November 2021 Wrap Up

Hi everyone! Today I’ll be talking about the books that I managed to finish in November. I only managed to finish two books and a chapter sampler that I had, so I’ll also be letting you know what books I started but wasn’t able to finish in the month of November as well! While I only finished two full books, both of them were absolutely fantastic!

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Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao – ★★★★★
This wasn’t on my radar until I got it in a book box, and I’m so glad that I did! It’s “Pacific Rim meets The Handmaid’s Tale in a polyamorous reimagining of China’s only female emperor”, and if that doesn’t instantly intrigue you then I don’t know what will. I loved how this tackled tough topics like abolishing the patriarchy and gender roles that society puts on you. These characters were so complex and while I definitely found myself internally screaming at Zetian frequently, I still really liked her character and how she starts to grow. The themes of feminism and fighting against sexism were especially relevant to what is going on in the world right now, although at times I found that I was angry with Zetian for taking it almost too far into ‘all men are bad’ territory. The writing was also STUNNING, and if I hadn’t been reading my Illumicrate special edition I definitely would’ve been highlighting and tabbing everywhere. This is 100% going to show up on my favorites of 2021 list, and I highly recommend it!

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The Bone Shard Emperor by Andrea Stewart – ★★★★☆.5
This is the second book in the Drowning Empire series, and it did not disappoint! I do have a full review available, so to summarize we still get the two main characters of Lin and Jovis written in first person and the three side characters of Phalue, Ranami and Nisong are written in third person, just like in the first book. The change from chapter to chapter is so seamless that you hardly notice the changes! The magic really starts to develop in this one and we learn so much more about what’s possible, but there’s still a lot of unanswered questions. The last 20% was incredible, so much happened and I was literally screaming at some parts! The one reason I ended up giving this a 4.5 instead of a 5 star is because for once I didn’t really care all that much for the romance.

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Gilded by Marissa Meyer – ★★★☆☆
This one won’t show up on my Goodreads because it was only a chapter sampler, but I wanted to have a record of it somewhere on my blog! It was only the first 10 chapters so it wasn’t a lot to go off of, but what I read was interesting. We see Serilda telling tales that no one believes, until one day she tells a tale to the Erlking and his undead hunters and is then taken away to his castle to spin gold out of straw. That’s really all I know of what happens, so just that short sample was a 3 star because really nothing super crazy happened, I would need more to say how I truly feel about the book. I do however think it would be fun to read the full book at some point!

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What books did you read in November? Have you read any of these yet or plan to? I’d love to chat!