 it's been so hard trying to find a spot in this tree to film because i can't set the phone anywhere because it's a tree either the tree gets in the way or there's no place of the phone will balance securely or you know there's nowhere for me to sit so this is gonna be fun first and welcome to today's video where i'm gonna talk about oh boy this may be a very bad idea normally the road is not that busy but it just might be now that i'm trying to film i'm gonna talk about some of the recent reads i've been reading i'm sorry if the camera is slightly shaky this is this was a bad idea but at the same time it was the only decent idea so i'm in a tree in my parents' front yard because we're back in michigan and there's nowhere in the house to film and so i'm outside so this is gonna be real interesting so i might just try and like speed through this sorry i will be talking about four or five books that i've read recently and i'm gonna start with uh for this one away so i looked at my recent read video from earlier this year and i did not include any of the books that i did vlogs on um because you know you hear all my thoughts on in those vlogs so if you're interested in some of the other ones i've read i'll have some of those linked down below but for now let's just get started because there are bugs so the first one i'm gonna talk about is how the king of elphame learned hate stories this is by holly black it is the very short kind of explanation of cardin af but it takes place after the trilogy but it reflects a lot on his life and i rated it five out of five stars i thought it was just a solid short little book that told cardin's story i like that it took place after and that we got we did see a little bit of jude in it which was nice but it also made sense why cardin hates stories and um it was solid i just felt like there wasn't much to it but everything we got was good and it's not like we needed more so that was very short very simple five out of five stars the next one that i read so i technically read the first volume of lock and key welcome to lovecraft but i was not a big fan it was a horror graphic novel and when i when i say i want to read more horror and thriller books this year graphic novels is not what i meant um so i did not give it a star rating because i just felt like it was so out of my league like it was not something i enjoyed but that's not because it was bad so i didn't want to rate it because i felt like i couldn't rate it i just i wasn't going to rate it properly or fairly and so i just i didn't rate it but i will not be continuing on with it but that's also technically one that i read then the next one that i finished i listened to the storm brother by jc sydavantes and this was presented by rick rodin and i don't know if knowing it was presented by rick rodin would have changed anything but it's these it follows this boy named zane who finds out that he is a descendant of a figure in mayan mythology zane has one leg that is shorter than the other so he walks with a cane and he lives at this little house that has a volcano in his backyard and um so it kind of dives into mayan mythology and you meet some other characters along the way and he goes on this journey to not resurrect the god of death apuch but then you know he does because that was in the prophecy so then he has to go on a journey to save his soul from apuch and save the rest of the world so i i rated it three out of five stars i thought it was like just a solid story my trouble was that there were so many so many elements characters and things that were very similar to percy jackson and not like in a bad way obviously because i love percy jackson but just kind of in a it felt very unoriginal like if you just took percy jackson and put it into mayan mythology that's what this book was and i wish that it had been a little more independent and different um because i've read a couple other books presented by rick rodin but by different authors with different mythologies and those were different story plots like i couldn't predict and i couldn't correlate as much from one thing in this book to another in percy jackson and so i kind of wish that the stormrunner had been a little more unique a little more its own story rather than just a different version of percy jackson so then the next book that i'm going to talk about is the gilded ones by namina forna and i've started this one for the uh desertathon readathon that i'm doing i gave it five out of five stars and i loved it i had a few like little issues from it but not enough to like take off an entire star highly recommend everyone said it's darker than what they expected and so me hearing a lot of people say it's darker than what i expected automatically made me expect it to be very dark and then when i read it i felt like it either wasn't that dark or i was just so ready for it to be dark that i just didn't pay it any more attention like their trigger warnings are a lot of killing and gore involved in it but that's because the main character can't really die um so once you get past that it's actually not that dark it follows this girl who on her blood ritual day her blood spills gold instead of red and so therefore everyone thinks she's a demon and the only way to make herself pure is to serve in the king's army for 20 years so she takes that deal and it was just a great found family and just a good community book and there were lots of twists and turns and of course you learn so much more about the religion that they take and i believe i talk about this book very strongly in another one of my videos so i'll link those down below um but i've sprayed it five out of five stars i loved it i thought it was great there were a few like there were some correlations to our world which i thought was really interesting um but i think it was very very well done and so i'm really excited to read more by this author in the future i just i thoroughly enjoyed it all righty and then the most recent book that i finished was an audiobook and that was labyrinth lost and this is by Azoreda Cordova and this book i also gave three out of five stars um it followed mythology again it so it was the first initially g called the glim brujas and it is about this girl who finds out that her power is very strong and very special and that kind of scares her so she decides she doesn't want to be a brujas anymore so she her family puts together her death day which is a tradition where the brujas um gain the blessings of all their family members and ancestors and that helps them control their power but alex our main character decides that instead of gaining her blessing she wants to get rid of her magic however when she tries to do that she kind of gets rid of her entire family instead so she goes on this journey with a guy named nova who is a brujo that she is not a fan of at the very beginning and she and they go on a journey through the magical world of their mythology with her friend rishi and they try to bring her family back and it was a beautiful story of you know family and magic um i just felt like it wasn't anything super unique or nothing really stood out to it for me it was just kind of another one of those like mythology adventure stories which i love obviously like three stars by any means is still a great book that i would recommend it just tends to be like this was a solid book that was written and i enjoyed and that's kind of the end of it you know there wasn't any like one thing that really struck out or stuck out to me i'm debating on changing it more to maybe a four star or at least a 3.5 just because the romance subplots were some were actually really good and normally i don't really care about those and these adventure kind of mythology types but yeah i i want to read the other two books in this series in the trilogy so um yeah three or four out of five stars just a solid fine read i just didn't have any more thoughts on that because it was like plot good characters good ending good like sorry kind of all i have to say all righty thank you guys so much for watching this video and dealing with me filming in a tree with cars in the background i hope that isn't too much of a problem um but i hope you guys are having a wonderful start to your summer and that school is going well and uh like this video if you thought it was interesting or if you read any of the books let me know down below in the comments or just feel free to comment anything anything but also anything book related i would love to chat with you guys and um make sure to subscribe subscribe if you haven't already hit the bell notifications to uh be notified every time i post which is on every thursday but until i see you all in the next video i wish you a happy reading