August 2022 Bookclub: Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus

 

My rating: 2.5 of 5 stars

Category: Adult
Genre: Historical Fiction, Sci-fi, Fantasy
Content: Talk of raping women, An off page rape and murder, People being sold into slavery

 

In the not-too-distant future, a major scientific breakthrough has created a way to open windows into the past, and a scientist believes she can alter human history from a tragedy of bloodshed and brutality to a world of hope and healing.

This was our book club book this month. It's sort of a sci-fi/fantasy, with the time travel and the Pastwatch organization, but leans very heavily toward historical fiction. I found parts of this to be interesting and other parts to be downright boring. The beginning engaged me enough and so did the end, but it sagged in the middle. I enjoyed history when I was in school, but I'm not a fan of novels that are about real people, and all that entails. I'm also long past wanting to spend my recreational reading time on history in general, and this was too heavy on the history and too light on the sci-fi and fantasy. 

There's a whole lot of philosophy and speculation in this book and those are the parts that bored me the most. I thought there would be more adventure, but there wasn't. It was mostly a lot of talking. I personally like time travel stories that have a lot happening in them with the time travel itself, and the direct and indirect consequences of it. This really had none of that, and I honestly wasn't all that interested in reading about the subject matter. There were some points brought up that resonated with me and made me think, and a couple of the characters were engaging, but I'm not sure I liked everything about their solution to "fixing" the past. I think one of the things I disliked most about this book was all the manipulating that went on. I can also think of a lot of other events in history that they could go back and fix as well, some of which I think would have been more compelling to read about.

If you liked Doomsday Book, you might like this. It felt similar in some ways, mainly the time travel to way back in history and the heavy historical fiction aspect of it.

Look what just came! 😍😍😍

 

 
                                         

 

The First Binding by R.R. Virdi (Tales of Tremaine #1)

  

My rating: 3.5 of 5 stars

Category: Adult
Genre: Fantasy
Content: Strong language, Bullying

 

All legends are born of truths. And just as much lies. These are mine. Judge me for what you will. But you will hear my story first.

I buried the village of Ampur under a mountain of ice and snow. Then I killed their god. I've stolen old magics and been cursed for it. I started a war with those that walked before mankind and lost the princess I loved, and wanted to save. I've called lightning and bound fire. I am legend. And I am a monster.

My name is Ari. And this is the story of how I let loose the first evil.

 

I was really excited to read this. It's the first epic fantasy I've read this year and it sounded like it would be right up my alley. I was intrigued by the comparisons to The Name of the Wind, since I really loved that book. The blurb for this book also sounded a lot like The Name of the Wind. After reading this I can definitely say that there is a resemblance. The woman that Ari is enamored with and the way she keeps leaving and showing up reminds me a bit of Denna. Then there is the storytelling that Ari does about his past, the Inn, and the fact that Ari performs on stage as a storyteller, and the way the book is structured. These things all remind me of The Name of the Wind. These are just a few of the similarities. There are some differences, but I do think that there are too many similarities.

I thought this book was slow to get going, and in general it is a slow paced novel, but after it got going I began to enjoy it. I enjoyed the South-Asian inspired parts of the book. It was new and refreshing for me. I liked reading about Ari's childhood, from the theater, to The Sparrows, to the school of the Ashram. I enjoyed reading about the friendships Ari developed, although the bullying was not fun, and I never like reading that stuff. Thankfully, it wasn't too excessive. Then there was the kite fighting, which is something I had never heard of before. I thought it was interesting, and I had to look it up to see if it was a real thing, and it is.

I liked the parts about Ari as an adult a little less, although the Game of Families was an interesting idea, it ended up going differently than I thought it would. I'm also not too keen on the love interest yet. Ari is naive about women, and at this point I don't think this is going to end well. Speaking of women, I've read a few reviews that mentioned that this book is sexist or misogynistic with the way it describes women or lumps them all into one stereotyped category. I think sometimes people don't really understand what misogyny is. I didn't get that from this book at all. Yes, there were some generalizations of women, but I also picked out generalizations of men in the book as well, and I think most of these were done for humor, or to show naiveté and ignorance. Anyway, it didn't bother me.

The blurb for this book makes Ari sound very full of himself and I think after reading the book that he really isn't. He's someone who had a tough life and had to prove himself over and over. I liked that the book showed how easily gossip and misconceptions can turn into what people think are facts. I wasn't so crazy about the fact that Ari purposely let people believe some things that weren't true and then looked back at history in general as being based on a bunch of lies. This is a viewpoint coming from a liar, so of course he would see it that way, but in reality, history is probably a mixture of truth and lies.

I liked some things about this book and disliked things about it. I felt it was lacking something, so I'm giving it 3 stars.

Thanks to NetGalley and Tor Books for providing me with an ARC of this book.

Planned August Reads

Here are my planned reads for August, let's see if I actually get to all of these...

I may or may not review all of the books I read this month, but I'm looking forward to reading some of these. Only one of these is for the August reading challenge. I'm not going to tell you what it is though, until the end of the month! And who knows, maybe I'll end up adding more than one for that challenge.

My most anticipated read this month. I've got the hardcover on pre-order and I can't wait!

 

My least anticipated read this month. I'm so glad this is the last Cork O'Connor book I'll be reading! I'm so done with this series. I'm not enjoying it any more, but I didn't want to leave my buddy reading partner to finish these by himself. This is the last available for free book in the series for us so after this I'm done!

The last book in the series. It will be bittersweet! I wanted to read this in June and use it for the ebook reading challenge but didn't have time.

I'm super excited to start this book! I got a copy from NetGalley and it will be the first epic fantasy I've read in a while.

This is an epic fantasy series that I started months ago. I read the first book and haven't gotten around to any of the others, so I'm excited to get back to it. The whole series is on Kindle Unlimited, at least the books that have been published are, and it looks like it will be a pretty big series.

This is the last book in this 4 book series, unless the author publishes more. It's a fun series that I listen to while doing stuff around the house. It's free to listen to on Audible Plus.

I borrowed this book on Kindle Unlimited months ago and still have not gotten to this book. Every month I think I'm going to read and, and every month it ends up getting pushed to the next month. I really want to catch up on this series before I get even further behind! 

  I was really excited about this new series from Timothy Zahn that looks to be a follow up of The Icarus Hunt, which I loved. I was so excited that I pre-ordered it in hardcover. This is another book I wanted to get to in June but didn't have time.

The next Poirot book I've got on my list to listen to on Hoopla. I've also had the mass market paperback of this one on my shelf for years and have never read it. I'll probably end up replacing it with a hardcover copy later.

I'm borrowing these on KU to buddy read in the mystery book club. They come with the free audio to listen to as well.

Another series I'm buddy reading with the mystery book club. I'm listening to it on Hoopla. So far I'm loving this series, but not super crazy about the narrator.

 

 

 

July Reading Challenge

 

 Our reading challenge for July was an Ebook Extravaganza!

The goal this month was to tend to our neglected backlog of unread ebooks. We were supposed to pick ones that we were excited to read and focus on them, but also see if there are any titles we knew we would never make time to read and delete those. 

I have hundreds of unread ebooks on my Kindle and I was sure I would get a lot of them read this month, but of course that didn't happen the way I thought it would. I did get to a few of them. I decided I didn't want to just delete any of the books I own, even though a good deal of them were free, so I just removed the ones I have no intention of ever reading from my Kindle, and left them in the cloud. I ended up reading mostly mystery for this challenge, so I didn't read as much fantasy as I would have liked this month, but that's ok.

The first book I read for the challenge was Murder on the Links (Hercule Poirot #2) by Agatha Christie.

 

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Category: Adult
Genre: Mystery
Content: Clean  

Belgian detective Hercule Poirot is summoned to France after receiving a distressing letter with a urgent cry for help. Upon his arrival in Merlinville-sur-Mer, the investigator finds the man who penned the letter, the South American millionaire Monsieur Renauld, stabbed to death and his body flung into a freshly dug open grave on the golf course adjoining the property. Meanwhile the millionaire's wife is found bound and gagged in her room. Apparently, it seems that Renauld and his wife were victims of a failed break-in, resulting in Renauld's kidnapping and death.

The police think they've found the culprit. But Poirot has his doubts. Why is the dead man wearing an overcoat that is too big for him? And who was the impassioned love-letter in the pocket for? Before Poirot can answer these questions, the case is turned upside down by the discovery of a second, identically murdered corpse... 

 

This is one of the few Christie books that I actually own in ebook form. I have some hardcovers of the ones I've read and I've been borrowing the audio for the rest of them. Even though I own this one, I ended up borrowing the audio to listen to, because I've been really enjoying the audio versions of this series while I do household chores or while I relax in the pool. So, I didn't technically read my ebook of this, but I feel like it still counts for the challenge, because I've now listened to it and it's marked as read on my Kindle now.

As for the book itself, I liked this one, but not as much the the others I've read. The mystery itself was good, but not as clever as some of the others. I still enjoyed it and it took me a long time to figure out who did it.  I enjoyed the dynamic between Poirot and Hastings in this one. Hasting is very much the Watson, with Poirot being Sherlock. For his part, Hastings gets distracted by women and remains pretty clueless throughout most of the investigation. Poirot gets pretty frustrated with Hastings for hiding certain things, and I enjoyed reading how this all played out.

One of the things that really stood out to me in this book was the way Hastings thought of women, which probably matched a lot of people's views during that time period. He was so disconcerted that he was attracted to a women who wasn't the stereotypical type of female. The kind he had in his head as being ideal. I liked seeing how he came to realize that she was, indeed his type. Poirot's amusement at Hastings throughout this was so fun to read, and I liked the way things ended up for Hastings here.

I recently found the old ITV Poirot series on YouTube and, after each book I finish, I've been watching the episodes with David Suchet as Poirot. I had seen episodes of this years ago, but it's been so long that I can't remember much, so watching them again is proving to be a lot of fun. I thought the adaptation for this one was good, but I was disappointed that the parts I just mentioned about Hastings were either changed or some of it left out completely. There were also some other changes, but I'm still enjoying it, and I do think David Suchet is the best Poirot out of all the actors that have portrayed him.

“I had learned, with Poirot, that the less dangerous he looked, the more dangerous he was.”

 

 

Now on to the next two books!

I had the fourteenth book in the Kate Burholder series, The Hidden One (Kate Burkholder #14) by Linda Castillo on my Kindle courtesy of NetGalley, and I also had the novella Blood Moon that is set between books 13 and 14, so I read both of those. 

 

I already posted my review of this book so I won't post it again, but I did find this to be an enjoyable addition to the series. As for the novella, I usually enjoy them because Kate and John are usually together, and I like to read their interactions with each other. However, I didn't think this one was as good as some of the others. It was obvious to me, what the animal was that was running around wreaking havoc, and I thought Kate and John came off a little dumb for not figuring it out.

  

 

This next book, My Sister's Grave (Tracy Crosswhite#1) by Robert Dugoni, also fulfilled a buddy read I've been doing in a mystery book club, so I got to kill two birds with one stone. 

 

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Category: Adult
Genre: Mystery, Suspense
Content: Strong language, fade to black sex scene, a woman is kidnapped and assaulted but no details are given   

Tracy Crosswhite has spent twenty years questioning the facts surrounding her sister Sarah’s disappearance and the murder trial that followed. She doesn’t believe that Edmund House—a convicted rapist and the man condemned for Sarah’s murder—is the guilty party. Motivated by the opportunity to obtain real justice, Tracy became a homicide detective with the Seattle PD and dedicated her life to tracking down killers.

When Sarah’s remains are finally discovered near their hometown in the northern Cascade mountains of Washington State, Tracy is determined to get the answers she’s been seeking. As she searches for the real killer, she unearths dark, long-kept secrets that will forever change her relationship to her past—and open the door to deadly danger. 

 

I've had this book on my kindle for a long time and it finally ended up being the new series we are buddy reading in a mystery book club I'm in on Goodreads. Overall I thought this was good. There were a few things about it that I thought were unrealistic, and I didn't buy into the reasons behind why something was kept hidden, but it did keep me guessing and even surprised me with who the killer was. I enjoyed this enough to move onto the next book in the series. 

 

 

The last book I read for the challenge was a sci-fi novel. Iolanthe (The Spectre War #3) by Margaret Fortune. 

 

On a forgotten planet in the midst of an interstellar war, a resistance leader will rise.

Teal Sorenson has lost everything in the two years since the alien Spectres descended upon the Celestial Expanse: family, friends, even her home. Now condemned to exile on the jungle planet Iolanthe, she can only watch the war from afar…until a chance invasion sends her fleeing into the night.

With the colony overrun, the only place left to go is the jungle, and yet as Teal struggles to survive in a savage alien rainforest that could as easily kill her as save her, she realizes this invasion is more than just a simple offensive strike. Iolanthe has nothing to tempt the enemy: no resources, no strategic value, no military presence. So why are they really here?

The answer could spell the end of the war, and the human race along with it. Now only Teal and a ragtag band of survivors stand between the enemy and certain victory. Mere survival is no longer enough. It’s time to fight.

The battle for Iolanthe has begun.

 

This was a book I had been waiting a few years to read and it was finally released this year. I liked the first two books in the series, but didn't love them. I'm still in the middle of reading this book, so I'm not going to rate or review it yet, but so far I feel like it's too long, and not enough has happened to keep me really interested the way I want to be. This is one of those middle of the road series for me where it's hard to abandon it, because it sparks just enough of my interest, but it doesn't make me want to devour it either. It's so hard to rate these, or even make a decision on continuing. I'm hoping this is the last book in the series, but I bet it isn't, so I'm going to be left with this same dilemma again.

That's it for the July reading challenge! I hope to get back to more fantasy in August. I feel like I've read almost nothing but mystery for a while, and I guess that's what I was in the mood for mostly, but I'm missing fantasy now! I'm in the mood for some epic fantasy, and I can't wait to try a couple of the ones I have.