I don’t really know what I’ve achieved in the last two weeks… It definitely was not finishing my NaNoWriMo story, which I got to around 36k words before my imagination gave up. I’ll return to it when the ideas return.

The 2023 Popsugar Reading Challenge was announced last week and it’s a bit disappointing. So many repeats of prompts I didn’t like the first time round, so I’m doing a reduced set. The Goodreads group has set up an unofficial mini-challenge for those that want some slightly different prompts.

In other challenge news, Annemieke @ A Dance With Books is hosting the 2023 SFF Title Challenge which I’ll see if I can tick off a row or two, but I do think my main challenge for next year will be ATY.

On the blog I reviewed The Red Scholars Wake and did a small round-up of December releases on my radar.

Labrador dog at night, backlit by Christmas lights

I did actually complete Popsugar for 2022 though! I read The Golden Enclaves by Naomi Novik which I loved. It all came together so well but wasn’t predictable. If you haven’t read the Scholomance trilogy yet I highly recommend it.

And the final book I read for the challenge was I Must Betray You by Ruta Sepetys which was set during the 1989 Romanian revolution. It’s narrated by a teenage boy but sort of if he was writing from the future and I didn’t feel it worked all the time. There was a lot of info just dumped into the story, either future knowledge or he would hear it on the radio.  Would be a good intro to 1980’s Romania if you didn’t know much about it though.

I also read Emily Wilde’s Encyclopedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett for review, which was a whimsical fantasy set in an alternate past where there are scholars studying faeries as a serious topic.  My first 2023 release, and I’ll be sharing my review in due course.

Book The Daughters of Izdihar against blue background surrounded by leaves and fake dagger

New books acquired:

Bloodmarked by Tracy Deonn
Tread of Angels by Rebecca Roanhorse
[gifted] The Daughters of Izdihar by Hadeer Elsbai (Orbit)
What Moves the Dead by T. Kingfisher
Even Though I Knew the End by C.L. Polk (audiobook)
The Seawomen by Chloe Timms (ebook)
The Player Next Door by Elizabeth Davis (ebook)
Make You Mine This Christmas by Lizzie Huxley-Jones (ebook)