May was at least a little bit of a better reading month than April, although I'm still more behind on reviews than usual due to a number of factors (moving, being without steady Internet for a while after moving, general craziness due to buying our place, and of course going to New York City for a few days for Book Expo America and the Book Blogger Convention, both of which I hope to post more about later this week).
In May I got halfway through Feed by Mira Grant, a 600 page book. Complete books read during May are:
20. Magic Burns by Ilona Andrews
21. Servant of a Dark God by John Brown
22. Poison Study by Maria V. Snyder
23. Magic Strikes by Ilona Andrews
Eek, I haven't reviewed any of those yet although I have started on a review of Magic Burns.
Favorite book read during May: This is an easy one - Magic Strikes. I read this one on the bus while traveling and it was the perfect read for it since it was so easy to get absorbed in and it didn't have a dull moment. When I finished it right after boarding the bus to Boston, I was really upset I didn't have the next book and didn't want to start any other book. So I read the part that was available for free on iBooks and bought Magic Bleeds the very next day. It really surprised me just how much I enjoyed it. I am seriously considering putting up a post for spoiler discussion of the first three books in this series, followed by one for the whole series after more people have had a chance to read the book that came out last week - so if you're interested, let me know.
June Plans: Yes, I know, I've been trying to avoid this. I couldn't do anything but start Magic Bleeds next, but after that I'm going to finish Feed and read some more review copies since I've read so many books I've bought myself lately. Tentative planned reads after that are: The Darkly Luminous Fight for Persephone Parker by Leanna Renee Hieber (and a give away if I can find the extra copy they sent me in all this disorganization from moving), Shadow Bound by Erin Kellison and Stealing Fire by Jo Graham.
What did you read during May? What did you think of the books you read?
8 comments:
I have yet to do my May post - that's tonight's job - but it's been a good month as far as discovering new authors (Carol Berg & Sean Kennedy).
I'm trying to start Shalador's Lady (Anne Bishop) and have just discovered that Magic Bleeds is waiting for me at the library. Obviously I need to do some fast reading this long weekend.
And then, well, I have a lot of m/m romance that I just bought at the FW sale to read and The Archer's Heart arrived from Amazon (I wish the second set of books would appear) so I think I'll read that.
Am so glad you're enjoying the Kate Daniels series :)
The hope the post-moving mess improves before long. At least you have internet now!
I'm currently reading The Wayfarer Redemption by Sara Douglas and rereading Cry Wolf by Patricia Briggs. Wayfarer isn't as good as I'd hoped, but I'm not quite half way through, so there's still time for it to pick up.
Orannia-- what do you think of Shalador's Lady? I've been meaning to pick it up for a while now but haven't had a chance.
Orannia - Oh yes, discovering Carol Berg makes for a great month! What does Sean Kennedy write? I saw your comments on Goodreads but didn't actually look up the book.
I haven't read Anne Bishop yet. Which books have you read by her?
That's great that Magic Bleeds is available. I've read the prologue and the first two chapters now and is good so far. It's longer than the other books, too! The series is so good.
I'm looking forward to hearing what you think about The Archer's Heart too.
Manifesta - Having Internet again is definitely a good thing! It will be a while until the mess goes away, though. The reason it's still a disaster is that we're just moving again the end of this month/beginning of next month. So it seems like a waste of time to unpack if we just need to pack it all up again.
What do you think of Cry Wolf so far? I've always heard mixed things about Sara Douglas.
manifesta, I've read all six of the the Wayfarer books. I thought Wayfarer was enjoyable, but the series sorta goes downhill from there. The rest of the books aren't bad, they just don't get higher than mediocre to average.
Hey Kristen! What I read last month,
Ship Breaker, Paolo Bacigalupi
Incompetence, Rob Grant
Hell to Pay, Simon R. Green
Under Heaven, Guy Gavriel Kay
Scenting the Dark, Mary Robinette Kowal
Warriors, George R.R. Martin et al
Divide Allegiance, Elizabeth Moon
The Emerald Storm, Michael J. Sullivan
Bitter Seeds, Ian Tregillis
My favorite were Ship Breaker and Under Heaven. Bacigalupi is rapidly becoming one of the my favorite authors. Under Heaven is GGK's best book in years. Also, many of the short stories in Warriors were very good as well and definitely worth reading.
Manifesta - I haven't actually started Shalador's Lady. I've just finished an amazing book (Sean Kennedy's Tigers & Devils) and am kind of just flicking through Shaldor's Lady. And then I decided I wanted to flick through all the previous Black Jewel books, so I'm going that and THEN (she said hopefully) I'm going to start Shalador's Lady :)
Kristen - Sean Kennedy wrote Tigers & Devils, which is m/m romance. Actually, it's a good book to try if you've never read any m/m because the intimacy isn't explicit. It's more the emotion. It's written in the first person, and the main protagonist, Simon, is hilarious. The exchanges between him and his friends...I don't normally laugh when I read books, but this had me laughing quite a bit :) FYI - it is set in Melbourne (Australia) so there are several cultural references that may not make that much sense. Anyway, I loved it.
Oh, and have you never read Anne Bishop? Oh, are you in for a treat! She has written a number of different series, including the amazing Black Jewel series. The first book in the series is Daughter of the Blood. It's dark, dark fantasy. Oh, it's dark. Lots of characters that walk very fine lines. Many shades of grey. It's quite a complicated world, but a fascinating one./rave Here's a link to the author's website and there are excerpts:
http://www.annebishop.com/a.black.jewels.html
If you do try them I'd love to know what you think!
Benjamin - Wow, that's a lot of books! It sounds like some great books, too - a lot of those are ones I want to read, especially Under Heaven. I loved Tigana and I keep hearing that is one of Kay's better books.
Warriors and Bitter Seeds are both on the TBR and I really want to read Paulo Bacigalupi too. What did you think of Bitter Seeds?
Orannia - That sounds good. I much prefer romances in stories to be all about the emotional aspects and humor is always great too!
No, I have never read Anne Bishop. I read a review once of the Black Jewels books that made me not want to try them, but lots of people I think have really great taste keep recommending them to me so I just may have to after all! Dark, dark fantasy with shades of gray sounds wonderful.
Kristen, Bitter Seeds is a fairly strong debut novel. It's got strong writing and characterization. It's an interesting mix of fantasy and scifi and the setting of WW2 works really well for this. Tregillis also does a good job conveying the tone and atmosphere of the War on both sides.
That being said, it didn't fully grab me. I liked it, but I didn't love it. I'm not entirely why, though I do know that part of this was due to the villain. One of the German "supermen" is a precog, a seer. Yet despite several demonstrations of her ability, I couldn't get any real sense that she was manipulating events. On the other hand, this is only the first book of a trilogy.
Anyhow, I liked it enough that I fully intend to pick up the other two books.
Benjamin - Thanks for the information on Bitter Seeds. It sounds interesting - I like scifi/fantasy blends. I do want to read it but I suspect it will be a like but not love book for me as well so I haven't gotten to it yet... If only I could read faster!
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