george rr martin | Clare L. Deming

The beginning of January gave me pneumonia, so while I didn’t feel well and missed work, I DID have more time to read. The second half of the month left me busier though, so I didn’t quite meet my goal of finishing 6 books for the month. These are the books I finished in January:

Since it takes me so long to get to reviews lately, I thought I’d give you a preview of what I thought by listing how many stars I gave my recent reads. Here are my ratings for what I read in January with purchase links:

Swordheart by T. Kingfisher – ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Slow Gods by Claire North – ⭐⭐⭐
Exit Strategy by Martha Wells – ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Detour by Jeff Rake and Rob Hart – ⭐⭐
A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms by George R.R. Martin – ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

When I set my reading goals for 2025, I estimated that I could read 6 books a month (72 for the year). Of course, being unrealistic about my reading goals, I then put 9 books on my to-be-read list for January. Even with that, I feel like I did well with my reading, having started 2 additional books from that list, and leaving only 2 that I haven’t started yet.

I’m currently enjoying the trade paperback edition of The Will of the Many by James Islington. I’m about 200 pages into this one. Then my audiobook journey through the Outlander saga continues with #7 – An Echo in the Bone by Diana Gabaldon (paid links). I have 26 hours left of 46, putting me around 43% of the way through the book. If I add my progress for these two books up, I think that should count as a sixth book for January.

The two from my unrealistic list that I didn’t get to were Quicksilver by Callie Hart and Alchemised by SenLinYu (paid links). I still want to read these books, so I’ll have to figure out where to squeeze them in.

I’m going to limit my list for February to only 6 books, and half of them are under 400 pages, so maybe I’ll manage to read them all? Of course I have to finish those I’m currently reading too. Here are the books I’m planning to read in February:

A Fire Upon the Deep by Vernor Vinge – 613 pages, e-book – This is a classic science fiction novel that I received from Net Galley quite a while ago. I’m slowly catching up on my review reading.
The Everlasting by Alix E. Harrow – 320 pages, hardcover – I have read a ton of stellar reviews for this book and am very excited to start it.
Grievar’s Blood by Alexander Darwin – 13 hr, 31 min, audiobook – This is the second novel in a series I started a while ago that was a mashup of fantasy and MMA.
The Tainted Cup by Robert Jackson Bennett – 410 pages, e-book – This novel won both the 2025 Hugo and World Fantasy Awards for Best Novel. It is a selection for an upcoming book club discussion.
Pilgrimage: The Book of the People by Zenna Henderson – 255 pages, paperback – This is a selection for an upcoming book club discussion and is a classic published in 1961.
The Faraway Inn by Sarah Beth Durst – 384 pages, e-book – This is a cozy fantasy novel by the author of The Spellshop and was given to me for review by Net Galley. It will be published on March 31.

I did really well in keeping with my new rule to only buy the number of books I read in the previous month minus one. In December I read 5 books, and then for January I only acquired 4 new ones:

Exit Strategy by Martha Wells
The Everlasting by Alix E. Harrow
Pilgrimage: The Book of the People by Zenna Henderson
Graceless Heart by Isabel Ibanez (Fairy Loot)

You can see that there is significant overlap in my recent reading and the books I needed to obtain. I might have requested a book on Net Galley, but it hasn’t been approved, so it doesn’t count yet!

Coming up later this month on this blog are reviews of Slow Gods by Claire North, Katabasis by R.F. Kuang, and Detour by Jeff Rake and Rob Hart.

What are you reading this week? Are there any new books that you’re looking forward to reading? Let me know in the comments.

I had heard mixed reviews about George R. R. Martin’s latest book, Fire and Blood after it came out, so I approached this one with some apprehension. Sitting at 719 pages, this was going to be a long read.

Fire and Blood is the first half of the history of the Targaryens after fleeing old Valyria and arriving in Westeros. The book is written as a history rather than in a direct narrative style, which may make it a difficult read for some.

I enjoyed the book once I got into it far enough. Despite the way the author has chosen to tell this story, it is still *quite* a story. The Targaryens are all unique characters, and you get to spend enough time with each of them in this book to become invested in many of the outcomes.

Much like reading The Silmarillion, many names are similar within the Targaryen families, so it is helpful to reference the family tree at the back. I wish that the book had also offered a chart of which Targaryens had claimed which dragons, as this became confusing to me in the later half of the book.

Toward the end of this book, we learn about what happened in the Dance of Dragons, the Targaryen civil war. This tragic tale is supposedly the basis of HBO’s current Game of Thrones spin-off, House of the Dragon. If HBO will allow enough of a special effects budget, I think this will be a fantastic story to watch.

Fire and Blood is only the first half of the 300-year history prior to A Game of Thrones and I’m looking forward to the next part. Use my Amazon link to pick up your copy here. Or if you’ve never read any of the books, start with A Game of Thrones here.