March Reading Roundup

It’s still hard to believe, but it’s April now. It’s been a pretty crazy month, what with my regular homework and not-so-regular class projects, starting to apply for the bar, going down to D.C. for spring break, and then flying to Florida this week for an interview. I redesigned my website too, and I upgraded things so there shouldn’t be ads anymore. I’ve also been going home a lot, because I have five day weekends now and home is so close. It’s great, but it’s been a lot. It’s also hard to believe that I only have four weeks of classes left before finals, and then I’m done with my 3L year.

Before we dive into the books I read in March, I have a couple quick announcements. This is not an April Fools Day joke, either. Since I’m trying to post more regularly on this blog, I’m going to start doing individual reviews of books, instead of a big post every month with all the books I’ve read that month. Since I’m in the middle of a few series, I will take some time in April and May to write full reviews for books in the series I have already started this year. All the reviews will still be spoiler free, and I think I’ll still do a monthly recap post to sum up the month, but it will be shorter than these have been. This is an experiment for all of us, so feedback will definitely be appreciated.

I’ve also updated my book recs page. Books are now organized by category and then alphabetically by author’s last name. As I start writing individual reviews, I’ll link to them from that page as well.

Finally, please feel free to recommend books to me in the comments of any of my book-related posts or else use my contact form here. You should have a good sense of what I like and don’t like at this point, but I’m always happy to try new things. I will put all books recommended to me on this blog into a jar and pick at least one to read each month.

Now, let’s take a look at what I read this month.

I read nine more books in March, bringing my grand total for 2019 up to 28. I would have read more, but one of these books was massive and took me two weeks to read. Also like I said it was a crazy month. Eight of the books I read were fantasy, and one was a contemporary. On the whole, this was a great reading month. I absolutely loved so many of the books I read, and everything I read was fun and thought provoking. Let’s dive in.

My first March book was The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson. This is the first book in the Mistborn series, and the first book I’ve ever read by Brandon Sanderson. I’m going to talk about this one in much more detail this week, so I’ll keep these thoughts brief, but oh my god, I was completely blown away by this book! I totally understand the hype, it is definitely well deserved, and I’ve already purchased the next two books in the series.

Next, I read the third Trials of Apollo book, The Burning Maze by Rick Riordan. I’m also going to talk about this in more detail later on. This was definitely a fun read. Apollo is trying to free the third trapped oracle and stop a certain Roman emperor from taking over California. We learn a lot more about Meg’s backstory in this book, and of course we have Rick Riordan’s classic fun adventure feel. This was a great ride.

After that, I read the final book in the Wren series, Wren Journeymage by Sherwood Smith. Wren and her friends have finally brought peace to the kingdom, or so Wren thinks, when her old enemy, Hawk, rides into town with intentions of courting Tess. Worse, Tess knew he was coming, and she didn’t tell Wren. Angry with her friend for not trusting her advice, Wren leaves Tyron to try to persuade her to see sense and sets off to find Connor and some more adventure. There are smugglers, pirates, sea battles, cool magic, spies, and even more old enemies. This book was so much fun, and it really pulled the whole series together. While the second and third books felt a bit scattered to me, this felt a lot more unified, and it was a nice conckusion to the series. I did end up having to buy the audiobook because it wasn’t available in Braille, but no, I did not hate the narrator.

Next, I read Beartown by Fredrik Backman. Fredrik Backman also wrote And Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer and Longer, which I read last December and adored, and I found I loved this book just as much. And it’s about hockey. I never thought I would love a book that’s centered on a sport so much, but I did. There’s a sequel, which I’m waiting to get from the library, so like the other books I’m going to talk about this in a lot more detail later this month. I’ll give you a quick synopsis though. The book is told from the point of view of a failing town whose last hope of survival is that their junior hockey team wins the national championship. They’re so, so close, and this is the only thing that matters to anyone in town. And then a fifteen-year-old girl accuses the star hockey player of raping her, and everything explodes. This book is so powerful and utterly incredible. I was literally up all night reading it, and I have a ton more to say, so stay tuned.

And now for the book that took me two weeks to read, The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson. This is another start to a series, so I’ll be doing a full review next week. Good thing too, because there is no way I can describe this in one paragraph. It is epic fantasy at its most epic, roughly a thousand pages of epic. I found it to be very daunting to even pick up, but after The Final Empire I had total faith in Sanderson’s ability to make every one of those thousand pages count, and for the most part he did. My very brief thoughts are that I’m not entirely convinced it had to be as long as it was, but the plotting and the world building were superb, and the way it all came together in the end was fabulous! More soon on this one.

In the last few days of March, I powered through the last two books of the Chronicles of Narnia series by C. S. Lewis, The Silver Chair and The Last Battle, and then the last two books in the Magic Thief series by Sarah Prineas, Found and Home. I really liked The Silver Chair. Eustace is brought back into Narnia along with his classmate Jill, and Aslan sends them on a mission to find Caspian’s son, who was kidnapped by The White Witch (the witch of The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe). Accompanied by the marshwiggle Puddleglum, they journey north, facing man-eating giants, solving puzzles, and descending below the Earth to confront the witch in her underground layer guarded by enchanted gnomes. Overall, it was a good read. On the other hand, I found The Last Battle to be disappointing. The religious overtones were too much, and there was so much racism and sexism, and also just the plot didn’t make any sense. Like the monkey convinces the donkey to dress up as Aslan for a joke, and then somehow the monkey allies himself with the Calormen, and this ends the world? Okay that’s an oversimplification but you get the idea. On the whole, it was a disappointing end to the series.

But the last two books in the Magic Thief series were fabulous. As you might recall, I read the first two books toward the end of last year, and while I liked them, there was something missing, and I struggled to really be drawn in. The third and fourth book had that something, and I was sucked right in. These two books made the whole series awesome for me. In Found, the dark magic is threatening the city, but Conn needs to find a new locus stone so he can fight against it. So he goes on a journey and finds… dragons. And the adventure goes from there. The fourth book, Home, finds Conn dealing with new conflicts and old enemies and trying to figure out just who he is and what he’s meant to do in the world. This was another one that did a great job tying the whole series together. I liked it lots.

And that’s it for March. Have you read any of these books? Do you agree with my opinions?