 sometimes life doesn't go like that. I would be actually relieved because I like them. I should look them up to say I see them. Very mixed bag is what I'm saying. Cilantro was strong with this one. Welcome to my January wrap-up, the first wrap-up of 2023. I have a lot of books and this stack is very precarious. Oh I forgot to put in my stuff. I have two DNFs for the year. I might have to go get those, but anyway I don't count those toward my reading goal. Anyway, so red books. I have 15 books. Holy moly. This is also the first time I'm using a new camera to film a video so I'm really hoping this is going well. I'm going to be assuming if you're hearing me say these words it went well, but if not then editing me, hi this didn't go well and you're gonna have to rerecord this. But yeah okay cool. I'm mostly just thinking about my camera right now to be perfectly honest, but I have things to tell you about books. Oh and also year of game is still happening. I have scripted my neverware review and I keep hoping to like film it, but I haven't had time to do that. I'm very fairly, these only confident. There's a very next video after this one that I post will be my neverware review. I have yet to record it, but I have it scripted. I just need to pull. There's some quotes I still need to pull and then I'll be ready to film it and post it. So that's coming. I wanted to post it in January. I wanted to post each game and book in the month that I'm reading it, but sometimes life doesn't go like that. January wrap up. Yes let's do it. I will go get my DNFs. It occurs to me that my child, my furry baby, is locked in the bedroom so that she won't mess with my new camera and my DNFs are in there. So instead please enjoy these graphics that I have pulled from the internet. So I believe the first book that I DNFed was Age of Myth by Michael J Sullivan and Jashana if you're watching this I would just like you to know that I have valued our friendship and I'm very sorry to lose that relationship. It's meant a lot to me so I'm sorry that this has to be where we part. But yeah Age of Myth is a my Michael J Sullivan story. The first Michael J Sullivan book I ever bought was Age of Myth because I saw the cover and this was like pre-booktube or very early booktube. Anyway so I got Age of Myth and then after getting it I learned that it was a prequel to the Ryuria Chronicles. So I was like oh shoot so then I went and bought all of the Ryuria Chronicles and then I found out that the Ryuria Chronicles are actually prequels for the Ryuria Revelations. So I was like okay so I bought all of the Ryuria Revelations and I've read the Ryuria Revelations. I did not love them but I also own all of the Age of Legends. Age of Legends? Is that what it's called? It's not called that. Legends of the First Empire I believe. That's what Age of Myth is the first book in. I own all of those in hard cover. They're so beautiful. Honestly such nice cover art. Like not just for the first book all the books. Anyway um yeah I didn't love Revelations but it was the first thing he had written like chronologically speaking or like publication order speaking chronologically speaking. Age of Myth is first. Joshana and Jesse and I think other people also had expressed that while they liked the Ryuria books they thought that the Legends of the First Empire is like his best. It's just like a lot lot better than the Ryuria stuff and I was like well the Ryuria stuff wasn't bad. It was like far from my favorite but like it was it had some good stuff in there and maybe what I didn't like about it was just kind of like him being an amateur. Like that was the first thing he wrote. In Age of Myth I started reading it and I was like this is the same. This is no better no different. In fact it's slightly worse than Ryuria Revelations. Especially because it's supposed to be taking place like thousands of years before Ryuria Revelations and the world and the tone and the like time period feel no different. And Ryuria already feels slightly modern and it's like kind of jokey and bantery and quippy in a very modern casual like window pane prose kind of way. Which is like it's not my preferred but like I can like a book that's like that. And it works better for me in Ryuria Revelations because Hadrian and Royce are kind of this like buddy cop heisting duo. So like that they have this like bantery, jokey relationship it's like it's fine. I actually started liking the series less and less because it kind of got more and more epic and I just didn't think it was handling it well because it was kind of keeping that jokey tone but like also trying to be epic and I was like I just don't really take any of this seriously and the world building's not that good. So thousands of years before this the tone is the same. Hadrian and Royce could like show up at any point and it would feel entirely appropriate. I would be actually relieved because I like them. And that's the thing too. Everybody that praises Legend of the First Empire is like oh it's the characters. I love the characters. Well in fairness I did DNF the book but like so far I was not impressed with the characters. I was like I just I don't think this is gonna be for me. I could keep reading this and maybe it gets a bit better but I'm just like I don't think this is gonna be for me. And I was keeping all of those books all my Michael J Sullivan books because I was like well my year ago was fine but like man I'm so looking forward to Legend of the First Empire and once I become a huge fan of that I will want to have a complete like full Michael J Sullivan election and I don't. I don't like Legend of the First Empire and I don't feel any kind of attachment to Royeria. So I think I'm unhauling. 15 books? 16 books? Something like that because I'm gonna get rid of all of it. So anyway that was my first DNF of the year and the other DNF was like way faster. I gave Age of Myth a bit of a chance because I own all of them. But the other one um I really I didn't even think I would like it but I, Alcrae was doing these like Lord of the Rings inspired little ceramic bowls and at Christmas like they had a big sale of like merch that had been in boxes where you could just buy the merch. So I had bought the three that they had which were like Rivendell, Erebor and the Shire. Now after that and you could not buy it separately they're like I think they're January box or the December box or whatever. The whole box that comes with a book and like other merch in it they did the fourth and final bowl which is Gondor. And I looked online to see if people were reselling it um because I was like I just want the bowl that's all I want. And I did find some people reselling the bowl but they were asking like the almost exact same amount as it is to just buy the box. And they did still have the box it wasn't like sold out because if it had been sold out I'd be like well I guess I'm paying a box amount for a bowl. They still had lots I don't know if they have lots but they still had in stock the whole box. So I was like well I could pay this amount and just get the bowl or I could pay this amount and like guess what I should have too including a book that I might like. So I got the box and I love the bowl the bowl's amazing the Gondor one's my favorite. But so the book that was in the box was The Luminaries by Susan Dennard and I tried reading the The Witchlands series because Bethany loves it so much before and I did own like several of them and I did not like that series it was not for me. But The Luminaries is like years later now and it's like supposed to be quite different it's not part of The Witchlands at all. I was like I mean sure like I probably wouldn't have bought this myself but like it came in this box. So I was like sure let's let's give it a go. I quickly enough I was like oh yeah no this is not for me I know immediately it was like even more YA in tone than The Witchlands ever had been and it was just more amateurish than The Witchlands was and it felt so YA and so derivative and so like quippy in the way that it felt like a CW show but a CW show that gets canceled. Because like I can I watch CW shows I admit that freely. Riverdale is one of my all-time favorite shows of all time ever. I have no shame about that. I watched like the first four seasons I think of The Vampire Diaries. What else is on the CW? There's probably others. I don't know. Point being like just because something is on the CW just because it's like you know kind of campy and over the top and derivative and quippy and I tend to prefer that on screen then in books because on screen it's easier to convey camp but I mean yeah I can like a book that's like kind of that way like something reminding you of a CW show it's not necessarily gonna be a turn off for me but yeah this is like what a CW show that like gets immediately canceled. So yeah I very quickly did that after that. I was like yeah no. So anyway um those are my DNFs. Let's talk about the books that I actually read like finished in January. The first book that I read and finished um was The Lincoln Highlight by Amor Tolles. I think I put this on my DVR if I didn't. Yeah I did right because this was my uh December uh book of the month club box um this and my other ones in there as well. So I always try to read it in the following month and the only reason I got this was because at the end of the year if you've like finished the reading challenge then actually I think maybe everyone gets to. I'm not sure if you have to be the really reading challenge or not but you get to pick one of the year's finalists for like best book of the year for free and the finalists I had already for all of them I had already gotten it or I wasn't interested in it at all. The only one that I had not gotten and was mildly interested in was this one. So I was like okay Lincoln Highlight and I really loved it. I need to like really like force myself to not pick the speculative books from book of the month because those are never good. But they always are the ones most appeal to me the cover and the like synopsis and never good. The only times I've loved book of the month club books is when they're like lit fake or thriller or things like that. So once again lit fake to save the day. I really really really loved this. It kind of reminded me of the movie Oh Brother Where Are Thou which um is a favorite movie. I really like that movie. Anyone looking to pick this up I don't want to give you a false impression. It's not exactly like that movie. That movie is a lot more like stylistic and over the top and campy and just more out there. But this does kind of like bring the like the sense of like a Greek Odyssey or Greek stories or just like kind of old myth and legend and brings it in a kind of like very I don't know significant way to a story that's just in America that's about Americans, a young man and his brother and some other people. There's a lot. It's a very character driven story. We're actually not on the Lincoln Highway that much in it. But yeah it's just a people story from multiple perspectives how they connect and intertwine and you get to see this kind of like mosaic portrait of some pockets of America at a certain time. But yeah I mean the main character or I guess it is an ensemble but I would say there's a main character or at least slightly more main character than the others. And like he's just gotten out of prison at the beginning of the story which again reminds me of Oh Brother Where Are Thou and now they're going to be traveling across America. This reminds me of Oh Brother Where Are Thou. The younger brother is very much into like classics and he keeps like relating things in their lives to classics which is what reminds me of Oh Brother Where Are Thou. So yeah I really really enjoyed this and it's inspired me to want to pick up more by any more tolls. I should look up how to say his name. I still don't know. I think I gave it four stars not five because the ending like didn't like fully come together for me at the way that I would have wanted it to but it was really really good. Next up was a reread and that was Kingdoms of Death by Christopher Rockio because book five in the senator which is next was coming out and or had just come out and Alex and I were doing a live show to chat about it and um if you don't know Kingdoms of Death and Ashes of Man those two books were originally one book that got split into two and it had been a long time. I mean I read this when it came out so not that long but I read this when it came out and the more when we were talking about it in my discord I was like did I even read that book? I don't remember anything about it. One I don't remember enough and two this is basically like the first half of this same book so more so than before I would like to read it like kind of back to back. So I reread this and I'm glad I did because I liked it more the second time. The issues I had with the pacing and whatnot just like I don't know maybe because I knew to expect them they didn't bother me as much so I enjoyed it more the second time and then like immediately thereafter I dove into Ashes of Man by Chris Veracchio and I did have slightly more issues with this in terms of the tone of certain positions of the author becoming a parent. Alex and I will have our live show when this is going up like two days from today from when you're seeing this so I'm sure we'll talk about it um but yeah there were some I mean I'm vaguely aware of Chris Veracchio's personal beliefs and leanings and like positioning on some things and I don't think we like fully see eye to eye on things and for the most part in the senator series it's not like so much a part of it that like it's like you know a deal-breaker for me or that like it ruins the story for me but there are times especially in the like short stories and like extra world material that it becomes quite apparent what his views are. Again most of the time either it's not affecting the story or when I do notice it it's it's not such a huge part of the story to where it ruins it I'm more just like observing it occurring in the story and I'm like I know why this is here um but moving on like I kind of note it and I'm like I don't agree but then I move on because like it's not integral to like the infrastructure of this story but it was a little bit more so a little more prominent um a little harder to ignore in Ashes of Man but that said I still give this five stars because I really really enjoyed it and where it's going I'm very intrigued I'm concerned about where it's going not because there's been any bad signs or well there's been a little bit. If ultimately where we go with this like the answer to like the big mysteries that have been building throughout these books if the answer to those questions the answer to those mysteries is hugely leaning into his personal views and personal beliefs well then that will kind of retroactively kill the series for me but so far it's just been kind of like it's like that one seasoning in a dish that you wish wasn't in it but it's still a yummy meal it's it's like me in cilantro I love Mexican food I eat Mexican food all the time and they always put cilantro in everything and I hate cilantro tastes like soap but I still eat Mexican food and I'm just like that bite was a little bit soapy moving on so that's kind of me and the like the parts of this that I'm like I don't think I agree with the author about I read it and I'm like there was the cilantro but moving on so like if the ending is just a big ol' pile of cilantro we're gonna have a problem but so so far it's apparent but like it doesn't bother me yet I look forward to chatting with Alex about this book next up is another book that you will see me chatting about soon and that is The Forgetting Moon by Brian Lee Derpy the first book in the Five Warrior Angels which I am doing a buddy read read along with Aaron from Books at Busy and the live show for this will be soon I don't think I know the date right now um any who sees this book is massively long and this did have some problems for me I think I gave it three stars because the things that it did badly it did quite bother me but the things that it did well were well enough for me to like that's how much it was able to balance it out because the good stuff was quite good so like it averages out to a three like that's how good the good stuff was if that makes sense so what it does badly I think is representations of females and exposition those things I think it does extremely extremely poorly um I as a fantasy reader I read a lot of books that handle those two things in particular quite badly and so the reason that I'm still quite excited to read the next book is what I've heard about where this goes what I've heard about like what happens and and where some of these things how they some of these things get subverted and and complicated in the next book so I'm very excited to see that but yeah so like with exposition in particular um basically if you're info dumping stuff to me I will never like that you're info dumping stuff to me or if you're having like really expository dialogue where it's like two characters or like this thing that you of course have heard of oh yes this thing that I have heard of that's a thing that does xyz isn't that so yes and don't forget it also does this thing and you're like no one talks like this like you're saying this because the reader will learn what this is or like literal just paragraphs that are just like telling you like we're just like pausing the story to tell you stuff like I will hate that always I would much rather be confused about what's going on in this scene than how you pause the scene to tell me what's going on that's just me as a reader I will I will never like it if you info dump to me or have a painfully unnatural sounding expository dialogue I will never like that have you do it a lot because like some books you know like you know you get that out of the way because it kind of like caught you up on the situation and then off we go I'll be like okay well I promise you could have delivered that more organically but fine we did it we got the info dumped we're doing the story now like just got through that moving on if your book is like a ton of info dumping all of the time there's never a point where we've caught up where we are continuing to constantly dump more and more information that I better think your information is interesting that's the only thing that can save it most of the time I don't most real building out there it's not that interesting it's pretty derivative or the author like that's you like now I'm thinking about the author and tell you info dump something to me or you can see the author's hand in it that's when you're aware that the author is speaking to you is when something is being info dumped and so then I'm also thinking about the author now and I'm thinking about how this author thinks they're so clever and I will always be annoyed by that so that's just like you're calling attention to yourself and to your real building and most of the time you're real building it's like not nearly as clever as you think it is so basically if you're info dumping information to me I better be really into it I better really love the world that you're telling me about where I'm able to forgive that you're dumping it to me like this and like to be perfectly honest the wolf by leo caru and all three of those books but particularly the wolf he does info dump a lot y'all know how much I love the wolf I've read it seven times and I will read it seven more times and I would give it six out of five stars I fucking love the wolf and it info dump so I'm saying like it is possible for me to not just forgive it but like give it a complete pass if I love what you're telling me and I'm not saying that I this isn't a new wolf I would have given it five stars not three but what I'm saying is I did think it was interesting I do think the world building is decently interesting I do think that the history of this world is decently interesting I do think that the mysteries it's setting up are decently interesting enough for me to go I don't like how you're telling me this and I don't like what you're doing with your female characters but I am interested I am I will keep reading I mean I have to keep reading because we're the read along but like even if there was no read along I would read the next book despite his flaws I am interested it is pretty good the world building and like the mystery of what's going on and and where we're gonna go with that so very mixed bag is what I'm saying next up is one of the biggest disappointments of the year for me and that is hell bent by Lee Bardugo I wrote a pretty scathing review on Goodreads I did give this three stars but it was more like a 2.5 rounded up and most of that 2.5 is just like cashing out the goodwill that it earned from me for 9th house so this if you don't know this is the sequel to 9th house 9th house was already like a shaky start but like a promising one in my opinion I thought you know it was it was it was hard getting into it I identified some pacing issues that I thought would have like structuring the story differently would have helped you to like be more immediately invested in it but like by the end of 9th house I was like okay but I do want to see where this goes you have me now you have me quite hooked and hell bent is like doing everything that 9th house did badly but even more so and then doing some new things like some fresh bad stuff that like 9th house didn't even do the world building is all over the place with this the pacing is terrible the plot is like I mostly compare this I don't think I did in my Goodreads review but I've like when I've spoken to people about it the most this most reminds me of Rise of Skywalker the Star Wars movie in the way that it's just like it's like non-stop fetch quests and just like we got to find them a guffin do the magic thing here's a ritual here's a scroll here's a book we got to find it we got to look at it we got to do it we got to get out of it like just constantly and a bit of that sure that's a bit of adventure that's that's what your plot is ostensibly that's how you learn real building but it's just like this complete grab bag of nonsense we're a building so that we can constantly be going from thing to thing to thing because God forbid we stop for a moment to like actually deal with the ramifications and the emotional fallout of the stuff that's supposedly happening to our characters which is weighty like it's not nothing that's happening to these characters there's some pretty intense stuff that's happening these characters but I feel nothing about it because we're just like this thing was super intense and I'll probably never be the same again anyway on to the next fetch quest like and that's not what I read books for personally I'm a character driven reader I would much rather have like you know 90% less fetch quests just have the one really significant one and like spend the book building up to this little ritual we need to do and slowly gather what we need for and figuring it out and really like sitting with the feelings and emotions and relationships that are affected by it that's what I'd like to read not whatever this is and like to be perfectly frank to like the macabre imagery of it was at times kind of ridiculous where it was like more funny than horrifying to me I was like are you seeing those right now this cover is like so cool and so sinister reminds me of the cover for what moves the dead what moves the dead is creepy as fuck that is sinister this is also like a cw show but a bad one next up is my other book of the month club book and that was the circus train by amita perique and this was not good this was very surface level almost offensively so because it's dealing with like so many different things and I feel like the author didn't have the space or time to really do justice to any of those things and then ended up telling like a schlocky hallmark channel kind of story instead because we wanted to have like happy endings and good good vibes but we're dealing with like horrifying parts of actual history as well as like really serious things that affect and have affected real people there's not really any circus in this if you're expecting like it'll be like the night circus it'll be like I don't know what's another work with a circus in it I don't know there's another one isn't there the people I don't know but if you're expecting circus vibes like nope not a lot of that the disability rep in it is um would have bothered me anyway and then when I saw so what people had to say about it people who are disabled and how we're like um no we're not we don't like this but it even it's just kind of like put words to a vibe but that I had or I was like something I something about this like I don't I don't know why I don't like this I don't like what this is doing this doesn't this feels off to me and I wouldn't have been able to tell you why but like yeah seeing reviews from people who are disabled saying this is why this is not okay I was like okay yeah yeah that's that was why the vibes were off so yeah and it like losses over the holocaust in a way that it's like it's like the hallmark channel version of the holocaust which is like out of that you know you don't have to write about the holocaust you know you don't if you don't want to write a story that's gonna like handle it with the weight and gravity that it deserves that just maybe don't touch it you know maybe possibly so yeah like I get what the author was trying to do and I did like there was an interview with the author as well that I like I just like I get what she was going for and I know why she was going for those different things and what she thought she was doing but like this wasn't it like so there's another book that I did not care for that was the winter king by Bernard Cornwall which was my well technically my first Bernard Cornwall book that I have finished but I have started like reading some other Cornwall books which is good because those other Cornwall books are like a lot better whereas if I had just read this and not touched anything else I probably would have never tried it again but like concurrently I was like picking up a bunch of different Cornwalls and this was one that I like had to read for this month so I finished it the other two I don't have to have read in January so I was like I'll finish y'all at another time winter king I was like this was the worst by far of the ones that I'm like reading at the same time I have a review on goodreads for it but basically like what is this it's like if if Harry Potter was told by Seamus Finnegan by which I mean the main character the the character that's telling you the story has like no is like hardly important to the story and not really present for a lot of important things so it's like why is he telling the story like I feel no investment in this and I'm also not getting very interesting information about it because he like wasn't there he wasn't in the room where it happened it's like this like 30 000 foot overview of stuff we kind of breeze by stuff the like action and battle stuff kind of happens off screen the stuff it's doing with the like characters from the Arthur myth is not terribly interesting maybe it's very interesting and subverted I have heard that it does get interesting and subverted in the following books but not in this one the one that it does subvert in this one is Lancelot in a way that I don't like not really I mean I don't really personally like feel any kind of way about Lancelot where I'm like Lancelot's my favorite character how dare you like I don't care honestly about the Arthur story that much I just think it's really uninteresting and annoying and unbelievable it was done with Lancelot I was like well don't like that and like Arthur is like kind of too perfect so like I would prefer an Arthurian story that's like subverting stuff to like make him unlikable because he is already the heroic like mythic figure like you know what I'm saying like okay this book confirms Arthur was a special dude like great cool and then like there's so much um sexual violence in this book to the point and it's not handled with care and it feels gratuitous and unnecessary and it feels like half the scenes the author was like hmm the scene needs something hmm need something to spice it up a little bit hmm I don't rape oh it's just exhausting after a while it's not even that I'm reading it being like horrified and upset I'm just like for real again and the the way that it depicts pagans again I don't find it personally offensive I'm just like I pagans weren't just like doing like wild banana stuff for no reason it's like the Arthur things because this is the Dark Ages and because they were pagans it can just write any all kind of wild nonsense that occurs to him and it's like no that's not how that works so yeah no I don't like this I own the other two so I might read them but I definitely will read more Cornwell because I could I've seen him do a lot better this is I don't get why people hype this at all well it's not for me next up I have Nine Liars by Maureen Johnson and I was really excited for this because I really like the truly devious books this is another truly devious like in the world of truly devious like the the truly devious mystery was already solved in that three book arc but there's other books with the same character so Box in the Woods came out last year I think it was okay and this is another story with the same characters that are from truly devious I was so pumped for this because well one the cover is orange and covered with fall leaves and it's like I mean yes and then it takes place in like an old house in England it's like an isolated closed circle mystery at least that's how it's pitched and I was like knives out in England yes but it actually really doesn't it's not so much an isolated closed circle mystery in a cool old house vibe like they are briefly in the house it's more about the characters and like their problems and the mystery kind of takes a backseat to that and I'm mostly interested in the mystery or like that's what I would come to this book for with some like fun character vibes on the side and yeah the character stuff is kind of getting old because it feels like these are the same problems they've been having for all of the books and it's like you know let's resolve it or move on or something like and then the the quippy bantry stuff like sometimes was funny like that's why these books why I generally like them because the humor does generally work for me but like yeah this just like wasn't that interesting or that good or that compelling and I'm just kind of getting sick of it and it wasn't a fun isolated closed circle mystery like I wanted and the character stuff yeah like I said it's just kind of getting old and also I've listened to this on audiobook this takes place in England and our main character and her friends they're not English they're the same kids from the truly devious but where they everyone they're who's involved in the mystery this new mystery they're all English they're all from England and there's lots of flashbacks for their mystery that are like just them there's like lots of people that are supposed to have British accents and the the narrator cannot do an English accent to save her life it was so painful to listen to this so that certainly did not help matters but I don't think I would have given this book like five stars if I'd read it physically instead of on audio but like reader be warned the audiobook like if you are tuned to accents at all and that will bother you it's bad it's really bad so anyway this was pretty loud cluster and disappointing and I don't know if I'll read any more truly devious books if she publishes more I mean the way the character stuff went I'm assuming she does want to publish more truly devious stories because it is not resolved what our character stuff and I just I just don't care anymore I don't think next up I have the last wish which is the short story collection before the other short story collection before the main witcher series because on chapter 3 podcast we were doing a read-along for the witcher series so we did have our live show talking about the last wish if you missed it I'll leave a link down below which was a great conversation and our bonus content for patrons of the podcast was to do with fairy tales and fairytale retellings and how fairy tales function in our collective consciousness because of fairly obvious reasons if you have read the last wish so anyway um this was a reroute for me I was also a reroute for Bethany the rest will be new for her rereads for me I really really love rereading this I kind of miss being in the world of the witcher the way the series ends kind of left a little bit of a bad taste in my mouth because I didn't love the way the series ends the main books um I don't hate it I have generally fond feelings towards witcher but like it kind of fizzled for me a bit I did not feel very enthusiastic about it by the end so being back where it started where I was giving these five stars because I loved it the first time I read it and I definitely love that again so it's nice just kind of being in the world with Geralt doing some monsters and some moral conundrums and just kind of vibing in the world of the witcher I had a great time great time chatting and I'm very excited to read Sword of Destiny in February next up is Neverwear by Neil Gaiman this is my third time reading it and I will have a review for it I will it's scripted I have it I just need to like do it this has never been a favorite for me for many reasons and having read it three times I think I've come to a more like firm understanding of why that is I can't wait to tell you about that in the review that is coming I promise but yeah uh Neverwear by Neil Gaiman is a book that I've read three times that I will tell you more about shortly next up is Let in the Mist by Hope Merilis and this was the blades and bodice rippers book club pick my pick and me and the ladies all dressed up as Fay for the live show for it so if you missed it I'll leave that link down below so you can see us all in costume chatting about this book this was a unicorn in the sense that none of us hated it me and Bethany really loved it Mara quite liked it and Amanda was fine with it no one hated it so yay I really really really enjoyed this like I said we had our live show talking about it for an hour or more but um yeah I think this is a really interesting strange um sweetly sinister little book and I'm really glad that we read it well I mean I I picked it so like thanks to me thank you to self for choosing it but yeah I had a really great time reading this so yeah if you missed the live show link down below next up is the book that my patrons chose for me to read on vlog for them which of course I did and that was Children of Time by Adrienne Tchaikovsky which is a long book and I had very mixed feelings about it I've never read a book before where I'm like there is neither characters that I care about nor a plot that isn't grossing but I still feel entertained and interested by this so I mean I talked about it at length in the vlog for my patrons but yeah to suffice to say I did not love this but I kind of get why it's so well known I think it did some things quite brilliantly but like the overall package isn't that great in my opinion I think it has a lot of weak points and a lot of flaws a lot of things that I think would improve it so like I wanted to love it and I think it could be brilliant but it's a long way from being my favorite and next up is a reread for me and that was Norther Lights by Philip Pullman also known as the Golden Compass we're doing a read-along for these books on my patreon and um I think we're all having a good time because we're gonna have our chat about it for the filming of this video that's happening tomorrow I will have already happened or is happening when you're seeing this I loved it gave it five stars it was so nice being back in this world kind of with Witcher where like the series kind of fizzles for me so like going back to the beginning again was really nice to be like oh yeah I did really love the beginning though so yeah I love Lyra so much um and I just like being in this world I think it's very clever and um and yeah I'm very happy to be rereading these books and I can't wait to chat about it with my patrons next up is the other ongoing read-along with my patreon and that is book of the new sun we read shadow of the torturer and this was my my second time reading it these re-reads for me up until um citadel of the autark and while I was reading I was like why didn't I give this five stars the first time because I I saw on goodreads as four stars I was like this is so brilliant I mean I remember liking it but this is amazing truly the pros like it's there's moments of writing that are just like I'm in awe I was like why didn't I give this five stars and then we got to like all the like questionable depictions of females that are like in quick succession and I was like there it is and it's like one or two of those and I would be like I'll still give it five stars but there's too many that's what I was thinking to myself at first when I was starting to get that I was like oh okay this might have been why but you know I think I could still give it five and then I was like and there's oh there's more well maybe I could nope there's oh god there's even more no no so yeah that's not great but other things the good stuff is so good so I'm excited to keep reading this and I do think it's brilliant I really do I just wish we would didn't do so much of like the naked sexual art of ladies I don't like that anyway I'm excited to chat about this with my patrons and the last book that I squeezed into January which I'll be chatting with without chatting about with Alex we chatting about with Alex is queen of mid ashes by Christopher Rock you which is a short story collection that includes queen of mid ashes I only give this three stars user did I say in the world of the senator if I didn't this isn't the world of the senator that's why we're talking about it with ashes of man I did not like most of these stories and this more so than ashes of man I was like there's some stuff in there I'm like there's lots of cilantro this this book is like mostly cilantro so I was like I don't know I don't know there's still some decent stuff yeah that's why three stars like I like being in the world there's some interesting stuff interesting expansion of stuff we've heard about there were some characters we haven't seen that much in the main series we got to see more of here and it was interesting to get that contact but like the cilantro was strong with this one I'm excited to talk about it with Alex see what he thought see if he tasted all the cilantro that I did those are all the books that I read slash gnf'd in January let me know your thoughts in the comments down below did have you read these books do you want to read these books do you feel the same way as I do about these books whatever you want to let me know I post videos on saturdays at the random house well don't be saturday so like and subscribe join my patreon if you feel so inclined I'll see you when I see you