WWW Weds: Zoe Chant binge-reading

A weekly meme hosted by Sam at Taking on a World of Words.

I’m having a better week than last week.I’m keeping busy working on my piece for a romance anthology I was invited to be part of (tentative publication winter 2021). I’m also thinking of going back to Instacart. Without getting into too too many details, when I was in the midst of struggling with weird ideas and fixation back in 2020 and I pulled myself out of it for a few months, working a lot of shifts at Instacart kept me really busy and I enjoyed doing it. I also made pretty good money. I don’t have to talk to people much when I do Instacart shifts.

That’s my tentative plan right now: go back to working Instacart shifts to keep busy while I try to break into adjunct teaching.

Anyway, I didn’t read as much this week, but I did finish a couple of books.

What Did I Recently Finish Reading?

I took a break from this series for a while. Not because the books aren’t great, but I just have a lot of book FOMO and jump around a lot.

This book has such an exciting climax. It’s like a typical Western showdown in the town square.

I loved that the female character is the hero. The male lead isn’t able to do much because he’s locked up in a jail cell. But there is still a happy ending, because the badass heroine saves the day (all while cursing up a storm and snapping at everybody-I absolutely love how much of a curmudgeon she is).

I also finished this collection of romance shorts. This is set in the Shifting Sands universe. Zoe Chant has this whole world of shifters, with all the stories overlapping and characters making cameos in other characters’ stories.

Some of the stories were better than others. My least favorite was the story with Scarlet. It wasn’t a romance and it made no sense. It was so short and had no damn plot.

Scarlet is playing with kittens. Then she finds out some gazelle shifter has ended up in a mental institution. Then she thinks about how she’s horny and lonely and then goes to sleep.

Just…what?

Of course, I saw Scarlet make appearances throughout all the other characters’ stories in this collection. I take it I’m supposed to be interested in her, because she’s the mysterious figure who runs the Shifting Sands resort? I could see that working, except the story was so short. The location never changes and basically nothing happens. It’s just one long scene of nothing.

And I have no idea who the gazelle character is.

Yes, Chant has all these books set in the same universe with tons of other Shifting Sands collections, but she also constantly bills her books as part of a series that can be read as standalones. So I read it as a standalone and was completely lost as to why I should care about this gazelle character. I wouldn’t have minded jumping in and figuring it out from context, except that the story didn’t go anywhere or have any resolution. There was what seemed like setup but then the story ended.

It was a frustrating and silly story that didn’t have any place in the collection.

What Am I Currently Reading?

I have a real problem…Zoe Chant is like my favorite thing right now. There’s something wrong with me.

Well, the Shifting Sands collection I had to buy. I saw it in the bookspry newsletter for 0.99. 99 cents for all these books! WHAT?! There are 3 full novels here, all set in the Shifting Sands universe.

Yes, I bought it and yes I will making a deep dive video on Zoe Chant books for my youtube channel. This is how I choose to spend my time.

After reading the graphic novel adaptation of ‘Heart of Darkness’ I was in a mood to explore some of Conrad’s other works. This is a collection of his most famous stories. These are adventure stories of sailing on tumultous seas and exploring islands and jungles. The settings range from Thailand to Africa to everywhere in between. What makes the stories all the more interesting is that Conrad was a sailor and (as men like him were called back in his day) a “gentleman adventurer.” He has been to all of the places described in his stories.

What Will I Read Next?

I am behind on so many arcs (months behind in some cases. Ah!). If i’m taking forever to read your arc, please know it’s probably not your book. It’s me and my mood reading and short attention span.

I’m not even gonna try to list out all the arcs I need to get into.

I’ve started accepting arcs by saying “I’d love to, but it might take me a VERY long time to get to it. Because I suck.”

Anyway that’s it for me!

What are you reading this week?