Best books for the month

Thraxas Under Siege. It’s 5/5 and overall great. “Thraxas and the Ice Dragon” and “Thraxas and the Oracle” are not far behind. Turai is about to fall and Thraxas will have to help Lisutaris any way he can, which varies between failing miserably and saving the day. Makri is not far as well.

Notorious Nineteen by Janet Evanovich and The Golden Enclaves by Naomi Novik were also good reads and 5/5s. The Golden Enclaves concluded the Scholomanse series and explained the Maw-Mouths. Notorious Nineteen was a nice bubblegum. Stephanie Plum doesn’t age.

Worst books for the month

• Alcatraz Versus the Evil Librarians – a parody where the author talks to the reader from the author’s position. It wasn’t fun in the way “The Carpet People” was. The only reason to complete it was my respect for Brandon Sanderson and the hope that Book 2 would be better. Brandon Sanderson is known to have some flops. I gave it a fair 3/5 because it was readable.
• Iron Flame – the sequel to The Fourth Wing had 760 pages of people talking and moving around in a world that makes no sense but closely resembles other fantasy worlds that do. I gave it 4/5 because it was still interesting, but objectively, it was worse than Alcatraz. Brandon Sanderson built a unique steampunk magical system that could sustain excellent sequels, which isn’t the case with Iron Flame.

Honorable Mentions

I read one standalone gamebook and one collection of 3 gamebooks. The local community keeps printing these, and the artwork inside is above and beyond. Some adults are having fun and publishing stuff because they can. None of the writing is Brandon Sanderson’s quality but it carries the spirit of the 80s and 90s.