The Reading Ace 🖤🤍💜

Not a bad little atlas! It covers quite a few countries, with an interesting bit of trivia about each.

My daughter picked this one up from the library - she's been on a board book kick, because she likes how heavy the pages feel.

It's honestly a pretty decent phonics practice book. The stories build on the long vowel sounds, adding in more as you progress through each of the little stories.

It really brought me back to my Hooked on Phonics days.

A lovely bestiary about various mythological/folklore creatures that call the woods their home.

The book leans more heavily into the mythology side of things, but it was still an enjoyable collection. Especially for someone who loves the wild potential of the forest to spin the imagination. Not talking about anyone in particular here...I definitely do not have any plans to run off into an old growth forest and let the trees consume me.

But, seriously - I can understand why so many stories and creatures have come from forests. They're practically an inherently magical thing, themselves...it only makes sense that we would fill them with similar stories.

Oh my gosh, I was not expecting this book to be as absolutely insane as it was.

The book follows three women who all fell for the same fake profile - how they met him, how they fell in love, how they started getting suspicious, and finally, how they all ended up finding each other to band together and stop him from taking advantage of other women. (Because there were other women - a LOT of them.)

And like...there was no monetary gain here. It was all emotional labor, and torment.

Mostly, I'm just trying to figure out where "Ethan" found the time to catfish multiple women at the same time, staying up late to talk to each and every one of them.

I listened to this one as an audiobook - and let me preface this by admitting that I'm new to the audiobook scene. I have trouble focusing on things like movies, podcasts, and audiobooks if I'm not doing something to keep myself just occupied enough that my brain will slow down and focus on them. But when I tell you, this audiobook is THE best-produced that I've listened to...the author is the one narrating, and she talks as if she's telling you the story personally, and they got a male narrator on to do the Ethan bits, so you don't have that weird "woman trying to do a man's voice" thing going on...just, amazing choices, all around.

It is honestly a crime that I've read (and enjoyed) as much Naomi Novik as I have, but still haven't even touched the Temeraire books.

Buried Deep is a collection of short stories, most of which tie into Novik's other works. There were a couple of stories set in the Temeraire universe, the proto-type short story that became Spinning Silver, a story set in the Scholomance universe (which reminded me, I really have to go back and finish that series!), and a lovely Irene Adler piece that goes out of its way to represent the femme fatale as an actual equal to Holmes.

Of all of the stories, I feel most comfortable commenting on the Spinning Silver addition. The original short story more closely followed the fairy tale that it was based on, with Miryem having to meet the challenge of the king of the Staryk for her reputation for being able to "turn silver into gold" (with smart economic practices!)

I kind of like the way that the original short story ended? It's a satisfying conclusion...but I really love seeing the way Novik built on that premise and created something deeper. Something...Buried Deeper?

Okay, yeah, no, cool. I'll just see myself out.

I am 100% there for books with secret underground cults that accidentally bring about the end of the world. Lovecraft has ruined me in that regard.

The plot outside of the cult stuff felt kind of...stale? Is stale the right word to use for a book? Like, SO much of the story revolves around a Viking reenactment, which (potentially) justifies the links that the story has to Norse mythology.

But it was a strange choice for a small, English town - even stranger when there's little time actually spent with the reenactors. They show up like a deus ex machina to act as an army against said secret underground cultists, and that's pretty much the extent of their actual appearance.