Reading Roundup: The 33rd week of 2025
Juggling home renovation and surprising pregnancy issues while keeping up the reading
My wife's pregnancy continues to throw curveballs , as does the crazy amount of housework. Renovating is never neat and tidy, but all the messier when you're actually planning to demolish bits of your house.
A couple of Dave Duncan omnibuses have been on offer this week, which is great for anyone new to the maestro. Also, an HP fanfic I've been seeing highly rated for the last couple of years finally finished. I do try not to read them until they're done.
4 stars to Solace, by Therin Knite
Book Description:
"Corina Marion has a father problem—namely that her Red Cross doctor of a dad has finally returned home from sixteen years of war..... as a body in a box to be buried. Her mother is devastated, her friends shocked and saddened, her hometown in mourning at the loss of its local hero. And Corina, indifferent to the man she never met, is trapped in the middle of an emotional onslaught she isn't prepared to handle. But when a strange old man confronts Corina at her father's funeral, he offers her an impossible opportunity: the chance to know the late Luther Marion. And in a moment of uncertainty, Corina makes a choice with consequences she can barely fathom. A choice that sends her twenty-five years into the past. To the heyday of her father's hometown. Right on the cusp of the harrowing events that will shape his life...and his death. And in order to return to her damaged home, supportive friends, and uncertain future, Corina will have to fight tooth and nail alongside the man she's resented her entire life. Because if she doesn't help fix the past she's inadvertently changed with her presence, Luther Marion may not live long enough to become a hero at all."
My Thoughts:
" Quite a warm-hearted redemption story, I can really feel the YA/Teen vibe. I'd have taken a lot from Corina Marion. With lovely overtones of Wilde and Dickens to flavour the English, a brutal war not to shy away from reality and a seriously strong dose of family, this was an emotional punch-packer of a teen yarn."
This Book: has 262 pages, a community rating of 3.82 and was first published in 2015.
3 stars to Harry Potter and the Artificer Legacy, by Kairomaru
My Thoughts:
" Although the idea was different, I struggled with over 3,500 exclamation marks, a great deal of written-out sound effects and randomly-placed sex scenes. I'm new to "kek", too. LOL was my kek. Properly showing my age. In terms of story, the idea of crafting and Harry being a Smith was kinda interesting. The goblin/dwarf stuff I'd not seen before, and the way spells are verbally changed (tria to add extra copies, etc, was neat). On balance, I'd read more of the author's work, but I didn't find myself hooked in the way I have by some Greater fics."
This Book: has a community rating of 3.
Things not on Goodreads or reread
Harry Potter and the Antiquity Link and Amulet of the Moon, by Semprini
Reread but read because I wanted the predictability. I sometimes just read the first of these but did both this time.
Star Trek: The Double Helix Omnibus, by various authors
I first read these as single volumes, and again when I bought the complete set for a friend a few years ago. They don't quite stir the heart like they did when I was seeing our characters on TV every week, but they were, and still are, great glimpses into different corners of the Trekverse.
Wasp, by Eric Frank Russell
And of course, another comfortable old favourite. I never quite clicked the same with EFR's other works