I’m honestly not quite sure where this month went. Looking back on it, there doesn’t seem to be any events that stand out as super significant. It has just all been a bit of a blur. I guess that is a good thing considering how awful June turned out to be. I’ll take the improvement of things returning to humdrum normal. lol. It wasn’t a ‘meh’ month when it came to reading, though. I finished tons of great books! Read on to find out more about them and how I’m progressing on my yearly goals.
Another month has come and gone, which means it is time to look forward to next month’s book releases. August is completely stacked with great books, and some of these are among my most anticipated releases of the year. So, it is going to be a great month!
Hello, everyone! It’s Wednesday! That means it is time for another WWW Wednesday, a weekly meme hosted by Sam @ Taking On A World of Words. I’ll be answering the following questions:
Hello, everyone! Today is my turn on the blog tour for Thick as Thieves by M. J. Kuhn, which is the conclusion to the Thieves duology. Thank you to Julia McGarry at Saga Press for the invite to participate in the tour. The first book in the duology, Among Thieves, is available now, and Thick as Thieves will be published tomorrow, July 25, 2023.
First Lines Fridays is a weekly feature for book lovers hosted by Wandering Words. What if instead of judging a book by its cover, its author or its prestige, we judged it by its opening lines?
Pick a book off your shelf (it could be your current read or on your TBR) and open 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
Hello, everyone! Today I’m reviewing Blade of Dream by Daniel Abraham, the second book in the Kithamar trilogy. I enjoyed the first book, Age of Ash, quite a bit and have been looking forward to picking this one up.
From New York Times bestselling and critically acclaimed author Daniel Abraham, co-author of The Expanse, comes the second novel in a monumental epic fantasy trilogy that unfolds within the walls of a single great city, over the course of one tumultuous year.
“An atmospheric and fascinating tapestry, woven with skill and patience.” – Joe Abercrombie, New York Times bestselling author of A Little Hatred
Kithamar is a center of trade and wealth, an ancient city with a long, bloody history where countless thousands live and their stories endure.
This is Garreth’s.
Garreth Left is heir to one of Kithamar’s most prominent merchant families. The path of his life was paved long before he was born. Learn the family trade, marry to secure wealthy in-laws, and inherit the business when the time is right. But to Garreth, a life chosen for him is no life at all.
In one night, a chance meeting with an enigmatic stranger changes everything. He falls in love with a woman whose name he doesn’t even know, and he will do anything to find her again. His search leads him down corridors and alleys that are best left unexplored, where ancient gods hide in the shadows, and every deal made has a dangerous edge.
The path that Garreth chooses will change the course of not only those he loves, but the entire future of Kithamar’s citizens.
In Kithamar, every story matters — and the fate of the city is woven from them all.
***Thank you to Orbit Books for providing a copy of the book via NetGalley. My review contains my honest thoughts about my reading experience.***
This author’s ability to weave together various story threads into such a rich reading experience is truly astounding. It is even better because it sneaks up on you. Things may appear slow at first, but please trust that the groundwork is being laid for something amazing. This trend in the writing makes me incredibly excited to see what the last book has in store because I’m certain it will be an epic culmination of everything that’s come before.
I was surprised by how well this book worked on its own. It covered the same time period as the first installment, which meant the overarching story was the same. However, the perspectives were completely different. Whereas the first book followed characters from the slums of Kithamar, this one was written from the perspective of members of the elite, including the heir to the throne. It was interesting to see the story play out from their point of view, especially since they turned out to be just as trapped by their roles in the city as the poor, just in different ways. Much of this story was about two individuals trying to escape/change the roles that society had set for them and searching for who they wanted to be. I enjoyed their love story, as well, and appreciated how the bond of their genuine connection was portrayed and held so much power. There were plenty of bits where the story of these characters overlapped with those from the first book, but it never felt like reading the first book would be absolutely necessary. Having the prior knowledge would undoubtedly deepen the reading experience, but this was definitely a discrete story in its own right.
As with the first book, the real main character was the city of Kithamar. I loved how the author, once again, was able to make the setting feel so alive. The soul of the city felt like a seething presence just below the surface that loomed over everything happening to the people living there. I was enthralled by the exploration of the bastardization of the communal compact that serves as the bedrock of any society. What should have been a force for the betterment of the citizens was twisted into something ugly and destructive by a hunger for power and control. It was thought-provoking and fascinating to read.
Overall, this is a great series so far. If you don’t mind a slow start and the work necessary to understand how the different stories thread together, you’ll probably enjoy this one. I’ve never read anything quite like it with multiple independent stories all telling different angles of the same narrative. It feels almost like a puzzle. I’m looking forward to seeing how it all comes together in the last book. Therefore, I rate this book 4.5 out of 5 stars.
Hello, everyone! It’s Wednesday! That means it is time for another WWW Wednesday, a weekly meme hosted by Sam @ Taking On A World of Words. I’ll be answering the following questions:
Hello, everyone! Today I’m reviewing The Jasad Heir by Sara Hashem, which is out today in the U.S. I was excited to get an early copy of this one. Just look at that cover!!!
Ten years ago, the kingdom of Jasad burned. Its magic outlawed; its royal family murdered down to the last child. At least, that’s what Sylvia wants people to believe.
The lost Heir of Jasad, Sylvia never wants to be found. She can’t think about how Nizahl’s armies laid waste to her kingdom and continue to hunt its people—not if she wants to stay alive. But when Arin, the Nizahl Heir, tracks a group of Jasadi rebels to her village, staying one step ahead of death gets trickier.
In a moment of anger Sylvia’s magic is exposed, capturing Arin’s attention. Now, to save her life, Sylvia will have to make a deal with her greatest enemy. If she helps him lure the rebels, she’ll escape persecution.
A deadly game begins. Sylvia can’t let Arin discover her identity even as hatred shifts into something more. Soon, Sylvia will have to choose between the life she wants and the one she left behind. The scorched kingdom is rising, and it needs a queen.
In this Egyptian-inspired debut fantasy, a fugitive queen strikes a deadly bargain with her greatest enemy and finds herself embroiled in a complex game that could resurrect her scorched kingdom or leave it in ashes forever.
***Thank you to Orbit Books for providing an advanced copy of the book. My review contains my honest thoughts about my reading experience.***
This book was SO GOOD! The tension. The angst. The secrets. The forbidden romance. It was the perfect combination, and I was hooked. The story also had so many of my favorite tropes, including dwindling magic, reluctant hero, and a contest of champions. I really loved the way the author utilized the unreliable narrator to slowly ratchet up the tension while also giving peeks into the complex history of this world that the main character would rather forget. It was truly brilliant and kept me on edge wondering what would be revealed next.
Sylvia was such an intriguing character. Her characterization was my favorite thing about this book. She was so complex. Her concept of self was a bit of a mess because the warring pieces of her psyche wanted very different things. Matters were complicated even further by her history of trauma, which caused her to experience selective amnesia. As a result, we slowly learned the things she’d forced herself to forget. It was fascinating to watch her assemble the pieces of her history and, as a result of this new understanding, stitch herself into a whole, new person with parts of both Sylvia and Essiya.
Arin was both similar to Sylvia and her complete opposite. So much of his personality was also the direct result of trauma. Rather than splitting into pieces and not caring about anything but himself, Arin solidified his identity around his national heritage and became militant in his beliefs about himself and his role. Much like Sylvia, he also closed himself off from others and established a strong need for control. The two of them together created such a riveting dynamic. She slowly chipped away at his regimented iciness while he helped create the necessary conditions for her to confront the past and forge a new version of herself. They had great banter and bounced off one another really well. The author did a fantastic job of crafting a slow stoking of the thick romantic tension between the two, and I ate it up. lol. I’m really curious to see how their relationship plays out in the next book. I have a feeling Arin will continue to have his rigid beliefs unravel in a mirroring of Sylvia’s arc in this book, but we’ll see.
I loved what the author did with the themes in this book. I was fascinated by its exploration of how our viewpoints can shape our understanding of historical facts and lead people to commit atrocities. It illustrated how nothing is quite as black and white as our beliefs may make them seem. At the beginning of the story, I thought I had a firm understanding of who the ‘enemy’ in the conflict would be. As Sylvia remembered and learned more about her past, the shades of gray became dominant and made me re-think my position multiple times. That’s not to say that the genocide portrayed in the book was excusable, but it definitely made it more understandable. I look forward to seeing what happens with these themes in the next book. Sylvia now has a huge decision to make about whether she will continue the cycle of violence and jockeying for power, and I wonder how the things she learned about her family and country in this story will influence her decisions.
Overall, this was a fascinating read with great characters, rich culture and world-building, and an impressive nuance in its exploration of powerful themes. I was on the edge of my seat for most of this story, and I cannot wait to dive back into this world for the sequel. Therefore, I rate this book 4.5 out of 5 stars.
Hello, everyone! Today I’m doing something different. I don’t usually write up reviews/discussions of an entire series, much less give my random thoughts before I finish one. However, A Chorus of Dragons has me in a choke-hold, and I just need to talk about it. So, here we are. I recently finished the third book of the series (out of five), and I am seriously tempted to throw my TBR out the window and move on to book four. I’m trying to be good, though, and decided that bombarding you all with my thoughts would be enough of a distraction to keep me on task… hopefully.
Where do I start? Hmmm. I’ve realized that I love super complex stories with multiple layers, detailed world-building, weird timelines that jump all over, and lots of strange mysteries with reveals that make my jaw drop. This series has all of those things with a side of polyamory. lol. So, of course I have to love it. I was SO CONFUSED whenever I started the The Ruin of Kings. The characters were commenting asides to each other while narrating a story from multiple perspectives and different starting points. I had no idea what was going on for a while, but the characters and world were so interesting I didn’t want to stop reading. I was honestly dumbfounded at how well the different perspectives meshed up by the end and needed to know what happened next.
So, I quickly dove into The Name of All Things. I was almost immediately disappointed. lol. The characters from the first book were largely sidelined in this one, and the story seemed to go backward to events that happened before and simultaneously alongside those of the first book. I guess that shouldn’t have been so much of a surprise given how wonky the storytelling timeline was in the first book. The book’s focus on the horse people/kingdom and it’s repetitive explanation of their gender roles just did not work for me and really got on my nerves. The end of the book was interesting and finally moved the story forward, but it wasn’t enough to make this book a great reading experience for me. I considered DNFing the series and didn’t pick up the third book until a year later.
The Memory of Souls changed everything. It delved deeper into the history of the world, its gods, and all the main characters. I want to talk about all the crazy shit that went down, but so much of it would be spoilers. All of the main characters got important roles in this one, and it moved the story forward in some massive ways. The complexity of the plot and of the relationships between the characters was wild. I’m still trying to wrap my head around all the ramifications of the past lives and the many layers of interconnections between the characters. It almost feels incestuous to a certain degree because of the complex history between them all. The ridiculous amount of revelations and the mind-blowing ending left my head spinning. That is how you use an epilogue. Seriously. This book even made me look back on the second one in a fonder light. lol. Now I’m curious to see what I’d think of it on a re-read with the knowledge I know now. I think I’d enjoy it more.
In general, this series has the potential to become one of my all-time favorites if the author manages to stick the landing. I haven’t really seen many posts about it in the book community. So, I felt the need to shout about it for a bit. 🙂 Thank you for reading my rambling. If you’re sleeping on this series, definitely give it a shot. I’m glad I did and that I didn’t give up on it.
