**A Reread of the Abhorsen Trilogy**

I recently finished rereading the Abhorsen trilogy by Garth Nix, which is one of my favorite series of all time. The first book, Sabriel, was a favorite of mine even in high school, and I've lost count of how many times I've reread it. However, when I decided to listen to the audiobooks narrated by Tim Curry, I realized that I had only reread Lyra's story once since my teenage years. I also recently finished listening to the rest of the series, which includes a prequel and a continuation, but sadly, Tim Curry does not narrate those.

**The World of Abhorsen**

One of the things that drew me back to this series is the world-building. The world of the Abhorsen trilogy is incredibly rich and detailed, with its own unique magic system, technology, and history. In this world, there are people known as Abhorsens who use a form of magic called "abjection" to communicate with the dead and control them. There are also different types of magical people, including those who can see into the future (known as Claires) and those who are skilled in the art of necromancy (Abhorsens). The world is divided into different regions, each with its own unique culture and history.

**Lyra's Story**

The second book in the series, Lyra's story, follows a young girl named Lyra who lives in a glacier to live up high. She wants to become like Sabriel, an Abhorsen who has been chosen by the dead to serve as their emissary. However, Lyra's journey is fraught with danger and uncertainty, as she must navigate the complexities of her own destiny and confront the darkness that lurks in the world. Throughout the book, we see Lyra grappling with suicidal ideation and death, which made me feel uncomfortable at times.

**The Villains**

One of the things that makes this series so compelling is its villains. The villains are incredibly scary and creepy, and they add to the overall sense of unease that pervades the world of Abhorsen. The book also explores themes of possession and animal death, which added to my discomfort at times.

**The Series and Its Impact**

I have always been a fan of the Abhorsen series, and I highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys fantasy and horror. While it may not be for everyone, as some readers may find it too dark or scary, I think that's part of its appeal. The series is also notable for its exploration of complex themes such as morality and the nature of good and evil.

**Rereading Sabriel**

Despite my love for the Abhorsen trilogy, I still prefer Sabriel, the first book in the series. There was something about Sabriel that resonated with me when I was younger, and it's a book that I've returned to again and again. While Lyra's story is equally compelling, there's something about Sabriel's journey that feels more satisfying to me.

**Listening to Audiobooks**

I recently discovered the audiobook version of the Abhorsen trilogy, narrated by Tim Curry, which made listening to the series a whole new experience for me. I was pleasantly surprised by how well he brought the characters and world to life, and his narration added an extra layer of depth and emotion to the story.

**Continuing with Spooky Reads**

For this month's spooky reads, I'm excited to dive into some other books that will get me in the mood for Halloween. I'd love to hear from you all about what you've read recently and any recommendations you may have. If you've listened to or read the Abhorsen trilogy, I'd love to hear your thoughts on it as well.

**Conclusion**

Overall, my reread of the Abhorsen trilogy was a delightful experience that left me eager to return to this world again and again. The series is a masterclass in world-building, character development, and plotting, with themes that are both complex and thought-provoking. I highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys fantasy, horror, or just great storytelling in general.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhey guys it's Sam and this is my September wrap up September went by so fast it was also incredibly long some of these books I felt like I read months ago so if any of these synopsis don't come to me super quickly it's because it feels like I read them three months ago it's wild then I read 10 books this month I was trying to finish an 11th but it was Babel by rfcon which I'll be talking about tomorrow here for book club uh I have a little more a little less than half to read still this is one of the only times I've actually like been right under the limit with book club so 10 books very exciting but top books I don't think any new like favorite favorites like a lot of really good books but none that were like blowing me out of the water necessarily it's like sort of one exception we'll get to that first I finished up the burning God by RF Quang this is the final book in the poppy War series I've already done a full review on this and a discussion so I'll link that on the screen so obviously since it's a finale I can't go into much detail but this was good it I liked the first half of this more than the second half so I really feel like this book could have been split into two books because there was things that were happening that I feel like could have been one book each so I kind of wish we would have had more time with more build up with certain things I still continue to feel like I really love Rin as a main character but a lot of the side characters just kind of fall flat for me in this series don't seem to have a ton of impact and the series is much more about like themes and things and the themes of war and how pointless War can be and people that are raised sort of during war and for war and all of that kind of stuff the series continues to be very brutal and the ending I think fit although wasn't really necessarily satisfactory for me either like I said I have more of my thoughts in my review but as with all the books in the series do be worn there's a ton of triggers or War xenophobia animal death rape torture racism sexism all of it if you've gotten to this book you probably know that by now but as far as a ranking of the books in the series I would say the poppy war is still my favorite that was the one that I rated 5 out of 5 Stars this one is like a 4.5 it's my second favorite and then the drag Republic is my third favorite with four stars I then read the bone Shard Daughter by Andrea Stewart this is our seasonal book club pick for patreon so every season we read a book together and then I do a live show just for patrons and we discuss the book and we also talk about a Discord throughout the time that we're reading it this is the first book and I believe an adult fantasy Trilogy thoughts main character Lin who's supposed to be the emperor's Heir but years ago she had a disease it apparently wiped out most of her memories and her father will not give her like the air dumb until she sort of proves herself and she wants access to this bone Shard magic that he has because that is kind of how they rule the kingdom and like where all the power comes from the synopsis makes it sound like we're only following her we're actually following a couple of other characters as well we're also following a man in search of his wife who was taken on this ship somewhere women disappear a lot uh in this world and are like taken for reasons unknown and so he's trying to find her and he sort of gets wrapped up in some of this stuff going on in the Empire and then there are two other characters one who wants to sort of lead a rebellion and the other one who is sort of a part of the uh nobility class um and they are in a Sapphic relationship and so we follow them as well so there's a lot of pieces moving here and honestly I really wish the book kind of just stuck to Lynn our main character I found her kind of the most interesting I do really like the guy as well the more that we got of him but ultimately I felt like Lynn's story was much more interesting and especially the two other women really sure why we were following them a ton we got some supplemental information from them but like nothing that I don't think could have been added in with jovis who's the guy's POV if his story um so yeah there's drag a little bit for me I felt like my wasn't necessarily carrying a ton there are some interesting things about the bone Shard magic and the twists which some of them I didn't see coming some of them I didn't quite um and I'm intrigued enough so I think continue the series but I gave this 3.5 out of 5 stars like 3 3.5 um and I feel like if I don't read the second book soon I will lose interest in this like this parts of it are already slipping from my mind so I liked this but didn't love it there are triggers in here for blood death child death body horror and animal death so it is a little bit darker but I will say it was written sort of in like a y8-ish style so I feel like this might be kind of good for like a crossover book if you're wanting to get into darker things but you used to reading more y a then I listened to Mexican Gothic by Sylvia Moreno Garcia on audiobook I read a lot of really dark things this month I have a lot of triggers in them so this has triggers for rape racism Eugenics suicide gun violence body horror and I believe self-harm a lot we basically follow this uh wealthier woman from a Mexican family living in Mexico City and her cousin recently ish got married to this like mysterious European white dude and she writes this very concerning letter home and so our main character's dad sends her and it's like hey see what's going on with your sister like what the heck she gets to this house sets out in the like Mexican Countryside that is taken over by this family this white family and she's like something is not right is the house haunted she starts kind of like hallucinating and seeing things and it just basically like the story is like The Haunting is colonialism right like it's like white supremacy is the haunting is like sort of the themes of this but it's sort of unclear it's a lot of sort of like magical realism-esque stuff going on but there is like this paranormal element to it that I will not obviously tell you like what exactly it is but thematically it's very much like the the scary thing is racism which is very true and it's just very creepy and Insidious I will say I did not love the audiobook for this I wonder if I would like this slightly more if I didn't read it on audio the problem was is the narrator used the same voice for all of the people in the house that were like European um so like the men and women sounded the exact same um I had a hard time distinguishing who was talking unless they were saying who their names were it made it hard to kind of connect the story uh but like if you want something creepy but not too scary like I this is horror but like horror light like I can't do super scary stuff but can I do like creepy sort of sentient maybe houses like again we're not really clear what's going on with the house uh yeah cool exploration of themes that aren't necessarily like Paranormal themes but have some paranormal to explore like really serious scenes of like racism and colonization stuff like that yes um so yeah if you're not too into spooky I think you can probably do this and I do want to read more of her books that are spookier um I've already read gods of Jane Shadow which is not spooky I mean I guess it could be considered spooky in its own right but it's not really but I do want to read the one with the vampires um that she has and uh next month we're going to be reading Dr moreau's daughter for book club um so I'm interested to see more of her like Gothic horror stuff that she does I gave this three stars Ben read this wicked Fate by Kalin bayram which is the second book in the this poison heart duology this takes place after the events of the first book where our main character Brie discovers that her family her birth family left her their family home she has uh this like nature magic where she can work really well with plants and stuff and also is not affected by poisons her and her adoptive moms go to this house and kind of start to unravel this mystery like about her family and things like that so this has elements of like Greek mythology and things and like a reworking of like Greek myth obviously as people of color which is like a fun reinvigorating way to like be telling some of these myths and things like it gives it a new life in a way this does have triggers for death of a parent just like grief stuff in general this book I didn't like as much as the first book sadly um what's great about it is like this is incredibly sophic uh incredibly mostly bisexual I would say I'm not sure if every character like says what their sexuality is but like women loving women everywhere but this book has like a weird pacing issue because there's sort of like a deadline thing happening with this book and we spent a lot of the book with them just like waiting around and then everything is crushed into the very end and it's like I get why you did that to like add the suspense like they couldn't actually be doing this thing that they were doing in a month because it didn't take them a month um but they made the pace and kind of wonky and I really liked sort of like the gothic horrory elements of the house in the first book and like the Apothecary and the poisons and all this stuff and we didn't so much get that in this this is much more Greek myth stuff and like hero's journey questing type stuff which is fun but I just really loved the like cozy mystery sort of practical magicy type house stuff in the first book and I just wish we had sort of more of that so the pacing was like a little wonky but I really like this duology I still gave this three 3.5 Stars the first book I gave a four star so if you're interested in some like fun y a that has Greek mythology with like a new Twist on it has nature magic has poison like witchy kind of stuff this is a good vibe then I read under the spring door by TJ cloon this is a standalone contemporary fantasy follows our main character who's kind of an awful person I mean very much an awful person and he dies at like the beginning of the story and then he is taking sort of like this way place as a ghost to potentially move on and so he meets this little sort of like found family at this sort of like Way Station between life and death and has to sort of figure out like sort of Life Beyond and all of that this does have an achillion relationship in it as well and it does cover some pretty heavy themes but in a way that is very respectful um and still feels kind of cozy but just know that there are some dark heavy themes in here because we're dealing with death so there is death and that includes murder suicide child death and then has some like sexual harassment lightly and um covering with like panic attacks and things in here as well so I really love the setting because I love a between life and death story you know characters that deal with the dead things like that I really liked our characters and our side characters not as much as the side characters in um house in the Cerulean sea which is not affiliated with this in any way um it's just another book by him um but I still like your little found family and I just liked the themes of death death as a bureaucracy because it's almost like a business side of death here um and sort of what TJ cloon has been doing with like magical bureaucracy stuff like he kind of has that theme in place with a lot of his books now and just the way that like someone would react to different types of death like suicide you know like being murdered things like that I just like those kinds of death exploration things there were things about sort of like the pacing uh this is again very cozy so it's a little bit of a slower story but like I mentioned our main character is the worst like a truly bad person uh at the beginning of the story and we have the man that falls in love with him and they fall in love with each other um kind of see his Potential from the beginning and I'm like literally how uh it's not like a magical thing it's just like oh you contain multitudes and it's like a game doesn't he's awful uh so that was a little bit unbelievable for me and I don't always love the like terrible person manic pixie dream boy sunshine cinnamon roll relationship but TJ Clune tends to do that a lot of his books so if you liked his other book you probably would like this achillion relationship too I pulled for them and for a main character more towards the end um and but I don't necessarily feel like there was a good transition for him becoming a better person is kind of like how did this happen um but you kind of know that's how it's gonna go with the story like this anyway a very sort of like Christmas Carol E I guess um but I yeah this was fine um I gave this a four so like again more than fine for me uh but then like the characterization stuff was just like fine for me but the like themes exploration and the atmosphere and stuff World building stuff that was great I loved it then I read Pray by Rachel Vincent which is the fourth book in the shifter Series this has been an ongoing series of mine in urban fantasy series that I've been reading it follows werecats and the werecat Society is a very misogynistic society and faith is our main character is one of the only female werecats like in the area there's a genetic thing where they're not very common and so we followed like her and her story and in the first book she's like coming back from like basically going to college and getting away from the pack um and it's getting reintegrated back into like pack Dynamic stuff it's not a pack it's called a pride anyway so this is the fourth book I can't go into much but just know in this series overall there are burgers or misogyny a constant threat of rape because the men cats always want to like take the ladies to make babies with them because they're so rare and just like sexual harassment and things also like torture and Gore which is pretty prevalent in urban fantasy anyway but just in case you don't know that and I've decided to give up on this series I gave this book a two star uh this has been a wild ride of a series for me I love the first book when I read it I gave it a 5 out of 5 Stars the second book really taint for me and I think I gave that one a two star third book was like a three it was starting to kind of feel better for me and then this book was a two again it's just very repetitive with the things that happen and our main character doesn't learn like at all and all of her problems are pretty much caused by her there is a love triangle that is not explored enough and it's a very early 2000s love triangle where you know who she's going to end up with um it's like so obvious and like that Dynamic is kind of toxic the other guy I actually like way more um and I think is a better fit for her and there's like no chance um and there's just a lot of like pointless filler in these books so much of these books are like us hearing what the characters are like eating and like sitting around and talking and a lot of the like Side characters I couldn't tell you anything about them they feel like just cardboard cutouts of people in the background I just don't care so I decided to dnf this I read the synopsis for the next two books and I was like this is not gonna be a fun time for me this is just not the urban fantasy for me so I want to spend more time reading other Urban fantasies and I wasn't doing that because I wanted to finish the ongoing series I had and this is one of them so I'm like nope I will put this aside not for me and read some other hopefully better for me urban fantasy so yeah two stars then I read two series or like one series I finished and another series I continue so I'm gonna talk about them in tandem although I read them like every other book but I'm just I'm going to talk about them all as one so first I read books two and three of the Kate Daniels series by Alana Andrews all of these urban fantasy series by the way I read for a shift-a-thon which is the readathon for urban fantasy and paranormal romance that Matthew and I did this month so I read three books during shift-a-thon which is great but magic Burns is book two this has triggers for Gore sexual harassment death of a parent and some self-harm and then magic strikes is book three this has triggers for cannibalism Gore and rape as well most Urban fantasies like I said earlier are gonna be gory so this urban fantasy series takes place in magical Atlanta where sometimes magic is up so magical things work and creatures are more prevalent and things like that and sometimes Tech is up and that means like cars and telephones and guns and things work and this is constantly fluctuating I would say magic is probably more prevalent but it goes back and forth and our main character of Kate Daniels is something Supernatural e we don't quite know this is a very slow burn meta part of the plot but she also works for sort of like a paranormal task force she was previously like a bounty hunter mercenary um and she's just an all-around badass and I love her but in the first book she got sort of involved in the politics of the world which involved the pack which are all the shifters in the world the people who are like the necromancers that actually control vampires like vampires aren't their own sentient things they are controlled by necromancers and then I feel like there's other subgroups but yeah it's like every paranormal creature is present in here and I love these I love the continued evolution of this story I love uh there's some campiness to it which I really dig um Kate holds her own a lot which I really enjoy her mouth can get her in trouble sometimes but I love it like she can really back it up um she is very loyal to people and she's constantly fearing that like she's gonna put people in danger and then there's this evolution of this like very very very slow burn romance with potentially the leader of heck who is a where lion um and they really go head to head like he still has some alpha male right but she can give it back in a way that is very satisfying um and that's like a slow burn thing going on that I like really dig uh and yeah it's just a very fun Series so I'm looking forward to the evolution of this I believe there's nine books so I've read about a third of them so far and I will continue to read these they I fly through them so fast um this is the kind of urban fantasy that I really enjoy of like taking place in a city with a badass usually female character I tend to only read urban fantasy with like women and like every kind of paranormal creature being explored so yeah it's awesome it was really good I really like it then I finished up my reread of the important original trilogy by Garth Nick so the first book Is sabriel I reread that a number of times but I haven't reread lyriel or of course in since the first time I read them in high school I decided to listen to them on audiobook and they're narrated by Tim Curry and I highly recommend it because they're amazing and his narration is so good the rest of the books in the series these are first written in like the early 2000s and then Garth Nix in like 2014 wrote like a prequel and then 2016 wrote like a continuation of this and then he's also written another prequel since as well so I still consider this just like the trilogy and then those are companions to it even though it's still all in the same series but sadly Tim Curry does not narrate the rest of those so will I continue on I don't know because I want to listen to them with his voice this takes place in the world where there are people like magic users called abortions and they are essentially necromancers that put the dead to rest they use a kind of magic that's using bells and each Bell does a different thing um involving the dead and they can go into death which is like a river sticks type situation to like control the dead call the dead things like that and so our main characters in this series like are abortions or abortions of waiting there's also other types of magical people as well um in lyrial and of course and we learn more about the Claire which are basically like Sears um so they see the future and things and lyriel is is someone who lives in the Claire's glacier to live up in a glacier and wants to be like is a clear and like is waiting for the site to come and things like that and so then we follow her from there lyriel has triggers for suicidal ideation and just like some death stuff like there's dead creatures necromancers some possession type stuff that's more prevalent in abortion with the possession and like animal death and things um so it is a darker world but this is a y a series but why a crossover this is like why a before y a was like a very defined genre and um definitely can be good for like adults or teens um but this just does so much with the world the world is like my favorite part of this this is one of my favorite worlds I'm getting when my tattoos is going to be based on this series because I love it so much there's different types of magic there's like free magic and Charter magic and like so it's sort of like good and bad but like very sort of morally gray there there's magical talking Animal Companions which are fantastic um and just like all of like the technology challenging and stuff is really cool and it's just like such a cool world the villains are really scary it's creepy um I love it it's just a darker but not too scary-ish World um I do still stand by the fact that sabriel which is the first book is my favorite book in the series I was not wrong as a teenager to think that literally was my second favorite and of course is my third favorite none of them are bad though I read both of these four stars I like a little bit more of this one and some of the exploration that we get of different parts of the world in this one that I don't really feel like we necessarily get in the third book and um there are other characters that we follow besides lyriel uh there is a character of samoth and he's just kind of annoying and I don't like him but yeah if you haven't read this series it's a classic I highly recommend it um so well written and like I said Tim Curry narrates audiobooks so they're great but I'm really glad to finally reread that series because I've reread sabriel like four times and I hadn't reread these since I originally read them which I don't know how I did because High School me would have been spooked by those and I still I got through them uh so I don't know how I did it because even me now was like you're a little spooky you're in there it's scary yeah overall really good sort of like spooky prequel season um run a lot of like again darker spookier sort of like Gothic things um to warm up for spooky season so I will be continuing the spooky reads this month as well so comment below let me know what you read this month and if you read any of these books and what you thought of them thank you all for watching and I'll see all of you guys soon byehey guys it's Sam and this is my September wrap up September went by so fast it was also incredibly long some of these books I felt like I read months ago so if any of these synopsis don't come to me super quickly it's because it feels like I read them three months ago it's wild then I read 10 books this month I was trying to finish an 11th but it was Babel by rfcon which I'll be talking about tomorrow here for book club uh I have a little more a little less than half to read still this is one of the only times I've actually like been right under the limit with book club so 10 books very exciting but top books I don't think any new like favorite favorites like a lot of really good books but none that were like blowing me out of the water necessarily it's like sort of one exception we'll get to that first I finished up the burning God by RF Quang this is the final book in the poppy War series I've already done a full review on this and a discussion so I'll link that on the screen so obviously since it's a finale I can't go into much detail but this was good it I liked the first half of this more than the second half so I really feel like this book could have been split into two books because there was things that were happening that I feel like could have been one book each so I kind of wish we would have had more time with more build up with certain things I still continue to feel like I really love Rin as a main character but a lot of the side characters just kind of fall flat for me in this series don't seem to have a ton of impact and the series is much more about like themes and things and the themes of war and how pointless War can be and people that are raised sort of during war and for war and all of that kind of stuff the series continues to be very brutal and the ending I think fit although wasn't really necessarily satisfactory for me either like I said I have more of my thoughts in my review but as with all the books in the series do be worn there's a ton of triggers or War xenophobia animal death rape torture racism sexism all of it if you've gotten to this book you probably know that by now but as far as a ranking of the books in the series I would say the poppy war is still my favorite that was the one that I rated 5 out of 5 Stars this one is like a 4.5 it's my second favorite and then the drag Republic is my third favorite with four stars I then read the bone Shard Daughter by Andrea Stewart this is our seasonal book club pick for patreon so every season we read a book together and then I do a live show just for patrons and we discuss the book and we also talk about a Discord throughout the time that we're reading it this is the first book and I believe an adult fantasy Trilogy thoughts main character Lin who's supposed to be the emperor's Heir but years ago she had a disease it apparently wiped out most of her memories and her father will not give her like the air dumb until she sort of proves herself and she wants access to this bone Shard magic that he has because that is kind of how they rule the kingdom and like where all the power comes from the synopsis makes it sound like we're only following her we're actually following a couple of other characters as well we're also following a man in search of his wife who was taken on this ship somewhere women disappear a lot uh in this world and are like taken for reasons unknown and so he's trying to find her and he sort of gets wrapped up in some of this stuff going on in the Empire and then there are two other characters one who wants to sort of lead a rebellion and the other one who is sort of a part of the uh nobility class um and they are in a Sapphic relationship and so we follow them as well so there's a lot of pieces moving here and honestly I really wish the book kind of just stuck to Lynn our main character I found her kind of the most interesting I do really like the guy as well the more that we got of him but ultimately I felt like Lynn's story was much more interesting and especially the two other women really sure why we were following them a ton we got some supplemental information from them but like nothing that I don't think could have been added in with jovis who's the guy's POV if his story um so yeah there's drag a little bit for me I felt like my wasn't necessarily carrying a ton there are some interesting things about the bone Shard magic and the twists which some of them I didn't see coming some of them I didn't quite um and I'm intrigued enough so I think continue the series but I gave this 3.5 out of 5 stars like 3 3.5 um and I feel like if I don't read the second book soon I will lose interest in this like this parts of it are already slipping from my mind so I liked this but didn't love it there are triggers in here for blood death child death body horror and animal death so it is a little bit darker but I will say it was written sort of in like a y8-ish style so I feel like this might be kind of good for like a crossover book if you're wanting to get into darker things but you used to reading more y a then I listened to Mexican Gothic by Sylvia Moreno Garcia on audiobook I read a lot of really dark things this month I have a lot of triggers in them so this has triggers for rape racism Eugenics suicide gun violence body horror and I believe self-harm a lot we basically follow this uh wealthier woman from a Mexican family living in Mexico City and her cousin recently ish got married to this like mysterious European white dude and she writes this very concerning letter home and so our main character's dad sends her and it's like hey see what's going on with your sister like what the heck she gets to this house sets out in the like Mexican Countryside that is taken over by this family this white family and she's like something is not right is the house haunted she starts kind of like hallucinating and seeing things and it just basically like the story is like The Haunting is colonialism right like it's like white supremacy is the haunting is like sort of the themes of this but it's sort of unclear it's a lot of sort of like magical realism-esque stuff going on but there is like this paranormal element to it that I will not obviously tell you like what exactly it is but thematically it's very much like the the scary thing is racism which is very true and it's just very creepy and Insidious I will say I did not love the audiobook for this I wonder if I would like this slightly more if I didn't read it on audio the problem was is the narrator used the same voice for all of the people in the house that were like European um so like the men and women sounded the exact same um I had a hard time distinguishing who was talking unless they were saying who their names were it made it hard to kind of connect the story uh but like if you want something creepy but not too scary like I this is horror but like horror light like I can't do super scary stuff but can I do like creepy sort of sentient maybe houses like again we're not really clear what's going on with the house uh yeah cool exploration of themes that aren't necessarily like Paranormal themes but have some paranormal to explore like really serious scenes of like racism and colonization stuff like that yes um so yeah if you're not too into spooky I think you can probably do this and I do want to read more of her books that are spookier um I've already read gods of Jane Shadow which is not spooky I mean I guess it could be considered spooky in its own right but it's not really but I do want to read the one with the vampires um that she has and uh next month we're going to be reading Dr moreau's daughter for book club um so I'm interested to see more of her like Gothic horror stuff that she does I gave this three stars Ben read this wicked Fate by Kalin bayram which is the second book in the this poison heart duology this takes place after the events of the first book where our main character Brie discovers that her family her birth family left her their family home she has uh this like nature magic where she can work really well with plants and stuff and also is not affected by poisons her and her adoptive moms go to this house and kind of start to unravel this mystery like about her family and things like that so this has elements of like Greek mythology and things and like a reworking of like Greek myth obviously as people of color which is like a fun reinvigorating way to like be telling some of these myths and things like it gives it a new life in a way this does have triggers for death of a parent just like grief stuff in general this book I didn't like as much as the first book sadly um what's great about it is like this is incredibly sophic uh incredibly mostly bisexual I would say I'm not sure if every character like says what their sexuality is but like women loving women everywhere but this book has like a weird pacing issue because there's sort of like a deadline thing happening with this book and we spent a lot of the book with them just like waiting around and then everything is crushed into the very end and it's like I get why you did that to like add the suspense like they couldn't actually be doing this thing that they were doing in a month because it didn't take them a month um but they made the pace and kind of wonky and I really liked sort of like the gothic horrory elements of the house in the first book and like the Apothecary and the poisons and all this stuff and we didn't so much get that in this this is much more Greek myth stuff and like hero's journey questing type stuff which is fun but I just really loved the like cozy mystery sort of practical magicy type house stuff in the first book and I just wish we had sort of more of that so the pacing was like a little wonky but I really like this duology I still gave this three 3.5 Stars the first book I gave a four star so if you're interested in some like fun y a that has Greek mythology with like a new Twist on it has nature magic has poison like witchy kind of stuff this is a good vibe then I read under the spring door by TJ cloon this is a standalone contemporary fantasy follows our main character who's kind of an awful person I mean very much an awful person and he dies at like the beginning of the story and then he is taking sort of like this way place as a ghost to potentially move on and so he meets this little sort of like found family at this sort of like Way Station between life and death and has to sort of figure out like sort of Life Beyond and all of that this does have an achillion relationship in it as well and it does cover some pretty heavy themes but in a way that is very respectful um and still feels kind of cozy but just know that there are some dark heavy themes in here because we're dealing with death so there is death and that includes murder suicide child death and then has some like sexual harassment lightly and um covering with like panic attacks and things in here as well so I really love the setting because I love a between life and death story you know characters that deal with the dead things like that I really liked our characters and our side characters not as much as the side characters in um house in the Cerulean sea which is not affiliated with this in any way um it's just another book by him um but I still like your little found family and I just liked the themes of death death as a bureaucracy because it's almost like a business side of death here um and sort of what TJ cloon has been doing with like magical bureaucracy stuff like he kind of has that theme in place with a lot of his books now and just the way that like someone would react to different types of death like suicide you know like being murdered things like that I just like those kinds of death exploration things there were things about sort of like the pacing uh this is again very cozy so it's a little bit of a slower story but like I mentioned our main character is the worst like a truly bad person uh at the beginning of the story and we have the man that falls in love with him and they fall in love with each other um kind of see his Potential from the beginning and I'm like literally how uh it's not like a magical thing it's just like oh you contain multitudes and it's like a game doesn't he's awful uh so that was a little bit unbelievable for me and I don't always love the like terrible person manic pixie dream boy sunshine cinnamon roll relationship but TJ Clune tends to do that a lot of his books so if you liked his other book you probably would like this achillion relationship too I pulled for them and for a main character more towards the end um and but I don't necessarily feel like there was a good transition for him becoming a better person is kind of like how did this happen um but you kind of know that's how it's gonna go with the story like this anyway a very sort of like Christmas Carol E I guess um but I yeah this was fine um I gave this a four so like again more than fine for me uh but then like the characterization stuff was just like fine for me but the like themes exploration and the atmosphere and stuff World building stuff that was great I loved it then I read Pray by Rachel Vincent which is the fourth book in the shifter Series this has been an ongoing series of mine in urban fantasy series that I've been reading it follows werecats and the werecat Society is a very misogynistic society and faith is our main character is one of the only female werecats like in the area there's a genetic thing where they're not very common and so we followed like her and her story and in the first book she's like coming back from like basically going to college and getting away from the pack um and it's getting reintegrated back into like pack Dynamic stuff it's not a pack it's called a pride anyway so this is the fourth book I can't go into much but just know in this series overall there are burgers or misogyny a constant threat of rape because the men cats always want to like take the ladies to make babies with them because they're so rare and just like sexual harassment and things also like torture and Gore which is pretty prevalent in urban fantasy anyway but just in case you don't know that and I've decided to give up on this series I gave this book a two star uh this has been a wild ride of a series for me I love the first book when I read it I gave it a 5 out of 5 Stars the second book really taint for me and I think I gave that one a two star third book was like a three it was starting to kind of feel better for me and then this book was a two again it's just very repetitive with the things that happen and our main character doesn't learn like at all and all of her problems are pretty much caused by her there is a love triangle that is not explored enough and it's a very early 2000s love triangle where you know who she's going to end up with um it's like so obvious and like that Dynamic is kind of toxic the other guy I actually like way more um and I think is a better fit for her and there's like no chance um and there's just a lot of like pointless filler in these books so much of these books are like us hearing what the characters are like eating and like sitting around and talking and a lot of the like Side characters I couldn't tell you anything about them they feel like just cardboard cutouts of people in the background I just don't care so I decided to dnf this I read the synopsis for the next two books and I was like this is not gonna be a fun time for me this is just not the urban fantasy for me so I want to spend more time reading other Urban fantasies and I wasn't doing that because I wanted to finish the ongoing series I had and this is one of them so I'm like nope I will put this aside not for me and read some other hopefully better for me urban fantasy so yeah two stars then I read two series or like one series I finished and another series I continue so I'm gonna talk about them in tandem although I read them like every other book but I'm just I'm going to talk about them all as one so first I read books two and three of the Kate Daniels series by Alana Andrews all of these urban fantasy series by the way I read for a shift-a-thon which is the readathon for urban fantasy and paranormal romance that Matthew and I did this month so I read three books during shift-a-thon which is great but magic Burns is book two this has triggers for Gore sexual harassment death of a parent and some self-harm and then magic strikes is book three this has triggers for cannibalism Gore and rape as well most Urban fantasies like I said earlier are gonna be gory so this urban fantasy series takes place in magical Atlanta where sometimes magic is up so magical things work and creatures are more prevalent and things like that and sometimes Tech is up and that means like cars and telephones and guns and things work and this is constantly fluctuating I would say magic is probably more prevalent but it goes back and forth and our main character of Kate Daniels is something Supernatural e we don't quite know this is a very slow burn meta part of the plot but she also works for sort of like a paranormal task force she was previously like a bounty hunter mercenary um and she's just an all-around badass and I love her but in the first book she got sort of involved in the politics of the world which involved the pack which are all the shifters in the world the people who are like the necromancers that actually control vampires like vampires aren't their own sentient things they are controlled by necromancers and then I feel like there's other subgroups but yeah it's like every paranormal creature is present in here and I love these I love the continued evolution of this story I love uh there's some campiness to it which I really dig um Kate holds her own a lot which I really enjoy her mouth can get her in trouble sometimes but I love it like she can really back it up um she is very loyal to people and she's constantly fearing that like she's gonna put people in danger and then there's this evolution of this like very very very slow burn romance with potentially the leader of heck who is a where lion um and they really go head to head like he still has some alpha male right but she can give it back in a way that is very satisfying um and that's like a slow burn thing going on that I like really dig uh and yeah it's just a very fun Series so I'm looking forward to the evolution of this I believe there's nine books so I've read about a third of them so far and I will continue to read these they I fly through them so fast um this is the kind of urban fantasy that I really enjoy of like taking place in a city with a badass usually female character I tend to only read urban fantasy with like women and like every kind of paranormal creature being explored so yeah it's awesome it was really good I really like it then I finished up my reread of the important original trilogy by Garth Nick so the first book Is sabriel I reread that a number of times but I haven't reread lyriel or of course in since the first time I read them in high school I decided to listen to them on audiobook and they're narrated by Tim Curry and I highly recommend it because they're amazing and his narration is so good the rest of the books in the series these are first written in like the early 2000s and then Garth Nix in like 2014 wrote like a prequel and then 2016 wrote like a continuation of this and then he's also written another prequel since as well so I still consider this just like the trilogy and then those are companions to it even though it's still all in the same series but sadly Tim Curry does not narrate the rest of those so will I continue on I don't know because I want to listen to them with his voice this takes place in the world where there are people like magic users called abortions and they are essentially necromancers that put the dead to rest they use a kind of magic that's using bells and each Bell does a different thing um involving the dead and they can go into death which is like a river sticks type situation to like control the dead call the dead things like that and so our main characters in this series like are abortions or abortions of waiting there's also other types of magical people as well um in lyrial and of course and we learn more about the Claire which are basically like Sears um so they see the future and things and lyriel is is someone who lives in the Claire's glacier to live up in a glacier and wants to be like is a clear and like is waiting for the site to come and things like that and so then we follow her from there lyriel has triggers for suicidal ideation and just like some death stuff like there's dead creatures necromancers some possession type stuff that's more prevalent in abortion with the possession and like animal death and things um so it is a darker world but this is a y a series but why a crossover this is like why a before y a was like a very defined genre and um definitely can be good for like adults or teens um but this just does so much with the world the world is like my favorite part of this this is one of my favorite worlds I'm getting when my tattoos is going to be based on this series because I love it so much there's different types of magic there's like free magic and Charter magic and like so it's sort of like good and bad but like very sort of morally gray there there's magical talking Animal Companions which are fantastic um and just like all of like the technology challenging and stuff is really cool and it's just like such a cool world the villains are really scary it's creepy um I love it it's just a darker but not too scary-ish World um I do still stand by the fact that sabriel which is the first book is my favorite book in the series I was not wrong as a teenager to think that literally was my second favorite and of course is my third favorite none of them are bad though I read both of these four stars I like a little bit more of this one and some of the exploration that we get of different parts of the world in this one that I don't really feel like we necessarily get in the third book and um there are other characters that we follow besides lyriel uh there is a character of samoth and he's just kind of annoying and I don't like him but yeah if you haven't read this series it's a classic I highly recommend it um so well written and like I said Tim Curry narrates audiobooks so they're great but I'm really glad to finally reread that series because I've reread sabriel like four times and I hadn't reread these since I originally read them which I don't know how I did because High School me would have been spooked by those and I still I got through them uh so I don't know how I did it because even me now was like you're a little spooky you're in there it's scary yeah overall really good sort of like spooky prequel season um run a lot of like again darker spookier sort of like Gothic things um to warm up for spooky season so I will be continuing the spooky reads this month as well so comment below let me know what you read this month and if you read any of these books and what you thought of them thank you all for watching and I'll see all of you guys soon bye\n"