A Fantasy Book Haul and a New Blog Annoucement!

Hey y'all!

Since Saturday I didn't have a D&D game, I decided to go to Barnes and Nobles (my third home after Cinderella's Castle at Magic Kingdom and my house) because I had a itch for some new books. because after reading Johannes Cabal, I was in a book rut. So I went and brought these amazing books that might hopefully break me out of my reading slump.

The Assassins's Blade: The Throne of Glass Novellas by Sarah J. Maas

I'm a huge fan of Sarah J. Maas and her two book series, Throne of Glass and A Court of Thorns and Roses, and I've wanted to get the whole book series so bad after I've read Throne of Glass twice (might read it the third time). This is the beginning of the Throne of Glass novels (along with the others) and with Tower of the Dawn (Chaol's book? AWE YISSSSS) coming out really soon, I thought I get a hop on reading the series again, starting with The Assassins's Blade, and I'm currently reading it right now and I LOVE IT SO MUCH. 

Crown of Midnight: A Throne of Glass Novel by Sarah J. Maas

The second book of the Throne of Glass novels and I can't wait to read this one-also this book series actually gave me some inspiration for my current character I'm playing in Storm King's Thunder, Elektra Nightbreeze, my wood elf rouge assassin (and I'm not good like Liam O'Brien who plays Vax'ildan on Critical Role).

The Legend of Drizzt Book II: Exile by R.A. Salvatore

Now I couldn't leave B&N without grabbing my favorite drow and my favorite fantasy author! They didn't have the first book of this series (I didn't ask that's why) but I picked up this one and I have a feeling it's gonna be fantastic, especially with those Illithids that Drizzt's about to fight...

The Legend of Drizzt Book III: Sojourn by R.A. Salvatore

HAD TO GET THE THIRD BOOK. Because who dosen't wanna read more about our favorite drow ranger and his awesome panther Guenhwyvar? And yes, this is them coming into the light for the first time EVER and I can't wait to read this!!!

So my new blog annoucement (well it really isn't a new blog, I just haven't used it in a very long time)

So I decided to use a old blog that is just...sitting there like USE ME PLEASE and it was supposed to be a writing blog where I show off my writing (it might be that, I don't know yet) but then I decided to make it my randomized thought/somewhat of a personal blog. 

So if you wanna and visit the blank blog (I'm gonna post something on there really soon) its https://charmingbrittany.blogspot.com/  if you wanna just follow it and whatnot

Book Review: The Fall of the House of Cabal by Jonathan L. Howard

The Fall of the House of Cabal by Jonathan L. Howard
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book...this book, this book, this book. The last novel of the Johannes Cabal novel...

It was FANTASTIC. I loved every bit of it and I really want Jonathan Howard to write more from this series because I'm starving for more and I just wanna read more about Cabal and Horst and Leonie and Zarenyia-everyone. And splitting it up to five parts...OMG I LOVED EACH AND EVERY PART. Espically the Great Detective part, when Horst became human for a moment and ate bacon while they were investigating the death of Maximilian Maleficarius, which was saddening and also a bit funny because of Horst eating the bacon...but I have to say, the star of the book has to be Madame Zarenyia, my sister from another mister.

Even her quotes were funny and spot on:

"You’re telling me,’ muttered Zarenyia, drifting at the edge of consciousness. ‘Johannes has one, you know. Terribly clever with it. He got me my sweater. Lots of fish. So many fish.’ Her voice faded into sub-vocalized semi-words."

"Hello darlings!“ said Zarenyia as she breezed back into Satan’s throne room, a shambling, scuttling sound in her wake assuring her that Ratuth Slabuth was following. ‘Forms signed, bona fides authenticated. You will be delighted to hear that I am now declared a legal visitor to the scenic heart of Hell. Hooray for me!"

"Scrawny creatures, aren’t they? Still, a soul’s a soul.’ She sighed. ‘I am making myself ever so available, and I’m getting for my troubles is a lot of frightened looks and scuttling. Haven’t they ever seen a gorgeous woman before?"

"Do you suppose this is part of the trap, too?’ Zarenyia weighed up the possibilities. “I must say, as traps go it’s a little bit lazy, isn’t it? Tiny it short in the bait department. Why would we want to go in there?’ She squinted, her inhuman senses apparently able to make something out of the pervading shadow. ‘Oh, it’s all right, after all. It’s not trying to get us to go in. It’s letting something out. Much better."

And the ending, when Horst because of dhampir (yay!!!) and I FINALLY found out that woman in the coffin's name (Berenice, what a lovely name) and I really do reconmend this series a whole lot!!

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Book Review: Someone to Watch Over Me by Lisa Kleypas

Someone to Watch Over Me by Lisa Kleypas
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I haven't read a romance novel in a long time, and I wanted something different to read while I'm reading the other books I'm currently reading at the moment, and Someone to Watch Over Me came at the right time and I loved every single moment of it. I honestly cheered for Grant and Vivien/Victoria, because he stupidly thought she was Vivien the courtesan, which turned out to be her twin sister-trust me, I was shocked myself when I read that part-and then reading how they slowly but surely fall in love...

But the mystery behind Vivien/Victoria was...well, how can I put it....the mystery behind who wanted Vivien dead was a really stupid one. I mean, to hire a Bow Street Runner to do it? Really? Like...I thought the Lord Lane would hire someone from the street to do it...but to actually get a Bow Street Runner to do it? I was actually appalled by it, because it seemed to me that he didn't want to kill Vivien himself after what she did to his son and grandson, so he hired someone else to do it-and it was someone Grant knew....

At the end I loved the book and would really recommend it to anyone.

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Book Review: The Brothers Cabal by Jonathan L. Howard

The Brothers Cabal by Jonathan L. Howard
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book...this book right here made me laugh-like bust out laughing-while also shocking me and making my mouth drop. I loved this book out of all of the Cabal novels I've read over the months that I've read them, so what is this book about?

Well...Horst is back. Back back. Back from the Dead back. And the ones that brought him back-the Ministerium Tenebrae-wants him to create vampires for their army of the undead, so they can create a country for the undead. Then that's when the voice of Horst's ripper-that's what I call it (I used to watch/read wayyy to much Vampire Diaries and the Originals)-started whispering in his mind like Phury's did in his book, wanted to do it, to drink the blood from the table, in the wine glass and in the bowl. But he didn't and escaped with the help of the Dee Society, and then he met Miss Montgomery's Flying circus.

While they were getting aquiented, they were attacked by zombies, a werebadger, obelisk, and a stone spider *in which I screamed because I hate spiders so much* and then as Horst tells this story to his brother Johannes, he asks him to help him destroy the Ministerium. Though Johannes reluctantly said yes, the two packed up Cabal's things to meet up with Miss Montgomery's trio of fliers and went to the rondevous point and met with serveral....how shall I put this....members of each religious group, some were witches (the Sisters of Hecate or the Hades one, I believe) and others were fighters, and before they attacked the Ministerium, they had a meeting, where Cabal explained that the Red Queen was none other than Lady Orfilia Nimuka, daughter of Count Merchal, and on top of that, Rufus Maleficarus is alive and walking...or so he thought.

The Mirkavian battle started, and everyone brought their best warriors out, but the Ministerium lost, even when Horst and Cabal, along with Alisha, went inside the castle to kill Rufus and Lady Misericorde. Cabal tricked Rufus, who turned out to be the Eriskghal Working and trapped him in Rufus's body, while Alisha died-killed by dopplegangers, and Horst killed them all by listening to his inner ripper and killed them all.

But the ENDING though....Johannes found the book he was looking for, and then asked Horst about the Fountian of Youth and the Philsopher Stone.....but when Ninuka was alone and randomly talking to the urn....THAT was freaky enough.

So I really do recommend this book and the whole series if you haven't read it yet!

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Dear Cold, GO AWAY

Nose running...throat hurting.....getting a headache....oh dear god no...I'M GETTING SICK

*If only I got sick this fabulously like Lady Mary but sadly I'm not. Because I'm thinking that I don't wanna get sick god dang it. 

I don't get sick-well, I try not to. But since it got hot and it's a bit cold in my house, I'm starting to feel sick, which sucks. So I might just chill, finish reading the Brothers Cabal and also finish bingewatching...

 *yeah i can't stop watching this show have no idea why 

Definally need to finish watching this

...and finish watching this before Defenders come out

I wish this cold of mine can go away but I'll just have to wait and take some medicine (or all the medicine) to get better.

Tag: 100 Books the BBC think most people haven't read more than 6 of

So I was tagged by Olivia of Meanwhile in Rivendell (in which I say thank you again!!) and I thought I'd do it!

The original tag here

The Rules:
1. Be honest.
2. Put an asterisk next to the ones you have read all the way through. Put an addition sign next to the ones you have started.
3. Tag as many people as these books that you have read.

Books:

1.  Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen *

2.  Gormenghast Trilogy -  Mervyn Peake
3.  Jane Eyre - Charlotte Brontë
4.  Temple of the Golden Pavilion - Yukio Mishima
5.  To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee 

6.  The Story of the Eye - George Bataille
7.  Wuthering Heights - Emily Brontë 
8.  Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell 
9.  Adrift on the Nile - Naguib Mahfouz
10.  Great Expectations - Charles Dickens 

11.  Little Women - Louisa May Alcott
12.  Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13.  Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14.  Rhinoceros - Eugene Ionesco
15.  Baron in the Trees - Italo Calvino

16.  The Master of Go - Yasunari Kawabata
17.  Woman in the Dunes - Abe Kobo
18.  Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19.  The Feast of the Goat - Mario Vargas Llosa
20.  Middlemarch - George Eliot
21.  Gogol's Wife - Tomasso Landolfi
22.  The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald *

23.  Magic Mountain - Thomas Mann
24.  War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25.  Ferdydurke - Gombrowicz
26.  Narcissus and Goldmund - Herman Hesse
27.  Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky * (it was for class that I read that)
28.  The Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck*
29.  Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll *
30.  The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame 

31.  Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy 
32.  The Jungle - Upton Sinclair
33.  Tom Sawyer / Huck Finn - Mark Twain  
34.  Emma - Jane Austen

35.  Robinson Crusoe - Daniel Defoe
36.  Delta Wedding - Eudora Welty
37.  The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini* (read it in high school for class)
38.  Naomi - Junichiro Tanizaki
39.  Cosmicomics - Italo Calvino
40.  The Joke - Milan Kundera
41.  Animal Farm - George Orwell* (read for class)
42.  Labyrinths - Gorge Luis Borges
43.  One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44.  A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45.  Under My Skin - Doris Lessing

46.  Anne of Green Gables - L. M. Montgomery 

47.  Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48.  Don Quixote - Miguel Cervantes
49.  Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50.  Absalom Absalom - William Faulkner
51.  Beloved - Toni Morrison
52.  The Flounder - Gunther Grass
53.  Dead Souls - Nikolai Gogol
54.  Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen*
55.  My Name is Red - Orhan Pamuk
56.  A Dolls House - Henrik Ibsen
57.  A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens 

58.  Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59.  The Idiot - Fyodor Dostoevesky 
60.  Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

61.  Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck* (read in school)
62.  Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63.  Leaves of Grass - Walt Whitman
64.  Death on the Installment Plan - Celine
65.  Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas 
66.  On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67.  Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68.  Pedro Paramo - Juan Rulfo
69.  Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70.  Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71.  Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72.  Dracula - Bram Stoker + I'M GOING TO FREAKING READ THIS BOOK DAMMIT
73.  The Metamorphosis - Kafka
74.  Epitaph of a Small Winner - Machado De Assis
75.  Ulysses - James Joyce

76.  The Inferno - Dante * (read it in class last year)
77.  Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78.  Germinal - Emile Zola
79.  To the Light House - Virginia Woolf *
80.  Disgrace - John Maxwell Coetzee

81.  A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82.  Zorba the Greek - Nikos Kazantzakis
83.  The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84.  The Box Man - Abe Kobo
85.  Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86.  A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87.  The Stranger - Camus
88.  Acquainted with the Night - Heinrich Boll
89.  Don't Call It Night - Amos Oz
90.  The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton

91.  Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92.  The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93.  Gravity's Rainbow - Thomas Pychon
94.  Memoirs of Hadrian - Marguerite Yourcenar
95.  A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96.  Things Fall Apart - Chinua Achebe
97.  The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98.  Hamlet - William Shakespeare 
99.  Faust - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe 
100.  Metamorphosis - Ovid

Books read: 12

Books started: none because I'm reading Cabal at the moment but i've brought some of the books and are waiting for me to read it

People I tag: anyone who wanna do it

Book Review: Johannes Cabal the Fear Insitute by Jonathan L. Howard

The Fear Institute by Jonathan L. Howard
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

So this book of the Johannes Cabal series was different than the last two-mostly because they were in the Dreamlands looking for the Phobic Animus (in which THERE WASN'T ONE) and also because it felt like I was on a D&D adventure with Cabal and his companions. So what happened in this book?

Well three men came to Cabal's house to employ him to go to the dreamlands to retrieve this Phobic Animus. Cabal thought about it and after a day he said yes, and the four of them went to visit a poet that had the Sliver Key, and once he died, off they went into the dreamlands. Sadly throughout the adventure that I cannot remember because I took a break from reading this, but for the rest of the books I will be keeping a journal of all my thoughts:

Shadrach, and Corde died, Miss Smith and Cabal had a very nice conversation, they found a dead hermit's body and Cabal used necromancy to bring his skull back, the fight on the boat, and one of the Fear Institute People died.

Cabal is scared of cats, though I'm convinced there were Khajits in the book and Corde died, then Bose revealed himself to be Nyarlothotep, and sent Cabal through a dream, where he basically dreamt that his experiments worked, brought that girl in the casket back to life and then died WHYYYYYYYY.

Cabal also changed into a ghoul, didn't like it, so he made a laboratory so he could make an elixir to make himself hooman again. But the ghoul's leader took it from him, drank it, and became hooman, but then for some reason Cabal was knocked out, and a weird man came and took him home and took care of him. Now whoever he was knew the house intimately knew where everything was, and when Cabal woke up, he's like "You're supposed to be dead...."

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