My August 2023 Wrap-Up! (I Completed One of the Biggest Fantasy Books!)
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- čas přidán 25. 07. 2024
- Hi everyone! Today's video is about my August 2023 Wrap Up. I finished 4 novels, 2 novellas, and 27 manga volumes this month. Unlike the first half of the year, it seems like I'm having better luck with my reading in the second half of 2023. Let me know what you think about these books, and do tell me how many books you finished last month. Which one was your favorite book of the month? :)
Booktubers mentioned:
@PhilipChaseTheBestofFantasy
My review of the books in this video is below.
0:00 Intro
1:05 Jade Shards by Fonda Lee • Goodbye, The Green Bon...
2:37 The King-Killing Queen by Shawn Speakman www.goodreads.com/review/show...
6:03 To Green Angel Tower by Tad Williams • I Finished To Green An...
10:14 The Ice by Ryan Cahill www.goodreads.com/review/show...
13:44 Light Bringer by Pierce Brown • 3 Years of Booktube | ...
15:50 Skyward by Brandon Sanderson
18:20 Vinland Saga Vol 1-27 by Makoto Yukimura
20:12 Solo Leveling Side Stories
21:15 Book of the Month
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#booktube #booktubesff #bookreview #piercebrown #brandonsanderson #vinlandsaga #augustwrapup #wrapup #tadwilliams #togreenangeltower - Zábava
A fantastic month, Petrik! I really want to start The Bound and the Broken. You are absolutely correct that Vinland Saga has made me an admirer of the storytelling that is possible in manga. Great stuff!
Thank you so much, Philip! I think you'll like The Bound and the Broken series. And I'm so glad Vinland Saga sparked your passion for reading manga. Many great stories await you! :)
Yes to the love for skyward! ❤🚀🛰️
It was really fun! Hoping the sequels will be the same or better!
Light Bringer was so dang good!!! 😃 I'm happy to say Red Rising was added to a list of possible Buddy Reads for this month, and it got the most votes on my bookish friend's Patreon! So begins my reread😃
In August I read Some really great books, including Valor, Ruin, and Wrath... I can't pick a favorite. I loved them all! That's why I read them back to back! No regrets! Other than not purchasing A Time of Dread when I had the chance, because Gwynne has become a new favorite author.
📖🥰📚📚📚📚📚📚
Yeahhh it was amazing!! Glad you're doing a buddy read of Red Rising Saga, too. The Faithful and the Fallen is truly incredible. One of the best epic fantasy series out there. I remember reading it back to back, too! :D
You’re a madman! I wish I could read that much. I’m going to hold off on Jade Shards for a bit, I don’t want to say goodbye yet lol
Thank you! This was unusually productive for me lately. Understandable on Jade Shards. It will be worth the wait! :)
Hi 👋 always good seeing ur videos 🎥🎥🎥🎥
Thank you!!
Great wrap-up Petrik. I only completed 3 books in August. They were Project Hail Mary, Best Served Cold and The Heroes. I really liked all three of them but I think BSC was my favorite. I'm currently reading Red Country then I plan to read Piranesi before moving on to A Little Hatred. Keep the great videos coming. You are my favorite Booktuber by far. 🙂
Thank you so much! Wow, the three books you read were all great. I slightly loved The Heroes More than Best Served Cold, but both of them are great in their own way. One is a revenge story, and the other is a war story. I hope you'll love Red Country and A Little Hatred, too. Piranesi was a surprisingly enjoyable book! :)
Hi there Petrik. How are you doing? Thanks for another great video. I have not read or listened to any of the books that you have mentioned, but they are all on my to be read list. As for what I have been listening to I did manage to finish listening to the final Empire Mistborn last month and it was great. I also was able to finish another audiobook called ruination by Anthony Reynolds. Let's just say that the middle and the ending were not what I was expecting and I was definitely not a fan of how it ended at all. I did start listening to the audiobook Well of Ascension by Brandon Sanderson at the beginning of September. I'm hoping to listen to the hero of ages for the very first time in October. Also at the same time I have started listening to the book called The Very Secret society of irregular witches by sengu Mandanna. So far, apart from the occasional curse word that gets dropped in for no reason, it's been a cute and fun read. It's not as good as Harry Potter but it definitely feels like a very magical book. If I didn't know any better I'd say that it's very likely that the author was a huge fan of the movie Mary Poppins or maybe the books. I can see pretty clearly where she got her inspiration in other words. I hope that you are doing okay. I may have forgotten to tell you as well that you might remember that I broke my arm on the 21st of April of this year. Well after 3 and 1/2 months my arm failed to heal so on the 15th of August I had to have surgery. I'm feeling better and have started physical therapy which is a relief. Now that I think about it, I might just take a look at the skyward series towards the end of the year maybe in between the other larger books I have to listen to. I think that would be fun. Anyway thank you so much for the support you've given me before that means the world to me. Also I love seeing your puppy I have a golden lab and a cat in my house too.
Hi! I'm doing well, and thank you for watching. Glad you enjoyed Mistborn: Final Empire!! And for Ruination, it is a novel taking place in a famous video game series called League of Legends. Hence why the ending of Ruination ended like that... the story continues in the game. I heard great things about Sangu Mandanna's books. Also, good to hear your surgery went well!!
Fantastic video thank you Petrik!!!
Thank you so much, Dino! :)
i really want to see your bookshelf! please make a bookshelf tour! please!
Thank you so much! I will make one in November or December! :)
Just started the Green Angel Tower 😮
Good luck! It's awesome!
I like the cover of lightbringer to. Actualy, i heard the contrary. The say and i heard that the third book in skyward(forgot the name) was the best one🤔. Sanderson had to reedo the hole book at the last minute, and fans said it was worth the reedo, that it was amazing. Curious...
The cover of Light Bringer is gorgeous. And that's interesting. Sanderson did say Cytonic is one of the hardest books he ever wrote. We'll see how it goes for me!
OMG Vinland Saga is so amazing, one of the best manga I have ever read for sure!
Thorfinn's "I have no enemies" is timeless 🥲🥲🥲
@@PetrikLeo Absolutely! My heart strings lol
Petrik did you see Brian Lee Durfee’s homage in his Five Warrior Angels when reading Memory Sorrow & Thorn? I read them at the same time and sometimes I would forget which book I was listening to.😀
Oh absolutely! He also had the tendency to use the word 'scant' in his books. Just like Tad Williams! 🤣
Wrap-up leets gooo
Zen Let's gooooo!! :D
I am happy that you enjoyed Skyward :) Among my favourites this month was a re-read of The Dark Forest by Cixin Liu and also Days at the Morisaki Bookshop by Satoshi Yagisawa. I like to sprinkle smaller books outside of Fantasy/SciFi between my other reads to keep it fresh and this was somewhere nice between cozy and emotional.
But book of the month was without a doubt Sons of Darkness. I could not put it down. Thanks again for putting out the word for this one. I probably would not have known about it otherwise and it is such a great book!
Heckkk yesss! Glad you loved Sons of Darkness. I think that book was awesome, and so underrated at the moment. And like you, I'm also a huge fan of Dark Forest by Cixin Liu. That's one of the greatest sci-fi novels of all time, in my opinion. I need to do a reread of it someday!
On my catch up journey it is hard to pick a fav for August. Would be between Before they are Hanged and Way of Kings. Tough call 😂
Oh god tough call indeed. I'll choose Way of Kings over Before They Are Hanged though
Me too.@@PetrikLeo
Ooooh I can’t wait to read Jade Shards soon to complete my Green Bone journey, and Memory Sorrow and Thorn might be my biggest gap in my reading for understanding modern fantasy-I’m so excited for it!
I think you'll enjoy Jade Shards, too, if you love the main trilogy. And yes, please try Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn! :D
Great video.
Can you read Jade Shards before reading vol 2 and 3 of the Green Bone Saga. Waiting for the hardcover I ordered of The King Killing Queen. Waiting for the live show of To Green Angel Tower. Can't wait to get hold of The Ice!!! Read the first three Skyward novels, and I enjoyed them, but I think that is it, as the third was a bit disappointing. I have to start the Vineland series, have the first volume sitting on my desk.
Thank you so much! I think it should be possible to read Jade Shards after finishing Jade City. At least you have context on the characters and the world already after that. I look forward to hosting the live chat for To Green Angel Tower. It's been difficult nailing down the date for the chat!
Nice reviews. :)
Thank you, Eileen! :)
Catching up on all your wrap ups! I am unsure about whether I should continue with the Red Rising series. People seem to love it, but the first one was really sexist and weird, and I wonder if he fixes that in the sequels?
I read 12 books this month, which is a lot for me, because I was doing the Book Roast readathon. My favorite was a novella called Strange Beasts of China by Yan Ge. Very weird and interesting!
12 books!? That's amazing. And for Red Rising series, it gets much better in the second book imo. The women in the series are absolute badass. Not in the first book, though, for sure.
I just finished Of War & Ruin
It’s so good! Each book gets better
Yeah! Can't wait for the next one. Glad you loved OWAR!
Vinland Saga has been on my TBR for a while now and I've actually been eying the deluxe edition that is coming out in December 👀 I recently got the first deluxe volumes of Berserk and Blade of the Immortal and they are stunning, can't wait to dive in!! 🤓
I am waiting for the Vinland Saga deluxe edition hardcover, too! I'm almost done with collecting The Berserk Deluxe hardcover edition, and yes, they are absolutely stunning! You will love them! :)
Excellent wrap-up Petrik. I'm very excited to restart or resume Memory Sorrow & Thorn (depending on how effective the recap pages are lol) and Bound and the Broken.
August was my best reading month in quite awhile:
*Historical-Fiction*
Eaters of the Dead / Michael Crichton
- My favourite part of this novel was the exploration of culture clash between our narrator who is a Muslim from Baghdad and the Swedish vikings. A fun and thrilling adventure with some interesting takes on myth and legend. Crichton is an author I will be prioritising in the future.
*Literary Fiction*
Stoner / John Williams
- My book of the month! My book of the year! Favourite book of all-time? Only time will tell. And an audiobook i actually liked.
*Self-Published Fantasy*
Bound & Broken 0.5: The Fall / Ryan Cahill
- I ordinarily wouldn't read a prequel first, but it was short (and free), I'm new to self-pub and to my understanding it was written alongside the first novel proper so... loophole I guess? Action scenes were well-written imo, it was atmospheric and I really dig that it's unapologetically Epic Fantasy. Cahill explains the magic system in brief short bursts here and there which is fine but I honestly didn't think a lot of it was necessary, but wasn't immersion breaking. So yeah, I think I'm on board. Of Blood & Fire might potentially be a bit too tropey traditional Fantasy for me but I'm optimistic and really liking Of Blood & Fire so far.
*Western*
Butcher's Crossing / John Williams
- My favourite Western I've read which is saying something since the other two I've read are Charles Portis' True Grit and Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian. Well three if you count Stephen King's The Gunslinger.
I DNFed Mistborn The Final Empire and outside of Stormlight I am done with the Cosmere. I just didn't care and honestly Sanderson's writing more often than not now leaves me feeling... cold I guess. Its just not for me and that's okay. I did do a taste test by re-reading the first 50 pages of Way of Kings and thoroughly enjoyed those 50 pages more (jarring explanations of the magic system aside) than the near 200 I read of Final Empire but I'm holding off until the 1st arc of Stormlight is complete and has had time for the hype to cool down a little.
I did try to do a re-read of Cormac McCarthy's The Road but quickly found I was in no mood for a re-read of a standalone.
Thank you so much! Too bad about Brandon Sanderson's books! But no worries. If the writing is not suitable for you, it cannot be helped. The Stormlight Archive is a different beast compared to Mistborn, though. So hopefully that will be a click with you. I have to try reading Stoner by John Williams. Probably outside of my usual read, but heard many wonderful things about the book. And The Bound and the Broken series keeps getting better and better with each book! If you liked what you read in The Fall and Of Blood and Fire already, I think Of Darkess and Light will convince you to love the series further.
Good reads for August Petrik. I read six books - Revelator (Daryl Gregory), Deadman’s Road (Joe R. Lansdale), Death on the Burnt Ocean (Peter Wacht), Aching God (Mike Shel), Boys in the Valley (Philip Fracassi), and Eleventh Cycle (Kian Ardalan) . . . three fantasy, 3 horror. My book of the month of August is Eleventh Cycle. I can’t wait for the next entry in that series.
Thank you, Michael! Really glad you loved Eleventh Cycle. That book is criminally underrated, imo. I look forward to reading Boys in the Valley next month! :)
Now that's a banger of a wrap-up! I am so happy for you that you found 2 of your very rare 5-star reads this month, hope there are still many more to come for you!
I also can't wait to read The Ice, Ryan never disappoints!
My standouts in August were Obsidian: Awakening by Sienna Frost, Light Bringer by Pierce Brown and The Bone Ships by RJ Barker. Happy reading to you!
Thank you so much, Esmay! 5 stars seems more elusive this year, not sure why. I'm glad I managed to read 2 more 5 stars book in August! I have Obsidian Awakening!! I'll try to get around to reading that as soon as I can! :)
@@PetrikLeoI hope you enjoy Obsidian when you can get around to it! I wrote a whole spoiler-free gush review for it, so feel free to check that out to get a general sense of the type of mood you need to be in to read that book ;) I personally highly recommend it for all my fellow grimdark and political fantasy lovers!
I just got the E arc for the Ice and about 50% through it. It is honestly incredible. I don’t know how Ryan manages to put much suspense and heart felt moments in a novella but all 3 novellas have been excellent. The novels have all been 5 star for me and Ryan surely now has to be considered amongst the best of the best in terms of fantasy authors
Glad you're enjoying it, Nathan. The Ice was REALLY good! I loved The Exile more because I'm biased about Dayne hahaha. But it is pretty good, and the second half is superior. Happy reading!
My book of the month was
Rememberings by sinead o'connor memoir it was interesting learning so much about her life she truly was a remarkable woman if you are a fan of her music or curious about her life then you definitely should check out her memoir
Glad to hear that! I don't usually read memoirs, but I'll keep it in mind! :)
A truely great month, Petrik!
In August I finished «The Tartar Steppe» by Dino Buzzati (a bit Kafkaesque in its themes of futility and bureaucracy, though a lot more "aesthetic" in its mountain fortress setting along a border about to break into war and bittersweet in its melancholic tragedy, rather than the dreadful grey dull paranoia and torture of Kafka, I have the 70s movie adaptation: Gorgeous! Filmed on location at an actual ruined fortress in Iran, with a great soundtrack by Ennio Morricone!) and the «Vindolandia» Trilogy by Adrian Goldsworthy. I thoroughly enjoyed them, and they served as a nice contrast to each other. While «The Tartar Steppe» was a more contemplative text, born of the either blank meditation or grand fantasies born when watching desolate but splendid nature for hours/days/years, «Vindolandia» is much more down to the ground and Goldsworthy’s occupation as a dedicated archeologist and historian really shines through his writing: Highly detailed in his depiction of Roman military organization, uniforms and everyday military routines, boredom and humor (having served myself as a guardsman in freezing Northern Norway, I definitely found some similarities to my own experience during both guard duty and downtime!), great action and intriguing mysteries! The Main Character Ferox, as both a Native Briton (the grandson of a warlord who fought the Romans) and a Veteran Soldier and Citizen of the Roman Empire, is a man of two worlds: Working as a Regional Centurion in the Borderlands of Roman Briton, he acts as a peacekeeper for the locals and an agent for the Empire, making him a literary relative of the Marshals or the Native Agents of Wild West Westerns, having to fight against native raids and being literally saved by the (Imperial) Cavalry. And as a grown man with few illusions, a violent past and many regrets, as an excellent tracker taught by his grandfather as well as an raving alcoholic during off hours, as a man who can take a punch as much as he gives them out, but who also is human enough to stumble and have doubts, there is very much an almost Hardboiled Crime Noir Detective fair above him! l am also just about finished with «First Book of Lankhmar» (a «Fafhrd & the Grey Mouser» by Fritz Lieber Omnibus, Classic S&S).
I had to push «Count Belisarius» by Robert Graves and the Tim Leach books «The Last King of Lydia» & «The King and the Slave» till this month, but I am still on a «quality-wise» high, especially from finishing «Under Heaven» by Guy Gavriel Kay and the «Dandelion Dynasty» in July!😄
Thank you so much, Mac! Great to hear your reading month went well, too. Awesome to hear your brief your thoughts on the books you read! I seriously need to try reading Fritz Lieber's books someday. Especially for Fafhrd and Grey Mouser. Probably not anytime soon, though. I am still pleased to hear you loved The Dandelion Dynasty that much. It is one of my top favorite series of all time, after all! :)
Great books this month! All powerhouse authors. I still need to get my eyeballs into a Tad Williams book.
My 2023 August Wrap-Up:
- Wrath by John Gwynne (Final book in The Faithful and the Fallen series) - 4/5 (19/25)
- The Bone Shard War by Andrea Stewart (last book in Drowning Empire series) - 2.5/5 (12.5/25)
- Noy my Father's Son by Alan Cumming - An emotional memoir about family secrets.
- Elantris by Brandon Sanderson - 3.5/5 (17/25)
- Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree - 4/5 (20/25)
- An Echo of Things to Come by James Islington (Book 2, Licanius trilogy) - 3.5/5 (17.5/25)
- Song of Susannah by Stephen King (Book 6/7, Dark Tower series) - 3.5/5 (18.5/25)
Thank you, Ronald! Great you had a wonderful reading month in August, too. Really pleased Wrath and the entire Faithful and the Fallen received a positive rating from you. Legends and Lattes, too! :)
I somehow convinced a group of about 6 new friends to start reading Of Blood and Fire with me recently, lol. You're welcome, Ryan Cahill.
I definitely think Cytonic is the weakest of the Skyward series, but it's still better than something like Elantris imo. It's still well paced and interesting, it's just that the first Skyward book set such a high bar that neither Starsight nor Cytonic could clear it. Starsight and Cytonic especially also get a bit... weird, in ways that I don't think the first book properly set them up to become. Also, the novellas are excellent, so definitely don't skip those.
Oh well done! I hope your friends will love Of Blood and Fire and the rest of the series.
It seems like many agreed Cytonic is the weakest of the series. I'll give it a try, and hopefully won't feel too underwhelmed by it. I certainly will read the novellas, too! :)
Sanderson's Reckoners YA series is quite good
I'll have to read that, too!!
18:20 I'm curious what is your top 20 manga of all time
Since it's interesting to see from someone's POV that read both Manga and Novel
Oh boy, that is a hard choice! I have loved many manga! I did make a favorite completed manga video a long time ago, but that's only to depict 5 out of many favorites. I have to make another list like that again! :)
I just finished Light Bringer this weekend and my jaw fell on the floor. It was so damn good. Victra better be a bigger part of Red God.
Glad you loved it, too! It was absolutely amazing. I'm sure Victra and all the other main characters will have a bigger role in Red God! :)
@@PetrikLeo they damned well better 😅🤣
I need more of Victra beating her chest moments. "Hell knoweth no fury like a woman scorned." Or however that saying goes.
I've read Rainbow Six (vol. II) by Tom Clancy, The Path of Daggers by Robert Jordan, Plum Island by Nelson DeMille last month.
I'm in the middle of reading Path of Daggers at the moment!
I read Jade Shards yesterday and loved the first 2 stories. I have the unpopular opinion with Cytonic being my favorite so far. The Star flight novellas are also really good. I read both Yumi and the Nightmare Painter and Blood Over Bright Haven in August and loved them both. I finished Red Rising as well and it was OK.
Ohhh! Rare to hear someone prefer Cytonic over the other novels in the series. Here's hoping I will end up enjoying it, too. I own Skyward Flight already, too, and I will read that as well! :)
@@PetrikLeo Note on the reading order of the novellas: The first two are before Cytonic and the last one (Evershore) is meant to be read after Cytonic.
I struggled a bit with my concentration / ability to focus in August. I only read 1 Fantasy book, "The Rage of Dragons" by Evan Winter. Tau's obsession with revenge did not helped with my mood either. I listened a few thriller audiobooks, but my favorite audiobook was Ken Liu translation of "Laozi's Dao De Jing". It helped me accept that sometimes is ok not to be as productive.
I hope this month's reading will be better for you! :)
Another great video I see that you're reading the Vinland Saga I read that a couple months back, such a rich story and the anime is so awesome ,looks like you had a pretty productive reading month,I'm reading The Gunmetal Gods Saga book 1 by Zamil Akhtar and this is a bloody feast of a ride through a brutal grimdark world I've been putting these books off I should not have been waiting, so far it's everything that I like in a book, once again thank you for reading the books that I don't want to I wish you would do spoiler reviews LOL that way I really wouldn't have to read them and you know I'm only talking about the slow not bad books that you love the ones that I can't read for some reason or another, I also wanted to know your opinion on the new live-action one piece since I know you're a lifelong one-piece fan
I am planning to read this series as well. I've heard great things about it. Just curious, did you read the Death Rider Novella prequel before starting Gunmetal Gods? I don't think its necessary but It's available for free on his website so I downloaded it and plan to read it first.
Thank you so much! Vinland Saga is amazing. I did not expect the anime to be THAT good. Unfortunately, I can't do many spoiler reviews on my channel. Spoiler-free reviews are risky already statistically as they tend to do bad, and if I do spoiler-reviews, there's a risk of the channel not being recommended by CZcams anymore if it keeps performing poorly. As for One Piece, I'll say for now it is not for me. It definitely got the passion right and it tries to be as faithful as possible to the original material. But at the end of the day, I felt the casting for Luffy is really odd, and the manga/anime will never work too well as live-action. That's my opinion from the first episode anyway, maybe it will get better after I continue haha.
I got my copy of The Sword of Kaigen today, the special edition one, got book 446. Really looking forward to Jade Shards, I'm on my second reread of The Greenbone Saga right now, very nearly finished Jade City, it's still so good!
Speaking of The Wheel of Time, you started the show? I'm skipping it, the first series proved they don't have any talent for story telling and as the source material is crap anyway, even if they follow it, then it's not going to be worth the bother. If the reviews a positive when it's all out then maybe but I have loads of books to read that are more deserving of the time.
Ahhh so awesome! My Sword of Kaigen hasn't arrived yet. I look forward to rereading Green Bone Saga again someday. Probably after the SubPress edition is available! 😄
Not sure regarding watching Wheel of Time. It's definitely not a priority of mine.
@@PetrikLeo I finished Jade City today, the end (don't want to be too specific in case it spoilers someone who reads this) at the graduation still upsets me. I think these books are absolutely going to be like Kingkiller for me getting rereads over and over, I couldn't count how many times I've read those. Speaking of Kingkiller, a friend I bought the 10th anniversary edition for, who keeps stopping reading it right before pivotal moments, I finally convinced to listen to Nick's version of the audiobook. He's really enjoying it so far but we had a deal where I have to read some Warhammer 40K books when he's finished.
Here's what I read in August
Pageboy by Elliott page memoir
Rememberings by sinead o'connor memoir
Winter's heart by Robert Jordan
Maame
A time for mercy by john Grisham
Electric idol by katee Robert
Imogen obviously by Becky albertalli
Age of empyre by Michael j Sullivan
Ashes of gold by j elle
Furysong
Glad you had another productive reading month, Angela! I'm in the middle of reading Path of Daggers. I'll catch up to Winter's Heart eventually! :)
@@PetrikLeo good luck 🙂
What book is that on the shelf with the cover art of a man and a dragon facing off each other?
Dragon Mage by M.L. Spencer. Great book! :)
Is the bound and the broken all about war and fighting? I'm curious since it's always prominent in your background, but I'm not a huge fan of war-centric books. I even skim through most fighting scenes, they're just not interesting to me
It's definitely a war centric series with a lot of battles. If you don't like them, the series might not be for you. 😅
Skyward was a good book, but the other novels are really bad, especially the third one. The novellas written by Janci Patterson on the other hand are excellent and the best content in the series overall. Sanderson has a habit to write sequels when he shoudn't (like Mistborn...)
I love Mistborn sequels, that said, I am definitely worried about Starsight and Cytonic. You're not the only one and fans of Sanderson who mentioned the same sentiment, especially for Cytonic. I'll try it and see how it goes, but I'll make sure to keep my expectations in check! :)
Whats a "y a" book? 😢
Young Adult book. :)
@@PetrikLeo ohh thank you 😅