More Earthsea! And honestly 2 more fantastic books. Atuan really has such fantastic storytelling, going slow and taking its time telling basically the whole of the protagonist's life, it really helps build up the mysticism and importance of the temple she works at, and their religion too, it was great.
Farthest Shore on the other hand is the most "adventure"-y these books have gotten till now, with a more familiar story structure to a regular fantasy adventure book. It was good, and it definitely kept up the amazing world that's built in the others of the series I read, but for now it's my least favourite of the series. It's still great! ...but I don't know, I think I expected a more grand, life spanning tale like the other books, and what I got was very great but left me slightly dissatisfied.
I'm curious to see where the next book goes though, as Farthest Shore left the impression that that was Sparrowhawk's last adventure.

Hm. I'll be honest I remember very little of this book. And after reading several of these gas lamp gay fantasies I think this is kind of more of the same. Which is not bad! Not really. But what I can say I've basically said several times before: Fun premise and cool magic system (this time more focused on talismans which is interesting). I liked how macabre it got at times though, with body parts being used in unpleasant ways and all that. There was nothing outstanding of interest though, I feel.

I liked this book quite a bit! An interesting (if a bit unexplored) magic world with elemental magic people are born with, fun fantasy vocabulary that really sets a vibe.
And really, the vibes of this book were the best part. The world has that interesting fantasy feel of well melded almost voctorian technology with magic and a different world history, and the setting being mostly a university town was delightful.
And of course, the heavy emphasis on the protagonists' mental issues was interesting too, and for me at least was a pretty nice change of pace, along with having a neat way of describing all his thoughts. Though, I'll be honest, I can't say if it's an accurate description in any way.

I'm not really a horror guy, so I'm surprised at how much I've been enjoying this trilogy. This, the second book, has an even darker, more macabre bend compared to 'Smoke and Shadows', with it taking place in a proper hauted mansion, with proper horror tropes like being trapped till dawn and sanity being chipped away as the night crawls on. With all that in mind yeah wow I liked this one.
It does help immensely that even with all the spooky stuff going around, I'm not sure I can call this a proper 'horror'. There are jokes and humor throughout to make the tone lighter, and even when scary stuff was happening the chararcters were never totally terrified and helpless. There are a couple pre-teen characters in fact that, even though they're trapped in a murder mansion, both just quip and faun over their TV crush for most of the time.
That doesn't break the tension too much though, as I still found it all very gripping, a fun book the whole way through! I'm only kiiiinda dissappointed that there's a little less gay in this book than I wanted. Here's hoping the 3rd and final book wraps up that aspect of the main character nicely.

The previous book of this series, tournament of losers, was perfectly fine and enjoyable, if a touch unimaginative and... empty of substance. This one's more of the same on that front, just with a different main character than the previous book, and honestly even less twists and intrigue. Somehow, it still ends up being a pretty fun read!! It's like reading the equivalent of a good poundcake. Not really that much flavor there, not too nutritional either, but it really feels good to eat all the same.

Fun fact about me, I was super into the Percy Jackson series growing up! Read all the books, read the roman and egyptian spin offs, and I felt my heart flourish when I found out Nico, an actually important character, was gay!! For real, that was a pretty important moment for me as it was around the time I was still figuring myself out.
Fast forward around 10 years and it's come to my attention that Nico now has his own book, how exciting!! And right when I'm on my "quest" to read gay fantasy, it's a fun coincidence!
.......sadly though it's a funner coincidence than book. This... is fine. It's serviceable. But man is it dull. Part of it might be that I'm not up to date with the whole of the Percy Jackson universe, the book mentioned a good couple events that I'd never read, but it was easy enough to figure out the state of things, especially since this book is mostly standalone.
What really let me down though was Nico himself, and most of the characters really. It may be that I'm older but there wasn't really any genuine charm to them? Or there was but... it felt adolescent. And not really in an interesting way, which made it odder when the book tried so hard to grapple with things like Nico's trauma. It felt more that corporate decided "Oh lets have a book where Nico faces his traumas and has an adventure with his boyfriend the Gays(tm) will love that." and I don't know if I can give a more harsh critiscisim than that. It also made me feel odd that I'd been away from this series for so long but all the events and characters seemed to be just the same from a decate ago?! Somehow?? Bleh.
Is it competently written? Sure. Is it a slog to get through? Not really! But it doesn't feel interesting or really all that fun.

A perfectly lovely little story about a teacher ending up with the handsome divorced father of one of his new students.
Not really much to say here, it's cute, the characters are fun and entertaining, and even if where it ended up was predictable, it was a nice ride. I will say though that happy as I was to see that there wasnt an old "oh miscommunication..." moment in the book it did have something pretty close to it, which was a touch of a hassle to power through.