It’s time for the first wrap up of 2022. I don’t know about you, but January has felt like two months to me. I ended up with Covid on the second week of January and it took some time to get over it. During that time, I just bounced around from book to book. Nothing fit. So my wrap up is a little smaller than normal, but here’s my January 2022 wrap up.
The Bone Shard Daughter
Synopsis:
The emperor’s reign has lasted for decades, his mastery of bone shard magic powering the animal-like constructs that maintain law and order. But now his rule is failing, and revolution is sweeping across the Empire’s many islands.
Lin is the emperor’s daughter and spends her days trapped in a palace of locked doors and dark secrets. When her father refuses to recognise her as heir to the throne, she vows to prove her worth by mastering the forbidden art of bone shard magic.
Yet such power carries a great cost, and when the revolution reaches the gates of the palace, Lin must decide how far she is willing to go to claim her birthright – and save her people.
My Rating: 4/5
My Full Review: The Bone Shard Daughter Review
A History of Wild Places
Synopsis:
Travis Wren has an unusual talent for locating missing people. Hired by families as a last resort, he requires only a single object to find the person who has vanished. When he takes on the case of Maggie St. James–a well-known author of dark, macabre children’s books–he’s led to a place many believed to be only a legend.
Called Pastoral, this reclusive community was founded in the 1970s by like-minded people searching for a simpler way of life. By all accounts, the commune shouldn’t exist anymore and soon after Travis stumbles upon it…he disappears. Just like Maggie St. James.
Years later, Theo, a lifelong member of Pastoral, discovers Travis’s abandoned truck beyond the border of the community. No one is allowed in or out, not when there’s a risk of bringing a disease–rot–into Pastoral. Unraveling the mystery of what happened reveals secrets that Theo, his wife, Calla, and her sister, Bee, keep from one another. Secrets that prove their perfect, isolated world isn’t as safe as they believed–and that darkness takes many forms.
Hauntingly beautiful, hypnotic, and bewitching, A History of Wild Places is a story about fairy tales, our fear of the dark, and losing yourself within the wilderness of your mind.
My Rating: 2/5
My Full Review: A History of Wild Places Review
The Great Hunt
Synopsis:
For centuries, gleemen have told the tales of The Great Hunt of the Horn. So many tales about each of the Hunters, and so many Hunters to tell of…
Now the Horn itself is found: the Horn of Valere long thought only legend, the Horn which will raise the dead heroes of the ages.
And it is stolen.
In pursuit of the thieves, Rand al’Thor is determined to keep the Horn out of the grasp of The Dark One. But he has also learned that he is The Dragon Reborn–the Champion of Light destined to stand against the Shadow time and again. It is a duty and a destiny that requires Rand to uncover and master magical capabilities he never imagined he possessed.
My Rating: TBD
My Full Review: Coming Soon
The Wayfarer
Synopsis:
The Wayfarer stands on the rim of insanity. Forgetting everything. Everyone.
He doesn’t know when the forgetting began, but the Shadow does. A doppelganger wreathed in darkness; a figure only he can see; it claims to know both why he is losing his mind, and the way to restore it. Wary, desperate, with what seems no other way open to him, the Wayfarer submits himself to the Shadow, its warning compelling him forward:
Move on.
Or wither.
As the Shadow leads the Wayfarer through sentient forests, the graveyards of dragons, and realms between realms, so too does it lead the way into his forgotten past, restoring fragments of memory throughout the journey. Only the memories are distorted, nightmarish. In them he sees his friends, his family — dead. Impossible. His friends are alive, aiding him on his journey. His family is safe, awaiting his return.
Disillusioned by these perversions of past, the Wayfarer decides the only way to salvation is within himself. Aided by a psychoactive mixture, he descends into his subconscious, seeking the truth of his unravelling mind, the memory of his madness’ beginning.
You are not ready.
Though the Wayfarer can sense the truth lurking within the abyss of his subconscious, something in the Shadow’s words waylays him. Something in the Shadow’s words holds a truth of its own, warring with the truth within himself.
Frustrated, fearful, his mind fraying at its seams, the Wayfarer stands now on the rim of a choice: to trust the Shadow, to hope on a fool’s hope that its way was the way to remedy; or to forsake it, to do as he willed and seek resolution his own way, risking that it may very well be the way to ruin.
My Rating: 3/5
My Full Review: The Wayfarer by Zachary Kekac Review
So that’s my January 2022 Wrap Up. Did you read a new favorite this month?
