 Hello my darling extraterrestrials, I am Kim, this is Desimotsen Velikor, and my book consumption over the last month or so has been erratic at best. So, like all good things, this video is coming at you in three parts. In the last week of July I was on a lot of airplanes, so I read four books. The first two were the second and third of the Binti trilogy, titled Home and the Night Masquerade respectively. Nieria Kortofo lays out a beautiful sci-fi hero's journey for Binti, taking her from the place where she found her true intellectual home and returning her to the place where she grew up. And there she encounters alternating scorn and praise for leaving and surprise that she intends to leave again. While she's dealing with all of this, she is suddenly thrust into a position of intermediary to de-escalate a war that's been going on for generations and has suddenly arrived at her doorstep. The whole trilogy is character-driven and fast-paced, and Nieria Kortofo has a way of laying out complex issues with a simplicity that just amazes me. Then I read the second and third volumes of The Wayward Children's Stories by Sheena Maguire. Shaughnan? I think it's Shaughnan. These are titled Down Among the Sticks in Bones and Beneath the Sugar Sky respectively. Each of these books has a different main character, all introduced in the first book. Down Among the Sticks in Bones develops the partially told story of twins Jack and Jill after they find themselves in a world of mad scientists and vampire lords. Each girl must make choices for herself and for her sister, and it definitely gives you a better base to understand the events of the first book. I gotta say, these books definitely conform themselves each to a specific aesthetic. Calm and interrogatory like Nancy for the first one, and dark and wicked and thirsty for the second one, and madcap and frantically searching for the third one. Which brings me to Beneath the Sugar Sky, where an unlikely instigator is dropped literally into their pond, and the children of Eleanor West School for Wayward Children must journey with her to find the pieces of their friend Suni to help rebuild a collapsing world. On to August. Now, unless I was in an airplane or in a car, I had no time to read, so at this point in the month I have finished three books. Okay, of the three books that I finished in August, the first and second were the second and third of the Wayfarers trilogy by Becky Chambers. They are titled A Closed and Common Orbit, and a record of a space-born few respective way. I feel like I'm saying that a lot this this particular video. A Closed and Common Orbit focuses on two characters that were introduced in the first book but weren't really main characters. There's Lovelace, an AI who recently suffered a cascade failure in her operating system and had to be reset. So she's lost all of her memories and personality updates and has to start anew. And then there's Pepper, the engineer who set out to help her on her way. This book is very focused on the ethical as well as the existential. It looks at how AIs are treated and how they're repressed. It follows new life in a new body and choosing a new name and just figuring out how to exist. At the same time, Pepper's story unfolds in front of you and it lets you walk her road a little bit. Which is super vague for a summary, yes, but man do I want you to be surprised. This one's a kicker. I cried a lot. Less so during the third one but man, Becky Chambers has my number. Record of a space-born few takes a little longer to piece together. It's a bunch of different perspectives all interconnected in ways that you don't yet understand. Overall, it focuses on the remnants of the accident fleet, having successfully brought humanity from their murdered planet and delivered them to safe harbor. You have to kind of wonder what's the point now. But accidents aren't leaving the fleet. Some of them are. Some of them leave. But most of them stay. And so they're caught orbiting a borrowed star and figuring out how to move forward. Kip, a young apprentice, is restless, struggling to find purpose in his contained life. Tessa is Ashby's sister, mother of two, and is having to consider things she never even considered considering because all of a sudden her job is at stake. Sawyer is a newcomer, eyes wide and idealistic about the future that he set out for himself. And that's just the first three. A bunch of people come unknowingly together to tell this beautiful story of birth and death and rebirth and continuing on. It's like if Spider Robinson had written a long-form version of Calhann's Crosstime Tulum, which you know that I love for its co-mingling of sci-fi and philosophy, though thankfully Becky Chambers uses significantly less puns. The last book I finished in August as of this video is Carry On by Rainbow Rowell. I have not read Fan Girl. I started with this one, which I understand some people might disagree with. I don't know how I'm going to proceed from here. But I just really loved Carry On. An unlikely chosen one is plucked from the foster care system and plonked into a magical world, all the while desperately clinging to the idea of happily ever after, because at this point he's pretty sure he's not going to survive the thing that he was chosen for. He's also totally obsessed with his roommate. He's absolutely convinced that this guy is his sworn enemy and he's constantly watching him for fear that he'll betray him. And it's super gay. He's so gay and he doesn't even know it. Oh my god. And the perspective is they switch out so much that you get this meaty depth to everything that's happening. And there's this subplot about the perfect girl archetype. And this character is so close. So close to just ducking out on her part of the prophecy because fuck that. And I love that. Anyway, I love this book. Moving on. Okay, now we get to the tricky bit. So I'm having a bit of trouble with book formats. As in I'm reading three different books concurrently because oh well. Okay, so when I'm driving, I'm listening to Alexander Dumas, the Three Musketeers on audiobook. But when I'm sitting at work, I'm reading a physical copy of Dirk Gently Solistic Detective Agency. But when that gets entirely too metaphysical and starts pontificating on the interconnectedness of music and baseball via waveforms, I set that aside. And I pick up my phone which has my ebook copy of Labyrinth Lost by Zareida Cordova. So understandably, I should think I haven't finished any of them yet. Okay, going a little faster because we're coming into the homestretch. The Three Musketeers was written by Alexander Dumas in 1844. It's retelling a fictional history of a young man called D'Artagnan. Alongside his three friends, Athos, Porthos, and Aramis, D'Artagnan is working to navigate 17th century French court under the reign of King Louis XIII and his Spanish Queen Anne. The young men quarrel and quest on behalf of king and country. Overall, it's an adventure and a romance all wrapped up in the bow of comedy. Also, Constance Bonaccio gets kidnapped a lot. Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency is a mildly sci-fi, mildly paranormal detective story about sorting out the most improbable murder to ever have occurred, which really could only have been written by Douglas Adams. Some of his characters are impossible to like and sometimes he trips off into seemingly nonsensical tangents that you don't realize until much later are absolutely pivotal to the plot. So there's that. I haven't finished this one yet but I have a feeling that it's going to have a really juicy ending. Also, you will definitely be laughing in places that it is probably a little inappropriate to laugh and people will be looking at you funny. It's just to be expected. There's no point in fighting it, it's going to happen. And to round us off, Labyrinth Lost is a YA book about a queer bruja living in New York who is terrified of her immense power and when she tries to banish it, she banishes her whole family instead and she must quest to Los Lagos to get them back. I'm not very far in this one but I am really excited to finish it. And that's it, my July plus August wrap up. Now jump into those comments and talk to me about books. Aviento!