the very least, I’m hoping to read more books throughout this month than I did during the last one.
Anyway, as always, thank you for joining me in checking out my StoryGraph stats for my March reading in 2025. Thank you also for reading, and I hope you have a great day/night!
Well this is just the most abysmal thing ever. What am I doing posting a Weekly Wrap-Up on a Wednesday night?! Ugh! This week just started off a little rough, I guess…
Anyway – last week! I’m actually really happy with parts of last week. Not my blogging activity, really, but I read a lot compared to previous weeks. And I’m very happy about that. This year has just started with a really crappy reading slump.
Anyway, I’ll shut up now. Without further ado, let’s get on with the weekly wrap-up!
Tuesday 4/1: The Most Interesting Looking New Books of April 2025
Last Tuesday, I posted a list of the books that I’m looking forward to this month. Or, at least the ones that I think look the most interesting. It was the Most Interesting Looking New Books of April 2025. As always, it’s basically only fantasy and science fiction, as those are the two genres I primarily read. This time I had four books on my list.
On Friday, I finally posted another book review. This time, I read and reviewed Dark Moon, Shallow Sea by David R. Slayton. It’s a novel that’s been on my TBR for a while that I finally got around to reading. It was pretty decent. I gave it ★★★✯☆.
So yeah. This past week wasn’t the best for the blog, activity-wise, but I did do more reading in a week than I have been doing for the past couple of months. So I’m counting that as a win. I’m hoping to do better with the blog this week however, even though I got a late start. 🤞🍀
Regarding this coming week, I’m definitely going to post my reading wrap-up for March 2025. It’s later than I wanted to, but oh well. I’m not totally sure what other posts I’ll do – probably just some of the normal weekly stuff. For reading; I’ll probably read the sequel to The False Prince by Jennifer A. Nielsen, The Runaway King. Even though I don’t think I really liked the first one, I’m gonna give it one more shot, cuz it’s middle grade and I have to up my book count. My reading of books has been terrible so far this year.
Anyway, I’ve talked more than enough here. As always thank you for reading, and I hope you have a wonderful day/night!
The first in a new epic fantasy series from David R. Slayton, Dark Moon, Shallow Sea is a powerful story of divine betrayal, ghosts, and self-discovery, perfect for fans of the Dark Souls series or Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson.
When Phoebe, goddess of the moon, is killed by the knights of the sun god, Hyperion, all who follow her are branded heretics. With Phoebe gone, the souls of the dead are no longer ferried to the underworld, and instead linger on as shades who feast on the blood of the living.
Raef is a child of the night. He lives in the shadows, on scraps, eking out a meager existence as a thief. But when an ornate box is sequestered in the Temple of Hyperion, the chance of a big score proves too great to resist. What he finds within propels him on an odyssey across the sea and back again, altering the course of his life forever.
Seth is a knight of the sun. But unlike the others of his order, the fire of Hyperion only brings him pain. He believes he deserves this penance, exacted for his unknown origins. Tasked with recovering the contents of the box, Seth must also venture beyond the horizon if he’s to learn the truth about himself.
In a dying world divided by the greed of those in power, Raef and Seth find their destinies intertwined–and learn they might have more in common than they ever imagined.
My Review
Dark draws dark as light draws light, but only one may cast the other out.
So… Clearly Dragonfall didn’t work out for me. Haha. Moving on.
Dark Moon, Shallow Sea has been on my TBR for a while. Like, over a year type of a while. I gave rsr discovered it in November of 2023. I almost read it then too, but decided to read one of the author’s earlier works first, to try to get a feel for the writing style and see if I liked it. And… I did. White Trash Warlock was generally a pretty enjoyable reading experience for me. There were a couple of things that I was kind of “meh” on, but it was a positive experience for the most part.
So when my Kindle told me that Dark Moon, Shallow Sea was on sale about a month and a half ago, I finally grabbed it. And then near the end of last week, I finally got around to starting reading it. And it was perfectly… okay.
Let’s get into it.
Characters and Plot
They’d circled each other for so long. The gods had to have a hand in it, that the two of them, probably the last of their breed, should meet over and over. They’d danced like the moon and sun, like their gods, like night and day.
Our two mains are 🌙 Raef 🗡️ , a former future acolyte to the Moon Goddess Phoebe turned thief, and ☀️ Seth 🔥 , a warrior to the Sun God Hyperion with a lot of issues with his fire powers. They’re also the characters whose point of view we follow throughout the novel. I enjoyed their characters well enough – I really liked how kind Raef was despite all his circumstances and trauma, as well as how soft and awkward Seth was despite everything in his past.
The other major character here was Kinos, whom I hated since and was immediately suspicious of the second he started talking. So the thing later on with him didn’t surprise me too much – I actually figured it out a couple of chapters before it happened – nor did I feel upset whatsoever by what he did. I hated this guy – at the very least, he was annoying.
I also enjoyed Raef’s and Seth’s relationships with the parental figures in their lives. Raef’s relationship with the old lady he lived with – Eleni – was great. I love how they were both snartasses to each other. It felt really genuine. Raef’s past relationship with his teachers when he was still a ward of the tower he grew up in was also wonderful, as well as heart wrenching later on in the story. I loved Seth’s father-son relationship with Father Geldar as well – it was so sweet.
The 📖 plot 📖 itself was pretty engaging and interesting. I always enjoy a good light vs. dark / sun vs. moon motif in stuff; it’s the contrast, I think. Also, the last quarter of the book felt a little rushed with everything that was going on, but it still worked fine.
Romance and World Building
“I, uh-like your mask,” Seth said nervously. It disarmed Raef a little, despite his mounting panic. How could it not? Seth wasn’t trying to burn him. He was trying to what, flirt?
“Thank you,” Raef said. “I like your, uh, helmet.”
I didn’t like the 💘 romance 💘 here. Honestly, I think I just don’t like the way that Slayton writes his romantic relationships, because that was what I felt was one of the weakest aspects about White Trash Warlock as well. They always move way too fast for me.
In this book, I actually didn’t mind at first because I knew the first romance initially introduced wasn’t going to be the endgame relationship. But then the second relationship took forever to get going and then there wasn’t really any time spent on it besides the he fact that the two characters were drawn to each other, and then they pretty much felt like they got together offscreen at the end of the book. Ugh. It was very frustrating to read, especially because I thought that Raef and Seth were especially cute together and had a lot of potential as a couple.
The 🗺️ world building 🗺️ and ✨ magic system ✨ was interesting, but I was having a little trouble determining what the setting was supposed to be emulating. Like, there was clearly a lot of inspiration taken from Greek myths – particularly in some of the names – but the world itself didn’t feel like it was a fantasy land based on Greece itself. The relationships between some of the gods, as well as many of the names of the gods and what they were the god of, were also vague and generally undefined.
Final Thoughts
A lifetime ago, the Knights of Hyperion had been his cousins, worshippers of his goddess’s brother. No one would have batted an eye to see them friends or even more.
All in all, Dark Moon, Shallow Sea was a pretty decent book, even though I think it could have done with a bit more polish. I also didn’t think the book really felt like the games in the Dark Souls series either. Like, I guess because the dead couldn’t move on properly and some of the stuff surrounding that? It didn’t really have the same vibe though, if you get my meaning. Anyway, I guess readers who like high fantasy, really fast romance and LGBT+ rep might enjoy this novel.
As always, thank you so much for reading, and I hope you have an amazing day/night!
Yes! I am on time this week! Happy Monday everybody!
I’m mostly happy with my posting from last week – probably because I did three posts (that weren’t a weekly wrap-up which I never count, or else it would’ve been four posts). But three blog posts is generally enough to satisfy me for the most part. I would have liked to have done a book review as well, as I’d been aiming for.
Anyway, I’ll shut up now. Without further ado, let’s get on with the weekly wrap-up!
Tuesday 3/25: Top Ten Tuesday
Last Tuesday, I participated in a Top Ten Tuesday for the first time in a few weeks. Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly post currently hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. It celebrates lovely lists, wonderful books and the bookish community. The prompt for last week was Books I Did Not Finish.
On Wednesday, I participated in Can’t-Wait Wednesday for the first time in a couple of weeks. Can’t-Wait Wednesday is a weekly meme currently hosted by Tressa @ Wishful Endings. It focuses on books you’re looking forward to reading, usually new releases.
Last Friday, I participated in First Line Fridays for the first time in a few weeks. First Line Fridays is a weekly feature for book lovers (formerly) hosted by Wandering Words.
So yeah, I’m mostly happy with the posting I did on the blog last week, but I wish I would’ve done a book review as well. The book review didn’t happen because I ended up DNF-ing Dragonfall by L.R. Lam about a third of the way through. The book just wasn’t doing it for me, unfortunately. Now I’m reading Dark Moon, Shallow Sea by David R. Slayton, which is both by an author I’ve read before and enjoyed, as well as something I’m enjoying more than Dragonfall. I’m also almost done with it; I’ll probably finish it tonight.
I’m hoping to really get back into reading next month – the first day of April is tomorrow. I already have one book I’m really looking forward to coming out – a very anticipated sequel. But there’s a series that I started reading several years ago – but not too long ago – but never finished and am still kind of interested in. (Yes, another one.) Who knows what’ll happen though? My TBR can, and quite frequently does, change on a whim.
Anyway, I’ve talked more than enough here. As always thank you for reading, and I hope you have a wonderful day/night!
