I've loved the Kate Daniels series for YEARS! I've re-read them a couple times. In fact, Ilona Andrews is maybe my favorite author. I've yet to dislike any of their books.
For the Kate Daniels series, it's really fun seeing how Kate and Curran's relationship shifts throughout the series. From Kate being independent, to the Beast Lady responsible for over a thousand shifters, to being the Sharratum of Atlanta and being the real power behind Atlanta
I love that piece of it so much. I was pretty wary of Curran when he first shows up and the alpha male thing always puts me on my guard, but man I love the way their relationship progresses!
I have discovered your channel only a week or two ago and I am so happy to have finally found a youtuber I have similar literary taste with, and who also has similar opinions as I do. Your book analyses are so deep, thorough and intelligent that sometimes you make me see a book I already read under a different light. Love you and your channel!
Just put Lakewood on my tbr! The Beautiful Ones is now one of my favorite Moreno-Garcia! Nina is my favorite character of last year I think - it may have beat out Gods of Jade and Shadow as my second favorite of hers. Teixcalaan series is probably one of my favorite series of all time for the subtlety of its themes,❤ thank you so much for this video! So many of your favorites are mine, I almost always use you as a benchmark to see if I might enjoy a book, since you read so many genres.
I LOVED A Memory Called Empire and A Desolation Called Peace! They were SO good and I loved the worldbuilding! The ancient Mexica themes were unique and interesting, and I love palace intrigue. And all the complicated commentary on translation was my jam. Plus the Sapphic romance! I need to reread these as well!
I love Nettle & Bone too! It was my favorite book this year and I have been going down a T Kingfisher rabbit hole since. I definitely think she could become a new favorite author!
@@SarahAtHeart A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking was so cute! The other one is What Moves the Dead. I'm not a big fan of retellings, but I thought this was very well executed. They don't have Minor Mage on my audiobook service, maybe I'll get a print version
I am so glad I tuned into your channel! Nice to connect w you! I have subscribed and I look forward to going back and watching more of your content! Bookmarked a few titles and hope to get to them soon!
Wow, I'm late to the Kate Daniels party, but also right on time, oddly. Never read this series before (I'm a noob!), and I just picked up book three from the library, so I can read along with you! My sister told me to start reading Kate Daniels, but I had trouble getting into the first book. I agree with you that it feels dated. But! Then, I saw a video with you saying that you stan Kate Daniels forever, and my interest in the series shot up. I powered through books one and two, enjoyed them, and here we are. Thank you, Marines!
I’ve been binging your videos after discovering you through the Goodreads video and I’m obsessed with the way you describe books! You convince me I’d like all of them even when I’m not actually sure I would 😂
I love Memory of Empire and its sequel. So good, I liked how they felt weirdly old school sci-fi but with the new of exploring empire, racism etc. Also Lakewood was fantastic too, I look forward to picking up her new one in the new year since its on my tbr
I'm so happy to have found your channel! It's rare that I find one with such similar taste (and I'm watching a lot of your videos right now) , from your Babel review which was so similar to what I felt. And this video confirmed it, with Sea of Tranquility and Nettle & Bone getting mentions. I immediately added Out There to my TBR because of how you described it - weird & cool is what I love. I was just going to start Lakewood soon. Thank you for your work
Well, now I gotta read A Memory Called Empire... Also I know everyone loves T. Kingfisher but wasn't sure why and the way you talked about Nettle and Bone made me want to give it a try
I genuinely thought you’d already read The Beautiful Ones and that it was your favorite SMG 😂 Lakewood is one I enjoyed when I read and then kept thinking about it. I might need to get a copy for myself so I can reread. Also v excited to pick up Giddings’ next book, The Women Could Fly soon! I loved Memory so much that I haven’t been able to pick up Desolation. I just loved all the cultural exchange bits and Mahit’s pov that I’m afraid book 2 will only disappoint me. I love these videos from you especially because we always have so much overlap. Def gonna try and join KD and see if I can find a copy of Out There 💕
A Desolation of Peace was also one of my top reads of the year! It took me over a year to settle into A Memory Called Empire because I didn’t love it when I first read it for a couple of reasons, but over time I got curious about how the story would resolve. The second book made me love the first book more in hindsight, just because the storylines in book 2 spoke to me so much. It’s definitely been a dark horse of a series, but a new favorite.
The Beautiful Ones!!! 🥰🥰🥰 I love how you describe Nina. She deserves ALL the good things T. Kingfisher has been one of my favorite underhyped authors for years now and it makes me SO happy she's having such a Moment on BookTube!! so glad you loved Nettle & Bone. I am not a quest fantasy person but this was my favorite book by her so far! For a second when you were looking for "Pet" at the end I thought you had your dog or cat loose in the room and they were getting into trouble and I was like 'oh that makes sense' 🤣
I’ve read all of Kate Daniels twice (we have an Ilona Andrews readalong where we’ve done Kate Daniels and Hidden Legacy and are starting Inn Keepers) and just read Magic Bites again in December because I just WANTED to. 😂🥰
mine would probably be: 1. The Book of Dust 2. To Kill a Mockingbird 3. House of the Scorpion honestly these are the ones that stand out to me, i was in a reading slump for a couple months last year and didn’t read anything.
I always enjoy T Kingfisher's books. I enjoy the way she uses whimsy/humor and combines it with creepy things or bigger stakes. Nettle and Bone was another great one by her. I have Pet on my TBR for February and I'm really looking forward to it! The Past is Red and Out There both sound really good.
I finally bought The Beautiful Ones, I'm really looking forward to it. A Memory Called Empire has been in my TBR for a while, I think I will try and read it in 2023. And Nettle & Bone was among my favourite of the years as well.
I've seen Sam talking about Kate Daniels and I was like, maybe I'll pick it up, and then you said, we're going to read one each month and I decided to give the first one a try: I really enjoyed it! I don't think I'll handle doing just one a month, you created a beast Marines xD You both really give great recs and I have yet to dislike something you guys loved and recommended!
I read A Memory Called Empire and Nettle and Bone last year as well and they were both amazing. I also read What Moves the Dead by Kingfisher and loved it so I'd definitely recommend picking it up
Nettle and Bone, the Past is Red, Pet and Teixcalaan are all favorites of mine as well! And I was shocked to love Nettle and Bone as much as I did since quest fantasy is normally a miss for me but her character work is just unmatched
I read A Memory Called Empire and got a bit lost with the intrigue at the end so I unhauled it and wasn't gonna read the sequel but then i kept thinking about the book and go the sequel anyway and totally loved it. defo gotta reread the whole thing for sure to get the whole experience
OK so you've talked about the Kate Daniels series a ton but I don't think you've ever given a summary of it so this is the first time that I'm realizing what it's about and I'm realizing that it sounds an awful lot like a magical version of the All For The Game series by Nora Sakavic 🤔 I wonder if Sakavic was a fan?
Until you got to the Kate Daniel's series I was like we have Very different "best of" lists, while our "worst of" are pretty similar. 🤣 Ilona Andrews-just love them. Magic Breaks is actually my favorite from the series although Magic Shifts is a very good entry too. I love all their things though. I've read All their books 📚 multiple times. Wish they could give "how to" classes to some of the other popular authors out there...😏Maas, Armentrount, Clare, CoHo to name a few. It would be like, do what they're doing Not whatever the heck it is that you've been doing. 🤨🤣
I loved Pet and definitely agree it could be a future classic! I put Nettle & Bone on my TBR from this video, because it sounds excellent as well. I will say though, Out There is on my most disappointing of the year, and I am a lover of weird sci-fi (there were at least 4 of them on my top 15 this year). Usually, I can get why other people might enjoy a book I do not, but it is honestly one of those that I cannot understand.
Why not? The writing was clean, the stories weird but they all had sense and something to say. What if we valued people for internal organs? What if you could never tell if the person on the other side of the app was a bot? If death by void was inevitable, at what point would you stop fighting? I totally get this not being someone’s jam, but with something this quality, I don’t understanding not understanding the appeal.
@@mynameismarines I don’t disagree that the technical aspects of the writing had quality. I rated the first story highly, but then as I continued I personally felt like the book had one trick, it was misogyny, and nothing lived up to that first story because I wanted even a crumb of hope or joy. There was at best interesting premises, but the execution kept showing relationships where characters only valued the superficial (in the internal organ story and the one about the porn describer people truly became objects) or secretly (or not so secretly) despised each other. The characters had no positive emotional connection to each other in my opinion. The thing that ended it for me (though I did read the whole book) was The Bone Ward being described as a “love triangle” in the synopsis. To me that story was one woman being so unwarranted in her jealously and hatred of another over a man that she felt she had to make her horrifically suffer. In the end I don’t think speculative fiction or the future means everyone must be miserable.
@@ManicChangeling I'm not arguing that you don't have reasons to dislike it or the project-- it's too hopeless for you, which I think was the project-- but I was just saying that this is a weird example to me of a book in which you can't understand the appeal. The entire point, to me, was what you pointed out as not enjoying. And the elements of "love triangle" and "online dating" are tongue in cheek to highlight the way the the superficial is prized or the way that women are pitted against each other etc etc. I think it's obviously very valid that you don't like this book for these reasons, despite it being the point, but also I reserve the "I don't get the appeal" for books that are way, way below this caliber.
@@mynameismarines I guess it’s more that people aren’t saying the appeal is that they didn’t enjoy it, people are saying they loved it. The person I got the recommendation from found this book exciting and enjoyable. If I was seeing reviews that it was a book to respect or it was a dark commentary my view would probably be different.
@@ManicChangeling I also loved it. It was dark and uncanny and I enjoyed it in the sense of appreciating the time I spent with it, even if the feelings it caused while I read it weren't positive ones. That's pretty par for the course with a lot of media. We "enjoy" things that make us cry or think or that reflect difficult subjects. I think the summary for this book did a pretty good job setting the tone of this being commentary and tongue in cheek, but I guess that might be different depending on where you heard about it from!
First! The sound isn't coming through for me. Is it working for anyone else? Edited after I got the sound to work to add: Happy to see a much of things I've read (largely because of you) and things I can now add to my TBR. Which edition of Out There do you have? It doesn't look like the one my library lent me at all but they're both hardcovers.
I've loved the Kate Daniels series for YEARS! I've re-read them a couple times. In fact, Ilona Andrews is maybe my favorite author. I've yet to dislike any of their books.
I'm excited to move onto the Hidden Legacies series now that I've finished Kate Daniels!
I am suffering from a horrible book hangover so a reminder of my love for Kate Daniels is perfect.
Any time I feel a slump anywhere near me, I'm like, "I know, I'll read Kate Daniels."
For the Kate Daniels series, it's really fun seeing how Kate and Curran's relationship shifts throughout the series. From Kate being independent, to the Beast Lady responsible for over a thousand shifters, to being the Sharratum of Atlanta and being the real power behind Atlanta
I love that piece of it so much. I was pretty wary of Curran when he first shows up and the alpha male thing always puts me on my guard, but man I love the way their relationship progresses!
I have discovered your channel only a week or two ago and I am so happy to have finally found a youtuber I have similar literary taste with, and who also has similar opinions as I do. Your book analyses are so deep, thorough and intelligent that sometimes you make me see a book I already read under a different light. Love you and your channel!
Just put Lakewood on my tbr! The Beautiful Ones is now one of my favorite Moreno-Garcia! Nina is my favorite character of last year I think - it may have beat out Gods of Jade and Shadow as my second favorite of hers. Teixcalaan series is probably one of my favorite series of all time for the subtlety of its themes,❤ thank you so much for this video! So many of your favorites are mine, I almost always use you as a benchmark to see if I might enjoy a book, since you read so many genres.
I LOVED A Memory Called Empire and A Desolation Called Peace! They were SO good and I loved the worldbuilding! The ancient Mexica themes were unique and interesting, and I love palace intrigue. And all the complicated commentary on translation was my jam. Plus the Sapphic romance! I need to reread these as well!
The way you talk about books is magical. Adding all of these to my tbr ❤
I love Nettle & Bone too! It was my favorite book this year and I have been going down a T Kingfisher rabbit hole since. I definitely think she could become a new favorite author!
Same! I started with Nettle & Bone and I have read 2 more books by her. She's definitely a new favourite for me
@@MaryaHach Yes! I read Minor Mage and A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking and they were amazing! What other 2 did you read?
@@SarahAtHeart A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking was so cute! The other one is What Moves the Dead. I'm not a big fan of retellings, but I thought this was very well executed.
They don't have Minor Mage on my audiobook service, maybe I'll get a print version
I am so glad I tuned into your channel! Nice to connect w you! I have subscribed and I look forward to going back and watching more of your content! Bookmarked a few titles and hope to get to them soon!
I don't normally like quest fantasy, but Nettle and Bone really worked for me!
It was so good, dark and cozy, a bunch of lovable characters... I can't wait to read more Kingfisher!
Wow, I'm late to the Kate Daniels party, but also right on time, oddly. Never read this series before (I'm a noob!), and I just picked up book three from the library, so I can read along with you! My sister told me to start reading Kate Daniels, but I had trouble getting into the first book. I agree with you that it feels dated. But! Then, I saw a video with you saying that you stan Kate Daniels forever, and my interest in the series shot up. I powered through books one and two, enjoyed them, and here we are. Thank you, Marines!
I’ve been binging your videos after discovering you through the Goodreads video and I’m obsessed with the way you describe books! You convince me I’d like all of them even when I’m not actually sure I would 😂
I love Memory of Empire and its sequel. So good, I liked how they felt weirdly old school sci-fi but with the new of exploring empire, racism etc. Also Lakewood was fantastic too, I look forward to picking up her new one in the new year since its on my tbr
I’m so glad you liked Nettle and Bone. T. Kingfisher is one of my favourite authors!
I'm so happy to have found your channel! It's rare that I find one with such similar taste (and I'm watching a lot of your videos right now) , from your Babel review which was so similar to what I felt. And this video confirmed it, with Sea of Tranquility and Nettle & Bone getting mentions. I immediately added Out There to my TBR because of how you described it - weird & cool is what I love. I was just going to start Lakewood soon. Thank you for your work
I loved Sea of Tranquility, it's such a beautiful and nuanced novel. Re-reading it was a great experience too.
I can't wait to reread it lol. I bet it will be a lot more fun knowing the end.
I’m in the middle of Nettle and Bone right now! I’ve absolutely loved reading T. Kingfisher this year.
Finally some love for Kate Daniels. i am happy that i started my journey into the urban fantasy genre with this series and not with the Dresden Files.
Well, now I gotta read A Memory Called Empire...
Also I know everyone loves T. Kingfisher but wasn't sure why and the way you talked about Nettle and Bone made me want to give it a try
I genuinely thought you’d already read The Beautiful Ones and that it was your favorite SMG 😂
Lakewood is one I enjoyed when I read and then kept thinking about it. I might need to get a copy for myself so I can reread. Also v excited to pick up Giddings’ next book, The Women Could Fly soon!
I loved Memory so much that I haven’t been able to pick up Desolation. I just loved all the cultural exchange bits and Mahit’s pov that I’m afraid book 2 will only disappoint me.
I love these videos from you especially because we always have so much overlap. Def gonna try and join KD and see if I can find a copy of Out There 💕
Pet is on my list, too, and I am currently rereading it. So good!
I just got Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow and I'm super excited to get to it. I keep hearing such good things about it.
A Desolation of Peace was also one of my top reads of the year! It took me over a year to settle into A Memory Called Empire because I didn’t love it when I first read it for a couple of reasons, but over time I got curious about how the story would resolve. The second book made me love the first book more in hindsight, just because the storylines in book 2 spoke to me so much. It’s definitely been a dark horse of a series, but a new favorite.
The Beautiful Ones!!! 🥰🥰🥰 I love how you describe Nina. She deserves ALL the good things
T. Kingfisher has been one of my favorite underhyped authors for years now and it makes me SO happy she's having such a Moment on BookTube!! so glad you loved Nettle & Bone. I am not a quest fantasy person but this was my favorite book by her so far!
For a second when you were looking for "Pet" at the end I thought you had your dog or cat loose in the room and they were getting into trouble and I was like 'oh that makes sense' 🤣
I’ve read all of Kate Daniels twice (we have an Ilona Andrews readalong where we’ve done Kate Daniels and Hidden Legacy and are starting Inn Keepers) and just read Magic Bites again in December because I just WANTED to. 😂🥰
mine would probably be:
1. The Book of Dust
2. To Kill a Mockingbird
3. House of the Scorpion
honestly these are the ones that stand out to me, i was in a reading slump for a couple months last year and didn’t read anything.
I always enjoy T Kingfisher's books. I enjoy the way she uses whimsy/humor and combines it with creepy things or bigger stakes. Nettle and Bone was another great one by her.
I have Pet on my TBR for February and I'm really looking forward to it!
The Past is Red and Out There both sound really good.
Well now I have to read Kate Daniels. You had me at "grown up Buffy"
I finally bought The Beautiful Ones, I'm really looking forward to it. A Memory Called Empire has been in my TBR for a while, I think I will try and read it in 2023.
And Nettle & Bone was among my favourite of the years as well.
I've seen Sam talking about Kate Daniels and I was like, maybe I'll pick it up, and then you said, we're going to read one each month and I decided to give the first one a try: I really enjoyed it! I don't think I'll handle doing just one a month, you created a beast Marines xD
You both really give great recs and I have yet to dislike something you guys loved and recommended!
Marine! Help!!!! I started the Kate Daniels three days ago and I'm in love!! I read three books so far, what should I do??? please send help!!!
I read A Memory Called Empire and Nettle and Bone last year as well and they were both amazing. I also read What Moves the Dead by Kingfisher and loved it so I'd definitely recommend picking it up
Nettle and Bone, the Past is Red, Pet and Teixcalaan are all favorites of mine as well! And I was shocked to love Nettle and Bone as much as I did since quest fantasy is normally a miss for me but her character work is just unmatched
Using this video to help me decide how to use a book shop gift card! :D
I’m so keen to read The Beautiful Ones!
I loved it! It's my favorite Moreno-Garcia now.
I read A Memory Called Empire and got a bit lost with the intrigue at the end so I unhauled it and wasn't gonna read the sequel but then i kept thinking about the book and go the sequel anyway and totally loved it. defo gotta reread the whole thing for sure to get the whole experience
Thanks for the recommendations!
Thank you for watching!
OK so you've talked about the Kate Daniels series a ton but I don't think you've ever given a summary of it so this is the first time that I'm realizing what it's about and I'm realizing that it sounds an awful lot like a magical version of the All For The Game series by Nora Sakavic 🤔 I wonder if Sakavic was a fan?
Until you got to the Kate Daniel's series I was like we have Very different "best of" lists, while our "worst of" are pretty similar. 🤣 Ilona Andrews-just love them. Magic Breaks is actually my favorite from the series although Magic Shifts is a very good entry too. I love all their things though. I've read All their books 📚 multiple times. Wish they could give "how to" classes to some of the other popular authors out there...😏Maas, Armentrount, Clare, CoHo to name a few. It would be like, do what they're doing Not whatever the heck it is that you've been doing. 🤨🤣
I loved Pet and definitely agree it could be a future classic! I put Nettle & Bone on my TBR from this video, because it sounds excellent as well. I will say though, Out There is on my most disappointing of the year, and I am a lover of weird sci-fi (there were at least 4 of them on my top 15 this year). Usually, I can get why other people might enjoy a book I do not, but it is honestly one of those that I cannot understand.
Why not? The writing was clean, the stories weird but they all had sense and something to say. What if we valued people for internal organs? What if you could never tell if the person on the other side of the app was a bot? If death by void was inevitable, at what point would you stop fighting? I totally get this not being someone’s jam, but with something this quality, I don’t understanding not understanding the appeal.
@@mynameismarines I don’t disagree that the technical aspects of the writing had quality. I rated the first story highly, but then as I continued I personally felt like the book had one trick, it was misogyny, and nothing lived up to that first story because I wanted even a crumb of hope or joy.
There was at best interesting premises, but the execution kept showing relationships where characters only valued the superficial (in the internal organ story and the one about the porn describer people truly became objects) or secretly (or not so secretly) despised each other. The characters had no positive emotional connection to each other in my opinion.
The thing that ended it for me (though I did read the whole book) was The Bone Ward being described as a “love triangle” in the synopsis. To me that story was one woman being so unwarranted in her jealously and hatred of another over a man that she felt she had to make her horrifically suffer.
In the end I don’t think speculative fiction or the future means everyone must be miserable.
@@ManicChangeling I'm not arguing that you don't have reasons to dislike it or the project-- it's too hopeless for you, which I think was the project-- but I was just saying that this is a weird example to me of a book in which you can't understand the appeal.
The entire point, to me, was what you pointed out as not enjoying. And the elements of "love triangle" and "online dating" are tongue in cheek to highlight the way the the superficial is prized or the way that women are pitted against each other etc etc. I think it's obviously very valid that you don't like this book for these reasons, despite it being the point, but also I reserve the "I don't get the appeal" for books that are way, way below this caliber.
@@mynameismarines I guess it’s more that people aren’t saying the appeal is that they didn’t enjoy it, people are saying they loved it. The person I got the recommendation from found this book exciting and enjoyable. If I was seeing reviews that it was a book to respect or it was a dark commentary my view would probably be different.
@@ManicChangeling I also loved it. It was dark and uncanny and I enjoyed it in the sense of appreciating the time I spent with it, even if the feelings it caused while I read it weren't positive ones. That's pretty par for the course with a lot of media. We "enjoy" things that make us cry or think or that reflect difficult subjects. I think the summary for this book did a pretty good job setting the tone of this being commentary and tongue in cheek, but I guess that might be different depending on where you heard about it from!
First!
The sound isn't coming through for me. Is it working for anyone else?
Edited after I got the sound to work to add: Happy to see a much of things I've read (largely because of you) and things I can now add to my TBR. Which edition of Out There do you have? It doesn't look like the one my library lent me at all but they're both hardcovers.
i hear it!
@@qtbaba thanks! Time to switch devices I guess.
💜💜
Ugh you read bad books. None of those are any good
Sure and I’m so sure you have good taste. 😂
I want to read Nettle & Bone so badly 🥲