December 2024 Doings!

Hello, all! Yes, we are doing two posts in one week, but I didn't want to drag out 2024 wrapup too long. So, next week will have my reading roundups for 2024, and this week, let's take a look at December's Doings!

Writing!

• Writing in December did not go as planned, by which I mean that it hardly went at all. The first half of the month, all my energy was consumed by my grad school class; the second half of the month, all my energy was consumed by work and Christmas.
• I did get a little writing done, but most of it was snippets of either Project Kingfisher character backstory or just-for-fun stuff. I managed a little bit more worldbuilding planning for Project Kingfisher, but not enough to start the book. I also started my DOSA Files story, but not in time to finish it before the deadline. (I do want to keep working on it, though, in hopes that Heidi does another anthology.)
• D&D writing has basically not happened at all; however, D&D sessions also haven't happened, so that's not a problem. Yet.
• I really should not plan on writing during the holidays, and I don't know why I deluded myself into thinking it would happen.

Reading!

• Reading, unlike writing, continued to go well in December and featured the usual mix of holiday-specific and non-holiday-specific reads. On the holiday side, we have three delightful rereads: A Superhero for Christmas, Christmas in Talesend, and my Christmas Eve treat, Twelve Days of Faerie Christmas. All of these were delightful, but Twelve Days was especially so.
• In non-holidays reads, I finished the Time Echoes trilogy by reading Fatal Convergence, which surprised me by having some substantial differences from the original version. To be honest, I'm not sure I love the changes — I can see why the Davis made those choices, and they still make for a good story, but I liked the way things originally happened too.
• On the other hand, two books I liked with no qualifications were What Comes of Attending the Commoners' Ball and Rescuing a Supervillain, both of which were absolutely delightful. Commoners' Ball was already on my to-read list, but it got bumped up in priority after multiple authors and the entirety of the W.R. Gingell Discord fan server raved about it. I'm so glad I read it; it's such a fun romp with two excellent, practical protagonists whose lives get upended by others' promises. Rescuing a Supervillain, on the other hand, is the latest of H.L. Burke's Superhero Romance Project series, featuring a cat-shifter thief on the run and a hero who's working through some trauma, and it's just such a sweet story of love and healing. I absolutely recommend it.
• My one other new read was Dogsbody, a Diana Wynne Jones book that had been on my to-read list for some time. That one was ok — it's a cool concept, and I liked the worldbuilding, but it's not my favorite DWJ by a long shot. I'm glad I finally read it, but I don't think I'll reread it particularly soon.

Watching & Playing!

• Amazingly, my friends and I managed to actually finish watching Yona of the Dawn before the end of 2024! I think that's the fastest I've gotten through any show since freshman year of college, honestly. (We haven't watched the untranslated extra episodes, but we're through the main show.)
• Overall, I really enjoyed watching Yona — the characters are excellent in terms of how they're portrayed, how they grow over the course of the story, and how their dynamics with one another play out. I'm particularly impressed with Yona's arc specifically and with the villain, who could so easily be a hero who I'd root for and even fangirl over were the story told from a different perspective.
• I do have to correct my prediction of last month, however, because Jaeha is absolutely, positively, without a doubt, my favorite of the dragons (and possibly also my favorite character in general). He appeared onscreen, and my immediate, out-loud reaction was "Oh, I like him." I don't think anyone should be surprised by that, though; he's very similar to some of my other favorite characters, and he's just fun in terms of personality. (And a little scandalous, yes. But that also describes some of my favorite characters.) Shin-Ah, the blue dragon, remains my second-favorite dragon, and I also still love Yun, Hak, and Yona herself . . . there's a lot of good characters; I'm going to have to read the manga so I don't have to say goodbye to them!
• I also watched some Christmas movies, but not as many as usual. Rewatches were A Christmas Carol, the original Grinch, and Merry Christmas, Charlie Brown; the one new Christmas movie I watched was We're No Angels, which was funny, but not a new favorite.
• Other than that, I have been playing some Star Rail and quite a bit of Genshin! That said, most of my Genshin time has been in service of building characters, as I finally got to pull on the limited banners (after saving for one in particular since I started the game), got some very good new characters (including the one I was specifically hoping for and several others I really wanted!), and then realized that I had virtually nothing with which to get them up to the level of the characters I already had (whoops). That's still been fun — I've done a lot of exploring, which has been nice — but I'm looking forward to getting back to story soon.

 Life!

• The dominant themes for December were, unsurprisingly, Christmas and my grad school class.
• Advent and Christmas materials — and the need to work ahead because I was taking time off around Christmas — kept me very busy at work. We had a few unexpected hiccups (including some communication problems and issues with deadlines, neither of which were my fault), but everything got done on time, and pretty much everything turned out quite well. I'm very pleased with the promo piece I made to hand out at the Christmas Eve services, and I also really like the overall Advent/Christmas visual theme I had this year!
• Wrapping up my grad school class also went fairly well; I was a bit stressed about whether or not my final project would actually fit what the professor was expecting, but thankfully, he liked my analysis. The final exam also went reasonably well . . . especially considering that some of the questions had to do with parts of the book that we were never assigned in class. (Thankfully, the exam was open-book, and I knew the rest of the material well enough that I had time to hastily find the info on the unfamiliar topics.)
• In the middle of all that, my D&D group started our new campaign! We've only had two sessions so far, but it's been fun. I think the new characters have some interesting dynamics, and I look forward to seeing where the storyline goes. I am happy with my character, Breena, a gnome warlock, so far — while I haven't gotten to test out many of her abilities, as a character I think she's fun.
  
• The payoff for all my stress earlier in the month was that I took the week of Christmas and most of the week of New Year's off from work, which was lovely, albeit busier than I intended it to be. I did quite a bit of baking and made two new recipes: pecan dainties, which are basically candied pecans in cookie form, and potato candy, which is a rolled candy made with peanut butter, a little bit of mashed potato, and quite a lot of powdered sugar. It is delicious, and I want to make it again (and try to do it better next time; I think I used too much peanut butter). I also tried a new sourdough roll recipe for Christmas day, one that allows for an overnight rise (which meant I could make the rolls Christmas Eve and bake them Christmas day).
• My sister came home for Christmas week, and getting to see her was lovely. We got to hang out, chat, and play plenty of board games, both on our own and with various friends (either over the internet or in person). We also visited my grandpa briefly the weekend after Christmas, which was nice — I haven't been up to see him in several months.
• As for Christmas itself, we had a very nice holiday. Our church had its Christmas Eve service on both Sunday and Christmas Eve proper, so we actually went to the church where I work on Christmas Eve. It was quite lovely to experience that service for myself and for my family to see where I work and some of what I've done and meet several of the people I work with. Then we had a fairly chill Christmas day in which we didn't get around to actually opening gifts until almost noon . . . which, to be honest, is pretty in character for us. People seemed to like what I gave them, which was good, and I got some gifts I'm pretty happy about. We ended up with an accidental theme of everyone but my dad receiving kitchen stuff in their stocking, which was funny.
• And, of course, we finished up the year by celebrating New Year's Eve with our Bible study. As always, that was a fun time; I loved getting to see some people who've left the area but are back for the holidays, and there was plenty of good food and conversation.
• Then we took the Christmas tree down on January 1, and the holidays are officially over. After all that, going back to work on January 2 was . . . rough. Hopefully next week will be better.

January Plans

• January should return us to the usual routine — work, grad school, and writing. I'm hoping that work will quiet down in the next couple months after the hecticness of Stewardship and holidays, but there have also been rumors of trying to change things with the livestream, so we'll see what happens.
• I have accidentally left grad school registration for this semester until the very last minute (in my defense, I thought I had another week), so I don't know for sure which class I'll be taking next — I have a required class that will probably be difficult and frustrating, though it may also be occasionally interesting, and I have an elective that should be pretty chill but I'm not especially excited about, and I'm not sure (as of writing this post) which one I'm doing first and which I'm doing second.
• As for writing: I plan to use most of January for continued planning on Project Kingfisher, additional work on my unfinished DOSA Files story (in hopes that I can have it ready and waiting if there's another opportunity), and D&D writing (since we will hopefully be getting back to regular sessions soon). If the timing works out, I'll also start drafting Project Kingfisher this month — though it might be the very end of the month. Additionally, as I mentioned in my last post, I will be wrapping things up on Dreams and Dragons so I can retire that blog.
• I talked about my reading goals in my 2024 recap/2025 goals post, and I hope to get a good start on those in January. I have a stack of Peter Wimsey library books that need to be read, so that might be a good place to start . . . Plus I intend to start reading the Yona manga where the anime left off.
• And, of course, I am very excited for the start of a new storyline in Star Rail! This one sounds like it's going to be absolutely epic. (It also sounds like it will potentially tear my heart out and rip it into pieces with feels, but y'know. Isn't that what a lot of great stories do?)

How was your December? Any plans for January? Did you make any resolutions or goals for the new year? If you did Christmas baking/sweet-making, what was your favorite thing you made? Please tell me in the comments!
Thanks for reading!

 

I have mixed feelings about a lot of recent trends in fantasy and speculative fiction . . . but one trend that I absolutely love is the move towards settings based in locations and cultures other than medieval, Edwardian, or Victorian European ones (specifically those from northern and western Europe). While I will always appreciate the classics when they're well done, it's nice to get some variety. And since I've never actually compiled a list of my favorite non-European fantasy stories, I thought I should remedy that this week! Not all of these are recent releases — actually, most of them have been out for a while, since I'm SUPER behind on any recent books that I didn't agree to review — but they're well-loved by me and well worth a read!

(Please note that I'm not including any urban/contemporary fantasy on this list — while my love of the City Between and Dragons in Our Midst series is deep and well-documented, these genres aren't as overwhelmingly Europe-based as many other fantasy genres are.)

 

Non-European Fantasy Favorites

1. The Queen's Thief series by Megan Whalen Turner. I debated a lot about whether or not I could include this series because, you know, it's heavily inspired by ancient Greece (with a side trip in one book to ancient Persia), and Greece is technically European? But it's very much not your standard medieval European fantasy, and that's evident in everything from the lore and mythology to the food to the architecture to the landscape to the language and names. It's so great.
Bonus Greek-inspired fantasy recommendation: Coiled by H.L. Burke.

2. Golden Daughter by Anne Elisabeth Stengl. I would like to be very clear that the only reason this isn't first on the list is that it's the seventh book in the series — it's a gorgeous Asian-inspired fantasy epic (and, realistically, you could pick it up without having read any of the other Goldstone Wood novels, though there are certain elements whose significance you might not pick up on). As in the Queen's Thief books, this isn't just a standard fantasy novel with an "exotic" aesthetic tacked on — the location informs the culture, which informs the characters and storyline, and everything just comes together so well.
Bonus Asian-inspired fantasy recommendation: The Dragon's Flower by Wyn Estelle Owens

3. The Books of the Infinite trilogy by R. J. Larson. Arguably the least like traditional European fantasy out of everything on this list and everything that I considered putting on this list, the Books of the Infinite take place in a world much like Israel and its neighbors in the second half of the Old Testament. It's a story of prophets and kings, of signs and miracles and mercy and judgment, and it's generally well worth a read.
Bonus Biblical fantasy recommendation: Overpowered by Kathryn McConaughy

4. Horseman by Kyle Robert Shultz. This Wild West-inspired tale takes place in Shultz's Afterverse, and while I don't love it quite as much as the original Beaumont and Beasley series, it's still a lot of fun. You've got classic Wild West and fantasy tropes, plus the kind of colorful assortment of characters you can only get in this type of setting, plus reimaginings of American folklore — it's great.
Bonus Wild West fantasy recommendation: Rapunzel's Revenge by Shannon Hale

5. Jackaby by William Ritter. Storms, I haven't read these books in ages, though the last one has been on my mind lately because of some of the myths and folklore I've been reading. Anyway, this historical fantasy-mystery series is set somewhere in New England in the late 1800s — the author doesn't specify which state, which I can't entirely blame him for. And it does feel pretty American, particularly leaning on the idea of America at the time as a blending of people (and, in this case, magical beings) immigrated from other cultures and countries.
Bonus American fantasy-mystery recommendation: The Lost Plot by Genevieve Cogman

What are your favorite non-European fantasy reads, whether recent or not? Please tell me in the comments; I can always use more recs!
Thanks for reading!

 

December 2020 Doings!

Hello, everyone! Yeah, this Doings post is not coming to you on the usual day. But since this is such a posting-heavy week (with Doings!, my 2020 reading wrap-up, 2021 goals, and hopefully a short story for New Year's Eve), I decided to mess with the schedule a bit. So, yes. This will likely be the first of many posts this week. Enjoy?

Writing!

• No, the Midnight Show sequel is not done. Yes, it is behind schedule. I continue to blame research. Also, y'know, Christmas prep.
• On the upside, I've written some every day this month, so I feel good about that. And I think we're close to being finished; nearly all the pieces are in place for the mystery to be solved and the conflicts resolved. I'd feel better if I'd written more every day and if a few more pieces were in place, but I will take the victories I can and try again next month for the losses.
• I also didn't work at all on my D&D campaigns, but we're still working through the current module, and I expect to be in this module for another couple of weeks, so we should be ok.
• I'm finishing out the month with 17956 words (plus probably another couple thousand over the next few days) written in December and 53698 total on The Midnight Show sequel. Some of those words will be cut in edits, but this book will definitely be longer than its predecessor.

 Reading!

• This month's reading was about 50% Christmas stuff, which is more Christmas reading than I've done in quite a while. I started off with Hogfather, which I liked better on the reread — It helped that I'd been seeing posts about the story a lot on the socials, so I was pretty hyped. I followed it up with some short stories: The Sixth Christmas, which was an interesting take on a Christmas Carol/Wonderful Life-type situation, and the Christmas in Talesend anthology, which is always fun. And we finished up on Christmas Eve and Christmas morning with The Enchanted Sonata, which was also absolutely delightful on the reread.
• Outside of Christmas reads, I finished the published Magus of the Library books with volume 3, which was about as good as the first two. And I read some short stories: an anthology by Patricia C. Wrede, the highlight of which was an Enchanted Forest Chronicles short story about an enchanted frying pan, and H.L. Burke's "Spider Spell", which was fun but did not make me more favorably inclined towards spiders as a whole.
• I also read Allie Brosh's recently-published second book, Solutions and Other Problems. It wasn't bad, but I didn't love it. I was glad I'd read it once, but I don't think I'll reread it.
• The non-Christmas highlight of the month was rereading Little Women, which honestly gets better every time I read it. It truly is an excellent book, and it was nice to revisit all my favorite parts and all the bits I'd forgotten.
• And I'm finishing out the month with 10 Blind Dates, which is not my usual genre (it's contemporary YA romance, of all things), but it was recommended to me by a friend and I'm actually enjoying it more than I would expect. It has a lot of emphasis on family relationships as well as romance, which is nice.

Watching!

• Obviously, we watched a lot of Christmas movies this month. Some of them were the usuals (Rudolph, Little Drummer Boy, White Christmas, Peanuts, etc.) Others were new to me; we watched Shop Around the Corner and The Bishop's Wife the week before Christmas. Both were . . . I wouldn't choose to watch them again, but I wouldn't refuse if other people wanted to watch them unless I had a compelling something else that I needed to do. (I do want to watch You've Got Mail now, though, since people have told me that it changes most of the reasons I wasn't excited about Shop Around the Corner.)
• We also watched the 2019 version of Little Women, and I was actually impressed. They did better with peoples' character arcs than I feared, and while I have mixed feelings about how they handled the back-and-forth between different parts of the timeline, I think the movie was well-done overall. (I also feel like this movie clarified a lot for me why so many people disliked a particular part of The Penderwicks At Last that I was genuinely happy about. So there's that.)
• Also, Overly Sarcastic Productions posted the next part of Journey to the West, and therefore I am IMMENSELY happy. It was a very fun episode, and my desire to read the actual book has been renewed. (Tragically, no libraries near me have the better English translations. I might suggest the libraries acquire them, though . . .)
• And, of course, I'm still working my way through Critical Role. I'm halfway through Episode 42, and the Avantika arc is still not my favorite, but it's getting better! And I think I only have about eight episodes left before we get to the arc I'm really excited about, which is the trip to Xhorhas.

Life!

• Most of the month, of course, was occupied by Christmas stuff: making and acquiring gifts, sending Christmas cards, baking cookies, and so forth. I am very happy with this year's Christmas baking. I made molasses cookies and gingersnaps (because we were running out of molasses cookies), both of which I've made previously. I did about 60% of making cut-out cinnamon sugar cookies — my mom and I mixed the dough up in a joint effort, and I did the cutting and baking. And, arguably the one I'm most excited about, I made mint chocolate chessboard cookies, which are a variation on cut-and-bake sugar cookies, but with strips of chocolate and mint dough formed into a checkerboard pattern. They turned out very well, and I hope to make the Neapolitan variation sometime in the future.
• In addition to the writing and the Christmas prep, I spent a lot of the month working on the second half of the freelance design project I was working on last month. This month was less of a learning curve, but it still took a lot more out of me than I'd hoped. On the upside, I'm almost done, and what's left should be less frustrating. Hopefully, anyway.
• On a happier note, I did have a second interview with one of the places I applied for back in November, and it went very, very well. And the interview led to a very exciting phone call about a week before Christmas . . . but more on that in the next section.
• And now, back to Christmas! Christmas Eve was . . . not really what I was hoping for? We ended up with the noon Christmas Eve service, which I wasn't super happy about (the service was very nice; it just made for an extraordinarily awkward flow for the day), and we didn't do as much driving around and looking for lights as we normally would because it was raining. (And there weren't as many lights on for the same reason.) But it was ok.
• Christmas Day was very nice, though. We ended up having ham instead of the lasagna we originally planned, and that was very tasty. My family seemed to like the gifts I got them, which I'm glad of. (One highlight: I got my sister her first set of D&D dice!) I also got some very nice gifts, including some expansion sets for Sentinels of the Multiverse (I now have all my favorite heroes, villains, and environments, along with some new environments I'm super excited to try), the most recent Invisible Library book and Randall Munroe's What If?, and two new tumblers to replace the one that has a bunch of cracks in the outer wall from when it got knocked onto the ground in a parking lot back in September. (They change color in response to temperature! I am more excited about this than I have any right to be! Also, they're a little larger than my old one but not so much that they don't fit in cupholders.)
• After Christmas, we took a short trip up to visit my grandpa, since we haven't seen him in quite a while. So that was very nice.
• And throughout the month, my sister and I had several opportunities to play Sentinels of the Multiverse with our roommates over Zoom. It works surprisingly well — it's better when all parties have both the villain and the environment we're using, but we can manage even when only one person has the deck. About half the games we played were against a surprisingly deadly combination: Omnitron (think: murderbot with control of a robotics factory) in the Ruins of Atlantis (exactly what it sounds like). Omintron is a Level 1 villain, so he's usually not hard to beat, but somehow this villain/environment grouping killed very capable hero teams three times (three!) before we finally managed to beat it.

 January Plans

• So, the most exciting thing that's happening this coming month: barring calamity, I am officially starting a new full-time job in the first couple weeks of January! I'll be doing print and web design work for a church about thirty minutes from where I live. I'm looking forward to it, though I'm also a bit nervous (more about changes in general than about anything specific). I think it'll be a good place to start out with professional work: it seems like it'll be less stressful than some other places I applied to, and the people I'll be working with most seem very nice.
• That means I'll have to work out how to balance writing with full-time work and not ignoring my family, as I fully intend to finish the TMS sequel in January so I can send it to Kendra in February. I will have a four-day workweek instead of a five-day one, so that'll help. But it'll still be a challenge.
• I'll also be finishing up the freelance project in the beginning of the month, but, again, I should be just about done with it. Fingers crossed that I'm not wrong . . .
• And in whatever time I have left over, I have a lot of reading to do so I can get in Return of the Thief and Rhymth of War before I have to return them to the library. Because let me tell you, I'm super tired of trying to dodge spoilers, especially since people are starting to leak stuff about RoW. Queen's Thief fans seem pretty good about tagging spoilers even months after the release. Not so much Cosmere people.

How was your December? Any exciting plans for January? Are you as behind on your TBR as I am? What were the highlights of your Christmas season?  Please tell me in the comments!
Thanks for reading!

June 2019 Doings!

Ok, that kinda snuck up on me . . . which is ironic, seeing as I was basically counting down the days to Camp NaNoWriMo (in the sense of "how long do I have to do x, y, and z before Camp?") in the second half of the month. And yet I still got to June 28 and was like "Wait, what? July is in three days? That's not right. That can't be right." But, obviously, it was right, and here we are with a new month's worth of Doings.

Writing!

• PROOF COPY! It's so shiny!
• So, yeah; as you can see, I finished edits and formatting for Mechanical Heart and got my proof copy! I'm kind of ahead of schedule, but I wanted to get everything with the actual book finished before Camp NaNoWriMo. At this point, I just have to write blog posts and do marketing stuff.
• Seriously, though, it's so shiny. And big. Mechanical Heart is roughly three times as long as Blood in the Snow, and, like, I knew that? That's why it took so much more time to edit? But it didn't really hit me until I got the physical copy and could hold it and all that.
• Also, there was a cover reveal, and you can now preorder the book on Amazon and add it to your TBR list on Goodreads if you haven't already. I'd really appreciate it if you did.
• In other news, it is now, in fact, July, and I'm working on my Camp NaNoWriMo novel! The tentative title is Blood in the Night, though I might change it to Blood in the Earth (except that earth technically is not a term that exists in this world?) or Blood Beneath. As you may be able to guess (or may have heard from me elsewhere), it's a sequel to Blood in the Snow, and it retells the Twelve Dancing Princesses crossed with a very loose retelling of Hades and Persephone. Interested? Great! Have a rough sort of blurb/synopsis thing!

A year has passed since the events of Blood in the Snow, and Baili is determined to keep the promise she made to return the captives to their homelands. She, Xiang, Chouko, Gan, and Azuma travel to one of the Three Peaks provinces to put her plans into action — but mysteries await there that will make their task more difficult and dangerous than anticipated.
Azuma believed he'd put sorrow behind him when he found a new purpose as a member of Princess Baili's personal guard. But the journey brings the ghosts of his past back in a way he never expected. To make matters worse, a mysterious visitor hints at danger to Baili, and the province princesses are undoubtedly hiding a dark secret. It's Azuma's duty to rescue his princess — but when he's failed with only one life in the balance, can he hope to succeed with thirteen?
Meanwhile, Princess Choi Eun-Ji of Cheongaeui Ttang is determined to save her older sister, no matter the cost. But that's easier said than done when it means defying the incredibly powerful Lord of Beneath. Desperate, Eun-Ji strikes a bargain that may be her only hope of success — if it doesn't claim the lives of her and her other ten sisters first.

• So, yeah. It's going well so far. A few elements are showing up earlier than I anticipated, and an unexpected subplot sort of popped up and I don't know what I'm going to do with it, but it's still good. It's the first time in a while that I've written a new novella/novel-length work, so that's exciting. I've missed writing by hand, haha.
• (Also, the Lord of Beneath is stupidly fun to write. He manages to be intensely Extra and dramatic while also surprisingly straightforward and practical, and he does ominous quite well, and yeah. I think this is the most fun I've had writing an antagonist since . . . oh, I don't know. Binding Destiny? Between Two Worlds? One of those two.)

Reading!

• I kinda sorta definitely had to raise my reading goal multiple times this month because I kept hitting it or almost hitting it and was like "No! I can't hit it this soon! It's only halfway through the year!" The most recent raise — from 99 to 111 books — was last Saturday, and I'm still 40-ish books ahead of schedule. We'll see how many more times I raise it over the rest of the year.
• I think it helps that I basically just said to myself, "You can read whatever you want as long as it's not trash," instead of just requesting a heap of the latest releases and pushing through them. I mean, I want to read the newest books, yes — but I also have a big backlog, and a big list of books I want to reread, and giving myself the freedom to read those meant I was reading a lot more.
• And, yes, that would be why I reread all of the Percy Jackson/Heroes of Olympus books. I have exactly 1 regret, and that is the fact that I didn't finish reading the last two books before Camp NaNoWriMo. The whole thing started because I wanted to reread Son of Neptune, but then I got to the end of that and realized that I missed Leo, so I reread The Lost Hero, and at that point, I was super invested again, so I had to read the rest of HoO. And then I thought I was done, but Riordan's writing is super addictive and I kind of wanted to go back to the beginning, so I read the first three PJO books . . . and then got stuck for a few days because I didn't own book 4 or 5 and had to wait for the library. On a non-tragic note, I actually do own slightly more than half of these books, thanks to the giant used booksale my local library does every year.

• And I got non-Riordan books too! Behold!

• (The dragon was not from the booksale, but the space looked empty and he seemed to fit, so I filled it. Also, please do notice that I have Volume 1 of the Chrestomanci Chronicles, which means my collection is complete! Also, A Cast of Stones is signed, but I'm honestly more excited about Chrestomanci. Not going to lie; if I hadn't gone on a Percy Jackson binge, I probably would've ended up devouring the Chrestomanci Chronicles instead.)
• Anyway. Getting back to the non-PJO books I read. My other two rereads, Raven's Ladder and The Ale Boy's Feast, were good overall. They're frustrating books, honestly. In Raven's Ladder, basically everyone except Jordam and Partayn is a mess, and it's super frustrating, but the book overall is a very good metaphor for our current culture. And then The Ale Boy's Feast has great themes and great allegory, and I love Jordam, but I hate the ending. I don't mind if an author leaves an ending a bit open-ended, but that was too much.
• All that said, I love how often this series wanders into what's basically horror territory, then remember they're supposed to be fantasy. It's mostly present in these books three and four, but it starts in book two once you find out about the beastmen. It's almost kind of funny.
• Moving on: I cleared a bunch of meant-to-read-this-ages-ago books off my shelf! Most notable: Fawkes and Horseman, both of which are alternate histories/historical fantasies of a sort (though Horseman is a lot more distant of an alternate than Fawkes!). I loved both books, and would absolutely recommend them to others. Nadine Brandes did a great job with the historical element and the family relationship in Fawkes, even if I was a bit iffy about how one particular element was presented. And Horseman was just a bucket of fun; I'm alwasy very impressed with how well Kyle Robert Shultz can simultaneously have a really humorous story and really tough choices for his characters. (And right after I finished it, I read The Fourth Musketeer, which focuses on Julio and was also very fun. And I was able to read Deadwood right after it released, which was just as creepy as it should have been and also gave me feels.) Those were all definitely highlights.
• On the short story front, I read Ray Bradbury's I Sing the Body Electric! anthology and part of Neil Gaiman's Fragile Things anthology. The Bradbury anthology was a bit mixed, as anthologies are wont to be, and both depressing and disturbing at times, but the better stories made the whole thing worth it. (I definitely don't agree with Bradbury on certain points of philosophy, but he still presented his ideas in an interesting way.) As for the Gaiman anthology — I DNF'ed it after reading a perfectly horrible story relating to The Chronicles of Narnia. I'm still mad about it; don't read it. I quite literally wanted to wash my brain out with bleach afterward. And most of the rest of the anthology was a bit too interested in the worst parts of human life and intentions for me to recommend it, even if some of them had interesting concepts. The only exceptions are the poetry, a few short stories that you can also find in his children's anthology, and a new-to-me short story, "Forbidden Brides of the Faceless Slaves in the Secret House of the Night of Dread Desire." Yes, that sounds like it ought to be sketchy, but it's actually a concept that I love — basically, the fact that, to a character in a fantasy world, our world would be the fantasy one. I absolutely recommend it. Just find somewhere else to read it than this particular anthology.

Watching!

• I haven't really watched any movies this month, due to reasons which will be explained in the Life! section. However . . .
• I did watch a good bit of Star Trek! And by "a good bit", I mean about ten episodes, which is probably a laughably small amount to other people my age, but storm it all, I need sleep. And if I'm going to lose sleep, I'd rather do it with a book than a TV screen.
• Anyway. My family's been slowly watching the first season of the Star Trek Original Series, and I can definitively say that Spock is the best part and McCoy is the second best. Kirk is fine, but altogether too prone to impulsiveness for the sake of the plot. Aaaaand I'm also not crazy about how he apparently is contractually obliged to make out (or at least have an implied romantic connection with) at least one woman every episode. I have been told that this is because the show was made in the '60s, but I still don't appreciate it.
• In addition, my sister and I have been watching Star Trek: The Next Generation, and I honestly like it rather more than TOS. For one thing: a ship full of reasonably sensible, reasonable, mostly professional people! Hallelujah! For another: I currently like a bunch of the characters rather than just two. (And the characters seem to be better-developed in general?) And, of course: there's no obligatory kissing scene every episode. Again: HALLELUJAH. I mean, yeah, you've got two sort-of-couples? But neither are "official" couples yet, and it seems like they're going to take their sweet time getting there, and given the choice between pointless kissing scenes and less-pointless awkwardness, I will take the latter. (Ok, I'll be fair. The kissing in TOS isn't always pointless. But there's still more of it than there needs to be.)

Life!

Not my picture.

• June basically consisted of two exciting things (one good, one bad), a few weeks of various people having colds, and the book sale. And, obviously, lots of reading and writing and watching Star Trek, but we already talked about that.
• We'll start with the good exciting thing: Hershey Park! We were supposed to go at the end of May, but we got rained out, so we went the first week of June instead. It was definitely a good time, especially since there were so many rides that everyone wanted to go on together. For context: my parents and my sister are all roller-coaster people. My sister, in particular, is the type of roller-coaster person who will happily ride the most extreme coasters in the park multiple times. I, on the other hand, would rather be spun in about five different directions than get on most roller coasters — literally. Spinny rides are some of my favorite things, and I wish I got to go on more of them. (The problem, of course, is that they're best to go on with other people, and I am a single person. So, I can have a good time on the swings or the Scrambler, but anything like the teacups where you have to rotate something to spin more is out.)
• However, I make an exception for wooden roller coasters because I don't have a problem with speed (within reason) or even with a bit of rattling around; I just don't want to go upside down or get dropped at a 90-degree angle or such. In fact, I like wooden roller coasters — and Hershey has three of them, which is a pretty decent number. All of them are good coasters too. The Racer was the best, but I'd ride any of the three again.
• The downside of the day at the park: I came home with a particularly nasty cold that reared its head a few days after we got back and put me out of commission for two days before I could function semi-well again. It seemed like I'd mostly gotten rid of it by the next weekend, which was Father's Day, but then, that Saturday . . . Well, a bigger problem showed up.
• And by that, I mean that my dad went to the hospital with an infected or inflamed gallbladder.
• The good news: he's fine now. The doctors figured out pretty quickly what was wrong; they did surgery; he came home and took a week off to recover. But we did have to delay celebrating Father's Day (we still haven't caught up on all our plans), and it did freak everyone out a little.
• Also, for anyone who's interested: I didn't cook a lot this month (mostly due to the fact that I was sick — though I did make or assist in making a few skillet dishes). However, I did bake bread, which was one of the main things I wanted to try! A family friend of ours had some sourdough starter, and I asked if I could have some, since I love sourdough bread and wanted to try making it. And BEHOLD!

• It did not turn out perfectly; it's super dense and didn't really rise as much as I think it was supposed to, and I'm not 100% sure what went wrong. But hopefully, the next loaf will turn out better. We'll see how it goes.
• Oh, and Independence Day was fun! We went over to a family friend's house for barbeque and other assorted yumminess, which was great. We didn't end up going to see fireworks, though, since the weather was so wet. Instead, we just watched them on TV. (I don't mind, honestly. We got see fireworks back on Memorial Day weekend, and those were pretty great, so I got my fireworks fix then.)

July Plans!

• Obviously, the main plans for July are Camp NaNoWriMo and work — but I've already discussed the one, and the other hasn't changed much from last month, so I won't get into that.
• My grandpa is visiting this month, so that should be fun. His visits are usually pretty chill.
• Also, Cow Appreciation Day is July 9! Basically, you wear cow-related apparel (which could be, say, a cow-spotted bandana or other clothing article, or even just a white shirt with black spots taped on), go to Chick-fil-a, and you can get a free entree. You can do this at any meal; if you have enough Chick-fil-a's nearby, you can do it for all three meals. (That is a lot of chicken, yes. But it's good chicken, it's free, and if you plan what you're eating well, you don't feel like you're eating the same thing all day.) My family is very into Chick-fil-a, and we have four different restaurants in a twenty-minute radius of our house, so guess what we're doing? Plus, we plan to go see How To Train Your Dragon 3 that day, so, yeah. I'm going to get nothing done, but it will be a good day.
• I have some crafting stuff I want to do: I'm working on my 3D-printed sword and a knitted cloak, and I'm planning to make a cool sign for my dorm room door. (Of course I make it the last year I'll be there . . . oh well. It is what it is.) I'll post pictures of all the things here on the blog once they're done.
• In general, I'm hoping July will be mostly chill — or as chill as a NaNo month can be, in any case. We'll see what happens.
• (Oh, and this isn't a July-specific plan, but I picked up some games during the Steam Summer Sale because they were cheap and I wanted to reward myself for being on top of things with Mechanical Heart, and I'm suuuper excited. None of them are new or recent — one of them is Portal, for heaven's sakes — but whatever. I'm going to have fun and enjoy several good stories and that's what matters. Again, it probably won't happen in July, 'cause Camp NaNoWriMo, but maaaybe if I finish early . . .?)

How was your June? What are your plans for July? How do you feel about roller coasters (wooden or otherwise) and spinny rides? How do you feel about engaging with books, games, or other media years after everyone else discovered them? Please tell me in the comments!
Thanks for reading!
-Sarah (Leilani Sunblade)

Summer 2018 Reads

Hey'a, everyone! This post is going up a bit later than it normally would, due to the Song of Leira and Lightporter blog tours. But that's ok, since those served the same purpose this post would've: to let you know about all the awesome books I'm excited for in this season of reading!

Summer 2018 Reads!

1. Song of Leira by Gillian Bronte Adams (June 5). I've already talked about this one, obviously, and I've also already read it . . . but I'm still super excited that it's out! It's definitely the high point of the trilogy, and I'm impressed by Gillian's ability to convey powerful themes without being preachy. If you haven't read it yet, go do so.

2. Bring Me Their Hearts by Sara Wolf (June 5). Maybe a little darker than I normally read, but it sounds like it could be fun. We all know how it's going to end (you'd think that people would stop sending female assassins after handsome, single male princes; they always end up falling in love instead) but finding out how it ends up there will hopefully be enjoyable.

3. The Bird and the Blade by Megan Bannen (June 5). Mongolian historical fantasy— yes, please! And I think it might be a retelling of a myth as well, but I'm not 100% certain. I need to brush up on my Asian mythology. Either way, it sounds magnificent.

4. A Thousand Perfect Notes by C.G. Drews (June 7). I don't usually read contemporary, but I'll make an exception for this book! It's by Cait Grace of Paper Fury, and she's awesome, so I expect A Thousand Perfect Notes will be as well. Unfortunately, it sounds like it's only releasing in the UK and Australia, but I still intend to get my hands on it somehow.

5. Lightporter by C.B. Cook (June 16). Again, I've already talked about this one a fair bit, so I don't have a lot more to say. Basically, there's more Blaze and Anvil (my faves!), Albany has grown up a little (yay!), and the plot's exciting and fun. Out of everything on this list, I think this is the most summer-y, so that's another reason to read it sooner rather than later.

6. The Janus Elixir by Kyle Robert Shultz (July 1). Assuming you read my Mid-Year Book Freakout, you know how much I love the Beaumont and Beasley books. The Janus Elixir, unfortunately, doesn't sound like it'll involve Nick, Cordelia, and Crispin much . . . but I'm not complaining, because Malcolm Blackfire is storming awesome. Also, Kyle currently has this free for newsletter subscribers, so go sign up for that. His newsletters are funny and infrequent, so you're not going to be instantly spammed.

7. Fawkes by Nadine Brandes (July 10). This one sounds like so much fun! It's historical fantasy about the son of Guy Fawkes (aka the guy who tried to blow up Parliament and got a holiday named after him for it), and I imagine it'll be delightfully exciting. Also, just saying, the cover is pretty awesome.

8. Kill the Farm Boy by Delilah S. Dawson (July 24). This is either going to succeed spectactularly or fail miserably. No in-between. I hope that it will be the former, because it has the potential to be a hilarious adventure in the same vein as Discworld and the Hero's Guide series . . . as long as it doesn't make the fatal mistake of only making fun of fantasy instead of celebrating the good in it as well.

9. Fairest Son by H.S.J. Williams (August ??). I've been following Hannah for ages and waiting for her to be ready to publish something. Fairest Son isn't what I was waiting for exactly (that would be Moonscript), but I am definitely not going to complain about a gender-swapped Snow White retelling, especially not one involving a fae Snow White. (My life has been growing steadily more and more full of fae-related books— and, more to the point, good fae-related books— and I love it SO MUCH.)

10. These Rebel Waves by Sara Raasch (August 7). This is either going to be piratey, political, mysterious magnificence or it's going to make me sad about the fact that the author wasted such an excellent premise on a subpar book. Either way, it should be interesting.

11. Worth of a King by Kendra E. Ardnek (August 27). I alpha-read Worth and ahhhhhhhh!!!!!! I love it almost as much as I love Lady Dragon, Tela Du. It's got pre-scale Amberite (they're adorable) and lots of Laura (one of my favorite of Kendra's characters) and Deladia (which joins Amberite and Reutra as one of my top three favorite ships in Kendra's books) and dragons and secret plots and counterplots and assassins and just a lot of awesome. Y'all should go preorder it, if you like ebooks, or else keep an eye on the Amazon page if you're more of a paper-and-ink person.

What books are you excited for this summer? Please tell me in the comments!
Thanks for reading!
-Sarah (Leilani Sunblade)

Mid-Year Book Freakout 2018

Original picture via

Hey'a, everyone! Half of another year has come and gone, which means it's time for my my annual Mid-Year Book Freakout, in which I recap all the best (and occasionally worst) reads I've discovered so far this year. In case anyone was wondering, by the way, I've read 57 books this year. Most of those have been good (my average rating on Goodreads is 4.1 stars). A few haven't been so great, but you know. It is what it is.

1. Best book you've read so far in 2018:

An Enchantment of Ravens, hands down! This book is storming amazing. It critiques a lot of elements of modern fantasy, especially the common portrayals of Fae and romances involving Fae. But it doesn't sacrifice story or characters in order to do so; the plotline is amazing and twisty, and the characters are just delightful. So, yeah. I love it, and you all need to read it. 

A few runners-up:

The City Beyond the Glass is a dark and powerful allegorical retelling of my favorite fairy tale, "The Twelve Dancing Princesses." Plus, it's set in Renaissance Venice, which is super cool.

Illuminae is just plain amazing, and I don't know why I waited so long to read this book. I was a little concerned that it would be confusing, since it's not written in standard narrative format, but instead it ended up being super exciting and twisty and I seriously could not put it down. Also, the main characters are so salty, and they remind me of some of my friends. Except most of my really friends aren't awesome hackers . . . probably not, anyway. The sequel is almost as awesome— plot-wise, it was actually better; my only problem was that I didn't buy the romance quite as much.

2. Best sequel you've read so far in 2018:

We've got a tie in this one. First up is . . .

The Lost Plot! Which, honestly, should surprise exactly no one. The day an Invisible Library book comes out and doesn't make one of my best-of lists for the year in some fashion is the day I . . . I don't know. I probably won't die, but I might be in mourning over how one of my favorite series has failed me. Anyway, The Lost Plot is high on dragons, low on fae (which is fine; I can live with that), and takes place mostly in magical 1930s Chicago which is officially my new favorite location for historical fantasy.

And the second book in the tie . . .

Song of Leira! You know, because I haven't talked about it enough on this blog already. I reviewed it earlier this month, if you want to know my full thoughts, but basically it's lovely and heartbreaking and heart-healing and amazing, and it's kind of bite-sized Tolkien but also kind of not. So. Yeah. Read it.

Again, some runners-up:

An Earthly King is the second in the Modern Tales of Na Fianna, and I loved it far more than the first book. I'm not sure if that's because I knew what to expect going in (with Blood Ties I didn't, or, rather, my expectations were wrong), or because I liked the characters better (I did!) or because it was a mystery rather than a straight-up quest, or because it felt much more like the urban fantasy it is, or all of those combined. But there you have it.

I actually read the whole Spellsmith and Carver series this year, but book two, Magician's Trial is my favorite. It's like . . . we've got politics, we've got magic, we've got assassins, we've got an engineer-inventor who's basically my new favorite character, we've got all the things you want in one book. (And what you don't have is the emotional heart-rending-ness of book three or the frustrations that come from not knowing the characters well in book one.) So, yeah. Others disagree, but I think this is the best.

(On a side note, I've given myself a new rule: never give up on a self-published series— or a series in general, but especially a self-published one— until you've read at least two of the books in it, because I almost always like the second or third book far more than the first. Not that the first isn't generally good, but often it doesn't click with me like the others do. I think it's either because the first book is hyped so much that I have unrealistic expectations or else because by books two and three, both the author and I have figured out what s/he is doing here. Not sure which.)

3. New release you haven't read yet but want to: 

Isle of Blood and Stone came out in April; it's on my shelf, but I haven't quite gotten to it yet. That said, seafaring adventure in a quest to rescue a character's brothers? Sounds fun to me.

4. Most anticipated release for the second half of the year:

New Sanderson new Sanderson new Sanderson NEW SANDERSON! Sci-fi Sanderson! With a sentient ship! I want it yesterday. Actually, no, I don't, I have too many books and too little time. But also yes. It's going to be awesome.

5. Biggest disappointment:

The Rest of Us Just Live Here by Patrick Ness. It had some good points, but for the most part, it was just angsty and unsatisfying and populated by frustrating people. I suppose that's a fairly accurate representation of life sometimes, but still. Doesn't mean I want to read about that.

 

6. Biggest surprise:

Ok, so I picked up The Wrath and the Dawn on a whim, thinking "Oh, yeah, my blogger friends like this; I'll probably enjoy it," but I didn't expect to love it that much. And then the sequel, The Rose and the Dagger, is arguably even better. They've both got gorgeous ancient-Persian culture and characters who somehow manage to be reasonably non-infuriating and lovely bits of magic and a romance that worked out suprisingly well AND DOESN'T TURN INTO THAT ONE LOVE TRIANGLE. This is actually a significant accomplishment, as you can tell, and it just made me love the books more.

7. Favorite new-to-you author:

Margaret Rogerson is amazing, and she writes books that are intelligent and exciting and easily readaable in one sitting, and apparently she's working on a second book (unreleated to An Enchantment of Ravens), and YES. Well, not so much YES on the unrelated-to-Enchantment bit, but still. 

 

8. Newest fictional crush/ship:

Newest favorite ship is obviously Rook and Isobelle from Enchantment because they are perfection. Isobelle is generally sensible, sensible enough that she recognizes her foolishness in her initial crush on Rook, but then they end up falling in love properly through shared adventure (definitely one of the better ways to fall in love, since it has a way of bringing out the best and worst in a person). And Rook is thoroughly dramatic but also so protective and they're just fun together, ok?

A few other lovely ships that I discovered this year:

• Auric and Lotte from Spellsmith and Carver.
• Shazi and Khalid from The Wrath and the Dawn.
• Nick and Cordelia from Beaumont and Beasley.
• Kady and Ezra from Illuminae. (These two are seriously adorable, just FYI. And Ezra is a hopeless romantic, and Kady's just like "you're ridiculous but I love you anyway.")
• Wilhelmina and Etzel from the Bright Empires series. (I don't know if these are an official ship, but if they aren't and they don't end up together by the end, I will be SO MAD.)

In terms of fictional crushes, Marcus Altair is still awesome, available, and alive. I'm pretty sure this is a small miracle. I intend to enjoy it while it lasts.

9. Newest favorite character:
Favorite-favorite character? Rook again. He's excellent (but I'm not about to say so to his face, because he's vain enough as it is). Isobelle, Nick, Kady, Lotte, Shazi, and Wilhelmina are all on that list as well, just not as high.
  

10. A book that made you cry:
Eh, I got nothing. I did get major feels over some bits of Illuminae, though, so we'll go with that.

11. A book that made you happy:

Not a book but a whole series: the Beaumont and Beasley books! Much like the first book, they're also delightfully hilarious twisted fairy tales, though there's a bit of some other not-quite-fairy tales mixed in there too. Book one is officially on my shortlist of reads for when I'm upset and need to be not-upset in a hurry, and the rest probably would also qualify. (Ok, book three is a little depressing at points, but it's fine.)

Runner up: The Penderwicks at Last, even though it's the last book in the series and I procrastinated on it so hard. It was a delightful ending, and it brought the series full-circle in a way that I thoroughly appreciated.

12. Favorite book to film adaptation you've seen this year:
Oooh! I've actually got something for once! My sister and I watched and rewatched The Lord of the Rings extended editions back in January— her first time, my third or fourth. We were going to rewatch the Hobbit extended editions too, but we didn't get around to it. Maybe if we have time this summer we can do that . . . haha. I'm hilarious.
 

13. Favorite post you've done so far this year:
A few of my favorites:

• "I'll Take the Lashes": pirate-y flash fiction set in the world of the Berstru Tales.
• Beautiful Persons: Valentines Day 2018: in which I interview the main couple from Blood in the Snow.
• Have I Read You Yet: in which I look back on an old Top Ten Tuesdays list to see how my reading diet has expanded (or not expanded) in the last four years.
• Lightporter Release Tour & Hero's Perspective: Blaze!: a super fun interview featuring my favorite character from the IDIA books. Fun fact: C.B. and I actually did this interview through a roleplay instead of the usual method, which was super fun (even though it did involve staying up super late).
  

14. Most beautiful book you've bought so far this year:
It's a tie between these two:

An Enchantment of Ravens (yep, again).

The Burning Page.

I got both of these at a book fair for pretty cheap, and I hope that I'll get to go back sometime in the next few weeks. We'll see how that works out.
 

15. What books do you need to read by the end of the year?

Still haven't gotten to Lord of Chaos; oops.

I need to read Dread Nation by the end of the summer; I meant to finish it months ago but had to return the library book.

Of course I'm super excited for Skyward! (New Sanderson!!!!)

How's your reading been so far this year? What are your favorite books of this year? Any new ships or favorite characters? What's a book that really surprised you? Please tell me in the comments!
Thanks for reading!
 -Sarah (Leilani Sunblade)