April WRAP-UP!

Hello wonderful people! April is ending and I am really looking forward to May! It seems like things are going better and so yes, I have great expectations for the next month. Let’s just hope that it won’t disappoint!
Anyway, in April I read quite a lot, and I was lucky because they were all good books, so… yay! And in April started the Book Bingo on Reddit, too. So far I am having fun and I have read a couple of books thanks to it that I wouldn’t have read otherwise, or that I wouldn’t have read so soon. And I really want to share my progress with it too, but this would be a long post, so I would wait for a weekly recap, but I am going to share it!

Books read: 20 + 4 short novellas +2 DNF
Physical books Vs ebooks: 5 physical books vs. 17 ebooks
ARCs: 5

I have DNF two books, but all things considered this was really a good month for reading, so… no complaints here!

The Amazing!

Terry Pratchett was amazing as ever, and I loved this book! We have Vimes and Vetinari, and we get to them their younger selves, too. It just was amazing!

The Very Very Good! (And surprising one!)

Patricia Briggs was the only author I knew before, and it wasn’t a surprise that I enjoyed this Mercy Thompson’s book quite a lot! Silence Fallen is the ninth book of the series, and even if things are getting a tad monotonous, in the structure of the story, I enjoyed the reading a lot! But all the other authors were new to me, and I loved them all! Swashbuckling Cats is a brilliant book, and I am so looking forward to share it with you all, but be warned! You would see the review in a month, given or taken, so be patient my friends, be patient! Snowspelled was a completely unplanned reading. I have seen some good reviews around and I discovered that I could use it for some squares of the Bingo challenge, so I read it making good use of the last day of trial for Scribd, and it was a pleasant surprising! I hope to continue this series soon!  And The Demons We See was a fun and intriguing reading, too, with great characters and a solid plot!

The Collapsing Empire was an amazing surprise. I have a hard relationship with sci-fi, but this one I loved. And I loved it from the first line, so that amazing, right? Skullsworn was a book that was on one of my lists, and it was surprising! This is an original and well written book, with an interesting world building and unique characters. Under Heaven was another surprise. On one hand this was not my cup of tea, but on the other hand this was a fantastic reading!

The Good!

This month was very rich in reading, so this would be a tad long, sorry! A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder was a try to not read only fantasy this month, and it was a captivating reading, even if it is not a masterpiece. Hostile Takeover was a catching reading, and I enjoyed it quite a lot. Her Majesty’s Necromancer was a pleasant distraction, is a fast reading book, not demanding at all, not bad but it wasn’t great either. But it was the right book at the right moment. La Meravigliosa Vita dei Filosofi was a very interesting not fiction book about philosophy with the cutest drawings ever!

These four are all short novellas from The Powder Mage series by Brian McClellan. I loved the first book of this series, and since I can’t buy books at the moment (hence I cannot buy the sequels, argh!) I consoled myself with these short stories. And they all were great!!!!!

This month was good for my non fiction reading, because I have read some interesting books! True Crime Japan was interesting and highly informative, and A Guide To Living With a Fearful Dog was full of good advices and info. I, Exile was a pleasant reading, that kept me company for an afternoon, taking me to a magic a world. Under Ordshaw was an enjoyable surprise, and I am glad to have been a part of the blog tour, because I was very curious about it!

And last but not leas, we have A Man’s Head that was a captivating reading that kept me glued to the pages, and The Wheel of Osheim which end this trilogy. I enjoyed the reading but… I had some problems with it. On one hand the worldbuilding is brilliant and the characters interesting, but on the other hand every time I put that book down I didn’t want to go back to it. But the reading was a great ride!

The Disappointing One

So, this month I have tried to read more non-fantasy books, since in May I would try and read only fantasy book, so I went back to this series I started ages ago but… I wasn’t lucky. It wasn’t a boring reading, and it was really fast but not engaging. I just went trough it without too much thoughts.

The DNFed!

Swarm and Stell is a book full of potentialities, and I really think is a good book, but it wasn’t for me, sadly. It was a bit much on the gross side for my liking. Scorched on the other hand was just… plain. I really liked the first book of this series, but with this second one I couldn’t care less! I tried to read it, and I have reached around 50% of it but… my interest wasn’t showing up, sadly!

The One I am confused about!

I don’t know what to think about this one. On one hand this is a series that I loved, the first books were great and so much fun! But lately I wasn’t really in love anymore with the latest books. I wasn’t in love with the eight one, and I wasn’t in love with this one either. It seems like the author is without inspiration, like she doesn’t know how to make her story interesting anymore. It seems like she has no more new idea for this one. And I am really sad to say that, but sometimes we have series that are going on and on, but it would have been way better if they were ended at some point before. And it sadly seems the case for this series too. So, on one hand, I wasn’t in love, and I think that we are really at the end of the rope. On the other hand, I was happy to see Charley and Reyes and Cook, and Bob again. The part about the characters were good (even if Reyes’ descriptions become quite boring at some point) but the parts about the plot and sub-plots not so much. I don’t know what I would do for sure, but I am thinking about dropping this series, sadly.

Series:
Finished: 1
Continued: 7

The Great Series Project: 

This month I wanted to concentrate more on non fantasy reading, so I had just one mini challenge for my project, and it was to finish a series. That was it! But in the end it seems like my mood was more fantasy oriented then what I was expecting, and so, all things considered, this was a good month for series, because I managed to continue some of them, and that was just great!
Usually I would have set another minichallenge for May, since I am trying to conquer my series but… probably in May I could bring home my puppy, and if it would be so I won’t have a lot of time for reading, obviously so… no mini-challenge for the next month, even if I hope to at least continue some of them!

My Reviews!
–Promise of Blood by Brian McClellan
–The Collapsing Empire by John Scalzi
–The Demons We See by Krista D. Ball
–Under Ordshaw by Phil Williams
–I, Exile by David M. Samuels
–Under Heaven by Guy Gavriel Kay
–Hostile Takeover by Christelle Comby

And what about you? How was your April? And have you read some of the books I have mentioned? And what have you planned for May?? Let me know!!!

Happy reading!
S.