Reading Roundup: The 34th week of 2025
From time-travel tales and AI adventures to fanfic, it's a varied literary journey!
Some middling fanfic and some good, a clever young adult time travel story and an excellent modern AI read this week. Quite a diverse collection!
4 stars to The Power of the Press, by Bobmin356
Book Description:
" Fandom: Harry Potter Relationship: Harry Potter/Hermione Granger
Forewarned Harry makes his escape from Britain, leaving the tournament in shambles. Protected by family, Harry sets about to fulfill his destiny free from the bigotry and manipulation of others."
My Thoughts:
" I very much enjoyed this duo's Sun Over Britain series a long time ago - we're talking nearly a couple of decades ago now. I hadn't heard of this story so dived into it happily. Apart from the central idea not making a lick of sense, they do the HR ship well. I didn't find Snape very well done this time - going insane only works up to a point and it was handled much better with Cho in Sunrise. Still, for what it is, it's well written, and I enjoy a satisfying Happy Harry story. "
This Book: has 941 pages, a community rating of 3.89 and was first published in 2012.
5 stars to Becoming Real, by Sean Fenian
Book Description:
" Michael Hagerty— GhostRayder , to his fans—reviewed video games and made game videos for a living. He was intimately familiar with virtual worlds. They were his everyday bread and butter. He was quite certain he understood very clearly the lines of demarcation between game and reality, between what was physical, and what was virtual. What was real, and what was not.
Then one day, not long after he reviewed a newly released VR open-world adventure game, a mystery source sent him a modified version of the game, and asked him to go back in and try it again.
Michael would soon find out, amid a high-stakes game of hide-and-seek with shady multinational corporations and shadowy government agencies, that the question of real or virtual, human or not, was far more nuanced and less clear-cut than he had ever believed possible.
••••••
A new novel from Sean Fenian,
Becoming Real
is an exploration of the natures of humanity and reality.
Or perhaps it's a commentary on some of the blind spots of video game design.
Or perhaps it's an SF postmodern love story with a twist.
Or perhaps, it's all of these things… and more.
••••••
This eBook is © 2025, Sean Fenian and Fenian House Publishing. It has been constructed to be fully compliant with HTML5, CSS3, and the EPUB 3.3 specification.
Published by Fenian House Publishing"
My Thoughts:
" The opening chapter of this really gripped me. The idea has been done before, but this is a well-executed story with a likable main character and brilliant execution. Reading the author's afterword, the idea behind RealMe's history, the whole Deep Sleep Inc plan would be an exciting novel in itself. I read it cover-to-cover and very much enjoyed."
This Book: has 327 pages, a community rating of 4.86 and was first published in 2025.
2 stars to Silver king, by JustBored21
My Thoughts:
" So I wasn't overly sunk on Apex, the other of this author's work. But something that's been 5 years in the making deserved a look at least.
I didn't really find much to enjoy. There wasn't really anything new, which given that this story is very late in the HP space is unsurprising. the ending was a bit of a let down, it was another super Harry without much going for it and the final speech was so at odds with the rest of the story as to make things feel muted. Angela Zabini could've been interesting, but even there it didn't really go very far."
This Book: has a community rating of 3.
2 stars to Angry Harry and the Seven, by Sinyk
Book Description:
" Fandom: Harry Potter Relationship: Daphne Greengrass/Harry Potter
Just how will Dumbledore cope with a Harry who is smart, knowledgeable, sticks up for himself and, worst still, is betrothed? A Harry who has a penchant for losing his temper?"
My Thoughts:
" Probably one of the most irritating super-Harry fics I've come across. Far too much quoting from Canon, a worrying number of "grapple hugs" and "squee" ing for my liking, and a worrying amount of discussion of the layout of a suite of rooms that only appears in the last ten percent or so of the story."
This Book: has 1961 pages, a community rating of 4.02 and was first published in 2013.
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.