Reading Roundup: The 9th week of 2025
This week features four mixed reviews on books and a struggle with slow Internet—ugh!
Greetings, fellow readers. A slow week, I'm afraid. We're suffering at the moment with pre-dialup Internet speeds at home. I didn't think I'd mind terribly, but it does make for some interesting Teams calls during work hours.
Just the 4 books this week without anything outstanding.
3 stars to The Takeover (Occupy Earth Trilogy #1), by Robert Charlton
Book Description:
"July 5, 2041
The takeover of Earth began so discreetly, it went unnoticed by every human being on the planet.
In America, folks had just finished celebrating the second (and, as it turned out, last) Independence Day of the new decade. Long after the celebrations had ended, small bits of matter—“seeds” let’s call them—began falling from the sky like pollen, drifting on the breeze and eventually planting themselves in the earth. Not all of them germinated, but enough did—some five million—to mark the beginning of the end of human supremacy on Earth.
Like all seeds, they represented potential . Tiny dead-looking lumps of matter can sometimes achieve great things. Acorns grow into oaks, cones fall to the ground and become redwoods, and winged maple seeds helicopter down from their parent tree with a full set of instructions on how to grow. So it was with these seeds. Soon they would grow into something unimaginably big.
All they needed was time. "
My Thoughts:
"With quite a lighthearted writing style and some memorable characters, this is the start of a potentially very interesting story. I can't admit to being gripped, but nor was I so bored that I didn't finish it."
This Book: has 351 pages and a community rating of 4.00.
4 stars to Honor thy blood, by TheBlack'sResurgence
Book Description:
" Fandom: Harry Potter Relationship: Harry Potter/Daphne Greengrass
Beginning in the graveyard, Harry fails to reach the cup to escape but is saved by an unexpected person thought long dead. Harry learns what it is to be a Potter and starts his journey to finish Voldemort once and for all. NO SLASH. Rated M for language, gore etch. A story of realism and Harry coming into his own." My Thoughts:
" So it turns out that this is the first of TBR's stories. I suppose I can therefore forgive the reuse of the Stebbings scene, which played out practically word-for-word in the other story. I also really struggle with authors who don't close their dialogue with punctuation, it just jars me. And there were some real humdingers in terms of proofing, things like "Now I do believe that it is time for us to divulge in our annual welcoming feast", "Inside he found several wand holsters, books and personal defects", and "When Gellert became the treat that he did the wizarding world looked to me to solve the problem.". I think treat is supposed to be traitor, in case you can't work that last one out.
There's also a lot of your very typical fanfictionist grammatical cockups: "per say" instead of "per se", "draw" instead of "drawer", "tact" in place of "tack", and a number of unique ones, such as "amiably" instead of "admirably" (Yes, Voldemort did tell Harry they'd fought amiably), "exulted" instead of "exalted" and "deducted" instead of "deduced". I also love the sentence "Being missing for 2 months in the wizarding world without training was a death sentence". Or perhaps just a regular school holiday for every Muggleborn, as I care to think about it. Finally on the grammar front, a rather high number of colons. But at least not too many "thought not"'s.
So all that aside, I enjoyed this quite a bit more than TBR's other stories for some reason. 'Twas a very actiony work, and even if the idea of the Black being alive completely flies in the face of all we know and the treatment of the characters is a bit rough around the edges (literally, spoiler alert, the only bad guys are Malfoy, Voldemort and Ron), I still enjoyed it and wanted to carry on reading more than the others. I may even give another one ago!"
This Book: has a community rating of 3.33 and was first published in 2017.
3 stars to Oh God Not Again!, by Sarah1281
Book Description:
" So maybe everything didn't work out perfectly for Harry. Still, most of his friends survived, he'd gotten married, and was about to become a father. If only he'd have stayed away from the Veil, he wouldn't have had to go back and do everything AGAIN."
My Thoughts:
" As a parody it made me smile in spots, so there's that going for it. Not to be taken remotely seriously of course."
This Book: has 651 pages, a community rating of 4.16 and was first published in 2008.
4 stars to Back to the Beginning, by burnable
Book Description:
" As found on FanFiction:
Harry finds himself thrust into his four-year old body, after Voldemort killed him in the forest in what would have been his seventh year. Knowing what he did, he decided to fix some things he never had a chance to before. He'd not go into the magical world untrained this time. OP Harry. Science, magic and discovery. Harem."
My Thoughts:
" Obviously written for the author's enjoyment rather than for any sense of story, this nonetheless had a little bit of interesting science (it's been done better in other places, but this wasn't too bad). I read it last September but, on a reread through over the weekend, found it went on at a reasonable pace and didn't make me feel bored."
This Book: has 1144 pages and a community rating of 2.80.
Rereads this week
- Quantum Lens, by Douglas E. Richards.
- Federation World, by James White.
Nothing particularly mindblowing about either of these rereads this time around, I just wanted the stability.