† ETERNALPORCELAINDOLL †

The end of the year is slowly approaching and as many other people I am trying to reach my Goodreads reading goal. To be quite honest, I set it to 50 at the beginning of the year and have changed it every time I reached my goal because I want to keep better track of my reading and I do not care much about reaching my goal in the middle of the year already. So far I'm up to 74 and I kind of hope to make 80 by the end of December. Let's see if I'll manage that. But first we have to talk about what I read in November of this year. I didn't read as much as last month but that was to be expected. Still, seven books in a month is still very good for me. I'm a bit surprised sometimes how I manage that but I spend enough time on public transport to get some reading in every day. I read about 2804 pages which averages to ca. 94 pages a day. Which seems right as I read about 50 pages in the morning and about 50 on my way home most of the time. This was also a month ...

What happens if you mix a "Kampfzwerg" ¹ , an AI with an existential crisis, and a whole lot of fighting in space? You get the Skyward series by Brandon Sanderson, and specifically Starsight. One of my most anticipated releases of this year and I had to wait until the year is almost over for it to come out. But the wait seriously was worth it. We pick up about six months after the end of Skyward. The people on Detrius now know somewhat why they are there and why the Krell are fighting them. But to fully survive they need a proper hyperdrive to escape the planet. The best way seems to be to infiltrate the Krell spaceships above their planet. Until one day something arrives on Detrius that changes that plan just a little bit. From here on out there will be slight spoilers for the overall plot. Nothing too spoilery but to properly review this book I have to talk about the thing that changes the plan for the humans on how to escape their planet. Because what arrives o...

What did I say last month? Apparently I'm out of a slump. And: damn, I definitely am. I need to be careful not to burn myself out. But I'm definitely back in a reading mood (except for one week but that was because I had a strong cold..). So here we are with this month's wrap-up and I finally got around to read more than I have in the last few months. I read about 3566 pages which averages to about 115.03 pages a day. Which, let's be real, is a lot. I mean, I did read a lot of smaller books but it does make this a lot more pages read than I have read in a while. I did realize though that I probably said the wrong average page count the last few times. Well, that can happen. This time I definitely didn't get the wrong count. I also started two other books but pushed them back to the next month or even December for various reasons. One being that I wanted to read more creepy books this month (didn't work out that well) and another reason being that I want ...

TW: Rape, rape culture, gore and horror, mention of sexism and racism "Mors irrumat omnia. Death fucks us all." Secret societies have been fascinating humans for some time now. From the Illuminati to the Freemasons, there have been plenty of books, articles, and strange forum entries written about any of these. So what would happen if that gets mixed in with magic, colleges, and human rights issues? That's when you get Ninth House. Ninth House tells us the story of Galaxy Stern - called Alex - at Yale after she had been chosen to become part of Lethe, a house on the campus tasked with the looking after and observing of the arcane doings of the "Ancient Eight", secret societies on the Yale Campus dabbling in magic and every house has their specialty. As someone who hasn't even finished high school Alex doesn't seem like she could be able to attend a prestigious college like Yale but she has one talent that got her into it: She can see ghosts...

The end of another month and the year is slowly coming to an end. But this slump I found myself in for some time seems to be over for now. I'm back in a reading mood and that is also because of the great stories I got to experience this month. It still isn't a lot but I also do not have the time to read as much as before because of work. This month I read four books which amounts to 2618 pages, which means I read on average 87.3 pages a day. Three were paperbacks and one an ebook. And my average rating this month is 3.75 stars. " Pan's Labyrinth " by Guillermo Del Toro and Cornelia Funke Pages: 320 Genre: Fantasy Age Range: Young Adult Year of Release: 2019   Read in: English Original language:  English Anyone who knows the movie will love this book. It is a gorgeous novelization of the script which mixes the styles of Del Toro and Funke really well. I was curious to see how she would write in English and I wasn't disappointed. Magic is ev...

"And so, does the destination matter? Or is it the path we take? I declare that no accomplishment has substance nearly as great as the road used to achieve it. We are not creatures of destinations. It is the journey that shapes us. Our callused feet, our backs strong from carrying the weight of our travels, our eyes open with the fresh delight of experiences lived.” Many great fantasy novels have been written and been devoured by fans and new readers alike. Brandon Sanderson got me with the Mistborn trilogy and again with this book he grabbed and shook me to the core. This is an epic story like you will find in many fantasy novels but for a reason it is seen as an amazing one in its own right. In The Way of Kings we follow the stories of various characters. There is Dalinar, a highprince, who seems to have lost his way as a warrior and is now obsessed with a book which gives us the title of this novel. We meet Shallan who wants to save her family from ruin and does...

“It's hard to believe in ghosts, until you see one, and then it's hard not to.” After almost dying in Edinburgh, Cassidy and her best (ghost) friend Jacob are now on their way to Paris for Cassidy's parents' TV show. As it is to be expected, even there she feels the Veil a lot stronger. And it does especially when she enters the Tunnel of Bones, the catacombs under Paris. Just like the first book this story is so cute and spooky in a child-appropriate way. I'm sure I also would have loved it when I was a kid. There is a series I read back in the day which this series makes me think of even though they're very different. But I think anyone who loves the Cassidy Blake series would love that one as well. But that's a topic for another post. This is about Cassidy's adventures. I love how the world and Cassidy's abilities are being opened up more to us. At the same time as her, we learn what she can do and what her purpose is. There ...

Magic is everywhere when you are a child. From the ground you're walking on to the stars in the night. Wherever you go things aren't explainable, yet. So it's no surprise that our story's heroine, Ofelia, sees exactly this magic. But is it real or part of her imagination? Our story takes place in 1944 in Spain and therefore in the early stages of the Francoist period. Ofelia and her mother are driven somewhere in the countryside to an old mill where Ofelia's mother's new husband lives. His name: Captain Vidal. A horrible person who only cares for Ofelia's mother giving him a son and furthering his side of the conflict's interests. No matter the cost. Ofelia is very unhappy with the situation and soon meets a faun who tells her that she is the lost princess of the underworld where he's from and that she has to pass a few tests so she can return. So she starts doing those tests because her life doesn't seem right to her with the half-brothe...

Another month has passed. Another wrap up is about to be served to you! I'm still a bit in a slump but I'm also busy so I don't have a lot of time to read anyway. In August I finished three books, all of which I borrowed from the library as I finally got a library card. It's really freeing to have one again, to be honest. It has been a few years and I realized I missed that. "Renegades" by Marissa Meyer Pages: 576 Genre: Science-Fantasy Age Range: Young Adult Year of Release: 2017 Read in: English Original language: English This is a cute story about a world of superheroes and supervillains. In parts it is a bit cheesy but that's typical for the genre. In Renegades the group of that name defeated the big supervillain group "Anarchists" some years back, and the Anarchists don't like how things have turned out since then. Our main character Nova is one of them and ends up infiltrating the Renegades. Overall, it has the typical ...