Transcript
Ranking books I read in February. I'll use the tier system, which always feels a bit better than numerical rankings. I started with a drop of corruption by Robert Jackson Bennett, but immediately went back and read the first book in the series The Tainted Cup. Both solid S-tier fantasy mystery novels. It's a super innovative setting where a modern society is based on biotech instead of electricity. The mystery is engaging and the characters are top-notch. Next, I read The Witcher series, all eight of them. They do some really fun takes on classic fairy tales, but I have to put them in the B-tier because of their episodic nature and they're so, so, character development. Lots of fun, though. Then came The Daily Grind, a progression fick where a bored IT guy finds a boring office-themed sub-dimension inside of his boring office. A fun idea, but as with many web serials, after an interesting start, it then gets boring. C-tier. Next is replay by Ken Grimwood. It's a time loop story that came out before Groundhog Day was a thing, with a longer loop. Very well done, solid A-tier. Next is Operation Bounce House by Matt Dinnaman, author of Dungeon feel. An orphaned Earth colony planet is suddenly under attack by a bunch of evil corporate-owned necks operated by gamer nerds. Lots of fun. Solid A-tier. And then for some whiplash, King Sorrow by Joe Hill. It's a modern-setting fantasy that's listed as horror, but felt more like a psychological thriller. It tracks a group of friends over decades as they deal with the repercussions of a ritual they performed in high school. May not be everyone's cup of tea, but I give it S-tier for uniqueness and execution. Great writing. I read so much fantasy that I gave an automatic half-tier bump whenever a book feels genuinely different. And last was Blood Over Bright Haven, a well-written, standalone dark fantasy novel. It starts off with an interesting magic system, but then proceeds to hit you over the head with a lot of themes of colonialism and Western elitism, and in my opinion, has a super frustrating ending. So I give it a B tier. 15 books over four weeks was definitely above my average, but I was in the middle of working on a new cosplay build where I had to learn to sew leather. So audiobooks were my friends. should I read next? I need some recommendations.
Additional notes
Do you ever feel like you spend more time searching for good books to read than time actually reading good books? Sure, there are millions of books out there, but it feels like the number of truly top-notch ones written every year is so much lower than the number of books I'd like to read. (Yes, I could probably expand my genre preferences a bit, but… 🤷♂️) #tiktoklearningcampaign #bookrecommendations #bookreviews #booktok #fantasy
References
- Book titles and author mentions are included in the transcript; no study references, DOI/PMID numbers, or source links listed in workbook.