Month of March and My Most Reading Yet

A newsletter in back to back months? My consistency astounds even me!

This month was a great one for reading, mainly for two reasons—an excellent fantasy trilogy I discovered and the latest Hunger Games book. Both will have a comprehensive review on my blog, but I’ll put my more rambling thoughts here.

The Chronicles of the Unhewn Throne was a trilogy recommended to me last year that I found the first book of at a second hand book store near me. The story follows three siblings, the princes & princess of the reigning kingdom, and their starkly different journeys. The world-building is vivid, the characters real & raw, and the story intense. It’s definitely an adult fantasy what with the gory violence and war, plus the crude jokes & language, and somewhat fade to black sex (only happens once or twice in the last book). However, given that the series is marketed as adult, I wasn’t bothered by the content and loved what a well-rounded fantasy it was. I’ve read the Fourth Wing series relatively recently, and while I did enjoy it to some extent, it was very much a “potato chip” type of story and lacked the true depth that I enjoy.

The content was also much iffier in Fourth Wing, in my personal opinion. To all my adult readers, I definitely recommend Chronicles of the Unhewn Throne! I have about a third left of the last book and things have definitely heated up.

This newsletter would probably be mostly about that series if not for the fact that my absolute favorite series had a prequel drop this month.

Sunrise on the Reaping.

I grew up on The Hunger Games and the story immersed me completely. Of course, as a teenager, I read it more for the thrilling dystopian that it was, but in a recent reread, I saw it in a much different light. I saw what happens when the majority gives power to the few and what happens when human evil is allowed to run rampant. That every story can be manipulated, and that people prefer to remain compliant if it means their own safety.

While our country does not have child sacrifice in the same way that The Hunger Games portrays, we have our own evil. Sunrise on the Reaping features Haymitch’s game and the most obvious theme was censorship and how people will be compliant when fed enough misinformation. It rings particularly true today with the fight for nonpartisan journalism and how even when we “do the research,” even that can be manipulated.

The game was just as brutal in this book and the themes just as strong. Suzanne writes as a warning, I believe. Regardless of where you draw your political lines, it is obvious that those in power will do what they must to stay there. I have yet to meet a politician that wasn’t worried about themselves. We must be willing to listen, but not so quick to agree.

If you haven’t had a chance to read it, I highly suggest you do, as well as refresh on the rest of the series. The Hunger Games is a timeless classic as much as it is a present warning. Terrible things happen when the people give up their power.

Rose’s Wrath

Buy on Amazon

Review on Goodreads

Rose’s Ruin

Buy on Amazon

Review on Goodreads