The Mirror Empire by Kameron Hurley

AMBITIOUS, CREATIVE, FANTASTICAL, DIVERSE, EPIC.

Once again Hurley has shown us that she is an absolute force. I can only imagine how daunting this project was purely because of how epic in scope it is. I think the word dense could be used to describe this book (I don’t mean that in a bad way), there is so much worldbuilding, there are so many characters, there are so many cultures and histories and we get to dive into it all. She doesn’t hold us back. She gives us as readers everything she has and she smashed it out of the park. This is the longest book by Hurley I have read and as with her other stories she doesn’t waste words. Every word on the page has a purpose. I fucking love that.

December 2017 – Books, Music and Kittens.

This has not been much of a reading month. Life has been distracting me and I think along the way I lost my mojo. I haven’t really felt the need to pick up a book for most of the month. As someone who reads 3-5 hours most nights I found it a bit weird to start with, but then I decided to go with it. I watched tv, harassed my husband more, paid a bit more attention to the family and completely ignored this blog.

Missed the mark in 2017

I’ve told you my favourite reads for 2017, so now I’m giving you the disappointing reads of 2017. I don’t necessarily think they are terrible books, ok some are, but most just didn’t work for me.

Dishonourable mentions go to – Brooklyn by Colm Toibin and Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn.

Now onto my top 5 My top 6 books that I didn’t love this year.

The Last Namsara by Kristen Ciccarelli – I feel bad about this one, it was repetitive and nothing really happened. I dnf’d it almost halfway through, so I gave it a red-hot crack,  I tried to like it, I was waiting for it to get good, but it was repetitive. All of the side characters were flat, the mc was a terrible sister and dragon hunter. We were told everything, never shown and it was repetitive. I was extra bummed about this not working for me because DRAGONS!!! Not nearly enough books have dragons.

Crushed under my pile of unread books

It’s a common bookworm problem, so many books that need to be read on your shelves, yet new shiny books catch your attention, so you grab them and ignore the ones you already have. Your pile of unread books slowly gets bigger and bigger and next thing you know its time for a new bookcase. I went from two bookcases to four last year, plus a small one. My fantasy case is double stacked and so are most of the others and at least 80% of these are unread. I read a decent amount of books, in 2017 it was 120, down from 163 in both 2016 and 2015, yet I seem to be buying them so much faster than I can read them. Does this knowledge stop me from buying more? Fuck no, read or unread, my shelves are beautiful, so many gorgeous books.. Yes I’ve been known to stroke my books while looking for my next read, sometimes I tell them I love them, sometimes I just sit and stare at them like the creeper I am. The key to my book buying is op shopping. A very large percentage of my books were purchased second hand for between 2-3 dollars. I once walked out of an op shop with the first 4 books in the Peter V. Brett, Demon Cycle series. That was a happy day. I find heaps of urban fantasy, paranormal romance and books that I’m not sure if I would like, so I wouldn’t risk paying full price for it. I have come across some absolute ripper reads this way and new authors that I now love. If you are looking to expand your reading, I fully recommend op shopping. I think I’ve got enough on my shelves now, so I probably wont be doing it much in 2018. I will be getting new books of course, I don’t think I could go on a book buying ban, that’s just crazy, but I will be limiting my purchases to series I already have on the go. Nicholas Eames and Mark Lawrence have books out in the next couple of months, no way will I miss out on those. Also Brandon Sanderson is an absolute work horse, I’m sure he will be releasing something this year and I can’t miss out on that.