Adult High Fantasy & Fireworks 🎆 READING VLOG #166 // 2021

we blow things up to celebrate somebody failing to blow things up one of my favorite things about reading actually that is one of the things that makes a book five stars for me but like fully molten piece of glue on my hand [Music] hello everybody welcome to my first reading vlog of november i am so excited for my reading this month i am just about to film a video i'm having a full youtube day today so i have one video to film and then i have three i can edit so i'm just going to essentially edit as much as possible throughout the afternoon but i thought that i would come in and kick this vlog off first so if you watch my vocally tbr for november you will know that i'm doing things a little bit differently this month we are going to be rolling as we go the first time i have ever done a tbr like this i started off on booktube four years ago not really doing tbrs and then as i got into booktube and doing readathons i started to do tbrs more and then obviously i started bookly three years ago so i haven't ever mood read at least not in the last four years i used to mood read because i didn't know there was another way of reading like back in the day but before we get started on the rolling as we go i have a couple of books that i need to read first book i'm reading is gray sister by mark lawrence and that is because this one is a delayed patreon pick i should have read this back in september it just kept getting pushed back and back not because i didn't want to read it either i'm really excited to read this one but last month i picked the majority of the books that i was going to be picking up using polls and it never won a poll so i'm going to start off by doing this so that it's done it's one of the only books that i have to read this month and i'm currently already 32 pages into it so this one is a sequel to red sister it is an adult high fantasy grim dark series but it also has a little bit of sci-fi in it i'm not sure whether the sci-fi is going to be prominent to the actual narrative of this series at any point but the origins of this fantastical world i want to say and some of the origins of the fantastical elements are actually sci-fi which i remember being surprised about when i picked up the first book but this series is the story of nona gray who is about to be executed when she's saved from the block by an assassin nun and this nun takes her to the convent of sweet mercy where everybody is trained to be assassins it has an assassin school setting which i really loved and it really went into detail in red sister about the actual classes which i enjoyed and i can't remember how old nona is when we start she might be somewhere around 12 but she might be younger than that and in this one we start out where she's 15 and it's all kind of building up to something that happens that you see in the in betweens of the sections in red sister which i know i didn't explain that very well but the books are broken up into sections and in between every section you get this glimpse of where the characters are at whatever point in the future is chronicling where the characters are in very different positions to where they are in the actual bulk of the story so i'm very excited to build up to that point and see like how we got there because it's things like people who are friends are suddenly enemies and people have different allegiances and are on different sides so i'm really intrigued to obviously see how we get to that point when 32 pages in so far this is going to be a slow read for me red says to took me an entire week to read because the text isn't incredibly tiny but it's not large at all it is smaller than average and then it's not necessarily it is a little bit dense as well so because i read the first book i think i read it way back in march it's going to take me a little while to be familiar with the terminology and stuff again although there is something that i love there is a recap at the beginning and it's broken down into bite-sized chunks which was really helpful and then just generally i feel like the writing style paired with all of the fantasy terminology makes this quite a slow reading it's also super atmospheric as well so i feel like the natural reading pace of this book is a little bit slower but the 32 pages i've read so far i really enjoyed and i'm excited to dive back into it tonight but for now i have a video to film and then i'm going to get some lunch and then crack on with some editing so that big youtube day um that i'm supposed to be having he's not going as well as planned i've just finished editing a schedule and stuff the first video oh three that i wanted to get done today and it's quite past four so i'm finishing in 45 minutes but i'm just popping in because i got a whole stack i'll show you the stack i got a whole ton of mail today and i was really excited because i had no idea what any of this stuff was and then i remembered that last week i started ordering my christmas presents so two of them are actually christmas presents so i can't show you what they are although they are really cool but i did get a box from jess's shop so if you are unaware who jess is just as a wonderful wonderful person and she has a shop it is called magic moon child on etsy i will of course link it in the description box but she makes resin things so she makes bookmarks but she also makes some other stuff and jess is also one of my patrons and when i was doing one of my i think it was just reading sprints a couple of weeks ago i said that she had an item in her shop that i absolutely adored but she'd made it in pink and i'm just not a pink person like you guys have probably noticed i'll wear it with pink makeup every now and again but you're never going to see me wearing pinky you're never going to see any pink in my house unless it's like a dusky pink to offset like a forest green but that is besides the point jess very kindly went out of her way to make the items that i wanted in green and they were these resin monstera leaf coasters that are so so pretty so these are two resin coasters with gold flakes and the resin is green and glittery as well and these are beautiful i'm gonna put them on some dark wood surfaces i think so i think they'll look really good so i'll put one in here on that table over there and maybe one in my bedroom and i might ask jess to meet me a couple more when my bedroom is sorted because i know i keep talking about this bedroom project that i'm never gonna work on am i like let's be real honestly it's gonna be my 2022 project and you better hold me to that but my bedroom i'm essentially painting it white it's an off-white at the minute we're gonna get a new carpet because carpets pink which is why i'm so offended by it the furniture in there is all gonna be like a a walnut or an oak and the accent color is going to be emerald green so um they would look amazing in my bedroom when it actually looks how i want it to but because i was placing an order i also picked up another resin bookmark this one is is it the white and rose gold but it is just a white resin with some coppery foiling in there and i do have some more bookmarks from jess that i ordered not long ago i showed you them in a past vlog but while they're right here i've got quite a few now is the other one in here yeah there we go so i have a nice collection of resin bookmarks and somebody asked in the comments of my video if these fall out of your book when you're using them not really suppose it depends i would say if you're somebody who takes your book everywhere with you and you like throw it in your bag without book sleeve and stuff then you do run the risk of them falling out because they're not super thin but like generally they don't really move but obviously like if i'm gonna throw a book in a bag like that actually no it's still in there so yeah the absolutely fine i don't go anywhere we know this but i also if i'm going to be more mobile with a book i do use magnetic bookmark which are my favorite kind of bookmarks to be honest but yeah no problem with these falling out but absolutely fine [Music] who said thoughts only cost a penny cause if that's the case baby i'd have plenty and i've been scrolling up cause my head's heavy [Music] but who'll say i should be ready cause i can be emotional honey but i let it go sometimes oh baby how it takes me [Music] when i get caught up in my mind and i don't say sorry cause we're all just human and the world keeps going and we all keep moving all your flaws won't never i'm almost at the halfway point of racist now i'm on page 185 and i'm enjoying it okay i'm not having the best time with it like i'm not super super into it i do think the first 150 pages of this it took me a while to fully get into the story and i was struggling quite a bit it felt quite slow i wasn't really sure where it's going it seems to have introduced a lot of elements that i feel are going to link up to a larger plot also part of like the main event of the book later on but at this particular moment i have no idea where they're going also i do apologize i'm going to hold this because you guys were balanced on my knee and there was quite a bit of wobble there but neither and past that 150 page mark i am enjoying it a little bit more things are happening something that i didn't expect has happened and i'm not sure like how i feel about it right now like i'm not sure if it's something that i like that's happened because it's kind of changed the setting up a bit and i quite like the actual setting that we already had going on which is the most i can say without spoilers really this book is interesting as well because i feel like mark lawrence doesn't use commas where he should and that is such a very specific thing to pick up on but punctuation like when it's done right you don't really notice that it didn't exist but when it's slightly off i feel like you can really tell that there's something missing and it's just commas feel like they should be there and they're not and it's not like every single time there should be a comma there isn't like there are commas in this book but multiple times throughout this i found a sentence where i feel like it should have a comma and it doesn't and it it feels off to me so i don't know if anybody else has noticed that it's a super small specific thing to pick up on so i don't many people will have picked up on it and i'm probably just being a picky [ __ ] well that's where we're at so i'm aiming to get to page 300 of this today it is it's like 3 30. maybe a bit later i'm watching steph's patreon sprints another busy work week has concluded which i'm real happy about i am waiting for some stock which i don't think is gonna arrive so i have left all of my work stuff out in case it did arrive because i have two more orders to pack if that package comes which i don't think it's going to which is super frustrating so i think i'm just gonna kind of give up on that because it's too late for the parcels to make the post now anyway so i'm just gonna pack all of my stuff away so that's done and it's bonfire night tonight as well which is actually one of my favorite days of the year i get a lot of questions about bonfire night every year um because it's like a uk only thing but essentially bonfire night is a night where we blow things up to celebrate somebody failing to blow things up so way back when this guy called guy fawkes attempted to blow up the houses of parliament and he failed so every bonfire and i we celebrate the fact that he didn't blow up the houses of parliament by having a massive bonfire and setting off a load of fireworks makes no sense the explosions to celebrate a lack of explosions don't quite understand it but it's one of my favorite nights of the year because fireworks so our town has a massive firework display that we'll be heading there later and i'm kind of excited but also kind of like i've had a busy work week and i just want to settle down be cozy and read this weekend so i think i'm going to struggle to get the motivation to get up and make dinner and then head out into the cold but it should be a good time so be worse just a little bit human [Music] they say it takes time being slow and steady [Music] chasing fame till it rains confetti no pain no gain no the growth in shedding cause i can be emotional anybody [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] but i'm pretty sure it's tipped over into afternoon now yes it has it's five past twelve but i slept in a little bit today which is fine because it's sunday i'm smart buying it in the middle of a lazy weekend and i'm having an amazing time feel fab and i tend to actually i tend to get up earlier on the weekends normally and i think that's because when i wake up at like eight on a weekday i think about all of the things that i have to do and i'm like you know what no you're going to sleep for another half an hour i don't want to deal with this right now whereas on a weekend i just have the whole day to kind of do what i want so i'm more eager to get out of bed i guess however i do kind of want to go out for lunch and honestly the town that i live in is so full of cafes there's so many different cafes but none of them are open on a sunday and it just like it blows my mind because i guess the predominant demographic of things to do in town and cafes and stuff in my town is older people so i guess they don't see they don't feel like it's important to be open on a sunday but for me peak time to go out and get breakfast or lunch is a sunday like there's no other time throughout the week where i can just go do you fancy going out for breakfast oh do you fancy going out for lunch like it's a sunday so if i'm going to be doing something on a weekend i'm going to be doing it on saturday and i'll get food while i'm out but sunday is the only day where i'll wake up and be like i want to go out and get breakfast or lunch and i can't and it's so frustrating so i'll see what curtis thinks but we'll have to go out of town if we want lunch which is absolutely ridiculous but yeah aside from that we're going to be having a lazy day i'm just checking in with you guys because yesterday yesterday afternoon during part one of this lazy weekend i finished grey sister by mark lawrence and i gave it four stars i really enjoyed it so the first 150 pages of this i found it quite hard to get into it was a little bit slow and we do have i think i've already mentioned that you have this little recap at the beginning and in this recap mark lawrence says he's done it so that the characters don't have to keep telling you things that they already know which i do really appreciate because it does annoy me if i'm reading the sequels to a book not long after i've read the first book and you spend the first hundred pages with the characters like really explaining what's happened but then at the same time because it has been a while since i've read this i feel like i could have done with just like a little bit of assistance because the story just kind of goes straight in after that recap and there's no like just subtle pointing towards things that happened in the book before to kind of help you connect the dots so this recap don't get me wrong it was really good it gave me a breakdown of the first book and the main things that you needed to know going into the second but i could have just done with like a couple of conceptual like little context clues alongside some of the things they mentioned in the first couple of chapters in here so that probably impacted my enjoyment of the first hundred pages also while i was getting my brain in order and re-learning a little bit about this world something that i missed in this one actually is you know those little in-between sections in between the parts of the book that i said were in book one they don't have any of these at all so you have a prologue and an epilogue that's set in that timeline that's in between the chapters of the book one but aside from that this book isn't section so it's just one whole thing sandwiched between that prologue and epilogue and i think that my favorite part of rochester actually was those bits just because i liked seeing the parallels of where the characters are and where we know from those bits that they're eventually gonna end up i still really love nona in here i love her as a main character she has this like bravado in front of being like this tough [ __ ] that doesn't care about anything or anyone when really she's actually a little bit of a softie and i like to find family elements in here as well with some of the other sisters of the convent both the novices and the elder sisters there are characters in the series that truly piss me off because of how awful they are and how willing they are to be on like just not be on the side of good you know when they have no reason to be apart from being really [ __ ] irritating people and plot wise i did enjoy the plot of this when i got past those first 150 pages and we had a little bit of a setting change and i'm really intrigued to see how this wraps up in holy sister because i feel like i'm still waiting for the story to come together i'm still waiting for some sort of like epic reveal where i'm like oh [ __ ] like that's why that happened that's why this is going on which i don't feel like i'm getting with this series and i think that little bit of feeling like it's cleverly plotted is what's making me give the books in the series four stars instead of five because i do feel like there's quite a few conveniences in here and i always talk about like there was nothing that i couldn't predict and it's not really what i mean when i say things like that predictability in a book is fine because like some people can predict stuff some people can't and predicting stuff a lot of the time doesn't take away my enjoyment from a book i like it when i predicted something because that means that the book is well plotted early on so i couldn't predict a lot of the happenings in this book which is good because i didn't know where it was going because of that there were a few moments of surprise but then nothing felt well connected like i like things like sanderson where i can connect the reveals back like 500 pages through little subtle plot clues throughout the rest of the text and that's what i mean when i say this is missing the thing that makes it five stars for me it's missing that little bit because i don't know is that a normal thing like do you guys love it doing that do you guys love it when you have a reveal and you can see how it's been plotted the entire book or is that just like a more specific me thing it's one of my favorite things about reading actually that is one of the things that makes a book five stars for me which i've only just realized in this moment so this one wasn't on my copoly tbr it was my patreon pick from september and it was bobby's pick and also bobby gifted me this series a couple years ago so thank you very much bobby for that you can be happy that i finally read it now and i do possibly want to pick up holy sister this month if i can because it's less than 400 pages i think and it would be good especially with how i not necessarily struggled but it took me longer to get into this because it's been so long i'd like to avoid that for holy sister if possible i also keep forgetting to tell you guys and i forgot in my tbr and i'm so annoyed at myself that i forgot about this but i'm also participating in the clio ship readathon this year which i also participated in last year but with being busy at the end of the year and having tbrs and all of the stress of end of year stuff completely fell by the wayside and i kind of gave up probably before even the end of november but if you guys don't know what the clear your [ __ ] readathon is it is hosted by andy at most reads i'll put the link to their announcement video in my description box and it's also hosted by art who i don't think has a youtube channel but their instagram is plasma and i'll also link the twitter in my description box for the readathon as well because this is it's kind of like a role-playing style readathon like a fantasy quest that is run by ariadne and the narrator and the narrator is just a sassy sassy character that i'm completely roast the participants it has a little bit of a storyline as well so in part one we were doing this quest the quest failed we all died and in part two we're trying to get ourselves resurrected so the point of the cliche readathon essentially the only real rule that it has is that you are supposed to be clearing your tbr for the end of the year so you can't source new books or buy new books to fulfill any of the prompts but all of the information will be in my description box and i've put gray sister in i think oh i put this in to fulfill the prom a book where someone dies because this is it's an assassin book so people are dying left right and center constantly but now that i finished that i'm moving on to my one and only copy roll for november which is dragon keeper by robin hobb this is the august and september book for catch up book club i can't really tell you anything actually about this series without spoiling at least some elements because the whole nature of this book kind of hinges on something that's revealed in um like the live [ __ ] traders but this one is a direct continuation of the live ship traders i don't actually know too much about it aside from it's the only series in the elderlings that is published in four books i think that was something to do with issues with the publisher it was supposed to be a trilogy and i've heard it reads slightly more why a than the rest of the books in the realm of the elderlings which are adults and it has at least one main character that is a dragon that is all i know about this but i am expecting it to be much more like the live ship traders than the fitz book so i'm expecting multi perspective it is set in that part of the world as well so i'm expecting to see some cameos i mean i've read one chapter and 14 pages into this and we've already had character from live ship traders which was really exciting because i actually still think that livestreamtraders is my favorite series that i've read from robin hobb so far so this one's on my pocopolis tbr to read a fantasy i want to read a decent chunk of this today because we all know that i've been reading a lot more on the weekends than i have in the week and i need that done for sunday which is when the live show is going to be [Music] on each day i feel like giving up i pray you'll find a reason to hold on even one thing that can make you smile is a prayer answered this i know for each day of lift is all by grace [Music] so i know that grace still holds you here [Music] even all the things that hurt like hell are all part of god's good story [Music] oh i thank god that you're in my life you brings us [Music] so i'm now 90 pages into a dragon keeper and it's already been really sad and i just was not ready for it so we know that this is about the dragons of the world i'm holding the camera in between my knees again so if there's wobble i'm sorry i need to work on my thigh strength so we know that this one is about dragons and we also know from the last trilogy the aftermath of what happens in the livestream traders regarding the dragony elements i guess of the series so something that i didn't think about before i started this that became very apparent early on is that because i know that it's running alongside part of tony mann we are going to see the aftermath playing out in the perspective do you know that's closer to like where it's actually happening instead of hearing about it elsewhere at the beginning of this book and it's really really sad i'm not i'm not into it but i have because i didn't actually know what the series is about i have read the synopsis which again has spoilers if you're not up to this part in the series if you are up to this part in the series it's fine to read the synopsis on this but i'm really excited because i understand why people are saying that this feels more like y a but it's not that there's anything different really about the writing or anything where i'm up to anyway it's that all of the characters are really young so the dragon characters that i've been reading about in here are really young and then the two we've had two human perspectives one of them's a kid i think she's around 10 years old and the other one is a young woman who's 21 years old and then we've also had the human perspective of a guy who's 26 but i'm really really enjoying this so far and i think i can see for sure know that i prefer the livestream traders and obviously i can't say if i prefer this but i really do enjoy the livestream traders more than i enjoy the fitz books and i think the reason for that is that when europa fits his perspective it's quite limiting because we're only reading from his perspective and he is only concerned about the things around him and the things that he is concerned in which is why i always say when i'm reading the fitz books it's really funny because there's lots of interesting things going on in the world like fitz doesn't care about elderlings or dragons or any of that magical stuff in the world he's focused on some other stuff which mainly focuses on the wit and the skill which are relevant in the livestream traders and in this series but there's kind of it's kind of like having two schools of thoughts about something so fitz thinks about the wit and the skill in relation to things that are going on with him and the way that those elements are regarded in the part of the world that he's from whereas in this part of the world where people believe very different things they have a different approach so they think about the witness skill in relation to other things so i think i prefer the live ship traders because of that multi-perspective element really broadens the horizon it also focuses more on the dragons and the elderlings as opposed to the internal politics of like book which is what a lot of the fit series is about and it doesn't focus quite so much on the wit and the scale even though as i've said they are kind of present just in a different context i'm doing sprints tonight i spent my day making candles packed a couple of orders um proofed a video set up a video for editing and then i did a little candle experiment which i'm eager to see how it's turned out i actually don't have high hopes for it but get off don't attack my glasses please sir i don't have high hopes for how it's gonna turn out but if it does turn out some semblance of okay then i'm really excited about it and now it is like it's 4 45 and i just could not be bothered starting something else with only like 20 minutes left on my work day so i'm just gonna sit around for a little while before i start making dinner and then hopefully make quite a bit of progress in this during sprints i find this series and the live ship traders to be a much quicker read like um i feel like i'm interested in them a lot earlier on in the books because like with the fitz books i find that they're very very slow and you need to settle into the story and there's a lot of just fits floating around being depressed and living his life which a lot of the time isn't actually all that exciting good evening guys i have had a terrible day nothing like majorly dramatic but just a series of very small and i feel kind of improbable stupid kind of things have happened so like i was working today and it's been a little bit of a mishmash day like i prefer to dedicate a day to one thing so like a day to film and editing a day to making candles a day to packing orders but not every day happens to fall like that so this is one of those days where i had lots of random little bits i need to do it and the best thing to do would be just try and fit them all into one day so the afternoon i dedicated to making candles now at this point i've been making candles for i think four years i actually don't even remember anymore but i think it's four years and when i started i remember um i got 50 pounds of money for a birthday and off amazon i bought like a digital thermometer and some scales and a couple of other bits so that was like my first equipment and i was still using the scales up until a couple of months ago but they were honestly not only were they covered in wax that i couldn't get off they were falling apart so i've been them and got some new ones but i still had my thermometer i also have the same glue gun that i've been using the entire time and today i was wicking my jaws with my glue gun and i've got some new glue sticks which like nothing fancy you know when i need glue sticks i just go onto like ebay or amazon or somewhere they're quite hard to find in bulk around here and i ordered like a pack of 50 glue sticks so the ones that i most recently got are a lot runnier than any that i've had previously i'm guessing they have like a lower melting point or something on them and for the first time in my four years of making candles i think nearly five years i burn myself and it's actually like it's quite a nasty burn because the molten glue like landed on me i'll show you because it's not like gross or anything it's just a bit like so looking but like a fully molten piece of glue on my hand and when it landed on there i treated it like it was wax because i'm used to splashing hot wax on myself and i was like oh it'd be fine like it's stinging it'll cool in a minute and i can flick it off and then i remembered it wasn't work so i was like oh [ __ ] just wiped it off without thinking took a layer of skin with it absolutely disgusting i have medical anxiety so dealing with it was not fun like burns for some reason burns cuts not for me and i have no problem with blood it's not blood that's an issue and there was no blood here anyway run it under the tap it's actually not saw at all which is weird because it is quite like it's it's past one layer of my skin but i burped myself soaked about it for a while and was like cool we'll carry on burn the tip of my finger with molten glue and that one is it's a lesser burn so i think that one's gonna blister which isn't fun so i did that and then later on during my last spatula candles i made for the day i picked up my thermometer and just dropped it into a full bottle like not bottled jug of wax so now my original thermometer is dead as well and i'm like cool everything is just going so wrong today and then when i was making dinner i opened a packet of like chopped cauliflower like this and he just like exploded and the cauliflower like hit the wall and burst back at me so i've not been having a good day i'm generally feeling all right though i went to get my hair done yesterday i don't know if you guys can tell the difference like whether it looks super different because it is just like a freshen up of the same style that i had previously although i haven't brushed my fringe recently so that's all clumpy but just in case you guys wondered about the difference i didn't go and get my hair done yesterday and today's my rest day like workout wise so i'm actually really struggling because normally when it's a rest day i have something else on to like force me into getting up after dinner but now i've got nothing on tonight and i really want to read which i'm gonna do but i'm just feeling real weird about not having anything to get up and have to do but i'm on page 340 of this still really really enjoying it we've had some cameos as well from characters from the live [ __ ] traders and honestly i loved it i loved it so much there's something about seeing characters that you know especially on the character that you're reading from doesn't really know the person and they have like assumptions and stuff about the person i'm like excuse me do you not slander my good friend alfie of esther like we're not going there absolutely do not do that so i had a great time with that and this is a slow burn story like we're getting reacquainted with stuff and also getting to know some new characters but i am like super immersed into it the only kind of negative point i have to say about this is that it's kind of tedious to read the beginning of it because a lot of things are being explained as though to a new reader which of course first book in a new series even though it is like the extended elderlings people are gonna pick this up without reading anything else i need all of that kind of stuff explaining to them whereas somebody who has already read all of the oddly's books doesn't need that information and it is i've noticed it is repetitive in real weird ways so like a specific example i can think of is that when we were reading from must have been the perspective of one of the dragons and in here essentially there is a bunch of dragons that humans said that they would look after however the dragons are proving to be troublesome so they're wanting to move the dragon somewhere else and the dragons also maybe want to go to this other place but we're reading from the perspective of this dragon and she was saying about the area that they're in all of the trees are like scarred and marked because the dragons will rub themselves up against them and some trees are broken that way and then later on in a different chapter i think that was actually from um another character's perspective and we got to the dragon and it was once again mentioned in the the trees were all scored and the bark was rubbed off them because dragons would rub on them to get rid of pests and stuff on their scales and it's just little bits like that that keep getting repeated from different characters perspectives and i'm like yes this might be something that a character me like the first time that i've seen these trees they may realize that the trees are scored but i don't need to read it again because i already know because you've already told me in a different perspective i am now that i'm in the middle portion of this feeling the slog a little bit like i'm not as invested in turning pages as i was at the beginning but i'm still thoroughly enjoying it i would like to finish it tonight probably not going to happen if i'm being realistic but i think i'm definitely gonna get to the page 450 mark and when we hit page 450 i get to roll for another book which um is exciting as the only on the days it's hard to leave your baby know that we still love you just the same [Music] every heavy weight you've carried here isn't too much for us to receive oh i think [Music] good afternoon it's 4 30 on friday and i have just finished work for the week and honestly i've had such a stressful work week i don't think i've actually mentioned to you guys what i've been doing this week work-wise but it is the winter and christmas candle lunch so like all the fall stuff is done i believe the thunder's restock the last one will be next week and i'm bringing in the winter stuff so i did all of the christmas candles including a new christmas candle so i had to like do all the photos and stuff and launch that and also i went through and picked out all the winter fragrances that i do and stocked all of those which some of them haven't been in for quite some time so it's a large restock it's like twice the size of my standard restock which most of them are at this time of year so i did all of that but also i filmed my first bookshelf tour this week which i shouldn't have done when i knew i was gonna have a stressful work week and i was convinced that i would have to work tomorrow to get that edited ready for sunday after already having like all of the candle related stress but i just finished editing that so that means that i'm free for the weekend now i have to do the restock at 7 00 pm but that only takes about 15 minutes to sort out because i've done all of the rest of the prep work already i'm free every year i'm so happy i'm honestly just so mentally exhausted after this work week i also woke up with a headache this morning i didn't read as much as i wanted to last night because of the anxiety that i had from burning my wrist and i'm one of those people i really wish i was one of those people who when i was having bad mental health times i could sink into a book for the escapism but i'm the opposite so if anything's going on with me mentally i can't concentrate on a book i can't sit still so i played monopoly with curtis instead which took my mind off it and was great but um because of being on edge all yesterday and anxiety etc i woke up with a headache this morning so i'm so happy that i finished my work for the week i don't have any plans for the weekend apart from a live show on sunday my main priority for the weekend or not even the weekend tonight and tomorrow really is to finish dragon keeper which i'm currently on page 400 so i have 150 pages left but we'll see how it goes because right now i actually just really want to lie down and have a nap i might just not wake up until sunday that would be great [Music] yellow so oh this is flickered and i'm not a fan so i finished dragon keeper and i gave it four stars i really really enjoyed this one the reason it's four stars and not five like i was into this immediately and the plot started to all at the pace and started to dip a little bit through the middle and the point that this ends on is not like your normal end of book kind of climax it felt like a very middle of book kind of situation but i do believe that this is the book that robin hobb well this entire series i think robin hobb had issues with the publisher and the schedule and they wanted her to cut this one down which is why it ends on such a anticlimactic kind of note so essentially because it doesn't it it does have that little bit of drag throughout the middle and we don't really go anywhere with the plot it does have a plot like i mentioned briefly that they're planning on moving the dragon somewhere and the dragons want to move somewhere but it just doesn't really kind of build into anything it feels like we ended kind of two-thirds of the way through a book but i was immersed in this from the beginning i really enjoy robin hobb's writing style couple of weird things with the repetition in there and i did notice like a couple of editing errors in this as well which is weird because it was published in 2009 so this is not a first paperback or anything this should be like a third or fourth round paperback at least so you'd think that they wouldn't have those mistakes but it did just a thing to note i guess i will say that the atmosphere in here is great because it mainly takes place in the rain world obviously it's the rain world chronicles it takes place in that part of the world which i think is one of the more magical parts of those probably the most magical part of the elderly's world and they essentially build all of their cities in trees so it's like this magic like woodsy fantasy tree village something that's really interesting about the areas of robin hobb's world is that she's built them very believably in terms of they have different societal issues so bing town where one of the main characters this book is from are very very sexist they don't treat the women of the world very well and the interesting thing about it as well is that women used to be in charge of everything they used to be the heads of the families and like the top traders and in control of a whole bunch of stuff that there is not anymore and they've kind of reverted to this kind of sexist society which is really weird whereas in the six duchies where the fitz books mainly take place you don't have those issues like they treat women equally and then there are other areas of the world where women are kind of like superior to men they have a matriarchal society then there's different takes on things like same-sex relationships slavery and stuff throughout the different parts of the world so it's always really interesting to venture into different parts and see what the takes on that society are if that makes sense this book does heavily deal with disability i want to say in a variety of ways some of the ways it's treated in this area is not entirely actually like it's just really awful but the discussions i think some of the discussions were interested and i'm interested to see how things unfold and change throughout the rest of this series plenty of content warnings in here as well i always find they see me more content warnings in the liveship traders side of things than i do in the six deutsche side which is also interesting but content warnings in this one for a whole ton of sad animal stuff over a variety of different kinds of things it was like really upsetting for me particularly because that is something that i really don't like to read obviously it makes sense within the story in this but it is there and there is a lot and lots of different kinds also in here we have content warnings for sexual assault domestic abuse and a whole ton of gaslighting so there were some sad parts in this which we all know that robin hobb is known for but also some like i i think that robin hobb deals with things that are hard to read really well because she doesn't shy away from delving into it but it never comes across as gratuitous after reading this even though i did only give it four stars in comparison to a lot of the robin hobb books they've given five stars i still think that i definitely prefer the live ship traders side of the world when i do the six dutches because it is just so limiting being in fitz's head and as soon as i started this and i have the same experience with a ship of magic it's just so much easier to get into the story and so much compelling from the start than the fitz books are where you need like two 300 pages to actually get into the book so yeah the live show is on this tomorrow i'm excited to see what everybody else saying is because i know at least one of the catch-up book club was not enjoying this in the beginning and because the pace dips through the middle and doesn't really pick up i don't think that's going to have changed much so i'm really interested to get everybody else's thoughts on this i am a little worried about going forward into this series because i know that robin hobb had a whole ton of issues with the publisher which made things like disjointed and stuff like it was only supposed to be three books it ended up being four this one ends like in a place where it doesn't feel natural for it to end and i know that the last two books are only like 400 and something pages each so i'm hesitant going forward because i feel like there's potential in this series so if i start reading it to be one of my favorite hob series but because i know about all those issues i'm like but what if they ruined it you know like what if all of those publishing issues just kills the series so in terms of what i'm going to be reading next i have actually done my next role i do actually know what the next book that i'm going to be picking up is but i'm going to be a real [ __ ] about it and tell you guys that i have included that content for the start of next week's vlog and i'm going to be wrapping this one up here but because i do feel kind of bad about being like yeah you don't get to see that for another week i will let you guys know that i'm doing another install of my unhaul project where essentially all of the roles that i roll next week i'm going to be picking from the books on my unhaul car so you have that to look forward to because i know quite a lot of you guys do enjoy my own whole project so i really wanted to squeeze in another round before the end of the year and essentially i have the perfect opportunity to do so so that is it for this week's vlog i do hope you guys have enjoyed it if you've made it this far if you have please don't forget to like if you liked it and subscribe if you wanna and i'll see you guys next week bye oh you bite your friend like chocolate you say you will go where nobody knows with guns in under our petty holes we're never gonna quit and no one ever gonna quit though

Channel: Becca and The Books

Views: 2,325

Rating: 4.9813085 out of 5

Keywords: adult high fantasy books, bonfire night vlog, fireworks, weekly reading vlog, reading vlog 2021, reading vlog, vlog, book shopping, booktube, Becca and the books

Id: omOFnxOt5X4

Length: 43min 17sec (2597 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 18 2021