 I gotta get through Red Rising. We did it. It was not the horror show that I was led to expect if you know you know. Wish is such a relief. February wrap up, kinda late. I also technically finished some of these books in March. I had starred them, but I hadn't finished them yet. So, cheated a little bit and used a bit of March, but we got it done, we got it done. And we made it to all our lives and discussions and we did it. The first book that I read, and actually I'll do, even though there's a book in between these two in terms of reading order, I'll just do them together. So, I had on my TBR, Fool's Assassin, which is the first book that fits in the Fool series and I finished it and I was like, Mara, we cannot wait a month to read the next one. And she was like, okay, well, let me read it too. And she was like, you're right. So then Mara actually finished The Empowering Prince and the Fool. I didn't realize she'd finished. I thought she'd just finished the second book, which I also finished the second book. I have started the third one, but I haven't finished the third one. She already did, so she's waiting on me. We will have our chat much sooner than expected on Fits and the Fool and the Realm of the Elderlings in general, because when I finish it, which I'm like a little more than halfway through, we'll be done with the Realm of the Elderlings. So, like I said, when I finished Fool's Assassin, Mara, Mara, we can't wait. We gotta read these immediately. And she agreed. So far, I would say this was my favorite one. I haven't finished the third one yet. I'm only halfway through. But the first one was like, knocked my socks off. I was like, damn, okay, we're back. That was amazing. That was unexpected. That was no pun intended, if you know, you know. But yeah, this was just absolutely like five, six out of five stars. Amazing second installment. Also really, really good. Just like not quite as good as the first one, which is unusual, because usually the second books in Hobbs series are my favorites. Still really, really, really good. Like, don't get me wrong, it's really amazing. Just the first one completely blew me away. And yeah, I gotta finish the third one. But so these two, Chonkers. You see why I needed a bit of March though to finish my actual TBR? Cause I suddenly had to read the entire fits in the full in February. So the second book that I read, technically, the book that I sit in between those two, which was actually on my TBR, was Age of Vice by Deepdy Kapoor, which was my book of the month club book. And I got this because the description of it sounded to me like it would be kind of reminiscent of the Greenbone saga. And I'm happy to report that it did deliver what I was hoping. So like, I don't want to falsely advertise. I don't wanna say, if you like the Greenbone saga, then you will love this book. Cause it's not speculative at all. And I knew that it wouldn't be. But this kind of like era of crime and crime families and organized crime in India in the 90s did like, I mean, cause the level of technology in Greenbone feels kind of 90s. And it is about crime families more or less. It's just, there's no magic in this, but it did feel similar to me in some respects. Like that's what I wanted out of it and that's what I got out of it. I really, really, really enjoyed this. I did not know that it would be multiple perspectives and not the usual way. So multiple perspective stories, you know, like Game of Thrones or First Law or Sex of Crows or anything you can name really, it usually kind of like jumps around between the perspectives. And if you think of all their storylines, you kind of jump ahead in this one a little bit and then this one and then this one and this one. And then you're like, okay, and then we can do that again. And we slowly into long and all their stories. So this book, I didn't know it would be multi POV because we do each of the POVs in their entirety all at once, which is kind of unusual. And it was also why I was like, what, we have a different POV now because the beginning of the book is just this one POV. And I was like, okay, so this is our main character. This is who the book is about. Everything will be through his eyes until it's not anymore. And then we kind of backtrack like timeline was and do that, do it again with a different character. And then we do it again with another character and like when I realized it was going to be doing that, you know, I adjusted to it, but it was pretty disorienting at first when you're not expecting that. So I'm warning you, so you won't be as disoriented as I was when that happens. But I just felt like this was very immersive, very evocative, very intense, filled with twists and politics and violence and moral grayness and I really, really enjoyed this. So if that all sounds good to you, I would recommend. Next was my game and book of the month. And that was Stardust. I did post my review of it. So if you wanted to hear more thoughts about it, that is available to you. Not one of my favorite game and books, but I did like it more on reread because I kind of understood its project better the second time, but it's pretty flawed. So obviously I unpacked that more in my review, but I was glad to reread it. The next book I read, I did not have a physical copy of because as you may recall in my TBR video, I was already on my second copy and it was damaged and Amazon wouldn't send me yet another replacement. So I was like, you know what? I've got the audio from the library. I'm not gonna buy another copy until I know I like it and didn't really like it, at least not enough to own it. And that was The Historian by Elizabeth Custopa, I wanna say. I don't have it in front of me obviously, I'm pretty sure. My patients chose that book for me to read and vlog for them. And I know they expected me to rant about it. And while it was not my favorite book by no means, I didn't think it was that bad. So maybe I would have ranted about it if I hadn't been so prepared to rant from the way they talked about it. We're like, look who's gonna hate this. This vlog is gonna be rant. All right, book up. And I kept waiting for the book to do something truly egregious because I was like, okay, I'm gonna be ranting at some point. When's it gonna do the stupid thing? And I just kind of like finished it and was like, it was fine. Like it wasn't great. Like if you had told me all in, this was the best book ever, you're gonna love this. This is gonna be your new favorite. Then I probably would have read it and been like, what? Why? Why do people love this? Why do they think I'm gonna love this? It wasn't good. But because people were like, this is the worst Everland is gonna hate it. I was like, well, it wasn't that bad. It was like fine. It was better than many other books I've read. So anyway, yeah, it was definitely too long, but it was not the horror show that I was led to expect. Next up is The Subtle Knife by Phillip Pullman, the second book in his Dark Materials. My patrons and I are doing a read-along for this series. It is a reread for me and all of them. It's been really fun going to the series again with them and kind of talking through it and also talking through a lot of the misconceptions and kind of not propaganda. That's not the word I want. But there's just kind of like mistaken impressions that are quite popular about what these books are, namely that this is like the atheist's Narnia. And like these books are by no means atheistic. If you read these books and you genuinely think that these are atheistic, I don't think you know what the word atheist means. They definitely handle religion as a kind of complicated, troubling, dark, possibly corrupt thing, mainly the institution of the church being those things. And yeah, it plays with religion and it talks about religion as like not necessarily wholly good, but it's by no means the atheist's Narnia. Like that's just such a wild misinterpretation of these books and of Phillip Pullman that it kind of boggles the mind. So anyway, it's a good time. I'm having fun going through them again and talking about them. And yeah. Next up is Red Rising by Pierce Brown because we are doing our read along for the Red Rising series in anticipation of the release of the new one. We had a pretty lengthy chat in myself, Angela and Alex. On my channel, we did it. The second show, the one for Golden Sun will be on Alex's channel if I'm not mistaken. We decided it live. We will have another giveaway for Golden Sun. So, you know, read and tune in. If you miss it live, you can still enter the giveaway by watching the replay and commenting. So there was some confusion about that. You don't have to have watched it live. You just have to watch the live show to like hear the question or the prompt to answer it in order to enter. So you don't have to, if you miss it live, you can still enter. And if you're not in America, if you're outside of the States, you can still enter. So just want to be clear about that. And I'll say that again in a community poster or something. So to be clear. But anyway, Red Rising, this is my third time reading it and I gave it five stars this time. I gave it four stars the first and second times I read it. The first time was like my first proper read of it. I liked the beginning and the end so much that I forgave how much I basically hated the middle and was like, ah, four. And the second time I read it, I was more skimming it because I was doing a reread of the whole series and I was like, well, I got to get through Red Rising so that I can get to Golden Sun. So this time I properly read it and tried to engage with it and tried to be like, okay, so people like the Institute. I'm gonna try to understand why people like the Institute. And because I kind of knew what to expect from it, knew what it was gonna be and what it wasn't gonna be, I could kind of engage with it on its own terms more this time around. And I really had a good time. So I gave it five stars and I had a really good time chatting about it with Angela and Alex. So I'm obviously so excited to read Golden Sun and talk about it because like, I have always loved Golden Sun. I'll be so disappointed if I ended up giving it this five stars and I'll reread Golden Sun lower that rating, but I don't foresee that happening. So anyway, having a great time with this readalong and I hope you'll join us or catch up if you need to because it's been a blast. Oh, also the official Discord for the readalong is on Angela's Discord, which is linked in all of her videos. And if I remember, I will link it down below in my video so you can join our conversation. Next up is The Sword of Destiny by Andrzej Sapkowski because chapter three podcasts readalong over the Witcher. And so we did that episode on the last Tuesday of February. If you missed it, I'll leave that link down below. And the first time reading this, I liked it less than Last Wish. And the second time through, I also liked it less than The Last Wish, but I do still really really like it. And these illustrated editions, man, like for reals. These are so amazing. So I do highly recommend the illustrated editions. They are stunning. But yeah, it was a good conversation. I'm having a good time rereading the Witcher books. The first few installments are like interesting. There's a lot to talk about, but like they're pretty straightforward. So when we get into like the meat of this series is when I don't know how we're gonna keep the podcast episodes for an hour because there's just like so much in the book. So it's either like, you just don't try to talk about it at all and it's gonna be five minutes or you do try to talk about it in like five hours. We'll see how it goes. But yeah, if you missed the podcast, I'll leave it like down below. Next up is The Blackest Heart by Brian Lee Durfee for the read-along for The Five Warrior Angels, which has now come to an end prematurely because both I and Erin hated Blackest Heart. So we made the executive decision that we will not force ourselves to read the third and final book, The Lonesome Crown, which is such a relief. I cannot even begin to tell you. Yeah, I was telling my patrons as I was reading it how much I hated it. And then I finally heard from Erin and she was like, I hate it. And I was like, oh, thank God. Cause if she had loved it, then I'd be like, okay, while I'm signed on, I'm reading the third one, but she hated it too. So we had our live show on Erin's channel. I'll leave that link down below. If you missed it, I gave the first book a like a generous, like hopeful benefit of the doubt three stars. Cause it was like the first one is like not that good, but like I've heard good things about the second one. And if this is all kind of like setting stuff up for what's going to be something good, like I'll generously give it three, but I need to like go back and change that rating because if this is the amazing thing that I was supposed to be setting up, like this was one star and that's generous. Like, oh my God, it was so bad. So if you want to hear more about why it was so bad, you can catch the live show. If you're worried about spoilers, I guess suffice to say everything you can think of was done badly. And it was very, very violent and graphic and filled with essay to boot. So that sounds great to you. Well, then this is the series for you. Next up, I have the Half Drowned King by Linnea Hartziker, which breaks my heart to have to tell you that my patrons have decided not to continue with this series. Not all of them hated it. In fact, I don't think anyone will actually, at least one hated it, but they just like weren't into it for the most part. Or maybe that's what they said to me because they know that I love it. And so they've privately spoken with each other and are like, this is the freaking worst. But we can't tell any of that. We'll just tell her that it's like, it's like fine, it's like not our cup of tea. And if that's the case, I'm very happy in my ignorance, but I love this Viking historical fiction series. So they're all wrong and that's fine. But so we will not rereading the Sea Queen and the Golden Wolf saga, at least not together. I'll probably continue my reread, maybe not immediately, because I do love these books. But anyway, we chatted about it and I presented my case to them for why this is a brilliant book. And they all kindly nodded. So I'm assuming that means I have completely convinced them of the error of their ways and they all went back and changed it to five stars on Goodreads. I'm assuming, I don't need to check because I'm fairly certain that's true. So anyway, this didn't go according to plan, but I had a good time. So I do recommend if you like Viking historical fiction. And last but certainly not least was Claw of the Consiliator by Jean Wolf because as you should know by now, I'm doing a read-along of the Book of the New Sun on my Patreon. And our chat about the Shadow of the Torturer was like three hours. And our chat about Claw of the Consiliator was also like three hours. Because this is another situation with kind of like what I was saying with the Witcher books where it's like, either you like don't try to talk about it at all or you do and it's like hours and hours of trying to unpack what that's going on in these books. So it's been so, so good talking about these books together and kind of working our way through it and comparing notes and comparing theories. And I'm having a blast reading this as a group project. So yeah, when we're all finished with it, I'll probably do a video on Book of the New Sun. But until then, just gonna carry on reading and chatting and delving and debating and analyzing and joking. Yeah, it's been a great time. And those are all the books that I read in February and a little bit in March. Let me know in the comments down below your thoughts and feelings if you've read these books, if you have not read these books, if you plan to read these books, if you hate all these books, whatever you wanna let me know. I post videos on Saturdays, other random times as well, but only Saturdays. So like and subscribe, join my Patreon if you feel so inclined and I'll see you when I see you. Bye.