Tag: fantasy reviews

#REVIEW: The Empire of the Vampire series, by Jay Kristoff

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It should be illegal for one guy to be this good.

I have read three of Jay Kristoff’s books prior to this series. I read his Nevernight series back-to-back-to-back and it ended up being my favorite thing I read that year. When I finished reading Nevernight the Empire of the Vampire series was two books in, with the third yet unpublished. The third book, Empire of the Dawn, came out in November of 2025, at which point I bought all three of them, and … they sat on the shelf. Because I was a hundred miles behind on my reading, and all three of these books are 700+ pages, and despite how amazing Nevernight was, this series had a big disadvantage: It was about vampires.

I am so, so, so tired of vampires.

So anyway, I started Empire of the Vampire on July 6 and finished Empire of the Dawn this morning, July 15, so I read all 2200+ pages of this series in nine days.

It’s fucking amazing. It’s about vampires and it’s amazing. That shit shouldn’t even be possible.

Now, I’m not certain I’m willing to put this above Nevernight just yet. I really need to think about the ending for a while, and I thought about delaying this post for a few days while I worked through my feelings about it. Let me give a general idea why without getting too deep into spoilers: this book is mostly framed as one character telling his life story to someone who is holding him captive. Eventually a second character does some narration as well, and from time to time they break away from the narrative style to a more standard third-person omniscient perspective taking place in the “now” of the book. And it occurred to me partway through book one that we had no real reason to believe that everything he was telling us was true. And that, in fact, an unreliable narrator would fit in perfectly with what was going on in the story. This feeling got a bit stronger when the second character started telling her story and started it by calling the main character a fucking liar.

I don’t like vampires, and I don’t like unreliable narrators, and this book has vampires and unreliable narrators.

Because holy fuck are Gabriel de León and the second narrator massive Gotdamned liars. They are filthy liars. And I’m still not convinced that I like the way all of that worked out in the end.

That said:

  1. This series has the best swearing I’ve ever seen in print. The depth and breadth of the profanity used in Empire of the Vampire should be taught in college classrooms. It’s amazing. I am literally in awe.
  2. As a massive fan of world building, the basic setting of this world– a crumbling civilization where the fucking sun went out, more or less, twenty-six years ago– is absolutely fantastic. They call what happened to the sun the Daysdeath, and this is basically a world where you have night and dusk and it never gets any brighter than that– and that’s what has allowed the sheer number of vampires that exist in these books to exist, and also explains why the several vampire bloodlines have more or less been able to take over the world in the couple of decades since the Daysdeath happened.(*)
  3. Jay Kristoff also writes fantastic battle and large-scale warfare scenes, which he didn’t have a lot of opportunity to use in Nevernight.
  4. The characters and their various relationships are absolutely wonderful. The development you see in Gabriel over the course of the book is awesome, and his relationships with the other characters are constantly evolving, or at least pinioning back and forth between “trying to kill each other” and “not trying to kill each other.” There’s a character in Book One who is going to give you Draco Malfoy vibes; don’t stress, he’ll get better. Much better.
  5. There’s also a sentient, talking sword who is slowly losing her mind over the course of the book. Yes, her. The sword is a girl.
  6. Everyone speaks French for no reason that I can see other than that it usually doesn’t happen in fantasy novels and it adds some neat flavor.
  7. And the use of religion. My God, the use of religion. The religion of the Empire of the Vampire books is a twisted, alternate version of Catholicism, and I am not joking when I tell you that if Jay Kristoff wrote an 800-page sourcebook of the lore and religious practices of this world I would buy it in a second and have it read in a day. Imagine a Catholicism that came from a Jesus who picked up a sword and conquered the world before being betrayed and executed on the wheel. (It’s not literally Jesus; they just call him the Redeemer, but the religion is clearly and intentionally derived from Catholicism.)
  8. Now imagine, in a book that’s already about vampires, the Holy Grail being a major focus of the story.

It’s so so so so so so so fucking good, guys. All of it. And it’s brutal as hell, and it continues Kristoff’s fine tradition of never ever letting anything nice ever happen to his characters; his goal is to hurt them, and in hurting them, hurt you, and he’s amazingly fucking good at it.

Speaking of fucking, this is a vampire novel, so there’s a lot of that as well, and the most unrealistic thing about this series is that it begins with a fifteen-year-old boy who is incredibly enthusiastic about eating pussy. Seriously, the books cover about eighteen years of Gabriel de León’s life, and there is more cunnilingus in this series than all the other books I own put together, and I have everything Sarah J. Maas has ever written.

The second most unbelievable thing about this story is that, remember, de León is telling someone about all of this, so any time he gets laid, he’s supposed to be literally sitting in his little jail cell describing this shit to a vampire who is writing it all down verbatim in a big book. There are moments where he gets mocked for it, but it’s unavoidably a little ridiculous.

Kristoff is absolutely a top-tier talent, and the worst thing is that he hasn’t started releasing whatever he’s working on next– I’m caught up with his books, and one thing he’s definitely shown me is that he’s a huge fan of unexpected reveals and sudden gory deaths (and sudden resurrections– the book’s about vampires, after all) and massive plot twists and I cannot start his next series until it’s finished, because if I had to wait two years in between any of these books I would simply die. But he’s firmly among my favorite writers at this point, and you have to check this series out.

(*) This has had serious effects on wildlife and plant life, as you might expect, and the food chain is all busted to hell as well since agriculture has gotten massively more difficult. You know what you can grow without a whole lot of sunlight? Potatoes. Gabriel de León is so, so, so tired of potatoes, guys, although he remains a fan of vodka.

#REVIEW: She Knows All the Names, by Michelle Jabès Corpora

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Don’t get me wrong, I love the stained edges trend, but I’m not sure that I love that I can find this image but not a straight image of the book cover like I’ve been using for years.

You have seen Michelle Jabès Corpora’s (not, fuck you autocorrect, Michelle Babes Corporation) name around here before; I read her His Face is the Sun almost exactly a year ago and loved it, and it ended up twelfth on my end of the year list. An interesting phenomenon: I said in my piece about it in December that I’d have ranked it higher, but a hundred books after first picking it up, I didn’t remember it very well other than that it was set in not-Egypt and I really liked it, and I resolved that I was going to reread it before the sequel, which I already knew was coming in May.

Well, I didn’t reread His Face is the Sun before picking up She Knows All the Names, and I’m pleased and more than a little fascinated to report that once I had the sequel in my hands I had no problems with recalling the events of the first book at all. I almost didn’t review this, to be honest, as what I have to say about it is nearly identical to what I had to say about Sun (go read that review); Corpora’s worldbuilding and characters are fantastic, the plot is twisty-turny and resolves a major plot element from the first book, clearing the way for a different antagonist to take center stage for the final book of the trilogy. I loved the first book, and the second is nearly a perfect sequel, and one of the best middle-book-in-the-trilogy volumes I’ve read in a very long time. I actually, genuinely do want to reread both books before the third volume comes out– not, this time, because I think I’ll need to, but because I think the series will deserve it.

Oh, and the cat’s back. I was a little worried at first; this book uses an animal as a framing device the same way that the first book did, but it’s an ibis and not the cat. No worries! The cat is back, it’s just not a POV character. Maybe the POV animal in the third book will be a crocodile. We can hope, right?

Pick it up.

#REVIEW: From the Depths, by Emily Renk Hawthorne

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I don’t like writing this kind of review.

I was sent this book by Emily Renk Hawthorne’s publicist for a review– not only was I sent this book, but also the first book in the series, in a nice hardcover edition, and when I cracked this open to read it I discovered she’d actually sent me a copy with a signed bookplate in it, which genuinely makes me feel bad about how I’m going to review the book. I’m going to keep this brief: I liked Book One, Of Mountains and Seas, well enough, but it had some problems; my review was mixed but ultimately I liked the book enough to request and read the sequel.

Unfortunately, having completed From the Depths, I feel that it has all of the same problems as the first book, and introduces a few new ones besides, while simultaneously not showing some of the strengths of the first book. Mountains and Seas jumped back and forth among several different periods in time, for example, and rewarded paying attention. This may be the first time I’ve ever complained about a straightforward narrative, but it’s a much simpler text. Mountains and Seas had a clear villain. This book’s bad guy is a nonsentient puddle of silver goo. That’s not a joke.

The author’s habit of choosing the wrong word continues to be an issue as well, and starts off on the very first page, where the word “sinkhole” is repeatedly used to describe the first appearance of the goo. I’m not going to get into the details, but the phenomenon being described in that first chapter is simply not a sinkhole. Sinkholes do not happen indoors.

I gave this two stars on Goodreads and Storygraph; one less than Mountains and Seas. I cannot recommend that you read it. I’ll leave it at that.

From the Depths releases on June 9.

#REVIEW: The Reanimator’s Fate, by Kara Jorgensen

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Standard disclaimers! Kara Jorgensen and I are mutuals on basically everything, although we have never met, and which precise social media thing we met on has been lost to the mists of time, at least to me. The Reanimator’s Fate is the fourth and final book of the Reanimator Mysteries series and the fifth of their books I have read. Somehow, this will be the first full review I’ve written of one of them— Book Three, The Reanimator’s Remains, got to share a review post with a couple other books, but somehow I appear not to have mentioned the other two books in the series. I’m not sure why— I’ve liked all four of them.

At any rate: The Reanimator Mysteries are the story of Oliver Barlow, an autistic necromancer who works as a coroner, and Felipe Galvan, Oliver’s partner and investigator. Both work for the New York Paranormal Society; they aren’t cops, precisely, but the Society gets brought in on investigations that obviously involve magic in some way, so they keep pretty busy.

Oh, and Felipe’s dead, technically, although nearly no one other than the two of them knows that, and the two are linked through a magical tether that allows some limited psychic linkage between them (strong emotions can bleed through, and they can “tug” on the tether to communicate if they want) and keeps them from being able to get too far apart. Oliver and Felipe are a great couple and I love reading about how they interact with one another; the way they balance each other out is fascinating. Oliver’s issues are a little bit more front and center, especially since he’s the primary character, but Felipe needs Oliver just as much as Oliver needs Felipe.

The Reanimator’s Fate begins with a naked man trying to steal a magic book, which promptly turns his blood to ink and exsanguinates him, just in case you were thinking this was just a romance book.

There is a lot going on in this book, above and beyond the central mystery, to the point where I really wasn’t sure Kara was going to be able to pull the ending of the book off successfully with about 20 pages left. The Paranormal Society itself gets a lot of development in a way that I don’t really want to get into to avoid spoilers, and while everything does knit itself together satisfyingly at the end, I feel like the book could maybe have used another 25 pages or so to breathe.

The problem is I really want to talk about the ending, and I can’t do it especially effectively without indulging in spoilers, which I don’t want to do. This is the last book of the Reanimator Mysteries series, and while Kara doesn’t kill off the main characters or anything like that there is a major status quo shift at the end of the book that fully justifies calling this the last book.

What I’m really hoping for, though, is that this is the last Reanimator Mysteries book, but it’s not the last Oliver and Felipe book, because there’s no real reason it has to be. Kara’s wheelhouse is the nineteenth century (have I mentioned this is a period book? It’s a period book.) and following the characters would involve taking them out of that context, but I really want to see it. I don’t know if that’s the plan or not, but it should be, damn it. The people demand more Oliver and Felipe! I am the people!

Meanwhile, you should read the series so you can join in the popular uprising for more books.

#REVIEW: Of Mountains and Seas, by Emily Renk Hawthorne

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Let us take a moment to appreciate this cover, while I collect my thoughts, because I am about to write a review of this book and I’m still not 100% sure what I think of it. So I’ll start with the bit I’m most enthusiastic about, which is that if you’re going to buy this book, get the hardcover, because the paper and the cover feel absolutely amazing in the hand and it looks awesome and it’s somehow less than $10 on Amazon right now. Which … hell, less than $10 for this book may push me into enthusiastic recommendation regardless of whatever else I might think about it.

I was contacted by Emily Renk Hawthorne’s publicist and offered an advance copy of her forthcoming novel From the Depths. That book sounded up my alley, but I hadn’t read the first novel in the series yet, so she went ahead and sent me Of Mountains and Seas, with the idea that I’d read that first and then see if I wanted to read From the Depths as well. I sent a follow-up email at about the 3/4 mark of OM&S asking her to go ahead and pull the trigger on the second book. And this is the part where I want to stare at the screen for a bit, because my opinion on this book is genuinely mixed, but one way or another it’s definitely positive enough that I still want to read the sequel.

Let’s start positive: Of Mountains and Seas is a nicely complicated little novel, with multiple POVs stretched between 1932 or so and the near-present. Parts of the book are set in 1932, 1935, 1936, 1955, 1985, 1990 and 2000, with 2000 being the “now” of the book, and shut up, 2000 is so the “recent” past. There may be another couple of years sprinkled in here and there but that’s good enough for now. There are at least half-a-dozen POV characters, some of whom appear in multiple time periods and some of whom are young enough that we only really see them toward the end of the timeline. Some of them change their names partway through! It can be kinda rough if you’re not paying attention, to be honest. The main thrust of the story is that most of the characters are Shifters, shapeshifters who also possess other magical abilities, almost, but not quite, X-men style— all of them can change shape but some can manipulate rock or affect memories or various other things, and there are also a handful of magical tinctures and other objects as well. Where’s the book set? California, of course, so mostly in the real world. Shifters have their own government set up— indeed, one of the characters is running for office for part of the story— and take careful pains to avoid being noticed by the humans, who they call Statics.

Davis, one of the more important POV characters, is born to a Shifter family, but without powers. This leaves him as an exile within his own family. And then he discovers that special stones exist that will allow him to steal abilities from other Shifters, leaving them powerless (there are also special marks that can be etched into a Shifter’s skin to take away their powers, by the way) and temporarily transferring their powers to him. “Temporarily” can mean for decades or for a much shorter period of time, depending on how powerful the Shifter he stole from was and how often he uses the abilities. At any rate, that kicks off the story, as Davis goes on to make a whole lot of trouble with these stones. Oh, and he also finds a mine full of them.

On a story level, the book is pretty cool. I may actually reread it before I read the sequel; it’s fast, and there’s enough going on that I suspect I’ll need the refresher.

Unfortunately, Emily Renk Hawthorne is one of those writers who consistently violates Twain’s thirteenth rule of writing: Use the right word, not its second cousin. Opening the book to a random page, I see her use pretense when she means pretext. Opening to another, I see someone use the word apparently to describe someone losing a hand, which is not a word someone would use in this particular context. She definitely lost her hand! It’s not there! On the opposite page from that, we have a clunky bit of dialogue where someone reads a cop’s full name to them off of, specifically, their badge. First, you would not say “Thank you, Officer… Brad Smith,” because that’s not how people talk. Second, their badges don’t have full names. Police badges don’t have names at all, in fact! His name may be on his chest somewhere, but it’s almost certainly his rank and last name and maybe a first initial, and that’s gonna be it. There’s lots of stuff like this, lots of little violations of logic and words that are 90 degrees away from being the right word for the context. This will bother some of you more than others. It’s the same exact problem I have with Ryan Cahill, actually. And, interestingly, I begin a review of one of his books by praising the book for the exact same physical things I just praised Hawthorne’s about. I wonder if they used the same printer?

At any rate, this book could have used a bit more editing, so your enjoyment of it will depend directly upon how much the good story distracts you from the less-good writing. I went back and forth; I barely noticed any issues with the first half of the book, then there was one particular chapter that was riddled with problems, and after that I either got a lot more critical or the book got sloppier because I started noticing stuff all over the place. Again, I’m in for the sequel even if I end up having to buy it myself, I’m just hoping for a slightly stronger sophomore effort on the prose front.

#REVIEW: The Door on the Sea, by Caskey Russell

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I’ve not had any diversity-related reading goals for several years now, but that doesn’t mean I’m not constantly on the lookout for books by authors from underrepresented groups, so when The Door On The Sea was represented to me as “a Tlingit Lord of the Rings” I bought it damn near immediately. And, in the way of such things, it perhaps lingered on my Unread Shelf for too long— most books linger on my Unread Shelf for too long nowadays— but now that I’ve read it, I’ve pre-ordered the sequel, and it’ll be devoured quickly once it shows up.

Forget the Lord of the Rings comparison, by the way; the books have little in common other than being journey-focused and party-based fantasy, and Door mostly takes place in an outrigger canoe rather than on foot and horseback, and there’s a clearly identifiable main character instead of LOTR’s omniscient third person. There’s a shapeshifter and a foul-mouthed talking raven, though, and that’s cool.

The main character is Elān, a young Storyteller— basically a bard and a scholar— who is dispatched along with several warriors to recover a lost weapon belonging to an immensely dangerous invading enemy race called the Koosh, who are posing a threat to everything and everyone Elān knows. If you’re wondering why a bard might be put in charge of such a journey, don’t worry; Elān is too, and everyone constantly questions his leadership despite him ending up being fairly level-headed and good in a tight situation. Elān is the grandson of a legendary warrior and he secretly wishes to be a warrior himself, but the others on the journey with him constantly call him a Bookeater, which seems to more or less be warrior slang for “nerd” despite being an objectively badassed thing to be called. It’s not entirely clear what the Koosh are; sometimes they come off as basically orcs, but they may actually be from another dimension, and the one Koosh that gets some dialogue and page time turns out to be really fascinating. There’s a lot going on behind the scenes here, and I’m really looking forward to learning more about this world in future books. This isn’t exactly a YA novel, but there’s definitely some coming-of-age stuff going on with Elān and his youth and inexperience and, well, softness are an ongoing theme in the book.

Speaking of “a lot going on,” the book is told in the style of an oration around a campfire, and there are even some hints that the teller— probably not Elān, but who knows— knows that people on Earth in 2026 are reading the book. I can’t find the passage to quote it directly, but there’s a bit where the narrator refers to an animal by its indigenous name, then a brief aside something along the lines of “in your world, you’d call it a moon jellyfish,” which … well, I also don’t know what a moon jellyfish looks like, but whatever.

A quick word about the language in the book; you may have noticed that diacritical mark on Elān and wondered how it was pronounced, and unfortunately I have to tell you I haven’t the slightest idea. Russell doesn’t hold anyone’s hand with spelling, and there’s no pronunciation guide in the book. On top of that, there are diacritical marks in this book that I’ve never seen in any other context, and I feel like I probably have more experience with languages than a lot of people do. There’s a character named Snaak, for example, and yes, that K is underlined on purpose, and I don’t know why. Or, just to pick a couple more words, xaax’w or ax xoonx’iyán, which means silence-sharing friend, or Kusaxakwáan, which is the land of the cannibal giants. Yeah, there are cannibal giants. They may not be cannibals, though. There’s a whole thing. Word meanings are always clear from context, but man, I feel like the audiobook narrator might have gone through hell on this book, and I almost want to listen to it just to find out how to pronounce some of this stuff.

One way or another, though, big thumbs up. Check this one out.

#REVIEW: The Poet Empress, by Shen Tao

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Bear with me, if you will: before I review this book, I have to review this book. As in, the object made of paper and cardboard that can be held in your hands. I have amassed a lot of special editions and Special Editions over the last couple of years— I have an entire bookshelf where the books are arranged spine-in so that the pretty painted edges are visible, and yes, I can still tell you what damn near all of them are anyway.

I have two copies of Shen Tao’s The Poet Empress. One of them is a book-box special edition from Illumicrate. The other is, supposedly, the regular edition, the one you’ll get from Amazon or if you walk into a brick and mortar bookstore.

The regular edition may very well be the prettiest book I own.

If you love books at all as art objects in and of themselves, go grab this book right now before this printing sells out, because I doubt future editions are going to look like this first one. Don’t read another word; the story doesn’t matter, this book is that pretty and you want to own it so you can look at it. I am going to have to figure out a way to display this one front-facing. The endpapers are gorgeous, the edges are gilded beautifully, and the cover has this lovely sparkly texture on it that I can neither take nor find a decent picture of. It just doesn’t come through properly in photographs. Go buy this book, right now.

Oh, you want to read it? Yeah, you should do that too, because I know it’s only mid-February and things change but right now I feel like this is going to be high in the running for my favorite book of the year. I think the last time I was this impressed by a debut novel was Jade City. Which I think wasn’t actually Fonda Lee’s debut, but it was the first of her books I read. Close enough. It’s matching my enthusiasm for To Shape a Dragon’s Breath, which … I also compared to Jade City. Along with Scarlet Odyssey. And Iron Widow, so maybe I’m overusing this particular comparison, but the point is I really loved all of those books. This is up there with them.

It’s totally prettier than all of them, though.

Anyway, the story: the main character, Wei Yin, is a peasant girl living in the backwoods of a famine-ridden, crumbling empire controlled by the Azalea Dynasty. The empire is, more or less, Not China; roll with it. The emperor is dying, and has chosen his second son, Prince Terren, as his successor, and Prince Terren is seeking a bride. He has sent emissaries all over the country seeking out women who wish to compete for the honor of marrying him. Wei Yin manages to get herself selected, in hope that she will be able to marry the prince and use her influence to save her family and her village from the famine. Prince Terren, unfortunately, quickly turns out to be a horrible bastard.

Now, I’m gonna be honest: at first glance this doesn’t sound great. Does the phrase “enemies-to-lovers romantasy” mean anything to you? Because even the marketing for this book has been leaning into this, and you are just going to have to trust me that this book absolutely is not a romantasy and is far too intricate for such nonsense as “tropes.” Terren and Wei Yin are both impressively complex, layered characters, and … well, I’m not spoiling anything, but this is absolutely not an enemies-to-lovers book. Why is the book called The Poet Empress? Because much of this world’s magic is based on poetry, and when Wei Yin decides that her best bet is to murder Prince Terren, she realizes that the only way she’s going to be able to do it is to write a very particular kind of poem, one that requires her to know and understand the target on an immensely intimate level.

Oh, it’s illegal for women to be able to read, by the way. Which sorta complicates things.

I know, I know, some of you are shaking your heads. Of course she’s going to marry the prince. The damn book is called The Poet Empress, not The Peasant Girl Who Came In Twenty-Third and Got Her Head Chopped Off. I promise you no other aspect of this book is going to be predictable, and the “competition” is dispensed with much more quickly than you think it’s going to. And once that happens the book can get on with its actual goal, which is sinking its claws into you and slowly tearing your heart out. You will be fifteen pages from the end of the book and you will still not know how it’s going to turn out.

It’s also dark as hell, so be prepared for that; Terren is terrible, and Wei Yin is put through some absolutely terrible things as a result of being connected to him, much less actually married to him. On top of that, many of the women who didn’t win the competition are fairly powerful and well-connected in their own rights, and a number of them immediately decide to kill her. And then there’s the dowager empress, who is also unhappy with her son’s choice of bride. And the prince who got passed over in favor of his younger brother. Comparatively, dying of famine in a squalid village almost feels quaint.

This is brilliant fucking work, guys, and I cannot wait for more from Shen Tao. Go get this book right now. Even if you just look at it, it’s worth the money. The fact that there’s an amazing story in there is a bonus.

#REVIEW: Bones at the Crossroads, by LaDarrion Williams

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Before you read this review, which is of the second book in the Blood at the Root series, I’d like you to read my review of the first book, Blood at the Root. Why? Because it’s kind of fascinating just how cleanly my reading experience of Bones paralleled my reading of Blood:

  • I definitely and absolutely have had Malik in my classroom before. Even more so in this book than in the previous one, honestly; Williams calls Malik “messy” in his Author’s Foreword to this book, and I feel like Malik’s messiness, and to be more specific, his temper, maybe hurts him more in this book than it does in Blood. This is a kid who has been handed a raw deal by life on a ton of different levels (the magic kinda makes it better, I imagine) but one way or another he doesn’t handle it like a grown-up. Why? He’s not one.
  • Watching Malik navigate romantic relationships? Also super familiar.
  • I would say the moment where Williams absolutely stomps on the accelerator is closer to the 2/3 mark of the book than the halfway point, but while Blood came close to making me cry a couple of times– something that, let me repeat, almost never happens while I’m reading– page 368 absolutely 100% got me. Like, a literal gasp, and a well of pride, and I’m not going to pretend I was sobbing or anything but there were actual real tears.
  • I am not enough of a nerd that I’m going to figure out exactly what percentage of the book was finished at page 368, and you can’t make me.
  • NO.
  • It’s 67.6%, so my estimate was right on the money, fuck you.
  • Anyway, I referenced “twists and turns and betrayals” in the first review, and … YEAH. Along with some major reveals and some major shake-ups of what you thought you knew from the first book.

And then the Goddamned thing ends on a cliffhanger, and … remember when I was reading Godsgrave, a million years ago, and I said that I’d never been happier to have the sequel of a book on hand before finishing it? The sequel to Bones at the Crossroads hasn’t even got a release date yet, so LaDarrion Williams is about to acquire a new, and very impatient, roommate.

I will ding the book a tiny bit for dragging occasionally before that pedal-to-the-metal moment that carries through the rest of the story, and it doesn’t mean a whole lot to say this is the best book I’ve read so far this year on January 7th, but this was real real good and if you haven’t read Blood at the Root, go pick that up, and read slowly, and maybe by the time you finish Bones the end of the trilogy will be available.