Dang, May was a decent month for reading. I ended up at 16 total books and I want to write a little bit about them! 16 is a lot so I won't go into too much detail. In the future, I'll be sharing longer-form reviews that give a lot more of my takeaways so be on the lookout for those!

Toothsucker by Kaden Love

I was fortunate to listen to the audiobook of this and I enjoyed it a lot. The narrator had the perfect cadence for the book. It surprised me! It wasn't what I expected and significantly more cyberpunk than I realized. The world is fun, weird, gross, and weaves in a lot of political themes. Kaden is clearly just having a blast writing this and I feel like authors who have fun always make something incredible.

Headlights by C.J. Leede

I could write a dissertation on the beauty of this book. Truly. I read the ARC, cried my eyes out, and preordered a signed copy. This book lives in me. It did something to my brain. Leede has a magnetic writing style I couldn't stop devouring. How she threaded in folk horror to her work was creative and considerate. Her characters and how they're connected, their pasts, and the way they find meaning in each other, however, was so beautiful. Also, I am having a hard time explaining why a woman eating a man's finger during sex is heart-achingly romantic.

The Dragon Republic by R.F. Kuang

I don't understand why people didn't adore this book. I mean, I do, but I don't. Kuang is incredibly good at making it less clear what it means to be a hero. This book showed the horror of genocide and the aftermath of Rin's destructive meltdown at the end of The Poppy War, plus the lingering ghost of Altan coloring her view of the world. Kuang is fantastic at showing Rin's imperfections and giving us depth and color to Nezah that made me fall in love with him - yes, even in the ending. Every character is their own ecosystem of motivation and an exploration of nature versus nurture. I LOVE her character work.

The Burning God by R.F. Kuang

This was my favorite in the series, just fantastic. It's bleak, but its raw and visceral and real. Rin isn't a moral paragon and I think people disliked that, but I absolutely loved it. Rin begins to realize she has no foresight and no plan, she struggles in the way a young person with too much power and no guidance would struggle. She has nobody left to turn to and has to figure it out, which makes her struggle and suffer in personal ways. It turns the war from abstract to overt and she has to contend with the different facets of having power. The power of a god, an army, a country... and she does not handle it well. I thought the ending was deft, Kuang tells you how it has to end the entire time and people just weren't paying attention.

A Gathering of Shadows by V.E. Schwab

Holland mt love. My absolute perfect book husband. This book was an extraordinary sequel and gave us such a fun experience. Schwab is a master of character work, it's impossible not to fall in love with all of them. I really enjoyed how she showed Holland's history and why he is the way he is. I think he is one of the most complex, beautiful characters I've read in a long time. I could write a treatise in his defense. He didn't have what Kell had and if he did, he would have been extremely similar. Holland knew only suffering in his world and still he only ever sought to change it for the better.

A Conjuring of Light by V.E. Schwab

A phenomenal final entry into the first era. Just amazing. Deep characters, meaningful arcs, all knots tied with enough left to come back. I love how fantastical and whimsical this world is while feeling threatening and deep. I stand by all my previously sung praises for Holland, they could never make me hate him. It could only ever end one way, even if it broke my heart. Still, no matter what, I will always be delusionally hopeful Era 2 might change something about it.

Shadow of the Gods by John Gwynne

This was a significant bar-raise from Malice and Valor. I know The Faithful and the Fallen is a crowd favorite, but I'm only finding it alright. Nothing about it sticks to me. I liked Shadow of the Gods, but I don't get the cinematic click everyone else seems to. It's fun, predictable, with distinct characters, but nothing about it really blew me away. I like Orka, but she isn't a favorite in my house. I'm not sure if Gwynne's writing style is just not for me?

Heavenly Tyrant by Xiran Jay Zhao

I wanted to love this. I did. I loved Iron Widow so much, it was a neck-breaking fever dream that played out like a dramatic anime in my mind. Zhao just bogged this down in so much theory and interjected way too much modernism that it drowned the story for me. Eventually, hearing the fifth iterative explanation of communism versus socialism just turns to white noise in my head. Plus, the introduction of the Emperor and the disappearance of Yizhi and Shimin for most of the story made my interest in the three of them fade.

The Starving Saints by Caitlin Starling

Okay this was exactly the kind of weird medieval cannibal lesbian nun book I was hoping for. Starling makes you work for it. People described it as "slow", but I disagree completely. Starling makes every sentence matter, she forces you to focus and pay attention to what she is saying. Her commentary on weak leadership, the fallibility of man, isolation, duty, honor, disconnection, community... all of it was perfectly captured in this claustrophobic horror novel. Plus, I would let Ser Voyne do unspeakable things to me, but she would never. Too much honor.

The Starless Crown by James Rollins

This book is AMAZING. Sci-fantasy peak. I can't believe more people aren't reading and loving it. This trilogy is incredibly inventive and creative, the world is realistic and strange. Rollins built characters who are insightful and a villain that truly shocked me to my core. I didn't expect a surprise villain because who does that?! Rollins is known for his sci-fi thrillers, so I think people expect this to be the same, but I assure you it's anything but. I can't wait to continue this series!

The Nightshade God by Hannah Whitten

How I wanted to love this, but I only felt okay about it. I loved The Foxglove King and enjoyed The Hemlock Queen, but this one felt a bit messy and crowded. The added perspective for Alie was great, I wish it had been included starting in Book 2. I didn't love the ending, but I loved that we got to see so much change and see how Lore's enduring love for her men carried her through the worst losses of her life. I wish we had more explanation about why Lore's arc ended the way it did, the Fount's motivations felt dubious to me. However, I still read it in two days and Whitten has a beautifully addictive style of writing no matter what.

The Daughters' War by Christopher Buehlman

Galva dom Braga is my book wife and I will follow her to the ends of the earth. Buehlman wrote something so special that this book is basically family now. The tone is completely different from The Blacktongue Thief, first in the series, but it should be and it works wonders for this story. His world is so gritty and intense, it's creative and sharp and still funny in a different way. Galva's story is a harrowing, tragic explanation about who she is and how she came to be the Ispanthian warrior we know and love. I adored this book. This book was magical. It feels like listening to a story at a campfire and I urge people to try this series.

The Fox Wife by Yangsze Choo

What a unique read this was! I love foxes and all the mythology around them, but Choo did something fantastical with it. This story was not just about Snow overcoming her grief and her thirst for revenge, it was about the subtle differences in fox mythology around East Asia and how the British occupation was slowly erasing the cultural identity of so many countries. Bao's tale wasn't just solving the crime of a peculiar death, it was teaching readers about cultural practices and regional differences and how women were oppressed in more ways than just foot binding in China.

The Works of Vermin by Hiron Ennes

This book was a miraculous work of weird fiction. I am so emotional about it it's bizarre. What masterful storytelling and unbelievable prose! Ennes is a stunning writer that manages to make stab wounds into poetry. This world wove art and politics together until they were not separate from one another. They showed you how tyrants are born in a slow drip, not a flood. So much more went into this. The ease around trans identity, control versus love, how sociopolitical rot destroys a society, our unresolved mistakes always come back to us, and so much more. I can't even speak about the characters because to do so is to reveal the story, which I would never want to do. I didn't expect a story about extermination to move me like this.

House of Chains by Steven Erikson

Erikson really flexed on his readers with this one. He proved he can hold a single character POV in his hands and simply chooses not to because that's not what the story demands. This book was a real open-faucet torrent of his background in archaeology and anthropology. He has so many poignant things to say about cultures formed on the bones of each other, changing worlds and ever-changing societies, etc. Plus he managed to pull off one of the greatest redemption arcs I've ever read. Lookin' at you, Karsa.

A Drop of Corruption by Robert Jackson Bennett

Convinced RJB isn't capable of writing anything short of fantastic. This mystery was wild and the world is so bizarre and fun, I never want to leave it. I love how Bennett's goal isn't to solve this world's ills or take out its Empire or change the leviathans, it's just to show you a glimpse of the bigger way the machine of it functions. We learn a bit more about Ana and who she is every book through these mysteries that feel like a fever dream. Dinios Kol remains my disaster bisexual son who misses the love of his life and just won't admit it to himself. The problem is that if he won't, Ana will.

This was an amazing month for reading! I got through a lot of books and only didn't squeeze ONE from my original TBR into the mix. I am so fortunate to have walked away loving so many of them this month, too. I actually changed The Works of Vermin from a 4.5 to a 5 because it sat with me that much. I had TWO 5-star reads this month:

• Headlights by C.J. Leede

• The Works of Vermin by Hiron Ennes

June will be a deviation from my regularly scheduled reading programming as I'm doing my very first read through and analysis of Throne of Glass! I'm calling it June of Glass! Which is ridiculous!

I'm looking forward to analyzing what about this series speaks to people and trying to piece together how Sarah J. Maas was able to captivate a generation of woman readers from multiple ages and bring them into reading again. Be on the lookout for my analysis of the first book - Throne of Glass.