March Reading Wrap up

 

My reading slowed way down this month and I completed six books, sort of  finished one, and stopped halfway through another.  

1. Super Powereds Year Four - Drew Hayes (Science Fiction, 1019)
2. Daughter of Time (#5 Inspector Grant) - Josephine Tey (HF, 206)
3. Hidden Palace #2 Golem & the Jinni - Helene Wecker (H Fantasy, 472)
4. Leviathan Wakes - J.A. Corey (Science Fiction, e)  
5. Left Hand of Darkness - Ursula Le Guin (Science fiction, dnf)
6. Bookshop at Water's End - Patti Callahan Henry (Literary Fiction, e)
7. Bookshop of Second Chances - Jackie Fraser (Contemporary Romance, e)
8. The Starless Crown (#1 Moon Fall) - James Rollins (Fantasy, 560)

Super Powered is a great series and however much I'd like to compare it to Harry Potter, there really is no comparison. These are college age kids, each with a special super power, no wands, who learn how to use their powers amidst the angst of college and real life battles.  It will be well worth reading again. 

Tey's Daughter of Time is a unique story involving history and how it can be perceived or easily wrong, depending on the book telling the tale.

The Hidden Palace is a wonderful tale interwoven with several different narrators and is full of history, drama, and magic. I loved escaping into their world and will definitely read it again at some point.

In The Bookshop at Water's End, everyone down to the children had baggage of some sort and it was an emotional story which I usually wouldn't enjoy but the writing was so well done, it pulled me into the characters lives, rooting for them all the way. 

The Bookshop of Second Chances was set in Scotland and  Edward, a curmudgeonly bookseller who is 40 ish and Thea, a 40 + woman on the verge of divorce, both with lots of baggage, who may or may  not like each other, lives become intertwined more than they imagine and makes for a beautiful story.

James Rollins has done it again and this time with Fantasy in which several characters come together over the course of the book to join together in a quest to save the world. An abandoned baby found in a swamp, bats, prophecies, darkness, a thief, a bronze statue, a fallen prince, wolves, a broken soldier, horrible villains who will do anything including burning entire towns to get what they want, sky ships and battles. Our poor characters are given no time to rest, hunted and chased, from peril to peril. A thrilling story I couldn't put down. Definitely a reread when the rest of the series comes out

How do you sort of finish a book?  I unfortunately didn't enjoy Corey's Leviathan Wakes as the characters rubbed me the wrong way and I read halfway, lost interest, skipped to the ending to see what happened.  I also didn't enjoy Le Guin's Left Hand of Darkness, decided life is too short to keep reading when the writing isn't grabbing me and decided to shelve the book.  Happily, the rest of my reads were excellent. 

I'm still reading more science fiction and fantasy with a historical fiction thrown in. I seem to be getting more into emotional contemporary fiction so we'll see how long that lasts.  At least I cleared some dusty books from both my physical and eshelves. Looking forward to seeing what April brings as I'm in the midst of several books at the moment.