All the books I read in 2025 / part 1.
and what I thought of them…
Delicious in Dungeon vol 8 – 14 – Ryoko Kui: ★★★★★. This story has it all! Funny, whimsical and original characters and a story that both manages to be original but at the same time have a lot of traditional fantasy elements and interesting worldbuilding, with a cool message about society, unity and how food is a privilege. It’s a theme you don’t see every day, and it was so refreshing to read and well delivered.
The Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas: ★★★
One sure can see that Dumas got paid for every single damn word he wrote. There are a lot of them, and it takes us a while to get to the point or to frankly get anywhere. There were chapters where the story was in full swing and I couldn’t stop reading, but then there were long chapters in between where the story completely drags along and becomes so boring.
The House with the Golden Door, The Temple of Fortuna – Elodie Harper: ★★★★ , ★★★★ . All in all, this is a very well-crafted historical book about the perseverance of women and their struggle. I had already figured it the ending of the trilogy by the end of the second book, but that didn’t take anything away from the story itself, as it was so consistent within its narrative. The characters are lively and real and despite the horrors of the story and the life they live, there is always hope in them which gives the reader some comfort. The text is a bit dry and tends to be a bit too modern at times, both in thought and style, which is sometimes difficult to get used to at first.
Ferðalok – Arnadlur Indriðason: ★★★The text is easy to read, and the setting is certainly fascinating, but I didn’t find this little murder story that was sprinkled in there that exciting and it just felt too much like a filler to increase the number of pages within the book.
All Systems Red – Martha Wells: ★★★I liked it, but I didn’t love it the way I had hoped. The combination of the depressed robot and the witty humor of the writing style makes the story fast paced and extremely entertaining, but personally I wanted a bit more out of the heavy themes of the story. I wish the story would stop a bit more and linger on things, but maybe I’ll change my mind on this fast-paced narrative style once I’ve read more of the series.
Somoene you can build a Nest in – Jon Wiswell: ★★★★
This is this fantasy love story that really made my cold, dead asexual heart sing. This was an asexual presentation I’ve been craving, because I thought it came across extremely well and was presented in a unique way without constantly talking about the misery that comes with being asexual and how broken you are. The story managed to be both serious and very witty and sharp. The witty thoughts of our main character as they try to fit into the group, and her thoughts about how stupid people are was delightful to read. Extremely original.
Guests – Hildur Knútsdóttir: ★★★★
I read this in no time. Exciting, easy to read and a little brutal but not as brutal as I thought or wanted.
The Bone Ships – R.J. Barker: ★★★Such an interesting idea for a story, an interesting world with lore and depth that truly has everything I want from an epic fantasy story and yet I couldn’t really get into it. Perhaps it was the nautical elements and then the painfully slow pace really did it for me. I wish there had been as much emphasis on characters and there was on world building.
The Teller of Small Fortunes – Julie Leong: ★★Sometimes it’s fun to read stories where nothing really happens and there’s nothing much at stake as you just relax while reading them, and sometimes it’s plain boring. I thought this story started off pretty well but as the story progressed, I started to feel very bored. The story felt too formulaic and the promise of such a queer, found family story with an asexual main character was not delivered well enough within the text. I really didn’t care about anything that went on in this story. It was a slog.
Nettle & Bone – T.Kingfisher: ★★★
I wanted more. I wanted a bigger world, a cooler magic system and more complexity to the fairytale elements that Kingfisher was building the story upon. I thought it was all a bit too typical, and even though I appreciated this feminist attempt to give the women in these fairy tales and folklore more depth, but I didn’t think the story went particularly deep with that theme. The idea of the story was stronger than execution and the dialogue between the characters became more and more annoying to me as the story progressed. I really enjoyed the ending though, and the last part of the book was very exciting.
The Lamb – Lucy Rose: ★★★The cannibal theme was nice, but I found this story very repetitive after a while. And I understand that is from a child’s point of view and things are being emphasized, but I thought the middle of the story, for example, was much too long and there were some logical elements that didn’t make sense to me. It was incredibly well written, the descriptions were very beautiful, but it also felt a little empty. But the ending was cool.
Tea You at the Alter – Rebecca Thorne: ★★★It was a fun-enough read, but just like with the second book there was really too much going on for this type of story. And way too many characters. Neither of the books that has followed You Can’t Spell Treason without Tea has managed to capture that same vibe of coziness, tranquility and introspection of characters while also having thrilling fantasy adventure and keep some sort of a balance between the two.
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell – Susanna Clarke: ★★★★ This is a re-read. This was once a story that I thought was dry, confusing, condensed and just plain boring. When I was in my early twenties I didn’t appreciate the text’s almost theoretical approach, with its countless footnotes, and the complexity of the characters, which are often very frustrating but at the same time so fascinating to read about. But I can enjoy these characters and their arrogance and pride that their method of learning magic and preserving it is the only way to do things that drives the story forward. The slow build-up of the story allows those themes to thrive and makes the story deeper and more complex as the madness of the two wizards and their quest for control and fame get a bigger hold on them. I still think that the story tends to be a little too slow and dry in parts, but this is such an unusual and unique fantasy with a great mystical and heavy atmosphere that sort of takes your breath away and leaves you pondering for weeks afterwards.
Sunrise on the Reaping – Suzanne Collins: ★★★★★
It’s amazing to see the depth of the censorship and propaganda that Collins made such a big theme within this story and how it distorts the truth for everyone, even the reader. How the power of propaganda makes you never know what really happened. The story is so exciting, full of great character moments, and so easy to read that you can hardly put it down, yet so brutal and heartbreaking at the same time. The road to a revolution is a long one with no winners, only survivors. It makes you see so many things in a different light.
Sixty Kilos of Sunshine – Hallgrímur Helgason: ★★
Even though the text is in many ways very well crafted and Hallgrímur plays well with words I felt it just made the story very long-winded, interferes with the story’s progression and just made it a rather painful read. For a while I also felt like the story lacked a main character that you could root for and I Hallgrímur was trying too hard to be funny. A very frustrating read.
The Waking of Angantyr – Marie Brennan: ★★★
While the idea behind this story has always managed to be intriguing and interesting enough to keep me going from the beginning to the end, I don’t feel like the structure and pacing of the story, as well as the excessive violence that was present there, to be exactly my cup of tea and sort of grating. And the story lost steam towards the end.
Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation Vol. 1 & 2 – Mò Xiāng Tóng Xiù: ★★★
This story had a habit of taking too much time blabbing about the backstories and family history of all the characters, which of course is important to the and is inevitable to a certain extent, but these info-dumps made the story too slow despite the world and the lore being cool. At times I just felt very lost within it and it almost like the characters feel too distant for me to care.
The House Witch – Delemhach: ★★The story starts out as a cozy take on a traditional fantasy and at first the mood that the book managed to create is vibrant and makes it an easy read, but I struggled with some of the world-building, the use of modern language and even slangs such a racist word for the Romany-people which just took me out of the story, as well as the strange misogynistic way of some of the male supporting characters spoke about the women and queer people. That might work in a grimdark fantasy, but not in this type of story.
Legendborn – Tracy Deonn: ★★★
It took me some time to settle into this story and get used to the world. I am not the biggest fan of urban fantasy. It was both a little too slow in the beginning but at the same time I thought everything happened just a bit too fast. Both the training, the discovery of powers and the romance. We got that typical YA male characters and while they didn’t do anything for me, the YA feel didn’t bother me too much either although some of those characters are rather flat. But our main character was great, easy to root for and by the end I was very excited about where the plot was going.
