nonesensed | What I read during 2022

If you want to see the covers of these books/texts and read more about them, you can hopefully see them over here on GoodReads (I'm hoping my reading challenge list from 2022 is visible to everyone, but GoodReads is a mess, so who knows).

Books/Texts I didn't vibe with:

Alvklingan by Nick Perumov - I was so bored. Soooo bored.

Gefangene des Blutes by Lara Adrian - Starting with the second book in a m/f urban scifi vampires-are-aliens stereotypical het erotica translated into German that I randomly picked up at an airport a decade ago, I really should have known this book wouldn't be for me XD Buuuut I did get to practice my German, which is great!

The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue by Mackenzi Lee - I felt the plot sort of just happened to the characters and I didn't click with the POV character. Might still give the next book in the series a shot since it's got another main character than this one.

Guts by Chuck Palahniuk - Read it because I saw a lot of people listing it as the scariest thing they've ever read. Body horror isn't my preferred form of horror and I'm also pretty jaded on that front, so this was just a 'meh' story for me. Especially with the impossible biology at the end re: pregnancy -_-

Ljusnan du mörka by Lars Landgren - Honestly sad I didn't enjoy this as much as I'd hoped to. Horror is always hit and miss, especially the kind that leans more towards being weird tales. Not the author's fault, it was just not my kind of stories.

Rogues by several authors - Most of these stories just weren't my thing. When I think "rogues" as an archetype I clearly have a very different idea of how high the percentage of "selfish asshole" should be involved. Liked a few of the stories, for example Neil Gaiman's one, but not enough of them to make up for the ones that didn't work for me at all.

Trading in Danger by Elizabeth Moon - Too much military in this military scifi for it to be my thing. I got it as a gift from my mom, which was very sweet of her, doing her best to find books I'll like at the book fairs she visits <3

Collections & Non-fiction:

Gul utanpå by Patrik Lundberg - Accidentally read the shortened version, will thus have to find the original eventually and read that, to see if I missed anything. Oh well.

Prompted by Elva Birch - A lovely collection of all manner of short stories :D

The World of Critical Role by Liz Marsham - An interesting read if you're a fan of the show. Lots of fun behind the scenes stuff.

Game books:

Ancestry & Culture by Eugene Marshall - (D&D) A fun and easy addition/alternative on how to make characters in D&D without there being a specific "race" many of your skills are related to by default. Makes it extra easy to create, for example, tiefling/orcs, dragonborn/gnomes, etc etc. Highly recommended!

Beasts of Flesh and Steel by Bruce R. Cordell - (D&D) Kickstarted this! Loooooveee these wonderfully weird science fantasy creatures, am adding so many of them to all my campaigns!

Blue Rose - An interesting setting and the game mechanics are easy enough for me personally now that they're d20-based. Will have to write a fun oneshot for this one of these days!

Book of the Righteous by Aaron Loeb - (D&D) Definitely a good book for what it is, but I should have realized it wasn't for me. I tend to keep my made-up gods fairly simple and/or vague. Fun spells though!

Caturday by Ken Spencer - (D&D) There's text missing from this and the creatures are very similar to tabaxi in many ways. Got it as a gift so can't complain, but not something I recommend people getting in printed form. Hopefully the ebook version has the text that's missing from the print.

Critical Role: Tal’Dorei Campaign Setting by Matthew Mercer - (D&D/Critical Role) You can definitely see how new to writing campaign setting guides Mercer is here, with the info being good but a bit spares. I'd recommend getting the Tal'Dorei reborn version instead.

Explorer's Guide to Wildemount by Matthew Mercer - (D&D/Critical Role) A great resource if you want to set one of your D&D games in Exandria!

Fizban's Treasury of Dragons - (D&D) I love dragons so this was the perfect D&D add-on for me <3. We finally have the gem dragons!

Humblewood Campaign Setting by Christopher Pinch - (D&D) Kickstarted this! Give your D&D game that fable-like feel of talking humanoid animals galore!

Monsterhearts 2 - An interesting setting! Will have to find the right group to play it with though, with how hard this can hit re: bullying and such.

Strongholds & Followers by Matthew Colville - (D&D) Love the idea of strongholds and having a way to do actual warfare in D&D can be useful at times, but my favorite parts are how well it's all worded (such a fun and easy read!) and the new creatures (cool stats and gorgeous art!!!)

Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide - (D&D) Over all, not really my thing, since I prefer to make my own homebrews. Some neat extras though, like new spells.

Tasha's Cauldron of Everything - (D&D) Always fun to have more options for spells and sub-classes! Magical natural hazards are a super fun idea I must include in future adventures.

Xanathar's Lost Notes to Everything Else by Ruty Rutenberg - (D&D) A fun addition in many ways! Feybloods are an interesting new species option.

Fantasy:

All Manner of Hats by Elva Birch - A fun steampunk f/f romance with flying cityships, ghosts and magical hats!

Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman - I do enjoy Gaiman being Gaiman, even if this story wasn't quite my thing.

The Black God's Drums by P. Djèlí Clark - A young streetwise woman finds out a terrible weapon is being sold to the highest bidder in her hometown of alt-reality New Orleans. Liked the worldbuilding and would like to see more of these characters.

The City We Became by N. K. Jemisin - An intriguing start of a series where people suddenly become anthropomorphic representations of cities and city-parts! Especially as one character gets uncomfortably instantly loyal to another and that is acknowledged as Possibly Not Great But Also Not Bad which is exactly my kind of thing <3 Looking forward to book 2!

Creatures of Night by Neil Gaiman - It's Neil Gaiman stories with lovely art. Enjoyable!

Dora's Jinx by Boom Baumgartner - A cute young adult fantasy adventure set in an AU-modern world with witches and plenty of talking cats <3

The Ghost Bride by Yangsze Choo - An interesting and folklore/fairy tale flavored story about a woman who is forced to marry a ghost and thus must Go On A Quest.

Golden Age and Other Stories by Naomi Novik - Definitely worth a read if you've read and enjoyed the Temeraire series!

The Hanged Man by K. D. Edwards - Book 2 in a series. Getting to know the characters better, though could do with a little more variations in the cast. Still, a fun romp.

His Sacred Incantations by Scarlett Gale - The second book in a fantasy/erotica duology with a f/m-femdom pairing and I am all here for it <3<3<3

A Marvellous Light by Freya Marske - Very likely a new fandom here! On book two at the moment and it's looking very positive in that direction <3 This first book is an m/m romance with a murder mystery, the second book is a f/f romance with a murder mystery. If you, like me, am an adult who's fallen out of love with the Wizard Boy Books due to its author being awful, I highly recommend getting into this series because it's got the feel of reading a good cast-all-grown-up-but-set-in-the-past!fic of said series with poetic language, magical houses and wonderful sex scenes~

The Mask of Mirrors & The Liar's Knot by M. A. Carrick - New fandom a-hoy! If you enjoy con-artists with hearts of gold, world-threatening danger combined with personal problems and cool world-building, pick this up! Can hardly wait for the final book in the series!!!!

The Memory Theater by Karin Tidbeck - Love Tidbeck's folklore-like vibes when she writes fantasy. Just so happy I've found a Swedish author whose writing I click with this well, no matter the genre they write in <3<3<3

Of Dragons, Feasts and Murders by Aliette de Bodard - I think I would have enjoyed this more if I'd known the characters, since this is a "between stories" kinda tie-in to a longer series. Will have to re-read after I've actually read the main series.

The Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water by Zen Cho - A quick, interesting read. Would likely have enjoyed it more if it hadn't been sold to me as focusing on the "found family" trope, because most of the characters of said found family only exist in the background and don't really have any clear bonds with anything but money. Read for the adventure of it, not the found family trope, is my advice.

Die Prophezeiung, Der Ring & Die Schrift by Henri Loevenbruck - Veeeeeery cliché fantasy set in "standard Europe medieval"-setting. Very meh. But I got to practice my German!

The Red Threads of Fortune by Neon Yang - Love this world! The romance focused on here was also well worth following along with.

The Return of Fitzroy Angursell by Victoria Goddard - If you've read and enjoyed The Hands of the Emperor, definitely read this!

The Silver Tide by Jen Williams - I really enjoyed parts of this series, so I don't regret reading it, but I'm not going to revisit it I think.

Sing the Four Quarters by Tanya Huff - When will I learn to just trust that I'll enjoy a Huff book despite its seeming "tired" premise when you read the back cover? Hopefully soon! Recommend this to all who enjoy intrigue and semi-spy-work. Going hunting for the next book in the series!

A Tast of Gold and Iron by Alexandra Rowland - Are you also a fan of worldbuilding with interesting takes on gender roles, a bodyguard/prince romance and themes of loyalty and trust? Read this book!!!! Highly recommended <3

Turning Darkness Into Light by Marie Brennan - Such a good book! Exactly the kind of sequel I wanted for The Memoirs of Lady Trent <3<3<3

The Unbroken by C. L. Clark - Fighting colonialism in combination with enemies-to-lovers-ish f/f romance? Yes please!

Unicorn of Glass & Dragon of Glass by Zoe Chant - Urban fantasy m/f shapeshifter romance. Check it out if that's you're kind of thing :)

Uprooted by Naomi Novik - Novik always surprises me with where her books go, in a good way.

Horror:

All Tomorrows by Nemo Ramjet - Very scifi, but the premise seemed intent to horrify, thus I list is as such. It's very heavy on both body horror and the idea of a species (humanity) going extinct and thus definitely not for everyone. I got some nice chills out of it.

The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All by Laird Barron - Wonderfully creepy cosmic horror. Exactly my kind of thing!

Black Helicopters & The Tindaloss Asset by Caitlín R. Kiernan - Recommend reading The Tindalos Asset if you're a fan of cosmic horror with Lovecraft references thrown in. Black Helicopters is set in the same universe, but I think Tindalos was executed better.

Bone China by Laura Purcell - It's a Purcell horror story, so it's slow, eerie and so wonderfully creepy :D

Longharbor by Alejandro Mirabal - Helped Kickstart/Indigogo this graphic novel. Recommended if you're into cosmic horror and body horror!

The Shape of Darkness by Laura Purcell - Purcell is so good at that "maybe magic maybe mundane" kind of eerie horror I love so.

What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfisher - Kingfisher writes my kind of horror and I am delighted every time I get to experience it! Also, great cover art <3

White is for Witching by Helen Oyeyemi - A wonderfully dream-like story of a family and the generational consequences of the house they live in being...less than normal and quite possessive. Recommended!

Science fiction:

Bina's historia by Maja Lunde - A slow-paced and rather sad look at the possible future we as humans might be facing if we don't take better care of our bees.

The Fifth Gender by G. L. Carriger - A pretty fun romp at times, but brought in very heavy subjects to mix with its lightness, so the mood of the story is a bit all over the place. Also, the romance tries to be a will-they-won't-they but they skip to WILL pretty darn quick, without much build-up.

Foreigner by C. J. Cherryh - Love it when aliens get to be properly alien! Definitely continuing this series.

The Future Library by Peng Shepherd - A dark but human story about the end of the world, sort of. Also more science fantasy than purely scifi, but mostly scifi in tone.

The Future of Work: Compulsory by Martha Wells - If you're a fan of The Murderbot Diares, this short look at Murderbot's early years will be wonderfully heartbreaking.

The Galaxy, and the Ground Within by Becky Chambers - I'm so sad that this series is 'over' but I'm so glad I've read it. So cozy <3

Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao - Do you want the catharsis of being enraged at an unfair world and then see a character do something about that unfairness? With giant magical robots? This is the book for you! It also has a canonical OT3. Highly recommended, can't wait for the next book!!!

The Last Voyage of Skidbladnir by Karin Tidbeck - A science fantasy story that leans slightly more toward scifi. Short and bittersweet.

A Memory Called Empire & A Desolation Called Peace by Arkady Martine - New fandom! Love the language, love the aliens, love the criticism of colonialism <3<3<3

The Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells - Read book 1 All Systems Red to book 6 Fugitive Telemetry in record time and I love everything about our grumpy, loyal, self-sacrificing Murderbot <3<3<3 I'm chomping at the bit to get to read System Collapse this year!!!

The Space Between Worlds by Micaiah Johnson - Dark, but in a good way, and not without its dashes of hope. Really enjoyed following along as the main character had to confront her own flaws and try to dig out a better existence in a harsh reality. A very interesting read!

The Truth of the Divine by Lindsay Ellis - Book 2 in the Noumena series. Boooooy, this got dark! In a realistic way, which I like, but please keep in mind that this series goes to some very dark and depressive places if you want to get into it. Looking forward to book three!

What I read during 2022

no subject

(no subject)