Dungeon Crawler Carl

I've been meaning to get to Matt Dinniman's Dungeon Crawler Carl for awhile now, but was also putting it off in case I get hooked because it's a fairly big series. But a friend lent me the book, so I decided to take a break from Landover to give it a read.

In Dungeon Crawler Carl, aliens have decided to mine the Earth for resources. They collapse all the buildings, killing anyone who was inside, and invite the survivors to enter into a newly created dungeon in Earth's interior. This all happened around 2am Pacific time, so most of the people from North America just died. But Carl, our protagonist, just happened to be outside in his underwear trying to get his ex-girlfriend's cat Donut out of a tree when it happened, so he grabbed the cat and made for the dungeon stairs trying to stay warm (and not really understanding what was happening). They quickly find themselves in a D&D-like dungeon where it is kill or be killed. The event is being televised live for the galaxy, and the participants (or "crawlers" as the event calls them) have been outfitted with a HUD-like interface (HUD=Heads Up Display - a common video-game term) in their heads and can level up their skills and abilities and gain loot. Over 12,000,000 crawlers entered the dungeon before the stairs closed, and within the first hour or so, that number is already down to about 10,000,000. The dungeon is deadly and the galaxy loves watching all the gory details (while also rooting for crawlers who manage to beat the odds). If anyone makes it to level 18, they will become the rightful ruler of what's left of the world. But no one has ever made it that far in one of these world dungeons before. So Carl and Donut (who quickly gains the ability to talk and becomes a proper crawler as well) are fighting to survive in this dungeon where the odds of surviving are incredibly low.

I enjoyed Carl and Donut a lot. Their interactions are a lot of fun. Donut is of course my favourite: she is a newly more intelligent house-cat, so while she knows stuff about the world, she's also learning rather like a child. Plus she's a cat: her outlook on life and what's happening is rather different. And of course she has full confidence that she will win and be properly crowned the rightful ruler of the Earth.

I found Carl to be an interesting character, too. He was a coastguard-man who worked as a technician, so he was in fairly good shape and knew a bit about brawling, which definitely came in handy when he first entered the dungeon. Plus he's played video games before and could fairly intuitively figure out the game interface. While he seems like a loner, he has a heart and tries to do the right thing when he can (though sometimes it's hard to decide what that right thing is, especially inside the dungeon). Plus the two of them genuinely care for each other (he was planning on selling all of his belongings in an effort to buy Donut off his ex). 

But the story itself is a fairly dark read. Yes, there's humour. But there's so much death. Everyone (including the mobs) are cogs in this big entertainment machine, so things that happen are quite dark. Like the Spanish woman who was changed by the game makers into a 15-foot monstrosity who was crying for help. Or the goblins who were killed as collateral damage when Carl threw a bomb into the boss room. So while I enjoyed large parts of the story, a lot of moments like that made me really sad, and I'm not sure that I want to read more of the series if it gets even darker (and the author says in the Acknowledgement at the end that it will get darker).

Overwhelmed: Ways to Take the Pressure Off

I've been feeling very overwhelmed by life lately, so I thought that Claudia Hammond's Overwhelmed: Ways to Take the Pressure Off would be the perfect read to help me out. The endorsement by Daniel H. Pink on the cover even said: "Lowers you pulse as you read it" - exactly what I'm looking for!

Hammond breaks the topic into three big parts: part 1 is acceptance, covering things like perfectionism, a never-ending to-do list (and why it will never end), and how not all stress is bad for you. Then she details next steps in part 2, covering things like how to stop the news from overwhelming you, procrastination, and other people's standards. Finally, she looks at the bigger picture in part 3 with topics like nostalgia, how to worry less, and reaching a flow state. She also lists the key points of each chapter at the end of the chapter (though there wasn't a key point page for the chapter on worry, which was unfortunate - that chapter was almost completely different practical tips you could try to reduce worry in your own life, and a one page review would have been helpful).

I honestly found Overwhelmed to be a bit of a slog to read through. It reads a lot more like a literature review than a self-help book or a book of practical tips (though I felt like there were more tips in the third part of the book). And a lot of what she talked about didn't feel relevant to my life. At times I felt more overwhelmed just reading the book, especially when my mind kept wandering and I had to reread sentences over and over again to follow them. I considered stopping reading, but I was already over halfway through the book at that point; I decided to persevere in the hopes that I might get one or two more tips out of the book before reaching the end (which I thankfully did - like I already said, I found the last part of the book the most helpful).

Needless to say, I didn't really enjoy reading Overwhelmed, and am thankful I can go start something else now. 

The Black Unicorn

Continuing on with my Magic Kingdom of Landover rereading adventure brings me to book 2: The Black Unicorn. Ben Holiday has been High King in Landover for one year, and things are going rather well. But then he has a dream in which his former business partner and friend back in our world, Miles Bennett, is in trouble. The dream feels real, and he feels compelled to go and make sure Miles is okay. When he tells his friends about his dream, it turns out that both Questor Thews and Willow have also had equally compelling dreams: Questor was shown the location of the missing books of magic, and Willow dreamt that a demonic black unicorn was loose in Landover and she needed to find a magical golden bridle and bring it back to Ben so he could stop it. They all decide to go and see if their dreams are real (plus Ben wants to deal with his affairs in a more permanent way now that it's been a year that he's been gone). Ben sends the two kobolds, Bunion and Parsnip, to accompany Questor and Willow; he can't bring anyone back with him to Earth.

Questor and Bunion's quest is a quick success: they find the tomes where the dream promised they would be with little problem. Willow, with Parsnip in tow, heads back to her people to see if she can gain some more information on the bridle and the black unicorn.  And Ben makes it back to our world, only to be confronted by Meeks, the wizard who sold Ben the kingdom (and who is angry that he was shut out of said kingdom when Ben proved to be a worthy king after all). Thankfully this first vision of Meeks is just that: a vision. So Ben does everything in his power to make it back to Chicago under the radar, paying with cash where he can so as not to leave a paper trail. But when he gets to the office, he's confronted by another ghostly apparition of Meeks. Thankfully Miles is alright, so Ben hightails it back to Landover as quickly as he can.

But on his first night back, after puzzling over the books of magic with Questor and Abernathy for awhile (one is a burnt out book, the second only has pictures of unicorns in it), Ben awakens from another dream (one in which he gave his medallion to Meeks) only to find the wizard gloating over him. It seems Meeks was able to hitch a ride back into Landover using Ben! And to add to the horror, Meeks pulls out the medallion, showing Ben that he now wears one tarnished and with the wizard's image, rather than his Paladin and Sterling Silver. Meeks then uses illusion magic to make Ben look different and to make himself look like Ben, then he has Ben banished from the castle. Ben decides that the only thing he can do is try to catch up with Willow and warn her that her dream was sent by Meeks. He sets out alone for the River Country, but is shortly joined by Edgewood Dirk, a fairy prism cat who has decided to accompany him on his journey. And so the two set out, trying desperately to catch up to the sylph.

Like Magic Kingdom for Sale - Sold!, I didn't really remember much of the plot of The Black Unicorn. I remembered that Edgewood Dirk was in the book because he is the best character, but I didn't even remember that he was accompanying Ben (I thought he accompanied Willow like he does in the fourth book in the series, The Tangle Box). Little bits of the story seemed somewhat familiar as they happened, but there were a lot of things I thought might happen that didn't (like I thought Willow would be the one to help Ben break the spell). 

Thinking of breaking the spell....Ben Holiday is so incredibly dense in this book! One of the first people he visits, The River Master (Willow's father), tries to heal him, and flat out tells Ben that the magic enchanting him is of his own making. Dirk keeps telling Ben things about the spell and about how dreams work (but in his roundabout cat way which Ben has no patience for - I was complaining about this to my partner and we concluded that Ben Holiday is a dog person who does not like cats, otherwise he would have clued in at some point to what Dirk was telling him). Dirk practically spells it out near the end of the book, and Ben STILL had to waste time figuring things out. It was really upsetting to read after awhile, especially when you remember that Ben is supposed to be this super sharp and whip smart lawyer. 

I do think though that some of this could have been better had events unfolded a little differently. After their visit with the River Master, Ben and Dirk end up going to see Nightshade in an ill-fated attempt to get the bridle. Nightshade is still incredibly angry at Ben for sending her into the fairy mists with the Io Dust a year ago. She sees through the illusion and decides to bring him to Strabo. The dragon currently has possession of the bridle, and she is hoping to trade Ben for the bridle (since Strabo is also mad at Ben for using the Io Dust on him). Strabo is likewise able to see through the illusion; both Strabo and Nightshade decide it's because they are old, magical beings; they offer no further explanation. This encounter might have worked better before Ben's conversation with The River Master because it offered a few hints but no real substance as to what was enchanting him.

I also had a pretty good idea that Meeks didn't have the medallion because Ben was still able to talk to everyone. I remembered from the first book (and it's mentioned again at the beginning of this one) that it's the medallion that lets Ben read, write, speak, and understand the language the people in Landover speak. Had he lost the medallion he wouldn't have been able to communicate with anyone, unless Meeks had given his tarnished medallion that ability as well (and let's be honest, why would he bother?)

Also, Strabo and Nightshade were hilarious. Ben and company got away because the two of them started insulting each other then fighting. Had that not happened, Ben was as good as dead.

And then at the end, even though it's Willow who found the black unicorn, Willow who braved touching it despite all the warnings that she would be lost if she did, and Willow who got all the memories from the unicorn, Ben was the one who explained everything about the unicorns and the books of magic to his friends. I felt like he was mansplaining (though I know this isn't an accurate use of the term: he wasn't talking down to her and he did keep checking with her for confirmation). I felt like she was robbed of that moment which should have been hers to tell.

Despite my annoyances and complaints, I did think The Black Unicorn was a better book than Magic Kingdom for Sale - Sold! Where Magic Kingdom is an introduction, The Black Unicorn is building on what we know of the different characters. It's also telling a rather interesting story about where the wizards power comes from with some fun characters (like Dirk! I think one of my favourite moments is when Meeks and everyone are confronting each other and Dirk just waltzes into the middle of the field. Meeks takes one look at him and freaks out - clearly the wizard has some sort of history with prism cats). But like Magic Kingdom, I'm giving The Black Unicorn a downgraded rating from what I gave it years ago: it's going from a 4/5 to a 3/5.

And while I am going to continue this rereading adventure, I think I might take a break to read something else before I jump into the third book, Wizard at Large 

Magic Kingdom for Sale - Sold!

I read the first five Magic Kingdom of Landover novels a long, long time ago (I think around 30 years ago!! I think it was in late elementary school) I remember really liking them, but I don't really remember them. So I decided I would reread them all, see what I think of them now, and finally read the final book for the first time. This is also my first time reading them in order; I originally read books 4 and 5 first, then went back to read 1, 2, and 3.

So first up is Magic Kingdom for Sale - Sold!, which tells the story of Ben Holiday buying the Kingdom of Landover for $1,000,000 and becoming the King the fairy kingdom needs. I originally gave this book 4 out of 5 stars on Goodreads.

Ben Holiday sees the ad to buy Landover's kingship in a reputable magazine that his wife used to get. His wife, Annie, along with their unborn daughter, had passed away in an accident two years previously. Ben, a partner in a law firm, had mostly withdrawn from everyone, choosing instead to throw himself into his work. But his work is no longer challenging, and he feels he is losing himself; while quite likely a scam, he feels being King of a magic kingdom might be his ticket to start living again. 

I'd like to mention that, reading this now, I didn't like how Ben's grief was portrayed. I especially didn't like the insistence of his friend and fellow partner, Miles, that after two years Ben should be moving on. Grief doesn't work like that, and people need to grieve and feel their emotions at their own pace, not at the pace that society so often demands. 

I'd also like to note that when I read this when I was younger, I probably would have glossed over that part of the story. It seems reasonable when you haven't really experienced grief, especially from an unexpected loss. But now, years later, I was uncomfortable with this part of the story. 

So anyway, Ben Holiday meets with Meeks, the man responsible for selling the Kingship of Landover. Meeks deems him a suitable candidate precisely because he doesn't have any close ties to people (and, of course, because he is capable of paying the $1,000,000 fee). When Ben accepts, he is granted 10 days to experience the Kingdom and decide if he will stay, afterwhich the sale is final. Should he remain, he must also stay for one full year or else his purchase is forfeit.

But once he arrives, Ben discovers that the Kingdom is in shambles. There is a blight destroying the land, the magic castle, Sterling Silver, that he is to live in, is tarnishing and dying. The coffers are empty, and the various people of the land are fighting. But even after losing most of his ten day grace period due to the magical mishaps of Questor Thews, the court magician, Ben decides to stay for the challenge, and to prove he is more than the play-King many people accuse him of being. But his time is limited: the demon lord known as the Mark will challenge him for the throne by Midwinter. Will Ben be able to reunite the people in time to stop the demon, especially when the conditions they give for their pledges of fealty are impossible?

I honestly didn't remember a lot of the plot. I remembered a few bits and pieces here and there, but lots felt new: the stuff with the Mark, the people of the Greensward, how Ben met Willow at the Irrylyn. I remembered that Ben did something to make both Nightshade and Strabo hate him, but not the specifics of what happened between them (and I did find it funny that they got mad at him for tricking him, but they both intended to either trick him, kill him, or both). I remembered the truth of the Paladin, but not what it took for Ben to discover it (basically accepting that Landover was his home). I also didn't remember that he went into the Fairy Mists (I remember Willow getting help from the Fairy People in later books and traveling through thr Mists, and maybe Ben returning to Earth in a later book, too. But not his foray here at Nightshade's insistence). 

I did remember the main characters (Ben, Willow, Questor, Abernathy, Nightshade, Strabo, and sort of the River Master), but not some of the lesser characters like the kobolds Bunion and Parsnip. Or the G'home Gnomes, Filip and Sot (but when they were introduced, I did remember the name G'home Gnomes and where it came from). 

I also had a harder time liking Ben Holiday in this book. At times I liked him: he was clever and loyal to his new friends. But at other times I didn't, like when he would get mad and kick the gnomes for no reason; it felt like there were two versions of Ben Holiday and they were often at odds. I also didn't like Willow. She was very flat in this book. I remember her being a lot more active, and hopefully that will be the case in later books. Even her introduction was weird - I know she's a fairy creature, but her falling in love with Ben (and completely abandoning her home and people) just because he happened to be the man who saw her on a certain night at the Irrylyn felt contrived. And I'm not really sure how old she was supposed to be, but Ben was supposed to be about 40, and the book kept calling her a girl....so yeah, that felt uncomfortable. Again, these are things I noticed now that would have gone right over my head when I originally read the book.

So when I finished rereading Magic Kingdom for Sale - Sold!, I felt that it didn't deserve the 4 stars that I gave it when I was younger. I downgraded it to a 3 (it would have been a 2.5/5 book I think, but you can't give half stars on Goodreads): I still liked parts of it, but there are other parts that, 30 years later, didn't really sit well with me. I'm interested to see what I will think of the rest of the series! 

 

Edit, Sept 18/26: I just finished reading The Black Unicorn, the second book in the series, and am now downgrading Magic Kingdom for Sale - Sold! to a 2/5, while I'm giving The Black Unicorn a 3/5. 

Three Bags Full

The movie The Sheep Detectives looked cute, so when I saw Leonie Swann's book at work, I had to read it! Unfortunately I returned the book before writing here, so I'm just going to write something brief since I don't have the book to refer back to.

Three Bags Full tells the story of a flock of sheep trying to solve their shepherd's murder. While I had a hard time getting into the book originally (there are a lot of characters, and the dramatis personae only helps with the sheep, not the humans), once I got through that, I thought the book was a lot of fun! The sheep were all so quirky and different, but most importantly, they felt like legitimate sheep who were mostly doing sheep things (and not really understanding human things) for most of the book.

I also really liked the ending, and how the sheep solved the murder (and communicated it to the humans). I didn't really see the solution coming, which is always a plus in a mystery (I suspected the character who was involved, but wasn't really sure). And the sheep logic was fun - they kind of got to the answer but through the wrong logic (because it was their understanding of things, not how the humans actually did things).

 There is a sequel to Three Bags Full, but I don't think I'm going to read it. While I enjoyed reading the book, I felt like it was self-contained and didn't really need a second part; I'm going to leave things there for now. If I change my mind in the future, I can always get the second book then.  

The Urban Monk: Eastern Wisdome and Modern Hacks to Stop Time and Find Success, Happiness, and Peace

I found The Urban Monk: Eastern Wisdome and Modern Hacks to Stop Time and Find Success, Happiness, and Peace by Pedram Shojai at the perfect time. Life has been incredibly stressful these last few years, throwing one thing after another at me (most recently: wildfires). So I welcomed a nonfiction book that I don't even remember putting on hold showing up to hopefully help me with stress management.

The Urban Monk looks at nine common areas that cause people in the modern world problems, including stress, time management, sleep, and money. Shojai examines each problem and uses his views as both a trained monk and a doctor of Chinese medicine to offer solutions. He then further provides "modern hacks" - things that people in the modern Western World can do now to help break the cycle of each problem. Each chapter also starts and ends with a case study, which is based off of real people that Shojai has helped.

Overall, I really enjoyed reading through The Urban Monk. I found Shojai's suggestions helpful and would really like to try them at length. I thought the book was good for a beginner like me (while I'm familiar with some of the things Shojai talks about, I've never really practiced them in real depth or for long). But at times the book does get a little repetitive-sounding. He doesn't so much repeat himself, as offer similar suggestions for different problems (he provides different meditations to try, or suggests different herbs that are helpful). The structure of each chapter is the same as well, so that adds to the repetition (and might turn you off of reading it if you don't like structural repetition like that). His word choice was also a little off-putting at times in that he uses a lot of colloquial language and swears, which seem at odds with the subject matter (but he definitely wasn't as off-putting as I found Chris Crowley in Younger Next Year). I think The Urban Monk is definitely worth the read if you are stressed out by modern life and looking for a new way of thinking about and approaching what life can be like instead.

Stay for a Spell

I absolutely loved Amy Coombe's Stay for a Spell! I saw it at work and the premise sounded like so much fun: a princess gets cursed to never leave a bookshop until she can find her heart's desire. Her parents decide to send all of the princes of the realm to try to help because as everyone knows, love's kiss from a prince is sure to break the spell. And so Princess Tanadelle (or Tandy, as we get to know her as), is trying to live her life in the bookshop while every so often she's interrupted by the arrival of another prince.

While sometime a bit predictable (I knew what the pirate Bash had left in Tandy's shop when he stole all her books on curses fairly early on), Stay for a Spell is such a fun read. I liked all the characters. It was super fun seeing all of the princes different spell-breaking attempts. And I was really rooting for Tandy to succeed: with her bookshop, with her curse, and with learning how to do things on her own. I also liked the direction the book went with Tandy's curse: her heart's desire wasn't something cliche. :)

 Stay for a Spell was the perfect cozy fantasy read. I'll definitely keep my eye out for more by Coombe!

Pirate Latitudes

I found Michael Crichton's Pirate Latitudes at a little free library recently. I remember really liking Timeline (which I believe I read before starting this blog). And it sounded interesting, so I decided to give it a read.

Pirate Latitudes is the story of the privateer Captain Charles Hunter, who, with the unofficial blessing of England's Governor of Jamaica, Sir James Almont, leaves Port Royal with a crew of "loggers" with the intention of attacking the Spanish port of Matanceros and stealing a treasure-laden Spanish ship. 

The narrative was a little all-over the place. At first the book seemed to be following Almont, but once Hunter was introduced, he quickly became the central character. I wish things had gone back and forth between the two characters though - stuff was happening with Almont at Port Royal with his new secretary, Robert Hacklett, that we didn't get to see.

 At face value, the story is interesting enough. Attacking Matanceros is a difficult proposition, and it was interesting how Hunter went about it. The stakes were also consistently high: his crew was captured early, narrowly escaping death. And even the aftermath of the raid against Matanceros was fraught with danger at every turn.

But this book is full of very unsavory and altogether unlikable characters. While in the end I didn't mind Hunter, I spent a lot of the book not caring what happened to him and his crew. Pretty much everyone was a terrible person doing terrible things. I know that this is a historical fiction book, so it's quite possible that there's some truth to the way everyone was acting. But I honestly didn't want to read about it. 

As someone on Goodreads said, Pirate Latitudes "comes across as a [. . .] project never intended to see the light of day." And I can believe that. In a lot of ways, it felt like the book wasn't polished - it was most likely still a draft that Crichton was working on, or something that he never intended to share with others. 

While I did make it through the whole story, Pirate Latitudes definitely was one of my least favourite Crichton books I've read (I honestly think I enjoyed Jurassic Park better, and I wasn't overly fond of that either). Unless you're a huge fan of his, or really enjoy historical novels about pirates, I'd recommend giving this one a miss.

Isles of the Emberdark

I was so excited to hear that Brandon Sanderson was writing more of his Secret Projects! I asked my partner for the newest one, Isles of the Emberdark, for my birthday and couldn't wait to start reading it!

Isles of the Emberdark is a sequel to a novella Sanderson wrote some time ago. But rather than asking readers to go track down said novella, he incorporated it into the first part of Isles. I absolutely loved the first part of the book! It introduced the protagonist, Sixth of the Dusk, and went back and forth between his present day, where he is struggling to find purpose in his life, and what happened five years ago that led to his current predicament. Dusk was a Trapper, working on the most dangerous island on his world. But the world has changed, and no longer has need of Trappers. Plus with the arrival of people from other worlds, Dusk's people are struggling to navigate through the politics, trying desperately to hold onto their independence. It falls to Dusk to make one last treacherous journey to try to find a solution to his people's struggles.

Unfortunately, after the first part ended, the second part switched narratives to a different character, Starling. While she and her crew were interesting, they weren't who I wanted to be following, and I had a hard time getting myself to continue reading (even knowing that they were going to meet up with Dusk eventually). But I did, and I made it through, and was eventually rewarded with reconnecting with Dusk. And once that happened, I did enjoy the story a lot more. Though I did find myself wondering at times why Starling was there (other than to explain stuff to Dusk) - most of his story could have happened without her.

In the end, I enjoyed Isles of the Emberdark, though not as much as the other Secret Project books I've read. That said, I would very much like a sequel of some sort to see what would happen next! :)

The Faraway Inn

Continuing my quest for cozy fantasy novels, I came across Sarah Beth Durst's The Faraway Inn. I didn't realize it was a young adult book, so I was originally a bit surprised to find the main character, Calisa, was still in high-school. After a bad breakup with her boyfriend, Calisa decides, at the encouragement of her moms, to go and spend the summer helping her great aunt, Auntie Zee, at her bed and breakfast. But Zee isnt interested in her help, originally telling Calisa to go home, but then relenting and letting her stay for a few days. So Calisa takes it upon herself, with the help of Zee's absent landlord's son, Jack, to start cleaning and fixing up the place, hoping to get into Zee's good graces and be allowed to stay for the rest of the summer. 

Of course, not all is at it first seems. The guests are odd, and there's magic afoot. But with Zee's two rules (don't ask questions, and don't open any doors without permission), how will Calisa figure out what's going on?

...Quite easily, actually. She'll just break the rules every chance she gets. This was my biggest pet peeve of the story. I hoped Calisa might be able to figure out what was going on through some other means. Maybe she would start piecing things together as she was cleaning, or discover things in the library (with the help of the very-helpful library ladder). But nope. She just kept asking questions every chance she got (mostly of Jack), and opening doors (and even stealing her aunt's master key to get into some of the guest rooms) to figure out what was happening.

My other peeve of the story was how over the top Calisa was whenever she so much as glanced at Jack. Yes, he's very handsome. I get it. I don't need to be reminded of it with like every thought you have when you're speaking with him. Thankfully this calmed down a bit by about the midpoint of the book. 

That's also when the book started to get a little more interesting. Auntie Zee disappears while going to get supplies, and after trying to hold the fort, so to speak, for a bit, Calisa and Jack start looking for her. Their adventures take them into some pretty interesting places and they meet some really interesting people. Plus they end up getting to know the few guests at the inn a bit better and helping them out.

Most of the characters were quite good, too. I really liked Jack, and how earnest he was. He was so good-natured and dependable, even though he was obviously struggling trying to maintain everything with his father missing that you just couldn't help but like him. Mulligan was a rather odd guest, but I quite liked him because he was so different (and like Calisa, I had fun trying to figure out if he was something like a vampire or not). The mirror was pretty funny. And I really liked Melidor, the dryad, and her story of taking the time she needed to decide what she wanted for herself, rather than just giving in to the demands of her family.  

Also: Steve, the obviously-he's-a-dragon lizard that Calisa finds in a linen closet. He's very much like a cat, hanging out with Calisa and wanting to be involved in whatever she's doing. I enjoyed him just hanging out and tagging along with her and Jack wherever they went.

 While I had some issues with this book (and Calisa in particular), overall I did enjoy reading The Faraway Inn. :)

The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Waves

I can't remember why I wanted to read The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Waves. But when I first started reading it, a friend of mine saw me with it and said it was good. So I had really high hopes for it....and almost stopped reading it because I found it rather boring in the beginning. 

In The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Waves, one hundred years ago, the emperor of a country (I think? I'm going to call it a country) disappeared. No one is entirely sure what happened, but the Sea God, who was like a brother to the emperor, forsook the people and disappeared beneath the waves, bringing dangerous storms to their shores. In a desperate attempt to stop the storms, the people started sacrificing women, known as Sea Brides, to the god. And the storms would abate for a year, at which point they would need to sacrifice another girl to the god. This year, everyone knows Shim Cheong, the most beautiful girl in the village, is going to be the Sea Bride. But when the time comes for the sacrifice, Mina, the younger sister of the man who loves Shim Cheong, sacrifices herself instead, wanting her brother to be happy and her family to be safe. But when she enters the Spirit Realm, home of the Sea God, everything is not as it seems: the Sea God has been cursed and asleep all this time. And Mina learns that she has just one month to break the curse before she becomes a spirit herself!

The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Waves starts out as a kind of typical teen romantasy - a girl and a guy (Mina and Shin, in this case) who want nothing to do with each other end up thrown together and slowly start to respect and then love one another. Also, Shin just happens to be the immortal being who has been protecting the Sea God all this time (made me think of Twilight, honestly because Mina happens to be 16 - gave me some Edward/Bella vibes in terms of the relationship). Mina also is a typical headstrong female lead character - charging around and doing stuff even when people ask her politely not to. So that was all pretty annoying.

But then somewhere along the way, the narrative seemed to shift. Mina promised Shin she wouldn't leave his House without him....and actually listened. Shin always honored whatever he said he was going to do, and willingly took her to places to help her on her quest. Mina also got to know his guardians/friends/brothers (Namgi and Kirin) well, and everyone started to respect one another, even if they didn't 100% get along all the time. It was...refreshing.

I also really liked all of the main characters. Besides Mina and Shin, I liked the contrast between Namgi and Kirin. Not just the differences between their personalities, but also how they weren't what you would expect (Namgi in particular in this regard - he was a creature that even Kirin didn't really trust at the beginning of the story, but they became brothers in truth by the end of the narrative). 

While some of it was a tad predictable (I had strong suspicions pretty early on about the Sea God, though I will admit I started doubting them a bit as the narrative continued), I overall really enjoyed The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea in the end. It is a really good story about not just love but loyalty and family as well. I liked the world, I liked the characters, I liked the plot; I would be interested in reading more by Axie Oh one day! :)

Operation Bounce House

Someone recommended Matt Dinniman's Dungeon Crawler Carl to me a little while ago. While waiting to get a hold of it from the library, his newest book, Operation Bounce House, came out, so I decided to give that a try.

In Operation Bounce House, the people of New Sonora become the target of a corporation's new game, Operation Bounce House, where human players can pay to build mechs and fight against the evil "New Sonoran terrorists." Only....there are no terrorists, just a bunch of farmers who are trying to peacefully live their lives. But unknown to the game's creator, Oliver Lewis and his sister still have functioning bots who help them on their farm, including an advanced AI named Roger who coordinates the worker drones. And after they come under attack, Roger initiates their defensive mode. These farmers aren't going to just lay down and die while Earth steals their land: they're going to fight!

While I, overall enjoyed Operation Bounce House, I have to admit that the premise and plot made me very uncomfortable. I can see something like this happening, potentially even here on Earth right now. The way the Earthers talked about the New Sonorans being "other" and "subhuman" is a known propaganda tactic used in wars (I remember reading about how soldiers in the World Wars would call the enemy by different terms to make them not-human in their heads). So yeah, be warned if you're reading this book: it is very uncomfortable at times. 

 Plus, you know, a lot of people die. It's not a happy book.

But as I said, I still did enjoy the book. Dinniman is a really good writer, particularly in a cinematic sense: I could picture the action really well (and think this would make a fantastic TV series or movie). I loved all the characters and how they all worked together to try to stay alive (and how they decided to stick it to the game company). The worldbuilding was really interesting, how the main characters were part of the "orphan generation" because all their parents who were born on-world died (and how the fix ended up the thing the Earthers used to claim the New Sonorans were "subhuman," even though they were the same with the exception of that one change in their genes so that they wouldn't die like their parents did). 

I also liked how so much only happened because the Earthers were terrified. The very thing they feared would happen did happen only because they attacked New Sonora. Had they left the planet alone, nothing would have happened.

Operation Bounce House is a fast, addicting read (I stayed up really late to finish it last night). If you're okay with the dark subject matter, it's definitely worth checking out. But do be aware of the subject matter as it is an uncomfortable look at where our culture could go.

The Secret Garden

I remember enjoying the movie The Secret Garden when I was younger, but I never did read the book. So when I saw it recently at work, I decided to give it a try. After all, it's a children's classic (the edition I saw was an Oxford Children's Classic). I thought there must be a reason that it's still in print.

The Secret Garden is, if I'm being charitable, the story of the friendship between three young people: Mary Lennox, the spoiled orphan who finds herself suddenly alone at her uncle's Misselthwaite Manor after her parents dies of cholera in India; Colin, his sickly (and spoiled) son; and Dickon, the sweet animal charmer. The three of them get into Colin's mom's walled garden that his father shut up when she passed away 10 years ago, and bring it back to life. Though if I'm being more realistic, it's the story of two incredibly spoiled and privileged young people somehow becoming good friends because they won't put up with each other's shit while Dickon tags along. And while that is a less charitable explanation, it's also very true. Both Mary and Colin were incredibly spoiled because they were only children whose only companionship was servants who gave into their every whim. Mary's mother just wanted to party and forget about her, while her father was too busy governing or something. Colin's father didn't want to even look at him because he was the reminder of his wife who died in childbirth (and even had her eyes). Both of them had servants tending to their needs (and servants who would never say no to them), so they both grew up to be terrors.

But after Mary's family passed away in India, she found herself shipped off to her uncle's house in England. There, the servants had no time for her, and sent her to amuse herself outside. Having grown up without any real experience with the authority of adults, she does as she pleases and finds her way into the locked garden (while fully aware of the history of why it was locked and forbidden in the first place). At night she sometimes hears someone crying, and though the servants tell her it's just the wind on the door, one night she takes it upon herself to go see what's going on and so discovers Colin. Contrary to everyone's expectations, Colin takes a liking to her, and so their friendship starts. But where he is used to getting his way, so is she; when he has a tantrum she is the first person to ever stand up to him and just tells him off.

While I found the beginning of the book a bit slow and hard to get into, I did like how Mary grew as a person. She starts taking an interest in her surroundings and the people around her, and slowly finds herself liking more and more people. And while Colin has a similar arc to her, he remains a kind of overbearing child, lecturing the others and leading their activities. Unfortunately the latter part of the book seems to switch to be about him; the book ends with the servants seeing him and his father (and so learning of his recovery) and ignores Mary (I was really hoping to see the three of them together at the end, actually becoming a family, because that's what both of them needed. Not just Colin).

I liked Dickon, but he is a much more minor character. He doesn't grow or change at all in the book - he remains the same sweet and rather saintly boy who everyone, human or otherwise, trusts.

The book also took a bit of a weird turn when the children started talking about Magic in relation to Colin gaining strength and recovering. While I think it was supposed to be a nod to children's games, it felt a lot like we were being preached at (especially with Colin lecturing about the subject). I felt like that was a rather unnecessary addition in the book, as just going outside and starting to move around was magic all on its own. 

While a bit tough to read at times (and sometimes a bit odd), I do like the book's message about getting outside and getting fresh air. Just reading it made me want to go out and start playing in my own garden (though I admittedly have to wait awhile still as my garden is still currently sleeping under a blanket of snow)!

Nine Goblins

I've never read anything by T. Kingfisher before (I think she mainly writes horror, which isn't really my thing). But Nine Goblins sounded fun, so I thought I'd give it a shot.

Nine Goblins is the story of the Nineteenth Infantry (aka the Whinin' Niners), a goblin infantry troop of the Goblin Army fighting in the Goblin Wars (or the Glorious Conflict Resisting The Ongoing Human Aggression, as per the goblin generals). In their most recent engagement, they attack a wizard, who, while trying to flee the battle, accidentally transports nine members of the Whinin' Niners with him, deep into enemy territory. Now the goblins just want to get home to Goblinhome.

The main goblins were all a lot of fun. There was Nessilka, the reluctant sergeant trying to get everyone home (she was good at leading, but didn't like doing it). Murray, her corporal - an engineer who was demoted to the infantry because he was too good at designing devices (goblins expected giant clunky devices with lots of spikes, not neat little efficient devices). Algol,  her second corporal, an animal-lover. And Blanchett, who, after a Mechanics Corps accident, now only communicated through his one-eyed teddy bear. 

The remaining five goblins were Weasel, their stuttering and shy hunter, Mishkin and Mushkin, the twin new recruits, Thumper, and Gloober. These five were around but not as prominent as the other four.

I was not expecting Nine Goblins to also be about Sings-to-Trees, an elf veterinarian who will care for any creature great or small, mundane or magical. Though since he featured so prominently in the first few chapters, I (rightly) assumed he woukd be crossing paths with our nine goblins sooner or later.

The plot takes some interesting turns. First, skeleton deer appear at Sings-to-Trees' home, looking for help. From his books, he discovers they are cervidians, who only appear around areas of large magical disturbances. Then the Whinin' Niners try to raid a farm only to find it completely empty of both humans and animals (but find a moldy dinner sitting out with a few bites missing). So after finding Sings-to-Trees and telling him about the farm, the main four goblins go with him to try to discover what exactly is going on. And they are not prepared for the horror they find...

Overall, I quite enjoyed Nine Goblins. I loved the main goblins. The world building is really fun (I really liked how in goblin culture, the more you're complaining about something = the more you like it). There is a horror element to the story, so as long as you're okay with reading that genre, Nine Goblins is a rather fun read. :)

The Astral Library

I picked up Kate Quinn's newest book, The Astral Library, thanks to the contest Chapters/Indigo was having; if you pre-ordered it, you were entered into a contest to win a trip to P.E.I. I knew I wanted to read The Astral Library at some point, as I like Quinn's books and was interested in what she would do in the fantasy genre, so I pre-ordered it. I sadly did not win the contest, but I got a great book out of the deal. :)

The Astral Library is the story of Alix Watson, a young woman struggling through life. She was abandoned by her mom at the age of 8 into the foster care system. Having aged out of the system, she's now struggling to survive: holding down multiple jobs, only about $36 to her name, late on rent payments, and desperately trying to price out the groceries she can afford. But when her card gets declined at the grocery store, she loses her most steady job, has no hours at another job, is getting evicted from her apartment, and seems to be the victim of identity fraud, things look bleak. But then she steps through a door at the Boston Public Library and enters the magical Astral Library, where she's given the chance to live in a book. But as she readies herself for her new adventure, the Librarian receives word that some of the Astral Library's other Patrons are under attack. Alix tags along (much to the Librarian's chagrin) as they hop from book to book, looking for the other Patrons to bring them to safety.

I will admit: the first two chapters are a bit rough to read: it was crazy depressing going along with Alix as her world blew up. But once you get to the actual Library, the book really takes off. The characters are a lot of fun, especially the Librarian, the Gallerist (the curator of the Astral Gallery), and the Programmer (the guardian of AGNIS - the Astral Gaming Network Interspace System). I also really liked how people were able to move through books, paintings and games (and the differences between them). Some things were a tad predictable (like how the library had a perfect set-up for Beau), but others caught me by surprise (like who the villain ended up being). 

After I got through the first two chapters, I didn't really want to put The Astral Library down. It's a really fun story that I recommend for anyone who loves libraries. :)

Can't Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation

I, like many people nowadays, have been feeling super burnt-out by like everything. So when I stumbled on Anne Helen Petersen's Can't Even: How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation, I was hoping it would be helpful, shedding light on why I feel this way.

Well, the short answer is that life sucks for everyone (particularly in the United States, which is where Petersen lives and is writing about). I thought this book was really good at showing how things have changed over time for everyone (not just millennials): companies have reduced good salaried jobs in favour of hiring more temp workers (aka freelancers), everyone is expected to work more and more hours (and that corresponds to less and less leisure time), people are afraid they will socially move downwards (out of the middle class), and, thanks to social media, people are now performing their lives rather than actually living them. But I thought the book was less good at showing how any of this was specific to millennials. Sure, many millennials were trying to start work during the 2008 recession, making it very difficult to make money, especially when many of them were struggling with student debt. And some millennials (younger ones in particular - this was not at all my experience) were raised in heavily scheduled ways, where everything they did was organized and often in hopes of being a good point for a college application. But these are things that are transcending any one generation. Millennials are parenting their own children in the same way. People of other generations had difficulties finding jobs in the recession. College tuition is even more expensive now than it was when millennials were attending, so younger generations will have even bigger debts. So, while I found this to be a largely informative read regarding the history of jobs in America over the last forty or fifty years, that was all it really was. The book also offers little in the way of solutions (the final chapter admits as much), which is rather unfortunate; it might have served as a rallying cry had there been more than just historical fact.

While, in some ways, I didn't really relate to the things Petersen was specifically mentioning, being an older millennial from Canada, I will admit that there were some areas of the book that really made me stop and consider my own life. One that particularly stood out to me was how everyone seems to feel pressure to monetize their hobbies (which was also kind of top of mind for me after watching Ryan George's video on the same topic just a few days before reading the chapter) instead of just enjoying them. That really made me stop and think.

So if you're looking for an interesting primer on how the working world has changed over the last few decades (particularly in corporate America), while a bit depressing, Can't Even is worth the read. 

Though I will admit, I was annoyed at the grammatical errors in the book - there were a number of places where there were extra words, making sentences a little nonsensical on first read.

Automatic Noodle

Automatic Noodle by Annalee Newitz sounded like a super fun read. A group of robots wake up after being deactivated for a few months in the restaurant they were working in. They decide to open their own restaurant, even though they know they're technically not allowed to own property or businesses (or even own a bank account). So with the help of one of their human friends from before they were deactivated and a sentient car, they decide to start making the best hand-pulled noodles they can. But after some anti-robot activists get wind of their restaurant and start review-bombing them, how will their restaurant dream survive if no one can find them on the restaurant app?

Overall, I quite enjoyed Automatic Noodle. While the first chapter is a bit rough trying to keep all the robots and acronyms straight (there's a lot of world building thrown at you right off the bat), I ended up quite liking the main characters (I didn't have much of an opinion on the sentient truck). My biggest complaint was that the book just kind of ended. Staybehind, the ex-military robot-turned maintenance man for the restaurant, managed to infiltrate the inner circle of the anti-robot group and get evidence of their review-bombing to save the restaurant's online reputation. Then the book fastforwarded to after the reputation was saved, but the robots decided they don't even really want to bother using the app anymore because they have become successful enough using an old-school website and through neighborhood foot traffic. The end. It was very abrupt and underwhelming. 

Project Hail Mary

 A friend of mine wanted to do a sort of book club together with some books including Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir. We just happened to start reading it right before the movie is due to come out, so that was a happy coincidence. :)

In Project Hail Mary, astronaut Mark Watney Ryland Grace wakes up from a coma in another solar system. He's really disoriented and doesn't really remember what was happening at first, but he slowly pieces together, with help of his slowly returning memories, that he and two other astronauts were sent aboard the Hail Mary to Tau Ceti in a desperate attempt to save the Earth. A bacteria, Astrophage, has been discovered traveling back and forth between our sun and Venus, and it seems to be feeding off of our sun's light; in just a few short years, without a solution, over half of the world's population will die as crops fail due to the cooling of the air. So the world's governments got together to send a team to Tau Ceti, a nearby star, that seemed to be unaffected by Astrophage (the other neighbouring stars all seemed to have similar dimming problems).

But Ryland wakes up alone; his fellow astronauts passed away in transit. So now he has to solve the problem on his own.

Or at least, that's what he originally thinks until he encounters an alien star-ship. It seems that an alien species from another solar system (40 Eridani) are having similar problems due to Astrophage, and are also at Tau Ceti to try to find a solution. When the aliens saw the Hail Mary arrive, they made contact in the hopes that the two species can find a solution and save both their worlds together.

I loved Project Hail Mary. I wasn't expecting an alien species to make contact with Ryland, and, being a language nerd, I loved how they built up communication together. I also loved Rocky (what Ryland calls his new alien friend), and thought the two of them made a great team. 

The book goes back and forth between Ryland's present at Tau Ceti and his past, where he was part of the team that built the Hail Mary, as flashbacks as he regains his memories. The past serves to help him remember things about the ship and how it works, which in turns helps him use his scientific knowledge (he is a microbiologist) to try to find a solution to the Astrophage. I did start getting annoyed with going back to the past at times once the book got going because I was much more interested in what was going on at Tau Ceti than with what happened while they were building the ship. Though there was some interesting intrigue going on as well, once it became clear that everything wasn't quite as clear-cut as I originally assumed regarding Ryland's presence.

I also felt like Ryland wasn't really his own character, but just a further adventure of Mark Watney from The Martian. While it's admittedly been over a decade since I read The Martian, I felt like they were just too similar. Both were science nerd with a lot of random knowledge that was helpful. They also talked and thought in what felt like a similar manner (though again, it might not be; I haven't reread The Martian recently). 

The book also feels similar to The Martian in that everything that can go wrong (but Ryland and company survive) does. I remember feeling like the book must be wrapping up soon, but looking at how many pages are left to go still and thinking "well, at least one or two things are still going to go wrong from here."  So that was a little bit disappointing.

But honestly, I flew through the book in just a few days, barely wanting to put it down. I really enjoyed it, and I'm looking forward to the movie (though it'll be interesting to see how Ryan Gosling interprets Ryland Grace - a lot of how he talks in the book reminds me of Ryan Reynolds).  

How to Lose a Goblin in Ten Days

I've been looking for a good cozy fantasy for some time now. I've always been a fan of the genre, but so often the stakes are high and people die, which is something I really haven't been in the mood for. I was really hoping that books like The Honey Witch or Cat Dragon would be that book, but no such luck. But then I stumbled on Jessie Sylva's How to Lose a Goblin in Ten Days, and, dare I say it, this book was almost exactly what I was looking for.

How to Lose a Goblin in Ten Days opens with Pansy, a halfling, inheriting the cottage of her grandmother. The cottage is a little ways out of her town, much to the consternation of her parents, but she is determined to go and live her own life, in no small part because she feels like she doesn't belong with the other halflings. But when she arrives at the cottage, she finds a young goblin, Ren, living there. Ren claims their family has been taking care of the cottage for years, and so it belongs to them. But Pansy insists that the cottage is hers because she has the key. So they come to an accord: whoever gets fed up and leaves the cottage first loses all rights to it. And thus starts their attempts to make the other one leave (while remaining in line with the rule that neither one can destroy or remove the other's stuff, but they can both add things to the cottage).

Sylva's halflings and goblins have such different ways of looking at the world that this ends up the biggest culture clash ever as Pansy and Ren try to oust the other. But along the way, they start to not only understand one another, but also to fall in love. But that love may be a very fragile thing. Because even though the two start seeing eye to eye, their people have hated one another for a very long time. Will they be able to get through all the prejudice to live a happy life together?

How to Lose a Goblin in Ten Days is super cute. I loved both Pansy and Ren, and I loved that the narrative shifted back and forth between them each chapter so you got to see exactly what each one was thinking and why. And I loved how Pansy in particular became more aware of her actions as the story progressed, coming to an understanding of goblins in a way that most of her people would never have even attempted. Ren also changed as the story went on, letting down their guard more and more (but still jumping to conclusions from time to time from a life living with the prejudices of other people). I loved how their relationship grew, and was also much more understanding of how they didn't think the other could possibly be thinking of them in that way because they come from two different species with such a history of bad relations. 

My only complaint was the ending. While it made sense in the moment for their people to band together, the last chapter made it feel like the halflings and goblins had pushed aside their differences almost entirely; based off of how the halflings in particular had been so anti-goblin through the whole book, it felt like it was too fast for such a thing to happen.

But all in all, I loved How to Lose a Goblin in Ten Days. This was exactly what I was looking for in a cozy fantasy, and I hope I can find more that are similar in the future. :) 

A Treachery of Swans

I saw A. B. Poranek's new book, A Treachery of Swans, at the library and of course had to get it. I enjoyed Where the Dark Stands Still a lot and wanted to see what she came up with next. I have to admit, I was not expecting a France-inspired story, but I was still along for the ride. I did have a bit of a hard time getting into it (I'd say it took around 50 pages), but once I got hooked I didn't want to put A Treachery of Swans down!

This time around, Poranek wrote a sapphic romance based on Swan Lake. In this world, a king's sorcière advisor drove the Three Mothers, goddesses who control life, death, and change/magic from their country. Morgane, the Mother of magic, cursed the land as she fled so that nothing beautiful would grow. She left behind a single magical crown that allowed the king to keep the crops growing. But the magic comes at a price, for every time he uses it he falls more steadily into madness. Due to the sorcière's actions, anyone who can use magic, who happens to have gold in their veins instead of the regular red, is shunned, blamed for the blight on the land.

Into this world is born Odile, a girl with golden blood who was taken in, along with her non-sorcière brother, by a sorcière named Regnault. He has been sending Odile on missions to steal Goddess gold, the only thing that can still allow sorcières to summon magic. After many, many years, they have enough for one final heist: Odile will take the place of Marie d'Odette, convince the Dauphin to marry her, and, on their wedding when the magical crown is brought out, they will steal it to summon Morgane back and heal the land! Except....things start to go sideways when the Dauphin's father, King Honoré, is murdered, and Odile's estranged brother is accused of the murder. Odile starts to investigate, wanting to clear her brother's name. She starts to get closer to the Dauphin, as well as to Marie, who witnessed the murder, all the while trying to convince herself that these people are her enemies, and she must stay to her task of stealing the crown.

I honestly quite liked the story (once I got into it). I liked the characters, especially the Dauphin. He is a kind-hearted gentleman, someone who many of the other nobles, his father included, think is too weak, but who has a quiet strength in genuinely caring about the people around him. I also quite liked Odile and how she grew through the story, slowly coming to realize what her father, Regnault, had been doing to her over the years (and what she had lost as a result). I also liked how the other characters, especially Marie, saw the good in Odile, no matter how much Odile insisted she was the villain of the tale.

I will admit that I was able to predict some of the twists and turns of the plot, like who the beast was and the truth of Regnault. But I still enjoyed how the story unfolded and how the characters discovered these things on their own. Though it did feel like there should be a part two to this story (which probably won't happen based on the epilogue), I quite enjoyed A Treachery of Swans as a standalone tale. 

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet

I read Monk and Robot by Becky Chambers last October (and apparently forgot to blog about it - whoops!) I really enjoyed it, and was looking forward to reading more by Chambers. So the last time I was browsing at Chapters, I stumbled on The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, which sounded good. So I bought it and was excited to start it....

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet is about a group of spacers on board the Wayfarer, a ship that creates hyperspace tunnels to connect different areas of the galaxy together. There's Ashby, the captain, who is in love with Pei, the badass alien captain of her own ship who comes from a very xenophobic society (if their relationship is discovered, she could be exiled from her entire species, not just her family). Sissix, his Aandrisk pilot (she's from a reptilian species). Kizzy and Jenks, his human mech techs. Corbin, their algae/fuel specialist, who is really good at his job but isn't very pleasant to be around. Dr. Chef, one of the last Grum who loves gardening and cooking for the crew. Ohan, a Sianat Pair (an alien who is infected with a virus that lets them understand and navigate through the universe, but at the cost of years of their life). Lovey (Lovelace), the ship's sentient AI. And newcomer Rosemary, the clerk Ashby hired on to help them secure better jobs. The crew are given the job of a lifetime: create a hyperspace tunnel to Hedra Ka, home of the Toremi Ka, a previously violent species newly entered into an alliance with the Galactic Commons (GC). They need to make their way to the planet then punch a hyperspace tunnel back to known space, a journey that takes them nearly a year (or a Standard, as the GC calls it). 

The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet was a hard read for me. I actually stopped reading it to read Blind Date with a Werewolf (and I really considered not continuing The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet at that point) because I was really annoyed at how slow going the book is. The plot meanders, taking its sweet time to get anywhere. The crew makes stops in various places and meets various people. But for the most part there is little to no conflict. Pretty much all of the crew has secrets, but very little normally comes from them being revealed (for example, Rosemary lied about who she was. But it came to light because she didn't want to lie anymore, and pretty much everyone was okay with it. Ashby was apparently a bit upset, but we didn't get to see that in any real way). This was how almost the whole book operated: every chapter was a new destination or incident, which would have some (in most cases) minor conflict that was usually resolved at the end (but often not resolved in a real satisfying way either - there were a number of times where I thought "oh good, here comes the story" only to have the chapter end and a new adventure begin).

I also felt like we were following the wrong characters. The most interesting crew members (with the exception of Sissix) had more minor roles in the book. When Pei and her ship showed up, I was left wondering why we weren't following her as she went off on her more exciting adventures.

But there were some really good moments. I liked how Kizzy had trouble dealing with some boarders; I liked how that was handled by Chambers, and I like how it was resolved with help from Pei. I liked the Corbin story line, once we got there (I honestly wish that had happened sooner - I think the changes in him were interesting and I would have loved to see him grow with the rest of the crew more). I liked how most of the crew accepted Ohan's decision, at least through most of the story. Yes, they weren't happy with it (Sissix and Ashby had some words), but they were still ready to accept what he chose. And I really liked what happened after they finally arrived at Hedra Ka (though in some ways that also felt like the plot finally starting, but then it wrapped up right after).

I also want to say that the worldbuilding in The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet is great. The alien species were both interesting and different. They had different cultures and different ways, and it was great how the different characters interacted and came to terms with those differences.  One thing that did annoy me though (and I admit that this is super nitpicky of me) was how all the people of one species seemed to speak one language. Yes, the humans had trouble understanding some people who didn't speak their one language. But, say, all the Aandrisks spoke one language and no one ever had trouble understanding someone else who spoke that one language.

So that was The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet in a nutshell. It had some great moments, and some really interesting characters. But unfortunately it's a slow meander to get to anywhere interesting.  I had much higher hopes for this when I started. :(

I'd also like to note, the other books in the Wayfarers series don't seem to be connected specifically with these characters (the second book follows people who were introduced in this one, but doesn't seem to have the Wayfarer crew in it). So maybe I'll give it a try one day. 

Blind Date with a Werewolf: a Novel in Stories

It's been awhile since I read anything by Patricia Briggs, so it seems fitting that her new book, Blind Date with a Werewolf: a Novel in Stories is the first book I read in 2026! 

In Blind Date with a Werewolf, Asil, the Moor, one of the oldest and scariest werewolves, is given the "gift" of five blind dates for Christmas (which, as he keeps repeating to his "Concerned Friends," is completely unnecessary as he doesn't celebrate Christmas). Asil has been barely controlling his wolf for a long time, after the death of their mate (and has been begging his Alpha to kill him, though the Marrock has always refused), and so thinks this is a bad idea. But his friends are betting against him (the rules are that he must stay with his date for 2 hours, no one must run screaming from the other, and Asil is not to kill anyone) and Asil likes a challenge, so he agrees. The five stories in this book tell the tales (or the aftermaths) of his five blind dates.

Prior to starting Blind Date with a Werewolf, I had been struggling my way through another book (which I put aside in order to read this). I was so happy at the speed in which I got into this book; I finished it in about three nights! Asil is a really fun character: he's full of interesting knowledge because of his age, but is still interested in the people and happenings around him. He's physically gorgeous and likes to play this up, but he never seems arrogant (he's just accepting of it as a thing, and often just wants to get past it). While a very dominant wolf, he is very protective of innocents.

His dates themselves are also very entertaining. He starts out with a vampire LARPer; while Asil isn't into men, he has no problems continuing on the date and even dancing with him. From there he meets someone who loves cats (an interesting option for his "Concerned Friends" to choose for a werewolf!), a platonic date with a fellow gardener, a ghost hunter, and a high society swinger. Of course, nothing goes as planned as vampires, witches, wyrms, fae, and other creatures make their way into his dates.

But along the way, Asil also starts to heal, and even finds his wolf talking to him once again! This is largely thanks to his fourth date, Ruby; something about her calms Asil's wolf, and even though they just go on one short date, Asil's wolf is convinced that she is "their" Ruby. I was really happy with how that all developed, and I hope to one day read more about them. :)

I absolutely loved this book. It was such a fun read and a great start to my year. :D