I’m linking up with The Monthly Wrap-Up Round-Up, hosted by Nicole @ Feed Your Fiction Addiction and Shannon @ It Starts at Midnight.

Goings-On

After a slow July and August on the blog, 11 posts in September, a few I’m really excited about that I’ll link below. Reading wise and I had some great hits and some I enjoyed less. I found my mood was very much against combaty or books that take themselves too serious and much more inclined to humor and fluff.

Mentally I’ve been doing not great. Wave 4 hit us in Romania and we are unexpectly taken by surprise. I’m finding it harder and harder to get the energy to do much of anything, just a lot of “what’s even the point I’ll be stuck at home for ever”. I did work up the courage to get a long overdue therapy appt, had that over skype yesterday, so feeling slightly better now. I just feel stuck in such a rut, and I hate the days getting colder and shorter and wetter, yuck.

Books Read

• The Deep & Dark Blue by Niki Smith – lovely story in a very pretty middle grade graphic novel about a pair of siblings unravelling secrets. It has textile-related-magic which I always love and mushy accepting vibes.

• The Philosopher’s Flight by Tom Miller, took me forever to finish last month’s mod book club pick, it was just too at odds with my mood

• Child of the Daystar by Bryce O’Connor – I liked the first half with a smol dragon-lizard-dude but the second half went in a direction I wasn’t keen on

• The Cat Who Saved Books by Sōsuke Natsukawa – Also a book that didn’t really match my mood, just a few things that I wasn’t a fan of

• The entire Stariel series by AJ Lancaster: The Lord of Stariel, The Prince of Secrets, The Court of Mortals, The King of Faerie – the most I’ve binged in more time than I’m willing to count, loved it, exactly why my sad grumpy soul needed

• The Winter King by CL Wilson – it took a long time for this book to win me over after it’s strange sex scenes, but I ended up really enjoying it by the end

• A Dash of Trouble by Anna Meriano – I picked this up off a Latinx Heritage Month rec post and I loved it. It’s a sweet and short middle grade novel, with low stakes and fuzzy feels

• Into the Labyrinth by John Bierce – finally got to reading this and I loved it. It’s got all the cosy feels of being back at magic school, great characters and an interesting world. Currently reading book 2

• Patience and Not-Forsaken by Alix E. Harrow – a short story included with audibly plus, was nice, pretty gothic and queer

• The Lady’s Guide to Celestial Mechanics by Olivia Waite, not spec fic but historical romance, f/f, I liked it a lot, on the steamier end, about a lady astronomer. If you liked Krista D. Ball’s Ladies Occult Society you might be into this and vice-versa, there’s also a lot about women wanting to do scholarship and men trying to exclude them.

Blog Posts

Reviews:

• Stariel by A.J. Lancaster – series review
• Mini reviews: The Obelisk Gate, Nightshift Dragons, The Eternal Champion, Elatsoe, Child of the Daystar
• A Master of Djinn by P. Djèlí Clark

Lists:

• Self-Published Fantasy Books – my updated list of 21 recommendations!
• The Evil Cat Book Tag
• r/Fantasy Top Novels Poll: My 10 (+) favorite Fantasy and Sci-Fi books of all time

Top Ten Tuesday (umm more lists?):

• Top Ten Tuesday: 10 SFF books with numbers in the title
• Top Ten Tuesday: Books that make me happy
• Top Ten Tuesday: Thirsty edition

Sunday posts:

• Sunday Post: autumn weather, a series binge and Fiyahcon
• Rambling questions: How to blog hop?
• Sunday Post: WordPress SEO, 4 plugins & how I keep my review index