What have you recently finished reading?

One Night in Hartswood, by Emma Denny. It was… okay. There was nothing in it that I outright bounced off, other than the fairly genre-typical lack of communication/lying about identity, but I didn’t super click with it either. Sometimes that kind of predictability is comforting, but usually something else (like characters I adore) compensates for it to pull me in, and that didn’t seem to happen here for me.

What are you currently reading?

I’m in the midst of two books: Freya Marske’s Swordcrossed, and T. Kingfisher’s Paladin’s Faith. I haven’t totally gotten into the former yet, though there’s nothing so far to dislike beyond a worry that Luca’s lies are going to fuck things over in a way that I find both predictable and annoying.

As far as Paladin’s Faith goes, Kingfisher’s usual wit makes this fun, but I’m not sure about the match-up of Shane and Marguerite, or indeed about spending much time with this particular flavour of self-hating guilty paladin. All Kingfisher’s paladins seem to run basically the same software, and that can get frustrating.

What will you read next?

Volume four of Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation, pretty certainly. I was very tempted to start it already, but I’m trying to focus on finishing up my Book Spin Bingo reads first — especially since I have only two left to finish (the books I’m currently reading), so I’m really close to a blackout that isn’t super last minute, for once!

Anyway, I don’t adore MDZS as much as many seem to, but I’m having fun, and I kinda want to strike while the iron is hot after finishing volume three on Monday. But we’ll see!