2022 In Books

So basically the only rule for this list is that I had to read or finish the books in 2022. Everything else is my opinion. Of course, if you're interested in my deeper thoughts on these books, check out my reviews.

Number of times I smashed my Reading Goal: 3

Number of Books Read: 102, bringing my total number of books to 940 over my lifetime (that I’ve remembered)

Number of Pages: 32,474

Shortest Book: Recruit by Kelley Armstrong - 5 Pages 

Longest Book: Victoria The Queen: An Intimate Biography of the Woman Who Ruled an Empire by Julia Baird - 770 Pages

Average Book Length: 319 Pages

Favorite New Read: You Are Home by Catana Chetwynd - Such a sweet collection of Ms. Chetwynd's comics. Loved it so very much. Just gotta find somewhere to put those stickers...

Favorite Reread: The Forever King by Molly Chochran and Warren Murphy - Pretty much my favorite book ever, so it's unsurprising this was my favorite reread.

Favorite Non-Fiction: Beneath the Surface: Killer Whales, SeaWorld, and the Truth Beyond Blackfish by John Hargrove - I've always been interested in orcas and semi-recently interested in the welfare of orcas in SeaWorld and other parks, so this was kind of a natural like for me. It's also interesting to get some behind-the-scenes stuff that the public doesn't normally get about training orcas.

Favorite Series: Women of the Otherworld/The Otherworld. I really loved rereading this series, especially with the added shorts and novellas. I really recommend reading the series that way, it really enriches the overall story.

Favorite Author: Seanen McGuire - Only read one book by Ms. McGuire this year, but I love her work so... yeah.

Most Read Author: Kelley Armstrong - Due to how I did my reading list, of course I read a good chunk by Ms. Amrstrong. Got through four of her series this year.

Least Favorite Book: Rose Daughter by Robin Mckinley. This was just a weird retelling of Beauty and the Beast that had nothing to say about the original or itself, really. Rose Daughter was a slog.

Most Disappointing Read: The Third Magic by Molly Cochran - A seriously disappointing end to a trilogy that just started out so very strong. I love The Forever King, but The Third Magic just dropped the ball in terms of a) making this a trilogy and b) the story in general.

DNF Pile: Enchantress by James Maxwell - Well, this year it's not really a pile, but yeah. Dropped Enchantress pretty quickly (quarter of the way in). It was just bad.

Favorite New-to-Me Character: Hulda Larkin from Keeper of Enchanted Rooms by Charlie H. Holmberg. I mentioned in my review that I would like to be Hulda when I grow up and I stick by that assertion. She's pretty awesome.

Favorite Reread Character: Hermione Granger from Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K.Rowling. Squeaking by with a last-minute finish this year was my (and Mugglecast's) reread of Sorcerer's Stone. Hermione is my favorite Wizarding World character who actually appears in this book. I could technically give this award to one Sirius Black, but as he's only mentioned in passing, it seemed unfair.

Currently Reading: The White Gryphon by Mercedes Lackey and Larry Dixon, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J.K. Rowling, Tempt the Stars by Karen Chance

May your 2023 by happy and bright. May you have only good books to read. See you in my next post... whenever that is. 😅

The Black Gryphon by Mercedes Lackey & Larry Dixon

Technically a Reread Review

So, The Black Gryphon and I have a bit of history. When I last did a Valdemar read through, The Black Gryphon ended up in my DNF pile after maybe a page. I’d somehow got it in my head that gryphons did not talk and I basically didn’t want to read a book narrated by a gryphon. This was after I’d been reading the various Heralds books and… yeah… not entirely sure about my mindset then, but I definitely finished The Black Gryphon this time.

The Black Gryphon is not what I would call a typical starting book. The reader is not treated as though this is their first foray into the world of Valdemar. Terms are just thrown out there and the reader is expected to keep up. I don’t necessarily think this is a bad thing, just an interesting choice for a book that’s at least starting a trilogy. Some terms are later explained in depth, but I was flailing some initially. On this read, I was very happy to have the internet at my fingertips so I could look up what various terms meant and creature descriptions/images. I will, however, forever envision Hertasi as Randall from Monsters Inc. despite seeing images that have them looking much more aligator-like in the snout and coloring. Fight me.

Anyway, a good portion of The Black Gryphon is vignettes of war camp life. The camp is far enough from the front lines that not a lot actually happens. There is more character building than actual plot. The plot really kicks in during the last quarter of the book. Not a bad plot, though I am somewhat interested to see what happens with Ma’ar.

There’s a point in the book where Amberdrake has to explain two a pair of young healers what a kestra’chern is and actually does. This is done twice back-to-back. I found that really annoying. Honestly, that’s not the only point where the narration switches from not explaining to perhaps over explaining. It didn’t completely break me out of the story, but I did notice it.

There's a fair bit of parental philosophy thrown in here. Like, way more than I would normally expect, as none of the main characters have children. I mean, it's kind of spinning off stuff Urtho, creator of a bunch of magical critters, wrote, so it kind of makes sense. I was surprised. It's also not bad parenting philosophy either. Honestly, I agree with Urtho's assessment of human parents just being able to have kids all willy-nilly as a bad thing. It's part of why I support sex education and better access to contraceptives and, yes, abortion.

I would have liked an actual description of the makaar. Even googling them didn’t bring up much. I imagine they’re gryphon-like, but… ya know, would be nice to actually know.

So yeah, I actually made it through The Black Gryphon this time. It was alright. Very character driven. Not the best of the Valdemar series overall, but, ya know, not the worst.

Technically Spoilers Now

I said earlier that I was interested in what happened to Ma'ar, but I have since started The White Gryphon and... dude's dead, apparently. Go figure. I guess this is what happens when a series is essentially written to fill in backstory, like this one was. I mean, in hindsight (aka, after doing a tiny bit of research) The Black Gryphon really does read like a bunch of characters created in order to fill in the history of Valdemar a bit. And, ya know, the maakar exist here, but pretty much die out because Ma'ar died... for example. Nothing super in depth, just, like, how'd we get The Cataclysm and such... which I barely remember from my first Valdemar read through, to be honest. I dunno, just a thing I am now realizing as I start the next book.

Fury's Kiss by Karen Chance

A Reread Review

So I honestly found Fury's Kiss to be interesting, but not really satisfying. There are threads of story here that don't really seem to go together until the end, where the "true" antagonist just kind of jumps out and reveals themselves. Also the pacing is all over the place. That's kind of a function of the plot, but... not at the same time. It's odd and I'm not really a fan this time around (this was my second read). My memories of my first read of Fury's Kiss actually completely omitted the non-Dory-centric B Plot, so there's that. I also somehow remembered Dory and Dorina melding a lot more than they did... obviously that was wrong, but there you go.

I did quite enjoy getting the slice-of-life with Dory, Claire, Ray, and Claire's fey guards toward the beginning of the book. I think Dory and Claire deserve some normalcy and some downtime outside of their respective jobs. It's probably my favorite part of Fury's Kiss. Slice-of-life stuff is nice to get every once in a while and there's a reason a lot of fanfiction takes place this way. However, it does stand out against the rest of Fury's Kiss, which is honestly a lot of chaotic fight scenes.

Karen Chance really excels at writing chaotic fight scenes. I do think, however, that reading them in smaller chunks like I tend to actually helps my being able to follow them. Otherwise, like they did on my first read, the fights do tend to be a big blur. I really quite enjoy Dory's fight scenes in particular because she's rather straightforward in her fighting style. Nothing too fancy until the ending, which -- and this is my only spoiler -- was a clusterfuck of Master Powers. Which, by the way, haven't really ever been discussed in either this or the Cassie Palmer series. The only one we've really seen up until now was the Consul's nifty sand thing and her snake dress and I just assumed it was because she's The Consul and therefore had some special quirks. But no, apparently not. Apparently there's a whole range of X-men-like powers Master Vampires can have and multiples at that. Just... what the hell? Kind of neat, but would have been cooler if they'd been set up better.

I find the whole Dory/Dorina thing interesting. It makes sense that Mircea would do what he did to their brain and I'm interested in seeing how Dory and Dorina reconcile themselves into one cohesive being... assuming they do that eventually. I'm honestly really interested in seeing more Dorina. The couple slices of her we got were interesting, to say the least. And wow that's a lot of "interesting" in this paragraph.

I am glad Dory and Louis-Cesare finally figured out their shit. I'm really hoping they end up being a cohesive couple and not a bunch of drama-for-dramas sake. After all, there is a bunch of that here, too. I'm over it. I want more healthy couples in my vampire romances.

I feel it would be remiss of me to not mention Ray. I really do like his character. He bounces from being completely ridiculous to competent and actually feels like a rounded person. I'm not entirely sure I like him being a vampire info-dump, but I guess someone had to give Dory the info she didn't have.

I also quite enjoyed Kit in this one. You get to see two sides of his personality. Nice to see he's still got some humanity in there, even if he does go a little nuts in Dory's direction because of it. And yes, I do agree with Dory about his being pushy and intense while trying to figure out how his former "children" or whatever died mysteriously. Still not satisfied with how that storyline resolved itself, but... eh. I guess it works?

Yeah, Fury's Kiss was basically bookended by the B Plot. I really think Fury's Kiss was more about Dory discovering more about her "other half," as it were, than it was about why Lawrence and others of Kit's team were killed. In that, I think it succeeded more than it failed. However, the endings to both A and B plots were unsatisfying. I vaguely wish I was reading along the specific Dory storyline of this pair of book series, because I would really like to see how Dory handles the endings. But alas, I'm now on to Cassie Palmer for a few books.

Favorite Line

"Thank you, Captain Obvious."

"I'm on the Senate," he reminded me. "It's Lord Obvious. And I don't want any mistakes tonight." - Dorina Basarab and Kit Marlowe

In Other News

I've spent the last few weeks working on a pair of holiday art projects: Ornament Garlands and Snowman Repaints. The garlands took several of my days off as I decided to get as much glitter off of them as possible... the glitter spilled from inside the ornaments into the packaging and took forever to get off.

One of four. Looking to complete these next year as I just cannot with them anymore.

Repainted for my boyfriend, roommate, and me.

Links to my garland supplies, should you wish to make your own:

Ribbon

Purple Ornaments

Blue Ornaments

Silver Ornaments

Victoria the Queen: An Intimate Biography of the Woman Who Ruled and Empire by Julia Baird

I’m not really sure how to review a biography, so I’ve decided to list what I’ve learned from it instead. I will say that I largely enjoyed reading this. There was a lot of politics that I sort of glazed over while reading, but the rest of engaging enough.

Women have ALWAYS had it bad in the reproductive education department. Some of the things doctors thought about womens reproductive health were shocking. Victoria herself would have been unaware of most contraceptive practices at the time.

The prudishness associated with the Victorian era were really more Albert’s things than Victoria’s.

Queen Victoria’s letter and diaries were extensively edited by her daughter and a pair of dudes. Our view of her is warped by this. Kind of reminds me of the Egyptian pharoahs and the amount of destruction they did to their records of those preceding them. The destruction of Victoria’s letters and diaries and such was done for different reasons, but the reminder is still there.

Florence Nightingale was a feminist on top of being a nurse. Not exactly surprising, but something that’s never taught in schools, at least not while I attended. Also, she was bedridden and continuing humanitarian work, like a boss.

The Crimean War. I have to admit, I first learned of The Crimean War via a Doctor Who episode (War of the Sontarans). Getting any sort of education on this period of European history in the US is apparently for either college courses or self-discovery.

I didn’t realize that Europe still wasn’t… solidified… into what we think of a Europe today in the 1800s. I had no idea how much the, uh, countries were much smaller and made up of other countries at the time. I guess I need to find a European History YouTube channel or something.

This passage had my eyes wide: “In 1864, the first of the Contagious Diseases Acts introduced official brothels for the military.” This was apparently because STIs were being blamed on the women and not the men. Just wow. And then: “In 1886 the Contagious Diseases Acts were finally repealed. They had been ludicrously ineffective: the rate of VD in the army was exactly the same it had been in 1865, unchanged by twenty years of the law.” Surprise, your bad medicine is bad medicine.

I was somewhat surprised to learn how into the military and wars Victoria was. I guess a general lack of education as to just how many wars went on in Europe during her reign is at the root of my surprise. I guess it also didn’t really occur to me as part of the imperialism thing… that stuff is just really sanitized unless you actually go to study it specifically. I don’t know, just didn’t picture Queen Victoria as very warlike.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling

2013 Spoilery Reread Review

Originally Posted on my now defunct blog 6-17-2013

Seriously, there are spoilers for the entire series here. 

If you are planning to purchase this book, please do so used in order to curb J.K. Rowling's spending on her transphobia.

It will come as no surprise to anyone that I'm a Harry Potter fan. As such, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone was the book that got me into J.K. Rowling's magical world. That said, I tend to skip over it when I reread the series. This is for several reasons, which I will outline below, before I get to the reason I shouldn't skip over Sorcerer's Stone as often as I do.

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone is largely a setup book. The reader gets what is basically a book-long info-dump interspersed with actual plot. That said, much of the info-dumping is necessary as the reader is in the same shoes as Harry: neither has any idea what the Wizarding World is like. However, in large info-dumps serve to make the book choppy. While we don't necessarily need to know what's going on hour-to-hour and day-to-day, I personally felt as though delving into the day-to-day stuff more often would have been helpful to break up all the jumping around that happens. There are also a lot of plot-conveniences throughout the book that hinge on characters being in certain places at certain times to overhear random bits of dialogue in order to create the red herring villain: Professor Severus Snape. I enjoyed Snape as the villain on the first read, but knowing about that upon reread ruins the magic, as it were.

What I really enjoy about rereading Sorcerer's Stone is the foreshadow-y clues sprinkled throughout the pages. Sirius Black is mentioned in the first chapter, though he doesn't come back up until Prisoner of Azkaban. Horcruxes, while not explicitly named or expounded upon, are mentioned. We see the after-effects of Voldemort using one of them. It's the only way he could even show up in the book. Professor Snape is initially set up as the villain. By the end of the book, and ultimately the end of the series, we see that he's not. We get a slight mention of the Marauders in this book, or at least a mention of their exploits, when Dumbledore tells Harry that James saved Snape's life. These, along with many other bits and pieces, are reasons rereading Sorcerer's Stone is so much fun.

In addition to the foreshadowing, there were certain bits of the story I really enjoyed. The depiction of Hogwarts at Christmas really stands out. I also quite enjoyed the Gringotts plaque -- I've got that thing memorized. I do really want to punch Ron in the face for all the things he said to Hermione in this book, though. That was before they became friends, but even so, he was really cruel to her.

If you are reading Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone for the first time -- I don't know why you're reading this review if you are, first off -- this is the book that gets you into the series. It might not be the best example of Harry Potter brilliance, but it works as a nice introduction to the series.

2022 Spoilery Reread Review

Originally Posted on GoodReads 12-7-22

Still manages to draw me in and keep me reading. This particular reread is being done along with Mugglecast’s reread, so I’m only keeping to a few chapters at a time to go along with the podcast. That said, it’s a little hard to stop reading when I need to; a testament to Rowling’s effective writing.

Noticing this time around how much I get things mixed up with the movie. Just, the order of things, really. The Sorcerer’s Stone film is quite a good adaptation, even if they did cut out and rearrange some things. However, I’d completely forgotten that Vernon and Petunia were in the room and actually silent through Hagrid’s explanation of Lily and James’ deaths. Kind of weird, actually, and one of the choppy bits I talked about in my 2013 review. The mood swings completely from Hagrid being outraged to all calm to outraged again in the space of a page or two. I also have a hard time believing Vernon and Petunia were wrapped up in Hagrid’s story enough to not interject more than they did, but, well, it happened so shrugs all around.

Also find it interesting that Hagrid, who was expelled in his third year, is just randomly using non-verbal magic all willy nilly. Non- verbal magic, we find out later in the series, isn’t taught til the sixth year. So it just struck me as odd this read-through.

I had somehow forgotten just how short this book is. Like, it felt like the whole Norbert/Detention thing should have happened earlier, but there also wasn’t time for it to have happened earlier. You go straight from that into the finale, which happens really quickly. There’s just a lot crammed into the last three chapters, it’s a little nuts but also masterfully done.

Dumbledore is incredibly deep with the thoughts he shares with Harry at the end of the book. I think a good chunk if the most famous Dumbledore lines come from Chapter 17. He’s also incredibly frustrating, especially on a reread. Harry’s straight up asking about the prophecy without actually asking about it because he doesn’t know and Dumbledore is just like “nah, you’ll find out when you’re older.” I kind of want to punch him in the face. Also interesting that he apparently has little regard, or maybe even knowledge at this point, about Snape’s feelings toward Lily Potter. He, like Quirrell, puts Snape’s actions down to hating James and wanting to basically square away the life debt Snape owed James. Just so interesting when all the fan discourse around this stuff if put down to Snape saving Harry for Lily’s sake.

So anyway, it’s been fun revisiting one of my absolute favorite series again. The Sorcerer’s Stone is really a comfort read for me, though I don’t read it near as often as some other fans. Still a fantastic beginning to the series.

The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special

I am not an fan of holiday movies, to be completely honest with you. I find them overly saccharine, often with ridiculously bad dialogue, and find them just plain cringy to watch. This was not the case with The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special. My boyfriend and I loved it. Definitely adding it to our very small list of acceptable holiday movies.

I liked watching Drax and Mantis interact on their own. They’re really an interesting MCU pair. Both odd in their own ways. I’m also glad they’re clearly a platonic match-up. Not enough of those in the world, I think. But anyway, watching them handle the Hollywood culture and then the Christmas culture while being mostly oblivious to both was fun.

My boyfriend’s a big fan of the Nowhere set once it was all lit up with Christmas lights. I’m a big fan of Mantis’ little bow-apron thingie. If I thought I could pull that off, I would try. It’s so cute! Her whole Christmas outfit was just perfect.

The story itself was amusing. I really like the idea of Drax and Mantis hating actors but also being completely oblivious to the fact that Kevin Bacon is an actor. That all Peter’s heroes were actors, really. It amused me. It was also really sweet of Mantis to want to make Peter’s Christmas a happy one. Little odd that no one really thought about Mantis also being Ego’s kid, but I guess I didn’t really either… just seemed really obvious when she said it. Though, now I’m thinking about it, she definitely could have just been someone Ego picked up somewhere, so yeah… anyway…

If you haven’t seen The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special, I definitely recommend that you do. It’s sweet and fun but not overly cringy. Definitely an awesome addition to any holiday movie watching you might be doing.