This year’s got off to a great start! 😁 Helped along by a readathon that lasted most of January, I managed to get through 8 novels, 5 short stories, 3 comics and 2 audiobooks in the last couple of months, which is well above my average – and most of these were pretty great reads, too!
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BOOKS I REVIEWED |
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OTHER BOOKS I READ |
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Set during the French Revolution, Manus Bane is drawn into a plot to rescue the Queen of France by a promise of company from a very attractive royalist. I liked this better than the first Bane Chronicles story, and it dragged a lot less, but – once again – I don’t find that Magnus’ quirky adventures are really enough to hold my attention without any significant character development – which, to be honest, I figured was supposed to be the main point of this collection… There was a memorable hot air balloon scene, though, and I found Magnus’ interactions with the vampires mildly interesting. |
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With Gotham isolated from the rest of the US after a series of disasters, gangs rule the streets, and Batman and his allies are caught in a seemingly endless fight to keep Gotham’s citizen’s safe. This comic was a re-read for me, and a pleasantly surprising one! I’d been considering giving this series up after struggling with volume 2, and then spending several years about a chapter into volume 3, but decided to give it another go… and this volume, at least, tells me I made a good decision. In particular, I really liked Two Down, a story about Detective Montoya near the beginning of the lock-down; as well as Home Sweet Home, an incredibly touching, Up-esque tale about an elderly Gothamite trying to protect his home and help out the kids in his neighbourhood. Less interesting were the Azrael sections of the story, but on the whole they didn’t take up too much of the book. |
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Magnus attends a meeting at the London Institute about a proposed treaty with the Downworld, and is drawn to two very different people: the lovely and flirtatious Camille Belcourt, and Edmund Herondale, a rebellious young Shadowhunter. I enjoyed this a lot more than either of the previous two stories in this collection, perhaps because it had more of a connection to the rest of the Shadowhunters universe… but also because I really enjoyed the side characters. Edmund and Camille were both very entertaining, and I liked their interactions with Magnus. Also, I’m a sucker for an angsty love story (even a very short one), so naturally I liked that aspect of this story as well. 😉 |
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Taken in as a child by her aunt and uncle Bertram, shy Fanny Price grows up largely dismissed by her wealthy relations – with the exception of her kind cousin Edmund, with whom she is secretly (and contentedly) in love. But with the arrival of Miss Mary Crawford and her brother, Fanny begins to realise that she may not be so happy to stand by while Edmund’s affection is won by another. I’ve heard a lot of people say that this is Jane Austen’s least-good book (not that that’s saying much), and I can see why, even though it’s not my least-favourite. The characters are a lot less complex than in most of Austen’s novels, Fanny is a very passive lead, and the romance happens almost entirely off-page. It is still, however, a very entertaining story, and in the case of this production, very well-performed. The story was full of small, domestic dramas that kept me engaged the whole way through, and Mary Crawford was a stand-out character, even though she wasn’t the most likeable… I enjoyed her relationships with both Edmund and Fanny, and the glimpses we got of her internal struggle were really interesting. |
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A story set early in Earthsea’s history, about a wizard who’s trapped in a dungeon, trying to escape and save the world from his captor, whatever the cost to himself. This is too short to really say much about, but it was a sad little tale, and I enjoyed this glimpse into the Earthsea world as Le Guin was still building it. |
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Magnus returns to England after a long absence, and a reckless – and familiar – young Shadowhunter catches his attention. Another hit from this collection! And, if I’m not mistaken (which I might well be, as I’m only two series into the Shadowhunter universe), a first glimpse of the characters and conflicts of The Last Hours? Once again, I liked this a lot; James and Grace were interesting new characters, and I loved seeing Will and Tessa again! (They get a whole star all to themselves. 😊) |
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A tongue-in-cheek descrition of some of the Kings and Queens of England, with an empasis on proving the awfulness of Elizabeth I. More interesting to me was a brief, unfinished epistolary novel, Lesley Castle, that was also included, about two friends, one of whose father is marrying an acquaintance of the other. History was quite an enjoyable read, but Lesley Castle was much more fun, and I would love to have seen where the story was going. But alas. 😔 |
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The second volume of No Man’s Land, which wasn’t quite as interesting as the first. The Azrael storyline did pick up a bit, however, and I really enjoyed the chapters of Batgirl that were included (featuring Cass!), even though they’re also included in the regular Batgirl volumes, which I’ve already read. And I liked the Poison Ivy episode a lot! Not much else to say here, but I’m definitely still enjoying this series enough to continue on to volume 3 (the first in the series that won’t be a re-read!). |
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An orphan with few prospects, Jane Eyre decides to make her own way in life by advertising as a governess, but her unusual new employer is as intrigueing to Jane as he is intrigued by her, and it’s not long before she finds herself hopelessly in love. I found the beginning of this book very slow-going, but was able to get more into it once the unending misery of Jane’s childhood was done with, thankfully… And I was also surprised by how much I enjoyed the romance! There was so much chemistry between Jane and Mr. Rochester, and the way they interacted was incredibly sweet (most of the time). Downsides: the very un-nuanced characterisation of Bertha, though given her role in the story, and the time period in which this was written, I wasn’t really expecting anything else. |
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Dick Grayson strikes out alone, and tries to make a life for himself in Blüdhaven, both as a civilian and as the city’s masked protector. I like Dick as a character, and enjoyed seeing him try to make his way without relying on Bruce, and form his own network of information. There’s not much to the story here, but I’m hopeful that the series will get better as it goes on. (And I’ve already enjoyed glimpses of it that I’ve seen in other Batman bind-ups.) |
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Harriet and Perdita Lee are ordinary Londoners with an unusual family history: as a girl, Harriet came to England from Druhastrana, a land of unknown location, and dubious reality. And when Perdita sets out to find her homeland, and her mother’s childhood friend Gretel, Harriet must explain how – and why – she left. Helen Oyeyemi’s writing is some of the most beautiful I’ve ever come across, but I don’t always find that her stories mesh with me, and that’s the case once again with Gingerbread. I got more into the story once Harriet began her tale, but was often confused (especially in the final third of the book when a whole slew of new characters were introduced), and left the story not entirely sure what it was about… but still wanting to read everything else Oyeyemi has ever written. 😅 Harriet and Perdita were both great characters, too, and I really enjoyed Oyeyemi’s narration of the audiobook. 🍊🍊🍊 |
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JUST FINISHED: 
CURRENT READATHON STATUS: Done with my first book! 😁 Which didn’t count for any of the challenges, since it was something I’d already started reading before the readathon began (though I was only about 100 pages in)… so I still have a way to go, but if I’ve calculated all my page numbers correctly, I’m on track to finish everything I need to this month. 🤞 Next up will be 
Nightjar's Jar of Books 