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It's been a slow couple of months for books (because literally all I've been reading is fanfic) but here's what I've read since the last update! Includes two novellas I absolutely loved and highly recommend, I've marked them with little hearts under the cut.
Reborn by Seth Haddon (★★★☆☆) [goodreads]
A Magical Girl Retires by Park Seolyeon (★★★★☆) [goodreads]
When Among Crows by Veronica Roth (★★★★★) [goodreads]
Masters of Death by Olivie Blake (★★★☆☆) [goodreads]
Lore Olympus: Volume Six by Rachel Smythe (★★★★☆) [goodreads]
I completely forgot to post this last time when I was linking my recent fic, but for the first time ever I was the first person to put fic for a new fandom on AO3 which was so weird. When Among Crows fandom why don't you exist!! It's just me and my friend apparently!! Though it is kind of cool having the only fic I can find for a fandom lmao, I poked around DW/Tumblr/Twitter too but can't find any other fanworks. Which is also sad because I want other people to be into this book!! 😔
in the eye of the beholder (When Among Crows, Dymitr/Niko) - AO3 or DW
Tonight Dymitr has appeared at Niko’s place, blood on his knuckles, dirt under his nails. Niko looks at those hands, thinks of his mother, and opens the door wider.
For the first time in forever I have multiple WIP fics going that I want to work on at once, and I have no energy to write anything. 😠 Maybe it's that I have too many ideas I don't know what to work on haha, but I'm just not feeling like sitting down and working on any of them for longer than a moment to jot down a new sentence or whatever. On one hand, having too many fics to work on is a nice problem to have compared to spending long swathes of time not writing at all, but on the other hand. Curse my slow and lackadaisical nature. I'm probably not helping myself by constantly picking up new bingo cards. (Grabbed a card for![[tumblr.com profile]](https://www.tumblr.com/favicon.ico)
julybreakbingo, as if I needed one lmao.)
My first dip into danmei stuff! After watching both seasons of the donghua currently out, I reallyyy wanted to know what happened next so into the novel I went. I loved both main characters in the show, even when the plot or historical stuff got a little confusing I enjoyed them a lot. ♥ The romance is apparently very slow burn but even with what little we got in the two seasons I'm already kind of obsessed.
I'm not sure if it's the translation or the original but some of the writing comes across a little stiff or awkward, but it's easy enough to understand and the humor is evident even in the translation. It was actually funnier than I expected. Having knowledge of the donghua before reading definitely helped make sense of all the names/events, I was surprised how closely the show followed the book. This volume covered all of season 1, and I assume book 2 will cover season 2, so I'm not at any new material yet, but I'm definitely interested in continuing!
Reborn by Seth Haddon (★★★☆☆) [goodreads]
Set in the same world as Haddon's debut novel Reforged, merchant lord Oren Radek is sent on a diplomatic mission to the Rezwyn Empire after ties are mysteriously cut with the Kingdom of Usleth. There he meets Izra Dziove, advisor to the Emperor and a psychic of sorts who's been plagued by visions of his soulmate (Oren, obviously). Political intrigue and attempted coups force the two men and their allies to work together to stay alive and prevent all-out war between their countries.
3.5 stars, definitely an improvement from Haddon's first book which had been a little disappointing to me. I enjoyed both the plot and the romance of this one much better, Oren and Izra were both charming in their own way, plus I'm a sucker for soulmates and reincarnation tropes. The writing itself was improved too. Like in the first book, there's a lot of interesting worldbuilding in regards to the empire's gods and Usleth's magic system and I would've liked to delve a little more into the connections there, which this book sort of touched upon, but oh well, maybe in the third book that's apparently coming out this year lmao? But overall I'm glad I gave Haddon another shot!
A Magical Girl Retires by Park Seolyeon (★★★★☆) [goodreads]First of all please look at that gorgeous cover!! As per the blurb: "Twenty-nine, depressed, and drowning in credit card debt after losing her job during the pandemic, a millennial woman decides to end her troubles by jumping off Seoul’s Mapo Bridge. But her suicide attempt is interrupted by a girl dressed all in white—her guardian angel. Ah Roa is a clairvoyant magical girl on a mission to find the greatest magical girl of all time. And our protagonist just may be that special someone."
Read this in a single day, call me the Magical Girl of Speedy Reading. (This is a joke my normal reading speed is like 10 pages a day.) But that's just proof of how quick and easy a read this is! Gorgeous artwork, fun premise, a slightly too relatable main character--this is definitely worth the read. It doesn't dive particularly deep into the themes that it touches upon, but that's not unexpected given its length. To me it works perfectly fine as a novella and was engaging the whole way through. I definitely recommend picking this one up, I'll probably buy myself a copy at some point because the art is so nice.
When Among Crows by Veronica Roth (★★★★★) [goodreads]If you take only one recommendation off this list, PLEASE read this one. An urban fantasy novella featuring Slavic folklore, wherein a monster hunter teams up with a cursed zmora and a cocky strzygoń to hunt down the legendary Baba Jaga.
Ughhh how I wish this was a full-length novel! While the plot fits neatly into its limited pages, I would have loved to spend more time with these characters. All three have the perfect amount of poor little meow meow backstory to me, and given how the book ends, I wish we could get more time to see the relationships developing. The little of Niko/Dymitr we get is sweet, and I enjoyed Dymitr and Ala's shifting dynamic as the plot progresses. Where's the sequel, Veronica Roth!!!
The Slavic folklore was the initial draw to me picking up this book, and it was woven nicely into the worldbuilding and the plot. (Baba Jaga's house being over a chicken restaurant lmao.) There's a few gory scenes, some action, a fun collection of various creatures/myths. It's a story about curses, both magical and generational, and trying to break those curses. And also really cool bone swords. I'm absolutely buying myself a copy of this one.
Masters of Death by Olivie Blake (★★★☆☆) [goodreads]
A vampire real estate agent (Vi) finds a ghost in the house she's trying to sell. The godson of Death (Fox), masquerading as a medium, is sought out to help with this problem. There's a reaper and an angel and a demon there too, and the demigod who broke Fox's heart. It's all a bit convoluted but eventually culminates around a gambling game that the immortals play that only has one rule: don't lose.
This book has a rough first half; it's slow and a little boring, and the characters aren't quite interesting enough to make up for that. The writing is kind of annoying (why are there so many parentheticals that don't need to be parentheticals and what is up with the random dialogue formatting changes that make conversations awkward and choppy to read). Anyone more prone to DNFing books than me would probably have given up.
Yet the second half of the book makes up for all that; the plot finally gets moving and the main character relationships are fleshed out. Even the annoying writing quirks mostly die down. Where I sort of sat on this book for a couple weeks in the first half, I read the second half in a matter of a few days. The Fox/Brandt parts are undeniably the strongest parts of the book, and I thought the Game was interesting, for all its vagueness. While I enjoyed a few of the side characters, none of them really got as much development as Fox and Brandt or even Death.
I think if the cast had been pared down and the first half of the book had been edited down/rearranged this would have been a much stronger book. As it stands, I hesitate to recommend it to people I know would like the good parts.
Lore Olympus: Volume Six by Rachel Smythe (★★★★☆) [goodreads]
This series is trying so hard to make us hate Minthe, don't worry Minthe I could never hate you. Glad to see some semblance of plot picking back up, hopefully that gets into full swing next volume. I'm probably the only person not reading this for the Hades/Persephone content but they have some cute moments in this volume.
I completely forgot to post this last time when I was linking my recent fic, but for the first time ever I was the first person to put fic for a new fandom on AO3 which was so weird. When Among Crows fandom why don't you exist!! It's just me and my friend apparently!! Though it is kind of cool having the only fic I can find for a fandom lmao, I poked around DW/Tumblr/Twitter too but can't find any other fanworks. Which is also sad because I want other people to be into this book!! 😔
in the eye of the beholder (When Among Crows, Dymitr/Niko) - AO3 or DW
Tonight Dymitr has appeared at Niko’s place, blood on his knuckles, dirt under his nails. Niko looks at those hands, thinks of his mother, and opens the door wider.
For the first time in forever I have multiple WIP fics going that I want to work on at once, and I have no energy to write anything. 😠 Maybe it's that I have too many ideas I don't know what to work on haha, but I'm just not feeling like sitting down and working on any of them for longer than a moment to jot down a new sentence or whatever. On one hand, having too many fics to work on is a nice problem to have compared to spending long swathes of time not writing at all, but on the other hand. Curse my slow and lackadaisical nature. I'm probably not helping myself by constantly picking up new bingo cards. (Grabbed a card for
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I do want to check out other series but I think I ought to do these one at a time so I don't confuse myself...so I'll work on reading the TGCF novels first lol
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I'm not familiar with any of the adaptations for MXTX's work (or most cnovels, really), so I can't comment on on how they hold up in relation to the original novels (and, with TGCF and MDZS, I haven't actually read the official translations yet—though in the case of TGCF, the official translator is the same person who did the fan translation). But while I like all of MXTX's works, I did think TGCF was better written than MDZS, particularly when it comes to clarity of structure. With MDZS, I remember sometimes having been confused about where and when certain events took place during the timeline, but never had that issue when reading TGCF.
Also, by Xie Lian's "minions", do you mean Mu Qing and Feng Xin?
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well I can at least say that the TGCF donghua follows the first book pretty closely, so it seems like a good adaptation! the animation was really nice and Xie Lian was sooo cute haha. the music was good too! so if you're interested it's worth watching imo. I hope there's going to be more seasons :(
skdjfskdjf yeah those two, who pretended to be their own subordinates in book 1 and now they just kind of hang out. I don't know why I'm incapable of remembering which one is Nan Feng and which is Fu Yao + what their titles are. I guess adding a third layer to the name + title pattern just threw me off!!
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I don't know why I'm incapable of remembering which one is Nan Feng and which is Fu Yao
tbh I could not tell you which was which on the top of my head, haha. I know their actual names! But I've "only" read the whole novel twice and the second time was before the official translation was even published, so it's been a while. I actually almost forgot about the subordinate plotline in the beginning... Though, iirc, I think even on my reread it also still took me a moment to figure out which of them was in which disguise.
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the donghua made their disguises look really similar too, like they have the same hair just slightly different colors, so I think the universe just didn't want me to figure it out. but maybe I'll finally get it right once I read some more of the novels.
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Ha, I promise you really do get familiar with things faster than one may think! Don't let me scare you off; I promise that's not my intention at all <3
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An urban fantasy novella featuring Slavic folklore, wherein a monster hunter teams up with a cursed zmora and a cocky strzygoń to hunt down the legendary Baba Jaga. - That sounds amazing!
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When Among Crows was so good, I highly recommend checking it out especially if you're an urban fantasy and/or Slavic folklore fan! The characters were wonderful, I was so sad it wasn't a full-length novel. The plot was a good fit for a novella, but I just wanted more 😔
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And let me know if you do check out When Among Crows! I'm on a grand quest to make everyone read this now haha, it's a lot of fun and I loved it a lot.