RatCreature's Journal

What I Just Finished Reading

I finished Home Within Skin by Jem Zero, a SF m/m romance with an alien sex worker and a trans main character. It was okay, but towards the end I got impatient with the main character's angst and self-worth problems, and also was a bit disappointed that we never got any of the alien's POV.

I also read The Queer Principles of Kit Webb by Cat Sebastian, and that was a really fun historical m/m romance.

What I'm Reading Now

I haven't yet started anything new.

What I'm Reading Next

No idea. I've seen that Unseen by Jordan L. Hawk (Rath and Rune #2) is supposed to come out on the 12th, and I quite liked the first one, Unhallowed even though I haven't read the long series that was a spin-off from (I tried the first of that when it was a freebie at some point and iirc didn't like the writing much, and never finished it, but found later, other series by this author very readable). So I've pre-ordered that one. (TBR piles never really shrink, do they?) But maybe something else gets read before.

What I Just Finished Reading

I finally managed to finish a book again: I read the third in T. Kingfisher's Saints of Steel series, Paladin's Hope. The romance didn't engage me quite as much as in the first two, but I still love all the World of the White Rat books for the worldbuilding.

What I'm Reading Now

I'm currently reading All the Feels by Olivia Dade, which just came out, and surprisingly only cost 2.99€ on Amazon, so I grabbed it, because I enjoyed the previous one in the series, Spoiler Alert (despite the plot with the couple keeping secrets from each other, which I'm not fond of). So far I'm enjoying this one too.

What I'm Reading Next

No idea. I still haven't gotten around to Seducing the Sorcerer by Lee Welch, and since my last meme post I also bought the Petty Treasons novella by Victoria Goddard, which is set in the Hands of the Emperor universe and came out early September. (I have no idea why I didn't get an email from the author that it had come out despite having subscribed to their promotional list. Isn't the point of theses lists to alert readers?) Or maybe I'll finish one of the many books I got stuck in previously.

What I Just Finished Reading

Still haven't finished any books. *sigh*

What I'm Reading Now

Aside from getting a bit further still into The Bride Test by Helen Hoang (though my library loan of The Heart Principle has expired in the meantime, which arrival had prompted me to finally start the second book, that I had bought in a sale at some point after actually reading the first).

Anyway, that going kind of treacle-like, I checked out The Friend by Sigrid Nunez from my library, because it was featured in a non-romance rec set on the SBTB site recently. That said it was a short "animal-centric" novel and a "story of love, friendship, grief, healing, and the magical bond between a woman and her dog". I'm more than half-way in, and the dog barely appears, however, and it's all rumination about a now dead writer and ex-university lecturer, his issues with the introduction of sexual harassment policies, and the female narrator somehow feeling warmly to him for no reason that I can see, because he seems to have been insufferable. It's well written, though.

I also read the opening sample of Finding Joy by Adriana Herrera, an m/m romance that was on sale for 0.99€, and I decided it was worth picking up for that, but it didn't hook me enough to continue reading it right away either.

What I'm Reading Next

No idea. Probably Seducing the Sorcerer by Lee Welch, the fantasy m/m romance I mentioned last week, which is now out and I've bought the e-book. I also pre-ordered the next in T. Kingfisher's Saints of Steel series Paladin's Hope, but that will come out only on October 9th, so it's more than a week away yet.

What I Just Finished Reading

Still not over my reading slump, but I finished the m/m romance Off Balance by Jay Hogan at least. It was okay, but I'm not sure I'm going to bother with the second in this series that is coming out soon. I also read some shorter fanfic.

What I'm Reading Now

I haven't started any new books over the last week, so the most recently opened are still the second in the Stone Shifters series, Stonewing Guardian by Zoe Chant, and The Bride Test by Helen Hoang.

What I'm Reading Next

No idea, still hoping to reduce the half-read pile of books I didn't dislike but somehow stopped reading anyway.

Maybe I'll get back to reading some historical romances, if I don't manage to get unstuck on either the paranormal or the contemporary. I think one thing I really like about their type of escapism is that unlike in most contemporary billionaire romances at least the really rich characters in historical romance happily do not work, because they can extract rents from their wealth to have nice stuff and enjoy leisure, and even delegate their wealth management. Or they look to marry rich to avoid work, if the generational wealth was squandered a little too much. Sure, unjust for the exploited peasants (and quite likely involving some slavery-related investments, depending on the time period), so problematic on the macro-level you ignore for the fantasy, but so are contemporary billionaires, only for some bizarre reason the fictional billionaires enjoy "business" and mostly we are told (if not shown) that they keep "working" even though don't have to (well, in romance, not comic characters, who tend to do hero or villain things with their wealth, which I like more).

What I Just Finished Reading

My reading slump continues. I finished reading Stoneskin Dragon by Zoe Chant, a m/f gargoyle and dragon shifter romance, though. It was okay, though not one of my absolute favorite shifter romances.

What I'm Reading Now

I started reading the second in the Stone Shifters series, Stonewing Guardian, but I'm not that far in yet, and not sure whether I'll stick with it. The pile of all the other half-read books also remains. I have no idea when I became this scattered.

What I'm Reading Next

I might finish something from that half-read pile? Also The Heart Principle by Helen Hoang that I had put on hold in my library ages ago, just got delivered in my library app, so I might get on with that, before I have to give it back in two weeks.

What I Just Finished Reading

I've read the third of that a kinky, historical m/f erotic romance series, that I read the first of last week, His Countess by S.M. LaViolette (Victorian Decadence #3).

Otherwise just a little fanfic and still doomscrolling. The IPCC report release didn't help with that. I know it's not helpful on any level, yet in the moment it somehow works as a weird kind of self-soothing activity. Brains make no sense. :(

What I'm Reading Now

I actually started reading the second in that series, His Valet, which worked great for my service kink, but then the whole deception setup got too much for me (not the gender concealment, but that the heroine maneuvers her employer to have sex with her, with her identity disguised) and I switched to the third. I might get back to it, because I really like the service kink aspect.

What I'm Reading Next

Probably Role Model by Rachel Reid (Game Changers #5), which just came out. It's a m/m hockey romance and I enjoyed the first four in this series.

What I Just Finished Reading

Once again I've been failing to finish anything. Not even any long fanfic this week. I only read a couple of chapters of WIPs I follow and a few short fics. I feel like the only reading I manage is doomscrolling. :(

What I'm Reading Now

I didn't start any additional books.

What I'm Reading Next

Who knows. Hopefully something I get to the end of.

What I Just Finished Reading

Again not much this week. I read Prince of Air and Darkness (The Darkest Court, #1) by M.A. Grant, a paranormal m/m romance. It was a fast read and intriguing with world building hooks, though I wasn't thrilled that one of couple apparently regularly tortures other fae as part of his fairy court position, even if they are more resilient than humans. At least the information he got in the plot relevant instance was part of a trap, and the torture didn't work for intelligence gathering. So the plot didn't implicitly endorse it as unsavory but effective (which I loathe as trope).

I also read some fanfic.

What I'm Reading Now

I actually started reading Death at the Crystal Palace by Jennifer Ashley, i.e. Kat Holloway #5, before the paranormal romance above, but kind of got stuck around page 80, and switched books. It's not that it was bad, but by the last book I was already a bit impatient with the drawn out yet repetitive revelations about Daniel McAdam and his secretive government or government-adjacent investigator/fixer/secret agent job, and this looks to turn out more of the same.

Though I still hope there'll be finally some follow through. I feel like teasers should only be strung out for so long, or I start to feel cheated, and five books is pushing it. With longer series I actually want to find out more things about a character, not constantly have the same thing left dangling.

What I'm Reading Next

Probably the next of M.A. Grant's The Darkest Court series? I picked up all three in some sale, and the world building and overarching plot hooks worked better than the romantic couple in the first.

What I Just Finished Reading

I finished Subtle Blood by K.J. Charles, the third in the Will Darling Adventures series, and enjoyed it as much as the previous two.

I also read Not Safe For Work by L.A. Witt, a BSDM m/m romance that was a freebie, and I had hoped would deliver what it said on the tin, but it really didn't have a lot of kink in it, but was mostly workplace outing and angst (one is an important client for the firm the other works at) that was both boring and somewhat contrived. A little bondage with quick release handcuffs, a cock cage, one semi-public mild rope bondage scene at a party (that got aborted) and one scene with hot wax was about the extent of the BDSM, aside from elaborate extra safe word negotiations that seemed ridiculous overkill for the kind of sex they were having. I know this list sounds like at least a decent amount of sex, but this book was not short, over 104k words.

Wait, actually there was a fucking machine contraption with a dildo too, but it somehow was made so boring that I already almost forgot about it. I tend to enjoy that kind of thing if conveys some objectification feelings or something, but this was merely mechanical. The whole power exchange that supposedly was taking place was not really felt in the POV, and it was all very rote and just a pile of stuff being used. It never actually felt like reading D/s sex scenes, though part of it was that we remained only in one POV (the Dom's). Normally I enjoy orgasm denial quite a lot in fiction too, but t never actually got into the head of the character wearing the toy. Well, at least I didn't pay anything for this.

I also read the two LitenVerse novellas by Nino Cipri, Finna and Defekt. Those were both fun with an kind of Evil!IKEA type corporation that somehow manages to generate interdimensional portals (somewhat by accident) through an extra confusing store layout and to exploit them for corporate storage and production advantages, while the unintentional side effects are borne by low wage employees who have to recover lost customers and deal with sentient furniture. The whole setup is more surrealist and metaphor than consistent intricate worldbuilding, but a lot of the individual elements are fun and very vivid. I liked the second novella about a corporate clone discovering his identity more than the first, though both were quick, entertaining reads.

What I'm Reading Now

I haven't started anything new yet, though I didn't finish that military romance from last week either, so I guess technically still that?

What I'm Reading Next

No idea.

What I Just Finished Reading

The Hands of the Emperor by Victoria Goddard managed to break through my reading slump. The gradual discovery of the world was satisfying, though I'd still would have liked maps, a glossary, a list of characters and mythological figures, timelines and generally all sorts of appendices. It doesn't end with a cliffhanger as such (generally it is fairly low tension) but even after 950 pages I still wanted to spend more time there, so I went right on to read the sequel, The Return of Fitzroy Angursell, which I also liked, but not quite as much. But I also subscribed to the author's mailing list to be notified whenever the next book that is mentioned in the end notes comes out.

I then read Upsy-Daisy Dom by Tanya Chris (Hell's Bedroom #3), mostly because I wanted to see how the overarching plot concludes, even though I had various issues with the second part of the series, that nearly made me nope out. This one was better, but I can't say I'd recommend the series.

Today I read After the Storm by Hannah Birchwood, Key Dyson & Raymond Roach, which is a bit of an odd mix of post-apocalyptic SF and angsty recovery fic of a very sweet if a bit annoyingly (if understandably) low self-esteem main character, with quite a lot of sex, but not really a romance. It was a bit pricey for an ebook at just over €9, as my willingness to buy ebooks drops quite a bit around €5, when then instead of buying I tend to look to just borrow them as I rarely reread anyway. But this is self-published, so not available to borrow, and the sample hooked me.

What I'm Reading Now

Currently I am reading Something Human by A. J. Demas, a pseudo-historical m/m romance (an invented ancient civilization, but as far as I can tell not with fantasy mixed in).

What I'm Reading Next

No idea.