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This book was such a slow burn for me. Coming highly praised, I came in here expecting a traditional school of wizardry tale. But your HP it is not. It's good though, very good.

Told from first person perspective, our narrator is Galadriel, a sophomore at the Scholomance, a deadly place of education indeed. The students learn magic simply by surviving the many horrors the school throws at them. There are no houses or anything the like, but alliances to make sure you survive your senior year. Students have to fight their way out, through masses of monsters.

Galadriel is a loner though. Secretly, she's one of the most powerful magic-users of the school, but she can only use spells of destruction. As the story progresses, Galadriel has to make alliances herself, and figure out if she and the most prolific monster killer of Scholomance, Orion Lake, are dating or not?

You get zero exposition in the beginning, you're just thrown in, as Galadriel, called El, is saved by Orion. The magic system is a bit mind-boggling at first, and El is a bit of an unreliable narrator, as she's not super-likeable. She's an antisocial introvert. Takes time for her to thaw, took time for me to warm up to her.

It is a creative story, and it successfully breaks the mold of every other wizard academy story out there.

After my previous book, I decided that a slice of life fantasy book might just be the thing, and it really was. Legends & Lattes is low-stakes fantasy, with barely a plot but a huge chunk of coziness.

Viv is an orc warrior who is retiring from adventuring, and she wants to start a coffeeshop. She's brought a good-luck charm from her adventures, and then just builds it up, until she is the proprietor of Legends & Lattes. She gathers a cozy cast of characters who work for her, or learn to love coffee and cinnamon rolls.

Reading this book was like drinking a good cup of coffee and munching on a piece of pastry. Just comfy. It read a lot like a fanfic coffee house AU of a fantasy story, Viv might be freshly retired from a DnD party. But that's all not bad stuff. Sometimes we need something uplifting and cozy, especially in 2022. Just don't go in expecting an epic story, it won't be your cup of coffee.

CN: sexual harassment

I thought I had only read the first 6 books of WoT back in the day, but no, I was wrong. As I read this long-winded book where not much of anything happened in 800 pages, a lot of the stuff from Ebou Dar came back to me.

The good: I like Mat, I liked his Ebou Dar chapters, and the end of the book with the attack on Ebou Dar is very promising. I liked the machinations of the Black Ajah, and generally the intrigue and political stuff.

The bad: Incredibly lame pacing. My usual complaints about the author not understanding female relationships, or women in general, having created a wide cast of super-unlikeable women. Inherent mysogyny everywhere. I get that the author tried a power role reversal but it doesn't change that sexism is everywhere in this book. I mean, come on, Rand is fine with sending thousands of men to their death for him, but he recites the name of every woman in his head. Ugh. I could go on.

The very bad: I first read this in 1996, and I have come a long way since. I am not sure how the bit about Mat and Tylin slipped me by back then. Queen Tylin has her eyes on Mat, and soon her hands, and despite him saying no many times and avoiding her, she ultimately rapes him at knife point and he weeps afterwards. When he tells others about it as they accuse him of making passes at her improperly, he gets made fun of. As Mat is often a character that's used as a bit of comedic relief, being the fun gambler and womanizer, I have seen Reddit comments that just pass this off as a bit of fun and genius writing. I personally was shocked, and don't think it was handled sensitively at all. Not that I could really expect Jordan to handle such a subject matter with a deft touch. Oy.

Nevertheless, the overarching plot is keeping me hooked, and I will see it through to its hopefully not bitter end. Halfway done, 7 down, 7 to go. And I haven't even reached the low points of pacing yet.

This one is from the category 'WTF did I just read?' It's not my first book by Kameron Hurley, the queen of zero exposition ever. You just get thrown in, and the missing exposition, in this case because of amnesia, is part of the story.

Zan is a warrior from the family Katazyrna, and apparently the only one who can conquer the Mokshi, a world-ship that has left the Legion, a group of decaying world-ships and is supposed to be the salvation, as all other world-ships are dying. But Zan loses her memory every time she comes back from the Mokshi, and along with her amnesia, just like Zan you as the reader have to figure out what exactly is happening here.

We get two PoVs in this book. Zan, who remembers nothing, and has to regain her memories, and Jayd, apparently Zan's love, daughter of the Katazyrna leaders, who gives herself away in marriage to the rival Bhavaja family, in order to fulfill the master plan she's worked out with Zan before she lost her memory.

Zan's chapters are great, Jayd's chapters I detested, just like I detested the character. What I wasn't prepared for was the amount of body horror in this book. The world-ships are organic, and this case it means very visceral and disgusting. At some point, Zan gets tossed to the bottom of the ship and has to basically claw her way back up through the bowels. It was disturbing yet also my favorite part of the book. I could easily transplant this into a Numenera roleplaying campaign, it was delightfully weird, with a group of four adventurers traveling through the world.

The main Mokshi plot left me a bit cold though. It was interesting, but not as good as Zan's story on the Katazyrna. Also a bit disturbing, if strange pregnancies might make you queasy. I should mention that this story has female characters only, and conception is sexless, as women get pregnant and birth ship parts as the world ships need them. Yeah, weird, I know. But also interesting, because female autonomy over their bodies is HUGE in this story, and should be in RL too.

Anyway, not my favorite for sure, but interesting.

This middle grade book would have been one of my absolute favorites in my youth, and I loved it now too. I love Greek mythology, and this is basically Greek mythology meets modern urban fantasy.

Perseus Jackson, short Percy, is a problem student who can never settle down anywhere. His mother lives with his detestable step-father in New York, and he gets moved from boarding school to boarding school. But one day something changes, when his math teacher turns into a Fury and tries to attack him. He eventually finds out that he is actually a demi-god, the offspring of Poseidon with his mortal mother, and that there's a whole camp full of children like him.

But war is brewing amongst the three major gods Zeus, Poseidon and Hades because Zeus' bolt was stolen, and Percy is sent on a quest with Grover the Satyr, and Athena's daughter Annabeth, to retrieve said bolt before the summer solstice.

The story is fast-paced, pretty fun, lots of monsters, and I read a beautifully illustrated edition. Would recommend for any child that shows a hint of interest in mythology. I'm not a child, but I'll keep reading too. :-)

CN Rape, Sexual Assault, Violence

This book offers a fictionalized version of the author's own experience with sexual assault, and you can imagine that this alone makes it a tough read at times. The story has two unique PoVs: Vivian Tan, a Chinese-American who lives in the UK, and who likes to travel alone, going on hikes. One fine day she travels to Belfast and goes on a hike there, to be assaulted by the other PoV character, Johnny, a 15 year old boy from an Irish Traveller family, Pavee, and just like Roma discriminated and prejudice against by the general populace. We get a look at his background, coming from a family where domestic violence was common.

The toughest part of course is the actual assault. We experience this in detail, and it's excruciating, painful, to experience this ordeal that Vivian, and the author both, had to live through. We also witness the trauma, the depression after the assault, and the difficult time at the trial.

The book left me pretty raw. One of the things that Johnny states in court is that because Vivian was on her own in a lonely park, hiking, she was asking for it. Because she took off her shoes and socks to cross a brook, she was asking for it. Will there ever be a time when a woman can feel safe when she's on her own? For many years I never walked or jogged in the fields because when I was 17 a car chased me into the fields and only stopped following when the path got too narrow. I never forgot this experience. I was lucky. Many women aren't. When will we ever able to feel completely safe?

I would lie if I said I enjoyed this book, but it's well-written, and very...visceral. I am glad I read it.

This stand-alone novel set after the First Law trilogy was probably even darker than the series, and definitely filled with a lot more gore. As the title suggests it's all about vengeance. Monza Murcatto is the female captain general of the Thousand Swords, a mercenary army formerly led by Cosca, the drunken mercenary we met in the trilogy. Monza's boss, Duke Orso of Styria betrays her, kills her brother and throws her off a cliff. But she survives, and vows revenge against the 7 men involved in this betrayal.

It starts off like a bloody heist movie, as Monza and her crew of misfits plot to kill one target after the other. But the vengeance project changes all people involved, there's more people involved and it's all out war in the end.

The most likeable character is probably Cosca and he is just as murderous and selfish as everyone else is in this book.

I don't think I ever want to return to Monza as a character, but damn, Abercrombie writes such compelling terrible characters.

I can't wait to read on in this world.