Stacking the Shelves: The Wolfsbane Edition

 "Stacking the Shelves" is a weekly haul meme hosted by Tynga's Reviews and Reading Reality. It allows book buyers to share their accumulation of books with the online book-loving community.

Well, this will be my last StS before ApollyCon. The calm before the storm. Two weeks from now, there will be a massive chaotic mess of a book haul. Right now, I'm just mentally and physically preparing for the trip. Lots of lists and schedules being made at the moment. My mind is a whirlwind.

As for books, I got something major this week. I was finally able to get my hands on an ARC of Wolfsbane by Andrea Cremer. This had been a book I wanted for soooooo looong. Ever since the cover change for the series back in the 2010s. And I found it for really cheap on Pango! I can't believe I get to check this off my high priority wishlist. EEEK! I also got my replacement copy of Sire by Jex Lane from Barnes & Noble. 

 

Up next, I have something I bought after I got the JLA Shop versions and was kind of meh about them. I wanted to get the Hello Lovely editions of the Wicked trilogy. I wasn't sold on these at first, but they just started calling to me. I also managed to get these for like $15 off with a coupon code, so that was exciting. I guess I'm just gonna start collecting all of the JLA editions now, no matter what. Ugh. I need to be reined in.

I only got one ebook this week, and it was Of Sand & Silk by Clare Butler. It released this past week, and I'd only heard of it the week before, but it sounded awesome. I ordered it on Kindle because that was the only place it was available. I just wish I had the time to read this right now. ApollyCon is really killing my reading buzz. I'm finally out of my slump, and I want to read all the things, but I can't because I'm going to ApollyCon. Ugh.

Well, that's all for me. What books have you bought/received lately?

Stacking the Shelves: The First Arcane Society Box Edition

 "Stacking the Shelves" is a weekly haul meme hosted by Tynga's Reviews and Reading Reality. It allows book buyers to share their accumulation of books with the online book-loving community.

So I had a bit of a disaster last week and didn't end up posting the StS I had already drafted. Why? Well, the last package I received caused some drama. I'll tell you about it below. Right now, I'm gonna recap the last two weeks. April is going by so fast. It's crazy. Only 1.5 more weeks until ApollyCon, and I am 100% not ready. All I did over the past two weekends was organize books, put up fan art, and build bookshelves, but it seems like everything has zoomed by. I also visited my parents one Monday evening as well, but that's not really about books. Ha ha.

As for books, I had a couple of preorders come in this week. The first was the December/January Arcane Society subscription box. It's my first one. And while I'm so happy to be off the waitlist, I'm not super excited about the recent choices, so I've skipped the last two renewals. I hope they have better selections in June. But my first box came with Flames of Chaos and Ashes of Chaos by Amelia Hutchins. They're very pretty. I remember wanting to read this series a couple of years ago, so it's cool I get the chance now. I honestly like the way Arcane picks already-published books for their boxes. It makes it easier to decide which ones I want.

The next preorder to come in was my Illumicrate copies of Rin Chupeco's Reaper duology. These books were my favorite reads of 2023, so I was super happy when Illumicrate announced they were doing special editions. I'm still waiting on Goldsboro to announce they're doing the second book, though. I need a matching version of the first book. I also purchased Zodiac Academy: The Reckoning on Mercari for pretty cheap. I'm slowly going to collect the ZA books from secondhand sellers. I only have seven books to go.

 

 

And next, I have my Barnes & Noble purchase. The one that caused oh-so-much drama. I was waiting to get this package last Friday, and my mail doesn't typically arrive until around 5 p.m.. Well, I think I ended up taking a nap or something, and the package sat outside my door for a bit. Normally, that wouldn't be a problem, but I guess the ants that used to live outside my door decided it was time to return. So, I unknowingly brought a B&N box in my house that had very small ants on it. Now, I don't actually think there were that many. Maybe five or six total. However, I freaked out. I did not want ants crawling all over my books or my furniture. So I sprayed way too much bug spray in my living room and pretty much fumigated the entire thing, which caused me to have to isolate myself in my bedroom for pretty much the whole weekend. It was ridiculous. I can also still slightly smell the spray as I'm sitting in my living room now. Probably killing brain cells as I type. Ugh. I've opened my window, turned on a fan, and even used cleaning products on areas I sprayed, but there's still a slight after-smell. It's insane. Anyway, I put the books in plastic Ziploc bags to quarantine them, just in case there were any ants inside their pages. Thankfully there weren't. The reason I had to do that is because the box B&N shipped these things in was absolutely terrible! The books weren't stacked on top of each other in a normal, sturdy box. Instead they were laying double side-by-side. Two on top, two on bottom. And one of the books I ordered ended up getting completely wrecked. The replacement should be here for next week's StS. Oh, and the box itself had huge slits on the corners; hence the reason the ants could crawl inside.

 

But anyway, let's talk about the actual books, shall we? I want to move away from that traumatizing experience... I needed to make a preorder for a special edition that I was worried was going to go out of stock as well as buy a book by an ApollyCon author before I left later this month, so I ordered some stuff. The ApollyCon book is K.J. Sutton's Fortuna Sworn, and the other two are Sire and Broken by Jex Lane (Sire still to come). I also ordered a paperback copy of Visions of Flesh and Blood for my mother, but it doesn't count. It's not going on my shelves. Ha ha.

 

Moving on to this week's haul, I have an order I made from Etsy for a set of A Kingdom of Flesh and Fire overlays. It's from a Spanish shop, Espada de Valkiria. I made a whim purchase for these. I'm not an overlay person. In fact, I wish people would just sell them as prints, but the artwork on a couple of these are so pretty that I had to have them. The shop also sent a Poppy x Cas magnetic bookmark and a couple of stickers from Crescent City and Fourth Wing.

 

And finally for the physical books, I have a special edition set from JLA herself. This is the Wicked trilogy set she sold in her JLA Shop. Now, they weren't exactly what I was hoping for when JLA hinted she'd be doing special editions of this series, but they're still pretty. I'm just not a huge teal/green fan when it comes to books. I like my silvers, purples, blues, golds, and blacks. But, again, these are still fancy enough to satisfy the book dragon in me.

 

And lastly, I have the ebook portion of the haul. There's only one, and it was a cheapy on Nook. Dark Heir by C.S. Pacat was $2.99 yesterday, so I bought it super fast, especially since the wait time for the Libby copy is like 20+ weeks. That's crazy. I read book one Dark Rise, when it came out a couple of years ago, and it was okay. I was a tad disappointed, but still intrigued enough to possibly read the second book. However, I knew I didn't want to buy it until I knew if I liked the series. No sense in wasting more money. So, this is my chance to find out if I need to buy a hardcover. 

Well, that's all for me. What books have you bought/received lately?

March Wrap-Up & April TBR

Sigh. Well, the good news is March wasn't any worse than February reading-wise. The bad news is is that it wasn't much better, either. Maybe one day I'll get out of this slump. Honestly, though, I truly think it is because of the blah books being published right now. Everything sounds the same. I think this slump cycle happens to readers who have read too much and just want something different. But, other than not reading, I've done the same ol' things each day. The only new things I did was spend a bunch of money on new bookcases. Teehee.

In this wrap-up, I’ll list the books I read, the books I reviewed, the books I bought/received, and my TBR for next month. Now, let’s get this bookish party started!

Books Read in March

A Ferry of Bones & Gold: 3.5 stars

Shadow's Seduction: reread

We Could Be So Good: 4 stars

I read three books in March. And, sadly, one was a reread, so it doesn't really count towards any big goals of reading TBR books. A Ferry of Bones & Gold by Hailey Turner was my first read of the month. I got it through Kindle Unlimited. It was decent, but I don't think I'm gonna continue with the series any time soon. To help me with the slump and to help me not fall behind on my reading goal, I reread Shadow's Seduction by Kresley Cole. I reread this book once every year or two. I love it so much. I always wish it was a full-length book, and not just 200 pages. And then, the night before the month ended, I managed to finish We Could Be So Good by Cat Sebastian, which was a cute historical MM romance. I actually read a physical ARC I got from last year's ApollyCon, so this counted towards reading my physical TBR! Woohoo!

Books Bought/Received in March

Okay, so this month I let myself get a bit carried away. I bought a total of 15 books this month and received 13. I just spent way too much money.

As for the 13 books I received, a majority of them were preorders. Those nine preorders were also all physical copies. They included the Bookish Box orders The Spanish Love Deception by Elena Armas A Soul of Ash and Blood and Fall of Ruin and Wrath by Jennifer L. Armentrout; the FairyLoot edition of The Atlas Complex by Olivie Blake; the three replacement Lux books from Books for Days Crate; Fate Breaker by Victoria Aveyard from Barnes & Noble; and the UK edition of Jay Kristoff's Empire of the Damned from Blackwells. I got four ebooks this month. Two were NetGalley eARCs: Dragon Rider by Taran Matharu and The Sins on Their Bones by Laura A. Samotin. And the other two were freebies: Twisted Pretty Things by Ariana Nash on Kindle and Priest by Sierra Simone on Nook.

I paid for 15 books in March. Yikes.  Most of them are preorders, so I won't see them until next month or later. Actually, zero of the books I bought in March arrived to me in the month of March. How odd. But anyway, I bought the Wicked trilogy special editions from the JLA Shop, the Fire and Flesh series 1-3 through BB, The Crowns of Nyaxia duology from FairyLoot, and the monthly adult FairyLoot book, A Feather So Black by Lyra Selene. For ApollyCon, I also preordered Salt Kiss by Sierra Simone and Blood Mercy by Vela Roth. Towards the very end of the month, I made two online orders. One with Mercari for the third book in the Zodiac Academy series, and the other with B&N for the last two currently-released books in Jex Lane's Beautiful Monsters series and Fortuna Sworn by K.J. Sutton, a 2024 ApollyCon author.

Currently Obsessed With

Once again, I haven't been watching a lot of stuff lately. I did start a new rewatch show though, so yay for progress.

I pretty much finished my 999th rewatch of The Office, so, to occupy my brain while I eat and do mindless tasks, I've been putting Everybody Hates Chris on. It was a show I used to watch reruns of on Nick at Nite as a kid getting ready to go to sleep. Other than that, I did watch Brokeback Mountain for the first time. The movie was not what I expected. I guess it was groundbreaking for its time, but I feel like it was too short to really make me like the two male leads together. Or maybe they were supposed to be that toxic. Idk.

April TBR

I have so many books that I'm in the middle of/just started right now. I've been trying to get out of my reading slump, so I've been picking up all kinds of things to try to get out of it over the past couple of months. Well, now I'm forcing myself to finish those books. I don't want to put them down and never read them, as they are actually pretty good. That includes Charm by Tracy Wolff, The Last Sun by K.D. Edwards, and The Curse of Saints by Kate Dramis. We Could Be So Good by Cat Sebastian is pictured because I didn't think I'd finish it before the end of the month, but I did. So yay! I'd also like to finish Visions of Flesh and Blood, the FBAA compendium book. It's basically just a textbook of the FBAA world, so it's not something I need to rush to get through. I also need to read two NetGalley ARCs: The Sins on Their Bones by Laura R. Samotin and Dragon Rider by Taran Matharu. Oh, and the last Zodiac Academy book releases later this month, so that's 100% a must-read.

***

Okay, well, that's the month of March, plus some April sneak peeks, all wrapped up into one post. Do you have a wrap-up post for last month? If so, share in the comments!

Review: Court of Wanderers by Rin Chupeco

Court of Wanderers

Rin Chupeco

(Reaper #2)

Publication Date: April 2, 2024

Hardcover, 448 pages, S&S/Saga Press

Genres: Adult, LGBTQ+/Polyamory, Fantasy

Goodreads

 

Remy Pendergast and his royal vampire companions return to face an enemy that is terrifyingly close to home in Rin Chupeco’s queer, bloody Gothic epic fantasy series for fans of Samantha Shannon’s The Priory of the Orange Tree and the adult animated series Castlevania.

 

Remy Pendergast, the vampire hunter, and his unexpected companions, Lord Zidan Malekh and Lady Xiaodan Song, are on the road through the kingdom of Aluria again after a hard-won first battle against the formidable Night Empress, who threatens to undo a fragile peace between humans and vampires. Xiaodan, severely injured, has lost her powers to vanquish the enemy’s new super breed of vampire, but if the trio can make it to Fata Morgana, the seat of Malehk’s court—dubbed “the Court of Wanderers”—there is hope of nursing her and bringing them back.

 

En-route to the Third Court, Remy crosses paths with his father, the arrogant, oftentimes cruel Lord of Valenbonne. He also begins to suffer strange dreams of the Night Empress, whom he has long suspected to be Ligaya Pendergast, his own mother. As his family history unfolds during these episodes, which are too realistic to be coincidence, he realizes that she is no ordinary vampire—and that he may end up having to choose between the respective legacies of his parents.

 

 Posing as Malek and Xiaodan’s human familiar, Remy contends with Aluria’s intimidating vampire courts and a series of gruesome murders with their help—and more, as the three navigate their relationship. But those feelings and even their extraordinary collective strength will be put to the test as each of them unleashes new powers in combat at what may be proven to be the ultimate cost.

My Review

Court of Wanderers was going to be one of my most anticipated books of 2024, but I got to read an ARC in October!!! And since this is only a duology, I was able to finish this amazing series in less than one year! It's such a bittersweet moment, and I'm going to miss Remy, Zidan, and Xiaodan. Ugh. That's the sad part about duologies and bingeing series, the magic is over too quickly. But, these books have captured my vampire-loving, fantasy-obsessed heart, so a reread may come in the very near future.

The three main characters are all back for this sequel, and they're trying to navigate their new relationship while dealing with bad vampires and undead monsters. Remy, as always, is a cinnamon roll in knight form, and I LOVE that his is the only POV we get. Too often authors use dual POV and it takes away from the mystery of the other characters, especially when it comes to romantic tension. Don't get me wrong, this isn't a romance. It's a fantasy similar in vibes to The Witcher, Empire of the Vampire, and even Van Helsing, the Hugh Jackman gothic paranormal film (not the original Dracula character). But all of those also have some interesting romances within the overarching storyline, and there's plenty of action, politics, and scheming to keep everyone entertained.

As for our other two characters, Zidan and Xiaodan, they're trying to figure things out. Zidan with leadership thrust upon him, and Xiaodan with her unreliable powers. I just adore these three characters' dynamics. One kind-of human, two vampires, and a lot of trouble.

 With the plot, everything was so fast-paced, in a great way. I devoured it all. And even though I did forget a few details between reading book one and book two, it was very easy to get back into the world and story. It's a digestible fantasy. I will say that the ending was a little crazy and convoluted. Nothing terrible per se, but I would have preferred a little less chaos in that last 10%, or at least another chapter or two to settle things down after the craziness. There were also a few too many villain monologues, which made those last chapters a bit cheesy. Still loved the book, however.

All in all, I read Silver Under Nightfall in August of 2023 and got to read Court of Wanderers in late October, and now I feel like no other book will live up to this story. I want more! Ugh! Just give me domestic Remy, Zidan, and Xiaodan scenes, Rin Chupeco. Please! But anyway... Trust me, if you're a fan of The Witcher, Empire of the Vampre, Van Helsing, From Blood and Ash, or any other vampire paranormal story, this duology should be your next read.

*Note: I received a copy of this book to review via NetGalley. This in no way affected my opinion/review.