My Ambitious Reading For May

Summary

In this episode, I discuss several fantasy books that I plan to read, including 'Mother of Death & Dawn' by Carissa Broadbent, 'The Glow of Everflame' by Penn Cole, 'When the Moon Hatched' by Sarah A. Parker, and 'The Touch of Darkness and A Game of Fate' by Scarlett Sinclair. I provide brief descriptions of each book and my initial impressions. I also mentions my preference for series and my excitement to finish some ongoing series.

Watch on YouTube: HERE

Takeaways

• Charity shares her ambitious reading goals for the month of May
• She discusses several fantasy books she plans to read and provides brief descriptions
• Charity expresses her excitement to finish ongoing series
• She mentions her preference for series and her interest in mythology retellings

Transcript

Charity (00:00.142)
Well, is this thing on?

Charity (00:06.062)
Hello readers, my name is Charity, the host of Booktrovert Reader podcast. I'm introverted, but willing to talk about fantasy books. On this podcast, I'll do book reviews, author interviews, and fantasy book discussions. Come join me every week as I explore new realms and talk to amazing people. Hi, I'm Charity, Booktrivert Reader, and I'm back. Yes, I am. I took a creative break. Let's just say April, probably I just left the internet a little bit, but.

I'm back now. I'm going to try to consistently post, but we'll see. We'll see. I'm very creative person and mood reader, blah, blah, blah, all that stuff. So that creative process is hard. I'm not going to lie, but here I am with my big books in May. Now I did post this on my Instagram recently and a friend of mine on on bookstagram was kind of commenting about how

If she read all these big books at the same time, she'll just get in a book slump and I'm like... I do too. But I am ambitious. I have some big goals. A lot of these books I'm either starting or I'm trying to finish the series and I'm really riding that wave right now. Let's get into that. If you're new to my channel, welcome. Thank you, reader, for being the reader that you are, stepping by my channel. And if you would want to keep following me on my shenanigans.

Please like and subscribe. I would love to have you continue to listen to my shenanigans and talk about fantasy books. That's what I love to do. So that said, now I started a series last year and I haven't finished it yet. And I just finished book two and I'm really determined to finish book three of the series for the month of May, which is the war of lost hearts by Carissa Broadbent.

I like this one just a lot because the main character, her culture is very suppressed just because of her being the Valtaine and she actually rises above being a slave, uses her powers and meets Max and Tereus. That's his name but he goes by Max and she meets him, falls in love. The second book is basically the involvement of her powers. I'm looking forward to three.

Charity (02:26.03)
The second one did leave me in a cliffhanger and it's very, a lot has happened in the second book. A new POV was introduced and I want to see how this ends because the Mother of Death and Dawn is the third book of this trilogy and I can't wait to finish it. It's just a big book. It has about 709 pages in this one, but I am looking forward to wrapping up on the story. Finally finished the series.

So the next one is a very new to me author that has been popping up on my social feeds this year, but I just, you know, I kind of held off. I bought the book and I just held off, you know, just the mood reader in me. I just wasn't really interested until I kept seeing on Facebook groups about how much they talked about it. And it is the spark of ever flame by Penn Cole. I did read the first book and I'm in love. I actually tabbed it and everything. You know, I love a book when I...

actually tab and highlight a book because I'm not planning on giving a book away. This is amazing. It's published by as Indy Finis, the author, main character Diem. And she's been taking this particular power to suppress these urges or these powers or anything like that. And there is this descended royalty, which they have powers and everything and they're considered above these humans.

There's a secret that she has that her mother has been trying to help her keep a secret away from the Descended Royalty. DM's mother just suddenly disappears and now that she's trying to figure things out as to why she was hiding these things and figure out who she is, where did she come from and all that stuff. So the first book left me in such a like, holy crap, what has just happened?

And so I'm going to be trying Glow of the Everflame, which is the second book in the series. And this has about four, 594 pages. So another big book. It does read very easily. So I'm very excited about this one. I love the story so far. And if you look at the artwork on the, on these pages, you can tell it's starting to evolve and tell a story. So I like it.

Charity (04:34.766)
so far because the story and the plot is evolving so I can't wait to read that one. So a new one that I have picked up that I've seen on bookstagram, I'm starting to notice a pattern that I'll see these books that I see consist - consistently a lot of people like always recommending and they're like read this so good and I'm like I hold off because if it's a popular book, a hyped book, I'm just like not jumping on that hype train pretty quickly.

But then eventually I do give in by, you know, peer pressure, FOMO, whatever you want to call it these days. And I'll eventually pick it up. So the one I'm currently reading that's going to be going into May is When the Moon Hatched by Sarah A. Parker. Now I am jumping into this. I have obviously I am still into this and it's done so far. This the way I can describe it, that this book is really geared towards a fantasy reader.

I am amazed that there's an index in here, there's pictures, there's a map. And one thing that a lot of people are very, you know, get really intimidated by is the index, the glossary, the pronunciations in the very beginning. And I love that. And I would just recommend if that intimidates you, just skip it. I would recommend just skip it because it's just, it's overwhelming information. And since you have no context as to what is happening in the story,

Just skip that part. And then as you read, if you come across something that you just don't understand or there's no pronunciations for it or no description as to why this certain thing is being introduced, then check the index. That's how I've been handling this book and I'm enjoying the story so much because I'll honestly tell you that when I first saw the index, I almost walked away. I was like, no, I'm not dealing with that. I'm not. That's just so overwhelming. But I'm glad I skipped that part.

The main character that's being introduced is Ruby and she is a pretty snarky, really gruesome female assassin that's being introduced and she has a soft side that you do get to see throughout the story and she is fighting for justice in her world which is, you know, basically the people that don't have elemental magic and they're poor, they're hungry, they're getting...

Charity (07:00.462)
They're basically treated as nothing and she's fighting for them. But she's also kind of being like the Batman of the story, which is, you know, at, you know, during, during her times of assassination, she is going out and taking out the, the people that are harming the innocent. And I really liked that because it just reminds me of Batman so much. And Batman's like my DC character, you know? So I just got introduced to another POV character and

There's not a lot of context of who this guy is, but if you actually look at the index, you kind of know who he is when you get. So there's like some ways and some forms there are spoilers within itself. And I was told, do not look at the family tree in the back. Apparently there's a family tree in the back and that will give you a spoiler. And I'm like itching to look, but I don't want the story ruined for me because I'm really liking this. She has a mouth of really bad mouth.

And it's always fun to see that snarky humor in the in the face of like her being persecuted or whatever the case may be. So I'm liking this so far. The book is pretty darn amazing. Next one, it's a urban fantasy that I've seen a few times and a lot of people recommend. And I know these are short books, technically, like 300, 400 page books. But I'm going to tackle this book series as a tandem read.

From what I understand this is a Hades and... Oh wow, Perphosthenes?

Let me see. Perf - Perf - Cephasine? Oh gosh, please don't hurt me. Uh, sometimes my tongue gets really twisted, but yeah, this is a retelling of the Greek gods and goddesses. And this one, The Touch of Darkness by Scarlett Sinclair, POV of Perseph -cine? Perf -cine? Oh my gosh, sorry. And this, the Game of Fate is in the Hades Pro Word of You. And if you read them in a tandem read, you kind of understand both perspectives at the same time.

Charity (09:05.966)
So if you are interested in that as well, I'll definitely link, I'll try to link at the bottom the tandem read of these books. You don't have to read them side by side, but I was kind of comparing my situation to reading Twilight and then I guess the next book. Oh, okay. No, I remember now. Twilight and Midnight Sun. What I did wrong with that is that...

I read them back to back, like I read all of Twilight and then I read all of Midnight Sun and I was burned out on that perspective because it felt like I was reading verbatim of that book. I decided I'm gonna do this so I don't have to like feel like I'm rereading a book per se and just try seeing if I like the tandem read at all. I'm gonna give it a try, give it a go.

reviews on this one, but I love the mythology retellings and looking forward to that. So yeah.

Charity (10:17.038)
So yeah, that's my stack. I don't know if I'll be able to accomplish this. It is a pretty big stack of books to read. I'm not an incredibly fast reader, only because I only have a certain amount of time I can read a day and I just can't sit for hours and hours to read a book nonstop because, you know, I like TV, I like games and I like other things, you know? So in life, I gotta eat, sleep.

So I am looking forward to finishing some series, continue on some series and let me know in the comments below if there's a series that you're working on that you're excited about and I can't wait to talk to you again readers. Bye.

Charity (11:02.83)
Thank you readers for listening to my podcast on fantasy books. I hope you're enjoying the content and finding it helpful in discovering new books to read. If you have a moment, please consider leaving a review on your favorite podcast platform. Also, don't forget to follow me on Instagram at BooktravertReader to stay updated on new episodes and other book related content. Thank you again for your support and happy reading.