2nd Quarter review 2021

Welcome to another Monday blog post! Can you believe that the year will be halfway over this week? It feels pretty crazy to me. Anyway, I thought I’d take a minute to recap all the books I’ve read in the last quarter. April feels like a long time ago, but I really did just read these books! Not everything I read gets a chance to make it here, so this is the full list of what I’ve been reading.

A Desolation Called Peace by Arkady Martine. Super awesome if you like politics and first contact situations for Sci-Fi. I think I liked the first book just a little better, but it was still a fantastic read. Already reviewed.

Stargazer by Dan Wells. The third book in the Zero G series was a fun ride. My kids actually took my phone and listened to it without me a bit, so I can’t give a full review. But the parts I did read were fantastic. First colony on a new planet and they’re just getting settled. And then the colony ship that’s supposed to come in a few years just shows up. What happened? And what about the ship that came before them? Turns out there’s already another colony on the planet! The details are fun for the kids and I enjoyed them too. Also, more Dragons in this one than in the previous installments which is always a good thing in my books.

A Darker Shade of Magic by VE Schwab. Fantastic, did a full review already. Loved this story and the idea of layered Londons.

A Gathering of Shadows by VE Schwab. Book 2 in Shades of Magic. Still excellent, with more magic but less world hopping. Already reviewed.

A Conjuring of Light by VE Schwab. Book 3 in Shades of magic. Lots of magic, some extra world hopping, a fantastic ending to a great trilogy. Already Reviewed.

Guards! Guards! by Sir Terry Pratchett. My first ever Discworld book. I LOVED this book; it was SO fun. Volunteer Book Group ftw on this one. I loved the gritty city and the burned-out guards. And Carrot, the new guy who was not a dwarf, was fantastic. Then there were the swamp dragons, the bigger dragon, and bits of political intrigue that just made me laugh out loud. I really need to do more of these books in the future. Sometime…

Fugitive Telemetry by Martha Wells. Book 6 of Murderbot, it was a fun and fast novella. Already reviewed.

Ship of Destiny by Robin Hobb. Book 3 of Liveship Traders. So fantastic, everything worked out just fine (though not completely happy; this is still Hobb) in the end. Already reviewed.

Cytonic by Brandon Sanderson. Gamma read, which was a fantastic learning experience and I want to do it again someday. Can’t really say anything about the story except you’ll love it when it releases if you liked the first two Skyward books!

Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire. Favorite

Down Among the Sticks and Bones by Seanan McGuire.

Beneath a Sugared Sky by Seanan McGuire. Favorite

In an Absent Dream by Seanan McGuire. Favorite

Come Tumbling Down by Seanan McGuire

Across the Green Grass Fields by Seanan McGuire. All 6 of these novellas in about two and a half weeks, and they were great reading. My most-enjoyed are noted above. Already reviewed.

Rhythm of War by Brandon Sanderson. My only reread so far this year (wow, that’s actually a little unusual…) because it literally took me 5 months to get through the audiobook of it. At over 60 hours, this bad boy was fantastic but very long and I still don’t have all my listening time back since my husband is still working from home full time. But the book is fantastic. I did a review just after it came out last November as one of my first posts.

Sea of Kings by Melissa Hope. Already reviewed, but this is a great book for kids. My 11yo daughter is reading it right now and loving every minute of it (even more than I did, tbh.) Already reviewed.

Love, Lies and Hocus Pocus 1: Beginning by Lydia Sherrer. Bought the first two in this series at JordanCon 2019 and then they got ignored in the shuffle for a long time. I liked the first one pretty well. Lily is a wizard and also the curator of a library at a small college in Atlanta. Her ‘friend’ Sebastian is a witch who deals with the fey and other tricks to get by without the inborn magic a wizard has. Together they get in a bit of trouble, fix some stuff, and mostly get back out of trouble.

L,L&HP2: Revelations by Lydia Sherrer. Book 2 was significantly better for me than book 1. Once we know how the world works, now we can have some real fun. They stop the heist of a museum artifact, and Lily learns about her mysterious past. And gets captured and tortured by her evil father, but Sebastian and Lily’s talking cat save the day with a couple of other important figures. I gave these books to my 15yo to read, she loves this kind of stuff. Gotta see if I can pick up the next books at JCon in a few weeks.

How to Defeat a Dragon King in Ten Easy Steps by Andrew Rowe. I picked this one up because the title was fun and it was narrated (audible!) by the same person who reads the Skyward books by Sanderson. It’s basically a spoof on Lit-RPG and also games like Zelda and Final Fantasy. They level up in odd classes to defeat the demon king in the most unlikely ways possible. At 5 hours it’s a fast and easy listen, I did it on my way to/from work in a week.

A Natural History of Dragons by Marie Brennan. Book 1 of the Lady Trent series, it’s the book I’m currently reading and the last I will finish this month. Think Jane from Tarzan, only she’s totally in love with dragons. At about a third of the way through the book, she’s been almost killed by them twice and found her husband because of their mutual love of dragons. It’s written like a memoir from a Victorian age Lady too important to be forgotten about but too eccentric to be really important. Which means you know she survives all these trials, but the adventure is the point. I’m going to have to find the rest of these books; maybe on audio since I’ve got a few extra credits sitting around. Marie Brennan is to be the Author Guest of Honor for JordanCon next month, which is why I picked this one up. And I’m so glad I did! I’ll give a fuller review later when I’ve finished the entire thing.

Well, that’s it. 20 books (though seven of them were technically novellas) in three months is a lot! Most of what I’ve got left for the year are significantly longer in general, so I don’t expect this many next quarters for sure. Plus, I’m now working 20+ hours per week for Dragonsteel in the warehouse, so my reading time is greatly reduced but my listening time is much higher so the tradeoff will be interesting.