🍁 Second Sundays - November 2023 🍁

Happy Second Sunday and Harvest Season! 🦃

The reading pace is still slow as I continue to find a new work-life balance amidst longer hours and the crazy that is about to be the holiday season. But, I did read, and that's all that matters!

Here’s what I read during the month of October, my hauls, book releases I’m looking forward to, and my updated end-of-year TBR!

🍁OCTOBER READS & REVIEWS🍁

My first October read was the third Secret Project by Brandon Sanderson, Yumi and the Nightmare Painter. Sanderson was inspired by the video game Final Fantasy X (one of my all-time favorites) and anime to write this book, and the inspirations show in the best way. Painter’s world is more “advanced” than Yumi’s in a similar way that Zanarkand was more advanced than Spira in Final Fantasy X, and the contrast between Painter’s job and Yumi’s is also somewhat similar in the sense that Painter’s occupation is more ”earthly” and Yumi’s is more spiritual.

Painter and Yumi become trapped in a ”Freaky Friday”-like scenario but with much higher stakes. They swap bodies and must discover the true reason they were brought together in order to return to their own bodies and save their worlds. The narrative also swaps between Yumi and Painter’s points of view each time we switch between the two world’s, which really serves the character building and gives a sense of gravity to the predicament they find themselves in. The narrator Hoid from Tress and the Emerald Sea also makes an enigmatic return, inserting just enough humorous asides to keep the pace moving through some of the slogs.

Which leads me to my only real criticism - this book is a very slow burn. The pace is ”a day in the life” for about 2/3, but then the last 1/3 the “Sanderlanche” of action occurs and rolls into an ending that makes all of the sloggish bits absolutely worth it. The twist is something I did not at all predict, and made this my second favorite of Sanderson’s secret projects so far. If you enjoy any of the aforementioned things that inspired Sanderson, this book is definitely for you.

One Dark Window by Rachel Gillig is a re-read for me from last year, and I have not stopped thinking about this book since then. It's sequel, Two Twisted Crowns, was my most anticipated release for this year.

Elspeth is a woman who caught a fever as a young girl that gave her magic - which despite not being her fault, is punishable by death. But that's not all. One night, Elspeth touched one of the Providence Cards, a kind of magical riff on tarot cards and the only legal form of magic in the kingdom, and that touch released a monster into her mind that has been a dark companion, confidant, and protector ever since. Also, the kingdom Elspeth lives in is under a curse from the Spirit of the Wood, and that monster that lives in her head may be the only one who can lift it - if she dares to let him take over her mind entirely.

I absolutely love Elspeth. She's sympathetic, strong, vulnerable, and flawed. But I have to say, I love the Nightmare in her head the most. He's an ancient entity that speaks in riddles and rhymes, and although Elspeth has accepted and even come to depend on him, we are never sure if we can truly trust him.

The story has a little bit of everything - magic, mystery, curses, friends to enemies and enemies to friends, political conflicts, an evil king, tragic characters, and just enough romance to make you hope that Elspeth will survive.

I am telling you, if you like Grimm fairytales, unique magic systems, and tragic characters, this two-book series is a MUST!

🍁📚 OCTOBER BOOK HAUL! 📚🍁

I acquired a lot of books last month - so many I'm not even sure this is all of them. 😅 But half of these I got secondhand with a store credit I've had sitting around for years. Most of them are impulse finds but there are also some real treasures. From top to bottom, left to right:

• Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett

• Bookshops & Bonedust by Travis Baldree

• The Hexologists by Josiah Bancroft

• Why We Love Middle Earth by The Prancing Pony Podcast

• The Princess Bride by William Goldman - I've always wanted to read this and I have a large special edition copy that I love looking at, but I've been waiting for the right one that feels easy on the hands and eyes to read. This edition is exactly what I'd been waiting for.

• Starling House by Alix E. Harrow

• The Hurricane Wars by The Guanzon

• Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman - another book I've always wanted to read and for some reason never bought a copy, but I'm glad I waited because this is a special edition with pretty paper.

• Shadow Moon and Shadow Star by George Lucas and Chris Claremont - A serendipitous find, these are the first and third books in a trilogy that I've had the second book of for about 20 years and never been able to read!

• The Forgotten Beasts of Eld by Patricia McKillip - this book was recommended on one of the bookTube channels I watch - unfortunately I can't remember which one - but it sounds like good classic fantasy!

• The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland, The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland, and The Girl Who Soared Over Fairyland by Catherynne M. Valente - a friend of mine told me about the first book a while ago, so when I saw these, I knew I had to snatch them up!

• In Calabria and The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle - I love The Last Unicorn and have a copy that I got signed by the author a couple years ago at Phoenix Comicon, and I decided to start a collection of my favorite covers. The other book I'd never heard of, and I'm eager to read more!

🍁 ANTICIPATED NOVEMBER RELEASES 🍁

I read and became obsessed with Fourth Wing by mere chance far before it exploded on social media and took the world by storm. When the book arrived at work, one of my coworkers showed me the pretty black sprayed edges with white dragons, and after reading the synopsis, I snapped it up without hesitation. About a month later, the Fourth Wing craze happened, and I smiled with glee to have beaten the wave for a change. 😁 It's Hunger Games in an academic setting with dragons, and I cannot wait to read the exclusives in the special edition and continue the story with the sequel. There are several more books still to come, and a TV series adaptation, which I'm so excited for. More CG dragons than Game of Thrones? Yes please! And by the way, how BEAUTIFUL are these covers?! 😍

Speaking of dragons, one of my favorite dragon-riding series is getting an illustrated edition of the first book, and a spin-off! I haven't read Eragon since it was first released in my early twenties, and I'm so excited to see it in a new edition, and to find out what happened to one of the series' most complex characters. Eragon is also up for a re-adaption as a TV series!

While not the long-anticipated third book in the Kingkiller Chronicles, it is a novella in the same world, and I am so excited. I read The Name of the Wind when it first debuted in 2007, and I remember absolutely devouring it and talking about it to every fantasy reader I knew. I still have not read the sequel The Wise Man's Fear, or Rothfuss' other novella The Slow Regard of Silent Things, but with this release, I'm ready to change that and come back to Kvothe's world.

🍁 END OF THE YEAR TBR WISHLIST 🍁

After I read Two Twisted Crowns, this one is next. Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett is a cozy fantasy about a Cambridge professor and faerie expert who travels to a far northern village to study the most elusive of faeries, the Hidden Ones, and ends up having to contend with her academic rival.

Next is another re-read and sequel - or rather, prequel. Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree is a Dungeons & Dragons-like cozy fantasy that I read last year and also have not stopped thinking about since. Bookshops & Bonedust is the newly released prequel and my second-most anticipated book of the year. Viv is a warrior who dreams of retiring in a coffee shop built by her own hands in a very Hallmark-film-with-a-Dungeons & Dragons-twist way. It was wholesome and warm and the descriptions of the food and beverages were enough to make me dream that Baldree will release a cookbook even though I do not cook. I loved the first book so much I've decided to make it an annual re-read, and I'm really looking forward to finding out where Viv's story began in Bookshops & Bonedust.

I am DETERMINED to read these two by the end of the year - even if it technically takes me into January and beyond. The Priory of the Orange Tree and its sequel/prequel A Day of Fallen Night by Samantha Shannon have been burning a hole in my brain ever since I first heard about them, and I definitely have a case of FOMO. These two books are quintessential epic fantasy - kingdoms at war and dragons, with behemoth page counts - but this time, women rule!

🍁 Happy Reading! 🍁