What have you recently finished reading?

Other than my ongoing Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation manhua read, the last thing I finished was Nicholas Jubber’s Monsterland, which was not quite my thing. It was much more into the travelogue aspect than I was, and while I understand that it added “authenticity” and “local flavour”, and was genuinely a good way for the author to gather information from the people the customs actually belong to… it’s not something I enjoy for its own sake. I did like the folklore it picked, though, and the fact that it went on to discuss modern monsters.

As far as MDZS goes, we just had the flashback about the destruction of Jiang Cheng’s golden core, and in the present we’re heading to the Burial Mounds. Lan Xichen stubbornly believes in Jin Guangyao, and my heart hurts already, since I know the story now.

What are you currently reading?

I just started on Julie Leong’s The Keeper of Magical Things, which is fun so far, though I’m not very far into it. I really enjoyed The Teller of Small Fortunes, and I’m enjoying that the protagonist of this one also has a magic that seems quite small. I’m wondering how Leong is going to play with that, and hoping that it’s a similarly interesting take.

As ever, I have a few other books on the go at once, including Alice Roberts’ Domination, with which I’m going relatively slowly. I keep losing the thread… I like her work, but the topic just doesn’t interest me, sadly.

I’m also still reading Agnes Aubert’s Mystical Cat Shelter, or more accurately, I still need to get back into reading it. It’s fun! I’m enjoying it! But I put it down for a bit and then life intervened a bit, and now I need to find my way back into it.

What will you be reading next?

I want to keep on with rereading Nghi Vo’s Singing Hills books, since I have an ARC of the new one, so I’ll be rereading The Brides of High Hill next.

Other than that, I need to really get to work on reading the books I lined up for Book Spin Bingo this month. Maybe I’ll finally start on KJ Charles’ How to Fake it in Society, even if I’m already cringing at the idea of the fallout of the characters’ bad choices already laid out in the blurb. I know I’ll enjoy it when I get started, and that Charles likely handles it more subtly than I’m imagining, buuuut seeing the probable third act breakup coming from this far away is a bit of a kicker to me.