I would 100% read a spinoff series just about Leo and Jakob...please...

Ghostsmith is the second and final book in the House of the Dead series, and it was a perfect fall read. I've seen some complaints about book two falling flat, and while I did wish there had been a little less plot armor, I still really enjoyed this book. The world-building and the aesthetics really hold everything together, and I'm really getting interested in necromancy in fantasy.
Wren, Julian, and Leo are on the run now that Wren has discovered the truth about her heritage and her father's plans. Similar to the first book, the story focused on a mix of "adventure-y" and political elements, though the emphasis fell on the latter. There were a few plot twists, most of which were fairly predictable but still got me hooked. The action and pacing were pretty good (there were a few moments that felt a little dull), and the ending felt a bit anticlimactic, but I overall really enjoyed the vibes.
I also really like the cast of characters. Leo is still my favorite by a long shot and I would love a spinoff book just about him. I liked the few interactions he had with Jakob and was hoping for more. Julian and Wren were back to their "enemies" mindset, which annoyed me for a while, but they got over it soon enough that I wasn't super irritated. I was glad to see more of Inara, too. I've also seen a lot of people say they hate Hawke, but I really liked him, and he was probably in my top 3 characters for the book.
Ghostsmith is a YA fantasy novel with beautiful aesthetics, delightful banter, and a heartwrenching plot.

3.75/5

Look, a lot of what this dude said was helpful...but he's so insufferably arrogant that it's hard to get through a lot of this book.

If you can deal with terrible attempts at humor and some random guy ranting about how he sold a movie to Disney (never mentioning that it has a whopping 7% on Rotten Tomatoes and features a scene where a thirty-year-old woman kisses an eleven-year-old boy and tells him to "find her in a few years"), then you'll probably find this book a lot more helpful than I did.
Again, he had some valid advice and tips that I'll probably employ in the future, but there's a reason that the cat on the cover is orange, and I wish this book had been written by literally any other screenwriter.

One of the better writing guides I've read, this book starts small (punctuation and sentence structure) and gradually moves onto the "big picture" parts of writing (POV choices and pacing).
I really appreciated Le Guin's examples as well as her exercises - some of which we completed for my class. While some of her tips are hardly novel ideas, others are incredibly helpful, and I plan to utilize them in my own writing.
A great guide for beginning writers looking for a book that covers the basics in a short yet entertaining format.

It's a bit outdated, but I still bookmarked a handful of sections with the intention of using them as guides in the future.

Some of this book's advice is rather old (do people still use business cards?), and other tips seem incredibly overkill, like keeping a portable binder of your achievements to show people, but it overall acts as a comprehensive guide to the world of employment. The formatting is clear, and it also provides exercises to follow to further one's career search. A great read for college kids about to enter the workforce.

It's crazy how much harder I cried over certain scenes when I wasn't reading them at gym class or band practice like I did the first time I read this.

As the conclusion to the Throne of Glass series, Kingdom of Ash acts as an epic finale to a beloved fantasy series for many. While I've admittedly not been enjoying my second read-through of this series nearly as much as I did the first time, this book is probably the best in the series. That being said, I completely forgot a certain subplot in the middle of it (Dorian's chapters about 50-65% through...I literally have no memory of it). Also, this book definitely could've been 400 pages shorter.
This is it. It's the finale, the epic conclusion. I can't say much about the plot without major spoilers, but now that there are, like, 10 different POVs, the pacing picks up compared to past books. However, the constant state of battle in some sections doesn't work well with keeping tensions high (especially past the 70% mark). There aren't many plot twists, but I do like the focus on final character developments and how some characters are forced to address their trauma. The last 70% is pretty fast-paced but so emotionally damaging that I had to time my reading so I wouldn't end up crying in class.
There are so many characters that I'll have to be brief here, but most of my opinions remain relatively similar to past books. Dorian is probably still my favorite (we love depressy boys), and I really enjoyed Manon and the Thirteen in this book especially. Fenrys gets an honorable mention (see my reason for liking Dorian). Rowan and Aelin were less annoying in this book, as were Elide and Lorcan. For some reason, I was more invested in Aedion and Lysandra this time around, but I don't know why. Chaol gives me the ick a bit in this one, but I still love Yrene as well. I think that's everyone (if I missed some, I obviously didn't care for them much).
The Throne of Glass series is not without its flaws, but I do appreciate this book and how well it writes a finale for one of the longer fantasy series that I've read. Kingdom of Ash is probably my favorite book in this series.

4.25/5

Let's all be honest: Caldon 100% carried this book.

The Gilded Cage is the second book in the Prison Healer trilogy, and despite the fact that I've read this before, I forgot most of the plot twists until about halfway through the book. Plotwise, I think this was a little better than the first book, but the characters and their stupid decisions ultimately dragged down my rating because whoever said Kiva was supposed to be a villain and ended up being a doormat was entirely right.
In light of the events of the first book, Kiva Meridan - also known as Kiva Corentine, heir to a diluted bloodline - has returned with Jaren to his kingdom. There's a lot of political maneuvering in this, but most of the tension comes from Kiva's indecisiveness and her hiding her true identity from the royal family while feeding their secrets to her sibling. Look, I'm a fan of secret identity stories and the conflicts that come with them, but that can only carry the plot so far. The plot twists are fairly convenient, and the rebels' motivations are pretty weak, but it was fast-paced, and the high tensions kept me intrigued.
And as for characters... Tipp and Oriel are adorable, so we love them. I actually thought Mirryn was really cool, but the Vallentis parents were extremely flat. Naari also felt like she got sidelined. Zuleeka annoys me, but Tor is fine. Again, Jaren felt a bit generic and, likely, overly caring for Kiva? I get being in love and whatnot, but he literally put off the rest of his life for her multiple times. Kiva herself was...girl did not know how to make a good decision to save her life. She goes back on her word so many times and she honestly got kind of annoying. I have a love-hate relationship with Caldon because as much he made scenes actually interesting, he does give weird vibes, and sometimes his cockiness was a little too much.
The stakes are higher than ever in The Gilded Cage as Kiva must decide between her blood family and the Vallentis family that has taken her under their wing.

3.75/5

Fake dating but fake mind control was not a trope I had on my 2024 bingo card, but I love it so much.

Ocean's Echo has been on my TBR since I read Winter's Orbit last year, but I was hesitant to get into it because of the different characters. As I expected, the vibes were a bit different, but this book is going to be living in my head 24/7 for the next week or so. I don't know if it's because it's been a while since I really enjoyed a romance in a story or if it's that I read sci-fi infrequently; I just know that once I started this book, I didn't want to put it down.
Tennalhin is a reader and a rogue one at that. When the government finally finds an excuse to conscript him into the army, he is matched with an architect (basically someone who can control other people's minds) who will "sync" with him and control him for the rest of his life. However, when Surit - the architect - discovers that he must sync with an unwilling civilian, he and Tennal decide to fake the sync and escape. There's so much political stuff happening in the background, but this is also a story about military exploitation. I really enjoyed most of the plot twists and how angsty the second half of the book was. I don't want to call the ending anticlimactic - because it definitely wasn't - but something about it just feels a bit off to me, although that's my only main complaint.
Like the author's other book, the romance and the characters were all amazing. I love Tennal's personality and his complicated feelings for Surit as well as his arc...it's all just so good. Surit really reminded me of Steve Rogers (I think Tennal is a little too sunshine-y to be Bucky, though), and I wasn't expecting to like him as much as I did, especially with his angsty and equally complicated feelings for Surit. I also really liked the background characters, like Istara and Basavi (and their romance was super cute). I wish we got to see more of Zin.
Ocean's Echo is a thrilling sci-fi story about what it means to be a weapon and the infinitesimal role of humans in the face of the universe.

4.25/5

So what we learned in this is that both of Alena's love interests have horrible judgment when it comes to women...

Stolen Fates is a novella containing four (more like three) short stories from before the events of When Gods Fall that help to clarify how characters got to where they are at the beginning of the actual book. I'm going to admit right now that it's been several months since I've read the original novel, so I may have missed some easter eggs with smaller details. (Also, I think I spent more time trying to remember what all happened by rereading my apparently 147 annotations from the original book...most of which were very not helpful).
Alena and Katell's chapters focus on Katell's botched marriage. It helped to emphasize the relationship between the sisters, and it also helped to prep Scylas's character (who I think is important later?).
Nik's story details how he was captured by the arena people, just as Leukos's explains how he ended up in the slave caravan to begin with. I thought both of these stories were really beneficial, given we don't find out much backstory during the original novel. While both stories were similar in specific ways, I found them interesting.
As a prequel, Stolen Fates certainly helps to shed some light on the character dynamics and backstories in the Gifts of the Gods series.

3.75/5

I was required to read this as a textbook of sorts for one of my history classes, but it felt far too brief to actually learn anything from.

Baer is a reporter, and you can definitely tell from his style that he is used to writing short, humorous articles about current political events. Each of the seven chapters features a brief, almost vignette-esque look into various political eras of PA, cutting off halfway through Corbett's term. While it undoubtedly revealed some of the more famous or entertaining scandals of political PA, it falls short in its length. It's probably a fine read for fans of politics, but I personally did not find it engaging or very informational.