Hello again, everyone! Today’s post is another mini book review. I received the last book of this series from NetGalley. So, I bought the rest of the series to get caught up before the last one is published. This is the first of the three I’ll be reviewing this month. Let’s get to it!
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Today’s post is a recap and review of some recent Eternals single-issue stories. I’m not sure why the ongoing series was paused for a bit after issue six in favor of these separate stories, but I’m looking forward to seeing what they are about, especially with the movie so close and the way issue six of the series ended. If you are curious about my thoughts on the first six issues of the current Eternals run, you can find them here.
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Hello, everyone! Today I’m bringing an extra mini review for a book I’ve been waiting to read for what seems like forever. I requested A Marvellous Light months ago on NetGalley and had given up hope of being approved. I was eagerly awaiting getting my hands on it since today was the publication day. Then, last week, I got an email saying I was approved for the eARC. So, of course, I had to drop everything else and read it, and I’m glad I did. Without further ado, here are my thoughts!
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Hello everyone! Today’s post is another Top 5 Tuesday! The prompt for today is the top 5 tropes that I can’t get enough of. I am a sucker for certain tropes. So, this topic is right up my alley even if it is pretty hard to narrow it down to five. Check out my top 5 list below, in no particular order, along with a book recommendation for each trope! Top 5 Tuesday was created by Shanah @ Bionic Book Worm, and is now being hosted at Meeghan Reads!
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Hello, everyone! It is the start of another month, which means it is time again to plan out what I want to read. I’ve decided to continue with the more flexible TBR approach I switched back to last month. So, I won’t be participating in a readathon this month; although, I should probably be participating in NetGalley November. lol.
In total, I want to read at least 8 new books in November 2021. I may end up reading more than this, but 8 is a comfortable number for me that I think is achievable. In addition to the new 8, I plan to read the one book left over from last month’s TBR, Before We Disappear.
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Happy Halloween! I hope everyone has been loving spooky season and enjoys the day today however you choose. My wife and I will be giving out buckets and buckets of candy (our neighborhood is quite popular and takes Halloween very seriously), and I’m looking forward to it. This month has been pretty quiet. I’ve enjoyed spending more time outside during the little bit of cool weather we have had. It has also been a pretty great reading month. All of the books I’ve read have been 3-star reads or above, with most of them being 4 or 5 star reads. I also read manga for the first time, and it is a medium I definitely plan to explore more moving forward.
For those that were following along here and on Twitter, I failed my book buying ban pretty early on. Initially, I wanted to avoid buying books for the entire month, but I only lasted 8 days. I did, however, manage to buy far fewer books this month and didn’t buy any for the last two weeks of the month. I still consider that to be a pretty big accomplishment, and I’m thankful for it considering how many books I’ll be buying in November…
After meeting my annual goal last month, I’ve been less focused on acquiring certain numbers. However, I still added quite a few books to my annual total this month, which brought me up to 117 for the year, so far.
In total, I completed 4 full-length book reviews, 6 mini book reviews, 2 comic book reviews, 4 manga reviews, and 1 audio drama series review. I reviewed the following books:
I continued participating in First Lines Fridays throughout the month. However, I did my last Stacking the Shelves and transitioned to a weekly wrap-up post instead since I was trying to acquire less books. I like the new format better and will be sticking with it for the foreseeable future.
I also participated in one Top 5 Tuesday, wrote a post detailing my reaction to the new Superman being bi, and wrote a post about my 9 most anticipated releases of November 2021.
Looking back on my TBR for October, I met almost all of my goals. I finished reading all but one of the books on my TBR, and I finished reading all the comics I set out to read. I got a lot of new ARCs, but I also read several this month. My NetGalley feedback ratio is beginning to take somewhat of dive. So, I’m going to have to be a little pickier about what I request for the near future. I also wish I could have done more Halloween themed posts, but I had such a packed schedule of reading/content that it didn’t really happen. I’ll definitely be planning better for next year. Overall, though, it’s been a great month. I enjoyed having a bit more flexibility in my reading choices since I wasn’t taking part in a readathon this month. I hope you all had a great month and wish you the best for November! Happy Halloween!
Happy Saturday, everyone! We’ve reached the end of another week. Today I’m going to, once again, wrap up my week, including notes about my personal life, blog posts/book reviews, reading updates, book acquisitions (if any), and comic book acquisitions and reading progress.
It has been a pretty great week. My wife is on vacation, and it has been fun getting to spend more time with her. We haven’t done much but hang around the house, but it has been nice. I wish there was something more exciting to say, but I’ve mostly spent the week watching TV and doing household chores and errands. I have made some progress on my Doctor Who 13th Doctor re-watch, and am excitedly anticipating the premiere of Series 13 tomorrow. I’ve also spent a lot of time getting the treats ready to give out to trick or treaters tomorrow night. We are giving out bags of candy to keep people from digging their hands into a bowl, which requires much more prep work than I initially thought.
I didn’t buy any books again this week! However, I did get approved for two new titles on NetGalley. They won’t be released until next year. So, it’ll be a while before I get around to reading them, but I’m looking forward to both.
Once again, I went to the comic book store this week. So, I have a mix of digital and physical comics. This week was also pretty diverse in what I picked up, but it still heavily included Star wars and Spider-Man.
As for reading comics, I didn’t read much this week. I kept up to date with Star Wars and Spider-Man and read some of the Star Wars Adventures issues. I also read the first book of Catwoman: Lonely City, which was a really great read.
This was a pretty slow reading week for me. I read the fourth volume of The Way of the House Husband. I also read Jade City and started A Marvellous Light. On the bright side, they were all pretty great (at least so far as I haven’t finished A Marvellous Light yet).
This has been another busy week for blog posts and book reviews. I once again managed to post every day this week! My posts from the last week are listed below:
There you have it! Another weekly wrap-up. I love reading wrap-up posts. So, if you’ve got one for this week, please leave a link to it in the comments, and I’ll stop by and check it out.
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?
“The two would-be jade thieves sweated in the kitchen of the Twice Lucky restaurant. The windows were open in the dining room, and the onset of evening brought a breeze off the waterfront to cool the diners, but in the kitchen, there were only the two ceiling fans that had been spinning all day to little effect. Summer had barely begun and already the city of Janloon was like a spent lover – sticky and fragrant.”
Do you know which book this is from? Scroll down to find out!
Title: Jade City
Author: Fonda Lee
Publication Date: November 7, 2017
Jade City is a gripping Godfather-esque saga of intergenerational blood feuds, vicious politics, magic, and kungfu.
The Kaul family is one of two crime syndicates that control the island of Kekon. It’s the only place in the world that produces rare magical jade, which grants those with the right training and heritage superhuman abilities.
The Green Bone clans of honorable jade-wearing warriors once protected the island from foreign invasion–but nowadays, in a bustling post-war metropolis full of fast cars and foreign money, Green Bone families like the Kauls are primarily involved in commerce, construction, and the everyday upkeep of the districts under their protection.
When the simmering tension between the Kauls and their greatest rivals erupts into open violence in the streets, the outcome of this clan war will determine the fate of all Green Bones and the future of Kekon itself.
I recently got approved for the final book of this trilogy on NetGalley and am reading them all in preparation for the publication of the final installment at the end of November. It sounds pretty epic from the synopsis, and the writing in the first few lines is good. I’m looking forward to finishing them all.
Does this book sound like something you would like? Why or why not? Let me know in the comments!
Hello, everyone. It has been a while since I listened to one of the Big Finish Doctor Who audio dramas. I was excited to listen to this one since it stars both the ninth Doctor, who was back to Doctor Who for the first time since 2005, and the Ravagers, which seem to be making an appearance in the upcoming series. Having finished it, I’m even more excited now for series 13, which premieres on Sunday!
1.1 Sphere of Freedom
On the Sphere of Freedom, the Doctor is about to shut down an evil Immersive Games business empire. He’s assisted by a valiant galley chef called Nova. But his plan spectacularly fails… And who exactly is Audrey?
Mini Review
Eccleston fell back into this role fabulously, and it was like he never left. It was such a joy to have him back as the Doctor. However, the story started out a bit weird with the beginning really being somewhere in the middle, and I didn’t care for how most of the run time was dedicated to telling the story of how the Doctor made it to the point heard in the first track. I did like the new companion, however. She seemed to have quite the personality and will probably be great at keeping the Doctor on his toes. The villain of the episode was pretty obvious early on despite the attempts to make it mysterious, but the way it unfolded did leave me curious about where the story goes from here.
1.2 Cataclysm
Nova is dislocated in time while the Time Eddies are out of control. Meanwhile, the Doctor is about to face the end of the universe. Or is that just the Battle of Waterloo?
Mini Review
I really liked this story. It was action-packed and super timey-wimey with the Doctor crossing his time stream and visiting places all out of order. The story also shed some light on what the Ravagers are, which was very interesting. It had some great Doctor and Nova moments, as well, and I was really loving the two of them together. My only complaint would be that it was hard to follow at times because the story bounced around so much, but it didn’t impede my enjoyment of hearing how the mystery of Audrey and the Ravagers unfolded. The story once again left off on an exciting cliffhangers that made me want to move straight on into part three despite already being up way too late.
1.3 Food Fight
The TARDIS is starting to get a little crowded! Audrey finds herself haunted by a ghostly Doctor.
Mini Review
This story was a pretty good way to wrap up the Ravagers arc. It definitely makes me anticipate seeing them on the show in the new series. It was just as convoluted (AKA timey wimey) as the second story of this arc, but it all came together in an interesting and logical way. I loved the explanation for why Nova knew how to ask the right questions and am looking forward to getting more adventures with her and the ninth Doctor.
A breakthrough in human cloning becomes one woman’s waking nightmare in a mind-bending thriller by the Wall Street Journal bestselling author of the Gibson Vaughn series.
In the near future, advances in medicine and quantum computing make human cloning a reality. For the wealthy, cheating death is the ultimate luxury. To anticloning militants, it’s an abomination against nature. For young Constance “Con” D’Arcy, who was gifted her own clone by her late aunt, it’s terrifying.
After a routine monthly upload of her consciousness—stored for that inevitable transition—something goes wrong. When Con wakes up in the clinic, it’s eighteen months later. Her recent memories are missing. Her original, she’s told, is dead. If that’s true, what does that make her?
The secrets of Con’s disorienting new life are buried deep. So are those of how and why she died. To uncover the truth, Con is retracing the last days she can recall, crossing paths with a detective who’s just as curious. On the run, she needs someone she can trust. Because only one thing has become clear: Con is being marked for murder—all over again.
This was a twisty, fast-paced sci-fi thriller that I didn’t want to put down. It explored the ethical and moral dilemmas associated with cloning. I enjoyed the way the author framed these discussions about what constitutes personhood and how to ensure the new technology would be used for the good of all and not just the elite. The world-building was also very interesting, and the author’s take on what the political landscape and environment might look like in the near future left me contemplating how we could avoid that future. The writing was simple and easy to read, and the pacing of the story kept ratcheting up the tension at every turn. I loved the character of Constance and getting to see her thoughts as she struggled to come to terms with being a clone. This book kept me guessing for quite a bit, but I did eventually figure out the surprise before it was revealed. The ending felt a little over the top and seemed like the easiest answer to all the mysteries, which is one of my biggest pet peeves when it comes to thrillers. Overall, though, I enjoyed the ride, the author’s interesting take on the future, and the ethical and moral implications of the work. Therefore, I rate the book 4 out of 5 stars.
