Just two days ago I read The Space Between Worlds duology, an example of my favorite kind of reading: engrossing, well-written, and also enlightening. Some Desperate Glory and The Radiant Emperor were very much in the same vein.
So many books focus on young people and coming-of-age. It’s nice to find works like The Hands of the Emperor and the World of the Five Gods trilogy about adults with all their baggage.
The Singing Hills Cycle turned out to be an unexpected delight. Not that I expected it to be bad, it was just so much more. The Bridge Kingdom also exceeded expectations. I had some free time with Kindle Unlimited and while the pickings were slim, this series of romance novels felt fresh, with strong plots and good all-around casts. I see there’s another book out, so I’ll be back for more. (If you find the covers annoying like I do, don’t let them put you off. The Singing Hills covers, on the other hand, I love.)
I was looking through my reading history before this blog for ideas for future posts and found some series that I’d never finished. So I made a conscious effort this year to finish (or catch up on) some of those series, all of which are favorites: The Invisible Library, The Expanse (I bought the TV series too), Children of Time, the Barbara Holloway mysteries, the Sue Grafton Alphabet (Kinsey Millhone) mysteries, the Mary Russell (and Sherlock Holmes) mysteries, and The Saxon Stories (also known as The Lost Kingdom). I read the first Jackson Brodie mystery series so long ago I couldn’t remember anything about it. After re-reading the first one I went on to finish the series.
For years I’ve been using Goodreads to track my reading. I’ve recently been trying to move away from it and have started using The Storygraph as well. I’ll probably have a post with more details later, but so far I’ve found Goodreads good for tracking reading progress — since I use a Kindle it’s almost automatic — and The Storygraph good for reviewing and finding new books.
As though I need new books! I have 435 in my TBR pile, 239 of which I already own. Let’s see how many I get to next year …