April Reading Wrap-Up

This is the month in which I finished my dissertation and in the first few days of May, I finished my degree altogether! So, all things considered, I did pretty decently reading-wise this month.

 The first book I finished this month was The Gladiators from Capua by Caroline Lawrence ****. As always, with this series, I really enjoyed the book as it took me on an emotional and educational rollercoaster. This is 100% one of my favourite children’s book series’ and I’ll be preaching that for many years to come! I definitely plan on reading the whole series once I am able to find them in the right covers in paperback and I know I’ll love them.

The next book I finished in April was The Hazel Wood by Melissa Albert ****, which I had as an eARC from NetGalley (yes I was behind, it is distressing and I’m working on it!). I have a full review of this book on my blog which you can find here but as a short overview, I really enjoyed this read and am looking forward to the sequel.

 

The third book I got to was Magnus and the Jewelled Book of the Universe by S.L. Browne **, which was another eARC thanks to NetGalley. I also have a full review of this book up on the blog, find it here, but the essence of it was that I was disappointed. This book could have been so much more.

 

Book number four for the month was The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas *****, which I was reading as part of a little travelling book club. My review of this book is up on my YouTube channel, and the link to the video is here. This was a very hard-hitting book which made me very angry, very emotional and I recommend it to anyone.

 

One book which was a big surprise to me was The Comedy of Errors by William Shakespear ****. I like Shakespear. I really didn’t expect to. I bought three mass market paperbacks of his plays as I thought they looked pretty and I decided I should attempt to “make my way” through some of his work. It turns out that both of the two I have read so far have been funny, entertaining, interesting… I really like Shakespear! I was expecting the climax of this to come a little sooner to allow for more time for resolution, however, as a play the timing works well as it is so I just need to get used to reading plays. A fun, quick little play which I didn’t expect to enjoy!

This month was the month I finally finished Other Minds by Peter Godfrey-Smith ****! I haven’t read non-fiction in a very long while, despite it being one of my main genres to read as a child, so I had forgotten that they take me a lot longer to read than fiction books. This was a really interesting book, and the only reason it lost a star was that there were some sections which focused too much on humans. I understand bringing them in for comparison but at certain points, I had forgotten it was an octopus centred book until it mentioned them again. Other than that, this was informative, interesting and something that was very much outside of my comfort zone but that I enjoyed reading!

The last book I finished in April was Davenant’s Egg & Other Tales by Jemahl Evans, *****. If you’ve been following me on this blog for a little bit, you’ll know that I am a huge fan of Jemahl Evans’ work and have been ever since I got his first book. So it’ll be no surprise to any of you that I loved this set of short stories which tie in with the Blandford Candy universe! If you want to see more of my thoughts on this book then click here! If you want to see my thoughts on The Last Roundhead (book 1) then click here, and This Deceitful Light (book 2) then click here!

I wasn’t able to get to Ink or Rebel in the Sands this month. Mainly because I was so focused on my University work, it meant I didn’t want to spend too much time reading and also I wasn’t out and about much, meaning the Kindle (where Rebel in the Sands is) wasn’t used as much. I’m hoping that I’ll be able to get to them in May, fingers crossed!

Considering that I have had one of the most important months of my educational life, I think I’ve done pretty well reading 7 books in April along with getting all of my assignments done. Now I have finished my degree I’m hoping I’ll be able to read some more in May and catch up a bit with some books I should have gotten to!

Stay tuned for my May tbr, which will go up soon!!

Davenant’s Egg and Other Tales – Jemahl Evans

So I think I’m slightly obsessed with this series! The Blandford Candy series is witty, humorous, realistic and engrossing, so when I saw that there were short stories I knew I wanted to read them! I absolutely love Jemahl’s writing.

These short stories cover a variety of areas within this world and intertwine to grow your background knowledge of this world and those in it. There are five short stories:

• The Mercenary Creed: A mercenary is placed in an impossible command.

• Davenant’s Egg: A poet seeks redemption for his past crimes.

• The Gravediggers: Digging is hard work in a town besieged.

• A Dowry Cow: A cheesy love story.

• The Red Regiment: Two boys follow their hero in search of glory.

(The above was taken from Jemahl Evans’ website which you can find here)

My absolute favourite story has to be The Red Regiment, and surprisingly it isn’t due to the cameo present. I love the reality check that is given to these young boys who think that they are going to have a fun and entertaining story to tell their friends and that the stories given about the war are true. In reality, it is a bloody and gory mess which will screw with your head and dispel any myths you have about the glory of battle.

A Dowry Cow is a quick and casual tale, which is placed perfectly within the set of five. It breaks up the tension and provides as silly and easy story to ease your mind a little, it’s nice and funny and I enjoyed it.

The Gravediggers starts off as more of a silly story, with the local homeless drunkard and an innocent man. The ending caught me off guard and was surprisingly touching, for such a short story.

Davenant’s Egg and was probably my least favourite section of this book, and yet I still really enjoyed it.It was interesting seeing Humpty Dumpty’s possible origin story and also seeing this annoying man fail when his ego has been boosted so high.

The Mercenary Creed was an interesting start to the book, one which plays a larger role throughout the collection than I had assumed at first. There are some really interesting characters which would be interesting to hear more about.

This is such a good novella with interesting characters, lots of development and addition of extra material into this ‘world’ (a term I use loosely as this series is so historically accurate that it feels like a lie). I will shout about this book needing more recognition until so many more people find it, the historical accuracy mix with the humour and the engrossing characters is a mix which works so well together, with Evan’s writing style really pulling the whole thing off. I’m really looking forward to reading more from this series, if there are any more books (God I hope so!), and finding more out about these characters and how they develop and react to the end result of this war.