❄🌱Second Sundays - February 2023🌱❄

Happy Second Sunday!

Thank you for joining me on this adventure. My intentions this year for the newsletter are to bring you more discoveries and inspiration, more detailed book reviews, and of course, keep you updated on all of my writing and drawing pursuits and nerdy obsessions. 🤓

I hope you enjoy!

In my last newsletter, I mentioned fluid intentions with my reading list, and it took all of about a week for me to be completely derailed and embrace a new path. 😅 But I'm so happy that I did! I've now begun a list of older (ten years or more) fantasy novels that I somehow missed out on in my teen and young adult years that I always wanted to read, coupled with some titles on the side here and there if the desire calls.

But first! Here are my thoughts on The Stardust Thief, which is the only book I read last month.

The Stardust Thief takes all of the best parts of the 1001 Arabian Nights, Aladdin, and genie mythologies, mixes them together with immersive Middle-Eastern inspired culture and language, throws in some "what if" backstory to fill in the gaps, and spits out a fun fantasy-adventure tale that can stand confidently alongside its inspirations.

The story is told from the alternating viewpoints of a female merchant, a prince, and a female thief, each roughly in their 20s and 30s. The thief was a viewpoint I didn't particularly enjoy because I didn't feel the character was as complex as the other two, but the balance with the confident yet sensitive merchant and the sympathetic prince, as well as a sarcastic and secretive jinn whose head you wish you get into, was more than enough to keep the pace from stalling.

The things I love most about this book are the desert landscapes and cultures. It was refreshing to read a fantasy story set outside of the traditional medieval European forestscape (though I still love those kinds of books for what they are!).

This is only the first book in what is going to be a trilogy. It ended in a desirable place with just enough of a cliffhanger to make me excited for the next book but not tormented. That said, though, the second book The Ashfire King comes out this fall, so the wait wouldn't be too long if you wanted to get started!

Now, here's my updated reading list for February:

I'm so excited to finally be embarking through The Wheel of Time series. I remember being in my young twenties when I heard that Robert Jordan had passed away and some relatively unknown young writer (Brandon Sanderson) was going to be taking over the end of the series. I had been waiting for all of the books to come out before beginning them, and then life happened, as it does. But a few months ago I started passionately watching book reviewers on YouTube and Instagram and the more The Wheel of Time and Brandon Sanderson came up, the more I knew I had to dive in. I finally let myself watch the show, and I am so enthralled! But before diving into the beasty that is 15 books long, I wanted to warm my reading palette with something shorter.

Now, Sanderson is a very prolific writer, so I did my due diligence of research to figure out where to start with his books through various book reviewers, online recommended lists, customer recommendations at the bookstore where I work, and of course, going to the source himself in the form of his YouTube and website. I ultimately decided on a standalone book that seems to be one of the more unpopular choices to begin among Sanderson fans, though now having read it, I cannot understand why.

Elantris is a great traditional, modern fantasy story with kingdoms in peril, a magic system that is both easy to understand and mysterious, an almost fairytale-like curse, a system of multiple religions, and a cast of characters involved in a range of relationships from friendships to rivalries to political maneuverings and light romance. The plot was never too political, too religious, too violent, or too romantically motivated but had a healthy balance of all these things. With the exception of one, all of the main pov characters had depth to their personalities and arcs that were believable when they came to their end. The one character that I'm a bit "eh" about had the least amount of growth in their arc, but I'm ok with it because I understand the benefit of using this character's pov from an author's standpoint.

Overall, this is exactly the kind of fantasy I want to spend the year reading, and I definitely recommend it for any fantasy fan, but especially for new Sanderson readers.

I mentioned earlier that I was newly into the BookTube, Bookstagram, and BookTok scene, so I thought I'd share my favorite channels and creators with you! All of them have at least one main thread of fantasy-related content, while others are basically entirely fantasy-focused.

@ezeekat just has all-around fun book reviews and book-themed videos. He's also on TikTok and YouTube.

@book_reviews_kill is my most recent find on Instagram, but so far I'm enjoying his content.

Brandon Sanderson on all the things, mostly YouTube, but here are his TikTok and Instagram

Daniel Greene on YouTube is basically a near-daily check-in for me at this point for all things fantasy

Nerd of the Rings on YouTube is my longest-running book-related social media obsession for all of The Lord of the Rings deep nerd awesomeness. 🤓

I made a little progress on the Rhosgobel rabbit piece last month. It's slow going, but I found myself needing to give my hands a break after some particularly physically intensive days at the bookstore.

I've been having some minor technology scares and hiccups over the last year, and last month my USB flash drives decided they weren't going to save any more files, and my desktop did some minor but... unsettling things with the screen. 😶 I've been intending to archive all of my Quaison notebooks to make it easier for me to look up information anyway (see said notebooks below), but these happenings lit a fire to get new USB drives and scan it all in as quickly as possible before something unfortunate happens.

This has been a really fun process, though. I'm starting to feel much more secure and organized, and I've come across some cool memories that I thought I'd share!

Top: character studies of Aerin, one of the main character povs in Dragonstone

Bottom Left: one of four folders with a ton of environment and creature reference photos, now all scanned and digitally saved

Below right: a revised map of Quaison that I briefly played with and ultimately discarded

I'd follow him. 🙋‍♀️🧙‍♂️