It’s time again to ask ourselves the three W’s:
What if gods wandered among us?
What if they were reincarnated every time they died?
What if you were one?

Wait, no, that’s not right. We ask these three W’s:
What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you’ll read next?

WWW Wednesday is a weekly meme hosted by Sam @ Taking on a World of Words.

       

Forest of Souls by Lori M. Lee
★★★★★ || Goodreads
This book was … phew. I can’t do it justice, so you’ll have to check out my review (which is going up today as my part in the blog tour). This world is all dark and wonderful and terrifying, and I just absolutely loved it. The focus is also on sibling bonds and, in a way, found family, because these girls aren’t related by blood but they chose each other, and I just love the focus of this. I don’t even know what else to say, honestly, other than read it? And may I have another, please?

Category Five by Ann Dávila Cardinal
DNF @ 25% || Goodreads
Okay, so, I didn’t realize that Five Midnights was actually book one of this series, so that’s partly me bad and partly the author/publisher, because it’s not marked on Goodreads as being part of a series. This book does a pretty good job of summing up what happened in Five Midnights, but it definitely feels like a sequel, where the reader is expected to have some amount of cursory knowledge going in. This book started out with a bang, and I thought I was going to love it because I was immediately hooked. But then things started slowing down with the paranormal, and what really did it for me, though, was I just hated the characters. There’s a romance, and maybe it was established in the first book, but I’m not buying it here. I mean, Javier tells Lupe to stay away from one of the guys at the hotel, but she doesn’t ask the totally normal (and somewhat expected) thing you would from your partner, “Oh, why? What’d he do?” No, she instead flips out about Javier controlling her and not trusting her and immediately questions their relationship. The book deals with post-Hurricane Maria Puerto Rico, which is an important topic, but in the part I read, there was some brief mention of what Javier went through, but mostly, the conclusion is just that the hurricane made him angry. It changed him. This is always said in a negative way, almost in a, “Why’s he so angry all the time?” kind of tone. What really made me set it down, though, was because Lupe is just … awful. I’m sorry, she’s horrible. They’re talking about Hurricane Maria, and Lupe says she knows what he went through because her uncle was there and they were worried about him, and Javier (who is clearly suffering PTSD) snaps and says she has no idea, because sitting safe in the US and worrying about family isn’t the same as living it. All of this culminating in Lupe crying, because somehow she’s the victim here because he hurt her feelings and so she questions their relationship, and I just … I can’t. There were so many instances where Lupe was clearly out of touch and elitist, and this was just the final straw for me.

The Phantom’s Curse by Shelley Wilson
DNF @ 15% || Goodreads
I gave this one the minimum 15% I try to give before I DNF anything, but just … nothing happened. There was a lot of exposition and talk about other things breaking up the action in the present, which just wasn’t enough to hold my attention, since it was basically the protagonist preparing for her debutante dinner. What it boiled down to was I felt completely lost in this world, no idea what was going on for a lot of things, and the things I did understand, I just didn’t care about. I’m obviously not the audience for this one.

This Eternity of Masks and Shadows by Karsten Knight
Status: 10%

In a city of gods and mortals, secrets never die.

The gods walk among us. Some lurk in the shadows, masquerading as mortals; others embrace their celebrity status, launching careers from Hollywood to Capitol Hill.

One of them just murdered Cairn Delacroix’s mother.

As Cairn sifts through the rubble, she uncovers a conspiracy two decades in the making: a cursed island, the fellowship of gods who journeyed there, and the unspeakable act that intertwined their fates. One by one, the members of that voyage are dying, and Cairn’s investigations land her in the crosshairs of the rogue goddess responsible.

With the help of Nanook, a polar bear god turned detective, Cairn descends into Boston’s underworld of supernatural crime and political aspiration. To avenge her mother and unmask her assassin, she’ll first have to reckon with a gut-wrenching secret that will rewrite the life she thought she knew.

The beginning of this started a little rocky for me, and I’m still not entirely sure what to think. I’m not feeling Cairn’s storyline yet, even though there’s a F/F relationship right in the opening that’s so sweet, it’s guaranteed to give you cavities. The brief chapter I’ve read about the gods, though? Phew, yes, it was so good and packed full of action. I’m just concerned that Cairn’s story, which feels very much like traditional teen contemporary so far, will drag the action down. I’m still not very far in, so there’s definitely time for this to pick up. The timeline seemed a little wonky to me already, the way things were revealed kind of backwards and out of order, but I am 100% here for the gods in this right now.

A Declaration of the Rights of Magicians by H. G. Parry
Status: 15%

It is the Age of Enlightenment — of new and magical political movements, from the necromancer Robespierre calling for revolution in France to the weather mage Toussaint L’Ouverture leading the slaves of Haiti in their fight for freedom, to the bold new Prime Minister William Pitt weighing the legalization of magic among commoners in Britain and abolition throughout its colonies overseas.

But amidst all of the upheaval of the early modern world, there is an unknown force inciting all of human civilization into violent conflict. And it will require the combined efforts of revolutionaries, magicians, and abolitionists to unmask this hidden enemy before the whole world falls to darkness and chaos.

I really enjoyed The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep, so I’ve been looking forward to this book pretty much since I finished that one. This book opens with a bang, and it immediately grabbed my interest … but then it kind of fizzled. I absolutely love the idea of mixing history and magic, but so far, what I’m getting is more history than magic, which is a bummer. I like history, don’t get me wrong, but there’s an awful lot of talking and exposition and not much actually happening. This book’s pretty meaty, and 15% isn’t that far into it at all, so I’m hoping it’ll turn around. I’m definitely interested in the premise, but I’m not yet seeing how the four different point of views are going to meet up, because keeping them all straight and remembering everyone is getting a little difficult.

           

Unsurprisingly, and basically as I expected, The Obsidian Tower is still here. Because Declaration is so long, I didn’t figure I’d get the chance to start this one this week.

I want to try to squeeze in a few shorter reads in the meantime, and The Dark Tide seemed like a perfect candidate. Something about luring men to be sacrificed seems oddly appealing to me. Hmm. Can’t quite put my finger on what it is, but I’m game. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I was also meant to read Night of the Dragon months ago when it came out, and I didn’t. I’ve been warned about the destruction of feels thing, and now seems like a good time where my feels can handle it. I’m also just really dying to know how this series ends (even if I don’t want it to end, and if I just never read this book then it’s never over, right?! Pretty sure that’s how it works.)

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