I lost my reading mojo.

 

I used to read 2-3 hours a day to while away time commuting up on London’s Underground. I’ve never counted the amount of books I read each year, but it was many. Then we all went into lockdown and that routine was disrupted. I had plenty of time, but I filled it with other things – exercise, writing, gardening, talking to my cats – and my precious reading time got waylaid.

 

So this year, I made a promise to myself to find the time to read. It’s been hard to manage, if I’m honest. The obvious choice was before bedtime (I’m definitely a morning person, so I read in the mornings, I would get nothing else done!) but I’ve never been a good bedtime reader as an adult. Where other people can’t scroll social media, watch TV before bed, my sleeping kryptonite is reading. It wakes me up, gets my sluggish brain moving again and before I know it, it’s two hours past my usual bedtime and I’m just going to read one more chapter…

 

So I spent a good deal of January training myself to read before bed again. There were a few late nights (or early mornings!) but I’ve made it through and am reading regularly again!

 

So… what have I been reading? A real mixed bunch, I can tell you.

 

Hall of Smoke – HM Long

 

The Dying Light – Emily Rooke

 

A Court of Silver Flames – Sarah J Maas

 

Mistborn – Brandon Sanderson

 

We Ride the Storm – Devin Madson

 

Hall of Smoke by H M Long – 5 stars

 

Hall of Smoke follows the story of Hessa, a battle-hardened priestess of the Goddess of War, with a literal bone-shattering scream. Hessa disobeys her Goddess’ orders. Whilst banished and praying for forgiveness, her town is burnt to the ground by raiders. Grief-stricken and alone, Hessa embarks on a quest to atone for her sin, win back of Goddess’ favour and avenge her people.

 

Hall of Smoke is Epic (that’s right, capital E epic). But unlike some epic fantasy, I really enjoyed how the story stuck with Hessa’s internal journey, as well as the politics and battles happening around her. Hessa is on the face of it the stereotypical epic fantasy female warrior, but narrated in first person the story let’s us see past this wild warrior facade to her faults, her doubts, the core of her very being. I was hooked on Hessa’s internal struggle and she tries to reconcile what she knows with what she learns over the course of the book.

 

The worldbuilding is mind-blowing. Every corner of Hessa’s world – even the parts she doesn’t visit – is filled out. Whilst reading you get the scope of the centuries of history, war and strife that have beset the people and moulded them into their distinct cultures. And then there are the gods and goddesses. Long doesn’t just bring these mysterious beings to life, she makes them mortal. Very, very mortal. It turns out, there is little more dangerous than a god who can die.

 

I did find that some of the relationships in the book fell a bit flat. Sometimes it was more that we’re told that Hessa likes a person that actually seeing it. However, I really appreciated reading a fantasy book with a female lead that didn’t have a romantic plot. I’m all here for romance, but sometimes it’s refreshing to have something different!

 

I’ve given this debut five stars because it really just blew me away. The worldbuilding and mythology in and of itself is enough to carry the entire book! Totally recommended.

 

The Dying Light by Emily Rooke – 4 stars

 

I was lucky enough to receive an ARC for Emily’s debut novel in exchange for an honest review. And what a debut it is!

 

Charlie Carroway has found a way out his dark childhood and now lives to protect his adopted granny and the young children he lives with. But his past isn’t done with him yet, and soon he finds himself beset by an old enemy bearing a grudge. Unbeknownst to Charlie, though, someone far more dangerous and darker is searching for him. Charlie must set out on desperate attempt to save his family or lose everything.

 

This by turns a dark and sweet tale. The world Charlie inhabits is full of soldiers, poverty, witch covens and criminal gangs, and his childhood one of horror. And yet Charlie finds a sparkle of hope in the form of friendships. At the heart of the novel it’s Charlie learning to trust again, when everything he’s learnt in sixteen years has taught him he can only rely on himself.

 

I thoroughly enjoyed The Dying Light just for the characters. Scowling Vasco has my heart, for ever and always, I want Alya to bake me cookies and I just want Seren to be okay. Saga is just a cutie! And Charlie… I would give him a hug, but I’m not sure he’d let me.

 

Emily’s power is in the lack of description. The reader has to piece together what has happened to Charlie, who is so secretive he wouldn’t even let himself think the words. It really makes for a climatic ending, that is by turns heart-wrenching and a moment of pride as he faces down his enemy.

 

The one thing that leads the book to not getting four stars from me is ironically linked to the lack of description. I love worldbuilding, and I felt that information was unnecessarily withheld. I would have loved the characters and felt even more for their plight if I had had more context in terms of the political divide, and some of the history. The Dying Light is the first in a trilogy and I’m hoping to learn more as the story progresses!

 

I totally recommend this debut indie novel and cannot wait to read the next in the trilogy!

 

A Court of Silver Flames by Sarah J Maas – 4 stars

 

I’m not a huge Sarah J Maas fan. Her style just isn’t what I usually go for, and I just can’t get invested in her characters. What she is really good at, though, is steamy romance. I’ve read all the Throne of Glass series and the A Court of Thorns and Roses books, and it was the romance subplots that drove me through them. So I picked up her latest novel, A Court of Silver Flames, for an easy read with some light smut.

 

And I got that. Well… the smut was erm… more than ‘light’ but that’s beside the point. In usual circumstances, I would have given it three stars like the rest of series. So why four stars?

 

Nesta. I’ve long been intrigued by the eldest Archeron sister. She’s just so spiky and mean and you just know there must be a reason behind it. Nesta’s journey through the book really hit a nerve with me. Her self-doubt, the way she bottles up her feelings, and the way she goes about healing the mental scars just all felt very familiar. I’m not alone in this either: in the days after the book’s release there were plenty of posts across social media of readers expressing that same surprising recognition of themselves in Nesta. In the acknowledgments, Maas mentions that Nesta’s journey reflects her own battle with mental health, so perhaps it’s not so surprising that it felt so raw and real.

 

There were plenty of my usual gripes with Maas novels. The plot beyond the romance (and steam) was non-existent and didn’t really make much sense in terms of the trilogy. The banter between the friends is often beloved by fans, but it just gets on my nerves (I really am Nesta). And there are certain aspects of the books especially around diversity and masculinity that I find problematic (please, please can we stop worshiping the ground that Rhys walks on because he’s fit? He’s not a nice person).

 

Overall though, Nesta’s journey and how it really touched me made the book. Out of all Maas’ novels, this is the one I’ve enjoyed the most (and read the quickest).

 

Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson – 3 stars

 

I’ve been meaning to read a Sanderson book for a while. Mistborn was where I decided to start – a fantasy heist, I mean, come on.

 

The story follows a street kid named Vin as she discovers her ‘Luck’ is more than a little dash of magical power. She’s picked up the mysterious Kelsier – a thief who is the only person to have escaped the Lord Rulers infamous mining jail, who has magical power of his own. Kelsier is a criminal mastermind, and now driven by revenge against the tyrannical Lord Ruler, plans a heist of an epic scale.

 

Sanderson is famous for his magic systems, and I loved the unique, metal-driven magic in Mistborn. The worldbuilding was absolutely phenomenal and I would keep reading the story just find out more about why ash continually falls from the sky, where the titular Mistborn truly came from…

 

Unfortunately, the story itself fell flat for me. Vin is, on paper, the kind of character I tend to fall in love with, but in Misborn I just didn’t get any of those feels. I didn’t really get a sense of her transformation, except that she became more adept at using her magic, and there were aspects of being a young woman that Sanderson just skims over, making Vin’s character far less rounded than it has potential to be.

 

I think if you like plot driven books, Mistborn would get far more stars than my three. But I am definitely a character-led story fan and the characters in Mistborn just weren’t fleshed out enough for me to care about the plot.

 

I may come back to the series, just because I am hooked by the world, but it won’t be for a while.

 

We Ride the Storm by Devin Madson – 4.5 stars

 

“They tried to kill me four times before I could walk.” – so starts Devin Madson’s We Ride the Storm. Needless to say I was hooked.

 

This epic fantasy set in an Asian-inspired world follows three characters from the first person perspective: a princess, an exiled warrior and a prostitute with a side-gig as an assassin. This cast alone sold the book to me. There’s nothing I love more than the ambitious, down trodden and vengeful.

 

The story is as sweeping as you’d expect from an epic fantasy novel, war and rebellion, palace politics, secret plans and a lot of murder. I thoroughly enjoyed the first person narration, it pulled me in and had me on the edge of my seat willing the characters to make the right decisions (they rarely do, sigh) and sometimes to just stay alive. None of the characters are archetypal heroes, although exiled warrior Rah might come close – we’re strictly in the territory of morally grey, here. Cassandra – the murderous prostitute – was my favourite. She battles with a lodger in her head (only named Her or She) with whom she is constantly arguing, but also seems to gift her with strange powers over the dead. Cassandra will pretty much do what she has to, to survive. She’s cunning and cold, but there’s a part of her hidden deep, deep down that perhaps isn’t and I loved seeing her fight what might be her true nature.

 

The story didn’t quite five stars for me because it left a lot unresolved. The ending was bloody and epic, as you might expect, but I didn’t have that ‘finished book’ satisfaction. I realise this is the start of a trilogy and a lot of my questions will probably be answered in later books, but I would have loved to at least had a tiny bit of closure on a few of the questions that had burnt through the narrative (for example, Cassandra’s passenger).

 

I will be starting the next book int he series very soon, and can’t wait to dive into the world, the characters’ heads once more!

 

Have you read any of these books? Drop your comments below!