Morren Aconite

I was so overwhelmed this month that I didn’t realize I was in a reading slump until around March 25th. I strongly suspect Crescent City 3 and just general stress put me in it, but I was struggling. It got to a point where I couldn’t even think of starting something else without feeling drained and bored in advance.

So I’ve decided to try out a method that’d never failed me before: going back to the basics, to the genre that made me fall in love with reading in the first place – fantasy. I picked up something light, short, and old-school. Et voilà, a couple of hours later, I was hopeful that I can like a book again and not want to douse it in gasoline to make a nice little bonfire.

Another Fine Myth, Robert Asprin

(Myth Adventures #1)

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Skeeve, a magician’s apprentice, gets stuck on a quest with a demon after his master is killed by an assassin. He’ll have to quickly learn not only about his powers but the workings of his own dimension, which is way more than he’d signed up for.

This was the first book by Robert Asprin I’ve decided to try out, and I’m sure it’s not the last one. I was hoping for a fun, ‘sword and sorcery’ type adventure, and it’s exactly what I got. There are mustached, sleeve-eating dragons, demons mistakenly called perverts, war unicorns (aka warnicorns, if you’re a fan of ‘Star vs. the Forces of Evil), and many more bizarre occurrences. What else do you need, really?

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Annie Bot, Sierra Greer

‘Despite warning herself that thinking too much will make her unhappy, she’s still subject to ruminating.’

Annie was created to be a perfect companion to her owner. Displeasing him literally hurts her, and her sole purpose is to learn how to always, always keep him content. However, as she tries to become more human, Annie realizes that it might not, after all, be what her owner wants.

Novels with sentient robots for main characters usually make me furious (in a good way, though). I enjoy discovering different authors’ perspectives on the messed-up ways human-robot relationships would develop. In this regard, the book didn’t disappoint.

It is a bit tragic to realize how much I could relate to Annie as a woman, which is the point, of course. I despised her owner, and it generally hurt me to read about the human characters’ perception of Annie and others like her. The book was refreshing, heartbreaking, and memorable.

House of Flame and Shadow, Sarah J. Maas

(Crescent City #3)

⭐️

I read – well, ‘suffered through’ would be more accurate – this for a review, and I’m just glad this clusterf*ck is over.

Crescent City was a mess from book 1, but, somehow, it spiraled into a flaming dumpster fire with a billion unresolved plot lines, a rambling narrative, and text that seems like it’s never even been glanced at by an editor.