It’s Monday! What are you reading? June 10th, 2024

It’s Monday! What are you Reading is a weekly meme hosted by Kathryn from Book Date, a place to share and discuss what we’ve read in the past week and what we’re in the middle of or are planning to read this week.

What I read / listened to last week:

How to become the Dark Lord and Die Trying by Django Wexler- this was so much fun! If you love isekai stories AKA ‘portal guest’ fantasy (where the protagonist is transported into a fantasy world or a video-game setting) and don’t mind an occasional footnote or two (or twenty, but mostly funny ones), you’ll find Davi’s story both entertaining and strangely addictive. We all have different kinds of sense of humour, of course, but this one hit the right spot with me.

From the blurb:

Groundhog Day meets Guardians of the Galaxy in Django Wexler’s laugh-out-loud fantasy tale about a young woman who, tired of defending humanity from the Dark Lord, decides to become the Dark Lord herself.Davi has done this all before. She’s tried to be the hero and take down the all-powerful Dark Lord. A hundred times she’s rallied humanity and made the final charge. But the time loop always gets her in the end. Sometimes she’s killed quickly. Sometimes it takes a while. But she’s been defeated every time.This time? She’s done being the hero and done being stuck in this endless time loop. If the Dark Lord always wins, then maybe that’s who she needs to be. It’s Davi’s turn to play on the winning side.

The God and The Gumiho by Sophie Kim- I honestly didn’t expect to read this one in one day…but here we go. I was simply charmed 🙂

The cover suggests that this is the beginning of a series (or at very least a duology), but the story is very nicely wrapped up, so, if you are a kind of read who tends to wait and binge up on a whole series, you can treat it as a standalone.

From the blurb:

The most notorious nine-tailed fox in Korea pairs up with a fallen trickster god to track down a demon before it destroys the mortal world in this sly, dazzling contemporary fantasy.

Kim Hani, also known as the Scarlet Fox, has retired from a life of devouring souls. She is, simply put, too full. Now she spends her days laying low in a coffee shop and annoying a particularly irritating trickster god.

That god is Seokga the Fallen. He was thrown out of his heavenly kingdom centuries ago for staging an utterly pathetic attempt at a coup against his brother, the emperor. But when a powerful demon escapes from the underworld and threatens to end all of humanity, the emperor offers Seokga an enticing bargain: Kill this rogue demon, as well as the legendary and elusive gumiho called the Scarlet Fox. In return, he will be reinstated as a god.

There’s only one problem: Kim Hani has no intention of being caught. Seokga might be a trickster god, but Hani has a trick up her sleeve that Seokga will never see coming—teaming up. As Seokga’s assistant, she’ll undermine him at every turn, sabotaging his investigation right under his overly pointy nose. Sure, she’ll fight the demon, but she can’t allow Seokga to uncover her secret identity.

Before long, though, the tension between the bickering couple boils over, and the god and the gumiho find themselves inextricably drawn to each other. But will the unlikely duo stand together to prevent the apocalypse, or will they let their secrets tear them—and the mortal world—apart?

Story Locale:Early 1990s South Korea

What I am reading/listening to now:

The Well of Ascension by Brandon Sanderson- time to start our next buddy read with Yesha. We both loved the first book with its fascinating magic system and complex social structure and can’t wait to start the next book which hopefully will give us answers to numerous questions we had. Don’t forget to check out Yesha’s wonderful review of the Final Emprire (book1 of the Mistborn Saga). She includes a most helpful table of allomantic metals. I would have been hopelessly lost without it!

From the blurb:

Evil has been defeated…
The war has just begun.

They did the impossible – deposing the godlike being whose brutal rule had lasted a thousand years. Now Vin, the street urchin who has grown into the most powerful Mistborn in the land, and Elend Venture, the idealistic young nobleman who loves her, must build a healthy new society in the ashes of an empire.

They have barely begun when three separate armies attack. As the siege tightens, an ancient legend seems to offer a glimmer of hope. But even if it really exists, no one knows where to find the Well of Ascension, or what manner of power it bestows.

It may just be that killing the Lord Ruler was the easy part. Surviving the aftermath of his fall is going to be the real challenge.

City of Blades (The Divine Cities #2) by Robert Jackson Bennett- General Turyin Mulaghesh was one of my favourite characters in City of Stairs, so I’m very glad she got a book of her own. Not surprisingly, the Divinity whose ‘legacy’ she is going to grapple with is Voortya the Warrior, the goddess of War and Death, and if you thought all loose ends were neatly tied in in Book 1 and nothing else can surpass the scale of the events, Robert Jackson Bennett has a few surprises in store for you…

From the blurb:

A generation ago, the city of Voortyashtan was the stronghold of the god of war and death, the birthplace of fearsome supernatural sentinels who killed and subjugated millions.
 
Now, the city’s god is dead. The city itself lies in ruins. And to its new military occupiers, the once-powerful capital is a wasteland of sectarian violence and bloody uprisings.
 
So it makes perfect sense that General Turyin Mulaghesh— foul-mouthed hero of the battle of Bulikov, rumored war criminal, ally of an embattled Prime Minister—has been exiled there to count down the days until she can draw her pension and be forgotten.  
 
At least, it makes the perfect cover story.
 
The truth is that the general has been pressed into service one last time, dispatched to investigate a discovery with the potential to change the world–or destroy it.
 
The trouble is that this old soldier isn’t sure she’s still got what it takes to be the hero. 

What I’m reading /listening to next:

…most likely…

City of Miracles by Robert Jackson Bennett- Sigrud’s book- can’t wait to read it!

From the blurb:

Revenge. It’s something Sigrud je Harkvaldsson is very, very good at. Maybe the only thing.

So when he learns that his oldest friend and ally, former Prime Minister Shara Komayd, has been assassinated, he knows exactly what to do—and that no mortal force can stop him from meting out the suffering Shara’s killers deserve.

Yet as Sigrud pursues his quarry with his customary terrifying efficiency, he begins to fear that this battle is an unwinnable one. Because discovering the truth behind Shara’s death will require him to take up arms in a secret, decades-long war, face down an angry young god, and unravel the last mysteries of Bulikov, the city of miracles itself. And—perhaps most daunting of all—finally face the truth about his own cursed existence.

How did your last week go and what are you reading this week?