Well. It's been a week almost exactly, and I think it's time to talk about the two weeks where we all read as much as we could! We had nine prompts, that being these:
I thought that I would be able to finish them all, but I got cocky, and picked one way too far out of my zone for number three, and then ran out of time for my nonfiction pick! But alas, that was still 57 books plus the others that I was fitting in between those. I'm trying to keep reading ARCs regularly throughout the month so I'm not reading them all at once in the week leading up to a due date!
The five that I finished were Stain by A.G. Howard, a stand alone fantasy book that was pretty chunky! I bought it release week last year because the summary intrigued me, and put it on my shelf and just entirely forgot about it! So many other books were coming out that I had been dying for that one I picked up on a whim kind of fell to the wayside unfortunately.
I enjoyed it really well, but I did skim a bit towards three fourths through until a certain point at the end where I started actively reading again, and that's just because I really don't like the mistaken identity trope when it's used in certain ways, and combined with the miscommunication trope, it just drove me absolutely bonkers. It's a chunky book too so I just started getting frustrated. I loved the characters, I love how Howard wasn't afraid to go "and our Main character, our princess, she's wild and freaky looking as hell!" She does go back to being ethereally beautiful at the end, but we take what we can get.
Book two was Once & Future by Amy Rose Capetta and Cori McCarthy, a futuristic King Arthur retelling! I consider King Arthur to be a fairytale because honestly, King Arthur is part of the mythos of Great Britain and mythos encompasses fairytales and folklore alike! So it fit for me, and I needed to read it anyways, it had been on my shelf nearly as long as Stain!
It was honestly exactly what I wanted from it, it nailed the concept perfectly and I enjoyed it more than I enjoyed Amy's first book in The Beautiful Death duology. It's heavily anti-capitalistic and Arthur is pansexual and really Ari, a girl of arabic descent. Guinevere is also a young woman of color who is Queen in her own right on a planet that follows medieval ways of living, and she wants nothing more than to have a child. This book deals with so many different types of women and I love them all and am so grateful that this King Arthur retelling in space just absolutely went for it. That's the only way to retell Arthur to be honest!
Book three was Daughters of Ruin by K. D. Castner, which disappointed me greatly. The concept is interesting, and could be incredibly well done if it had been handled right. Instead it was rushed and shoved into one book, but still written like it was meant to have a sequel? Which I think it was but it's been years and there's no news, so, that's not the authors fault but still. The end was weird, and suddenly the love interest to one of our main characters is power hungry in like twenty pages just because? and the Main character does a whole flip where she's suddenly not the same character. It was a mess. I wouldn't recommend it, and I'm glad I got it for a little over a dollar.
Book four was the Winner's Curse by Marie Rutkoski, which I only had on my shelf for about a month before selecting it, but I had known for a while that I really needed to pick it up. It's like THE fantasy ya romance series that everyone talks about.
I enjoyed it, way more than I thought I would, because I remember reading reviews and getting a bit annoyed by the main character, but man am I glad that I ended up grabbing it and reading it. I wish the world had been expanded upon a bit more but considering it's a trilogy and there's plenty of room for that, I'm happy with it! The end lines of this book are entirely iconic and I'me excited to get the second book this week.
I'm doubly glad however that I did pick this series up because back in January preordered the Fairyloot edition of The Midnight Lie and apparently, I'm stupid and didn't realize it's set in the same world!
Book five was Winter Glass by Lexa Hillyer, and was the end to a duology that I really enjoyed last year! I will say the end of this one was really rushed as well, and I feel like she didn't want there to be a typical happy ending so she split everyone up but still wanted everyone to be happy? Either way I really enjoyed the world! I won't spoil anything since this was a finale book but I would suggest this duology.
Book six was Bonds of Brass by Emily Skrutskie, which isn't out yet, but it was my purely scifi pick! It was being pushed as the FinnPoe book of our dreams, since the newest Star Wars trilogy "failed" in that. I personally did not care for Poe and never thought Disney would make it canon, so I just picked the book up because I wanted a scifi book and a bunch of authors I liked had enjoyed it!
You could definitely see in the story how this person was piecing together three characters that really didn't have this connection in the movies in their own way, and that's why I ended up loving it! It had a big twist at the end I kind of saw coming and yet I still yelled over! I'd highly recommend preordering if I were y'all.
Book seven was The Light Between Worlds by Laura E. Weymouth, which was exactly what I was expecting it to be, since I've read A Treason of Thorns. It's a sort of Narnia adjacent fantasy stand alone that explores what it would have really been like to be these children who traveled to this fantastical land, grew up there, and then suddenly went back to what they had been. Forced to grow up all over again with these memories in a world that is not made for them anymore.
I enjoyed it, but I've always loved Narnia, and yet have qualms with it about what happens to Susan, so I think Laura absolutely nailed that. It made me weep for these girls, this woman, who knows of fantastical things and terrible things. All stuff she never should have had to deal with. And the ending, it's so, so beautifully emotional and tragic and wonderful. I'd highly suggest it.
So, this was a very long post, but I think I really enjoyed doing this, and I would love to do it again! We had no submissions this time of people looking to claim a prize, but that's alright! Next time!
I'd love to see what you guys did read even if you didn't submit for a prize! Let us know!