What Have You been Reading This May?

[Tony]

Peter Cawdron has been making a lot of his books free for limited periods during the lockdown period, which is kind of him. I decided to read one of those that I had grabbed off Amazon for free. I've started Xenophobia, which is a first contact story set in the modern day world.

[Andrea]

I had a tree fall on my power line leaving me without power for three days. Fortunately there were a lot of hours of sunlight, and a helpful neighbour passed a cable through their window to ours so we could run our fridge and even our router/modem so I could keep working on my laptop (otherwise would have had three impromptu vacation days from work since the office it out of bounds still!)

But that said, by quarter to 9 it was too dark to read a regular book so I pulled out my Kindle Fire, which I usually don't read because it is backlit and took advantage of that light and FINALLY finished reading The Prophecy by Jeffrey M. Poole which I read in small increments over several years (yes, years). It's not that it was so bad or anything, it wasn't great, but it's not terrible, it's just the heavy glowing tablet that kept me from reading it. But at long last, I'm done!

For the next few years? I picked one of those free World Book Day books from Amazon The Man Who Played with Fire: Stieg Larsson's Lost Files and the Hunt for an Assassin by Jan Stocklassa. But I have my power back now so I'm not even putting it on my currently reading list :) After all I'm probably about 5 pages in, I have a long way to go...

[NekroRider]

Finished a couple books since I last posted, one fantasy and one mystery.

The Demons Within by Ashe Armstrong which is the 3rd Grimluk book. Rated it 3.25/5 stars. Fun Lovecraftian fantasy in a western setting.

Also finished White Nights by Ann Cleeves, book 2 of the Shetland mystery series. Always enjoy these! Rated 3.5/5 stars.

Soon moving on to some historical fiction set in ancient Greece Killer of Men. This series will probably occupy me for the next month or so.

[Tony]

I finished Xenophobia. This is an excellent novel that handles first contact in a very believable way. The aliens are quite alien and humanity behaves the way that decades of Hollywood have taught us to act. 4.5/5

[Andrea]

Finished Missing, as I'd hoped it was fun and cute and sometimes silly and very enjoyable.

Now back to our teenage demi-gods and their great prophecy - The Mark of Athena by Rick Riordan which should also be fun and cute and sometimes silly and very enjoyable

[Tony]

I have started Planet of the Apes. Until this edition was released in 2011, I had never realised that the film was based on a book. And yes, that's how long it has been sitting in my TBR pile :)

[Audrey]

I spent most of the month on The Thousand Deaths of Ardor Benn. I am almost done re-reading Ender's Shadow. I finished an indie book (The Children of Abydos) that was pretty boring. I am starting Promise of Blood and Active Memory; may finish one of those by the end of the month.

[Cat]

I've finally had half a second to get back to reading some fantasy (baby has finally decided to start sleeping properly allowing my brain to sufficiently function to read and a chance to snatch some reading time, hooray)
So I've started with a re-read of The Wilful Princess and the Piebald Prince and loving it

[Andrea]

Tony wrote: "I have started Planet of the Apes. Until this edition was released in 2011, I had never realised that the film was based on a book. And yes, that's how long it has been sitting in m..."

I did not know it was based on a book till today :)

[Navi]

Recent reads in May that I highly recommend:

Crown of Feathers
Frankissstein: A Love Story
The Last Mortal Bond - recommend this trilogy as a whole!
The House in the Cerulean Sea

[Edmund]

Research. Snippets of mythological facts and figures. Feels like I'm back in school. LOL

I have a fantasy book release (the 8th of a series) due by the end of June.

[Mary]

Worlds of Wonder, Days of Judgment: Popular Religious Belief in Early New England by David D. Hall

[Andrea]

Finished the Powder Mage novella Servant of the Crown and started the next one Murder at the Kinnen Hotel by Brian McClellan. This is a short 50 page one about Adamat in his early career

[[deleted user]]

Although I really enjoyed Bennett's Divine Cities trilogy and the first book of his latest series, Foundryside, I was really disappointed in the 2nd book, Shorefall. It was like a Michael Bay movie, all action, explosions and chases of little interest. I was so uninterested it took me the entire month to finish this mere 500 page novel. I had plans to read more this month....

[Andrea]

Finished The Mark of Athena.

Since only a couple days left of the month I'll finish reading the second half of The Bone Collection by Kathy Reichs (it's a set of 4 novellas) before jumping into another full book.

[Mary]

Cloak of Ashes by Jonathan Moeller

[Kivrin]

I read The Death of Grass. A nice little apocalyptic tale written in the 50's. It's set in England when a virus begins to kill all the grasses on Earth (that's means corn, wheat, and all other edibles BTW). It was a good, quick read, and I liked how the author showed the characters' rapid moral changes as their lives grew more desperate. The women characters were not well done but it was the 50's, I guess.

[Tony]

I know it's now June (just) but the June topic hasn't started yet, so I'll list this here. I have finished Planet of the Apes. Reasonably well-written and I'm glad I have read it, but the film (the 1968 version) is too iconic for this to have any chance of replacing it as the "real" story - although there aren't that many differences.

[NekroRider]

On Saturday I finished Killer of Men by Christian Cameron (who writes fantasy like the awesome Traitor Son Cycle under Miles Cameron) and rated it 5/5. It was book 1 of the Long War historical fiction series set during the Greco-Persian wars. It was an extremely epic read!

I'm now reading the second book in the series, Marathon: Freedom or Death which starts off back in Plataea and Athens.