As much as I struggle sometimes with the Top 5 Wednesday topics, I’m actually glad to have assigned prompts coming back next week. It may have been easier if I’d had more time to plan ahead, but I found it really difficult to figure out which previous topic I wanted to re-visit each week this month. There were many prompts that I liked, but in most cases, I had a hard enough time finding 5 books to fit, let alone 5 more! I decided to focus on a prompt that was TBR-based since that seemed to give the most options for a wider range of books to discuss. I’m not usually a fan of cover art topics since the artwork, while a nice addition, is not necessarily something I pay much attention to when choosing books. In this case, I remember finding the prompt surprisingly fun and although it was somehow very difficult to find any fantasy or sci-fi on my TBR when I started to look!
Top 5 Wednesday is a meme created by Gingerreadslainey on Youtube, and the official GoodReads group with the weekly topics can be found here.
1) Long May She Reign by Rhiannon Thomas
This book has been on my TBR for a year, although I don’t really remember adding it. It is about a woman named Feyra who was 23rd in line to the throne and prefers her laboratory to court life. She suddenly finds herself on the throne when the King and his heirs are massacred at a banquet. Feyra is determined to find out who was responsible for the deaths, while struggling to manage court politics with nobility who don’t respect her and advisers trying to control her. Looking at the synopsis again, it actually does sound pretty interesting although reviews have been fairly mixed. I can’t remember at all how I heard about this book, but the cover art is amazing! I love the dark colour scheme, and the palace in a flask also seems to capture Feyra as a character and just looks really cool.
2) The Last Girl on Earth by Alexandra Blogier
I’ve had this book on my TBR since last July, although it only came out at the end of January 2018. This book sounds really interesting, but the early reviews for it have been terrible! It currently has an average rating of 2.91 on Goodreads, which is definitely on the lower end of averages on my TBR. It is about a girl named Li who is the only human left on Earth, and everyone around her is an alien. When the aliens took over the planet 16 years ago and destroyed everyone, Li was taken in by a human-sympathizer who raised her to pass as one of their own since these kinds of aliens look human but have abilities that humans don’t. When Li meets Ryn and the two of them develop a relationship, it becomes more difficult to keep her secret. The premise of this book sounds amazing and the cover art is just stunning. If I remember correctly, it was the cover alone that first caught my attention while I was looking at lists of upcoming releases. The bad reviews have put me off a bit, but not enough to fully remove it from my TBR.
3) A Shadow Bright and Burning by Jessica Cluess
I’ve been hearing about this book on and off for a while now, and was never sure how much I wanted to try it. It received some pretty bad reviews from a couple of the Goodreads reviewers I follow, although the key issue seems to be that it is not very unique compared to others in the genre. I can live with that, as long as the story is done well. This book is about a girl named Henrietta who is forced to reveal her unusual abilities to save a friend, and becomes the first female sorcerer in centuries to join the royal court. Once there, she is declared the prophesied one who is destined to defeat the Ancients, a species of demons, and meets other sorcerers-in-training. Based on the synopsis, it definitely seems heavy on some of the most common tropes, and especially some of the most widely hated tropes (love triangles, chosen ones, etc.). I’m sure the cover art was a factor in my decision to finally add it to my TBR earlier this month, although it’s not the highest on my priority list.
4) Empress of a Thousand Skies by Rhoda Belleza
This book came out only last year, and I was immediately drawn in by the cover art although the book itself is a little outside my comfort zone. It is about a princess Rhiannon who has spent her life training to get revenge on the people who killed her family. Her path collides with Alyosha, who has risen from a war refugee to a celebrity, and in the course of that event, Rhiannon is presumed dead and Alyosha is blamed for her murder — although in reality, the two of of them have gone into hiding together. This book has received extremely mixed reviews from all of the reviewers I follow, and I’ve been putting off reading it because I actually knew very little about it. Part of the problem with the fantasy books on my list is that they all seem to be the start of a series, and I have so many series on the go already that I don’t know if I can commit to any more. Looking at the synopsis again, this one does seem pretty interesting and I’d love to give it a chance eventually.
5) The Forgotten Book by Mechthild Glaser
I have The Book Jumper by the same author on my list for sometime this year, and added this one to my TBR last year as soon as I saw it on Goodreads. It is about a girl named Emma who finds a book in an abandoned library, and soon discovers that everything she writes in it comes true. Emma starts to realize that she is not the only one who knows about this book, and someone is determined to get it away from her. For some reason, Goodreads mentions this book as a Jane Austen-inspired story, and one of the main characters is a new boy in school whose name is Darcy. I honestly can’t see how this is a Pride and Prejudice story (at least judging by the name Darcy) from the synopsis, but it looks like a great book anyway. I don’t often like cover art that has people on it, but this one seems to fit so well. I actually assumed this book was a sequel to The Book Jumper at first since the cover art was similar, but it seems to be a standalone.
Abyssal Librarian 