Note on this book: I basically lost a bet and had to read it. As an April Fool's joke, an online book club I'm in announced that they'd be reading this book. Knowing it was a joke, I had said that if it really got picked I'd have to read it. ...they ended up really picking it, so here I am.

Morning Glory Milking Farm by C.M. Nascosta.

Quick synopsis: A newly graduated college student is unable to find work, but eventually she spots an ad for a "milking technician" and accepts the job.

Brief opinion: Picture 50 Shades of Grey with furries. Did 50 Shades have graphic sex scenes? Milking Farm certainly did. Over half the book was very, very graphic/detailed sex. Between a human woman and a giant minotaur.

Plot: In a world where mythical creatures are real, a pharmaceutical company needs minotaur ...fluids... to make erectile dysfunction pills.

Violet, a recent college grad with a growing pile of credit card debt, can't find a job in her field so she answers a help wanted ad for a "milking technician".

Turns out milking technicians give handjobs to minotaurs all day.

One of the bulls turns her on right away (with lovely descriptions like her leaving a "slime trail" on every chair she sits on...). He's basically a rich dom. Deep, commanding voice. And don't even ask me to describe his dick.

In the second half of the book the plot is basically gone and it's just sex, sex, and more sex. How does Violet have sex with a minotaur whose dick is so big she can't even circle it with both her hands? (Ugh, I can't believe I read this book.)

Editing: Not good. Lots of typos/editing issues. Bad self-published book.

What I Liked/What I Didn’t Like: Well. The first half of the book (which we read in week one of the book club) wasn't that bad. I liked the worldbuilding with the mythical creatures. Violet's job was actually kind of interesting sort of (her co-workers, training and such), and in the first half the two were mostly just lusting after each other. There were endless handjobs, but no sex yet.

The second half of the book (read for the second week of the club) was awful. Nothing but sex. So much sex. Impossible sex size-wise. Pages and pages of extremely detailed sex.

Rating: 1-Hated / 2-Disliked / 3-Okay / 4-Liked / 5-Loved: First half of the book would be three stars/okay, second half would be one star/hated, so average to: ⭐️⭐️ - Disliked

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A Parade of Horribles by Matt Dinniman.

Quick synopsis: Book 8 of this series, Carl and company continue to try to survive. This time through a death race thing (don't come in last place or you die), followed by a short parade/level.

Brief opinion: While I've really enjoyed this series (heck, I've listened to it three and a half times so far), this book really didn't work for me. It was about 20 hours to listen to, and 18 of them were just a filler episode. Only the last two hours had any plot movement.

Plot: 10th floor: A death match race thingie. Crawlers are assigned some kind of a vehicle (Carl and Donut got a food truck) and have to race in seven races. The last place team in each race is killed.

Nothing at all of significance happened during the races.

11th floor: At about the 80% point of the book, everything takes a left turn. The AI goes even more insane and gets even more powerful. There were a number of major action/plot events that I couldn't follow the logic/reasoning of (I kept waiting for them to be explained, but it never happened).

Editing: I listened to the audiobook, so no idea about the text editing. There was one word that was incorrect in the audio version, but I don't know if that's a mistake on Jeff/the narrator's part or the author's (I assume the former).

I did have a lot more trouble following the reading this time. I think Jeff was doing stronger accents, so I kept missing words. Plus there were more sound effects, which I don't like (there's the Soundbooth Theater version if you want sound effects, they shouldn't bleed over into the non-Soundbooth version).

What I Liked/What I Didn’t Like: Let me get this out of the way first: I neither liked nor found funny the endless "splooge" jokes. It was not funny the first joke, it was not funny the twentieth joke.

I didn't enjoy the races at all (felt like nothing more than a filler episode), and that was the majority of the book.

I was sad that there were so few emotional moments of the book. There was an extremely brief mention of something really sad about Gravy Boat/Ferdinand that was probably the high point of the book for me.

We did see a little more of Pony, which is something I've been looking for through the whole series.

It makes me sad to say this, but basically this book had no purpose other than to set up the final two books of the series.

Rating: 1-Hated / 2-Disliked / 3-Okay / 4-Liked / 5-Loved: ⭐️⭐️ ½ - Didn't really like. It pains me to rate this book that, but I was really disappointed by it. It's possible that part of the issue was that my expectations were too high though.

The Next Passage (Animorphs, Alternamorphs #2) by K.A. Applegate.

Quick synopsis: The second choose your own adventure Animorphs book. It's just too bad you can't choose an original story.

Brief opinion: Can a book series plagiarize itself? Not only did this book use the direct plot from two previous books, it used exact chunks of text.

Plot: Take the plot from the David trilogy and add whatever book the Howler aliens were from and you have this plot. Seriously. That's all the plot this book has.

Editing: The usual: Not great, not awful. Multiple scanning errors. At least one actual editing issue.

What I Liked/What I Didn’t Like: I liked nothing at all about this book. It has "you" in the role of David from that trilogy, and you think/act like just like he does (and in one branch you actually die the same way he does). You mostly follow that plot, other than when you end up in the Howlers book plot. What a complete waste.

Rating: 1-Hated / 2-Disliked / 3-Okay / 4-Liked / 5-Loved: ⭐️ - Hated. There was nothing redeeming about this book. The first CYA book was bad but at least fun, this one wasn't even fun. I read all the story branches, but it felt like a chore.

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Oathbound Healer by Selkie Myth.

Quick synopsis: If you can wade through the endless typos, editing issues, and the most unprofessional writing on the planet, you'll find an enjoyable LitRPG story that avoids all the usual issues of that genre.

Brief opinion: Holy crap, this book had the worst editing of perhaps any of the thousands of books I've read in my life. So endlessly bad in so very many ways... yet I still enjoyed the story enough to finish the book and pick up the next one.

Plot: A 20 year old woman on Earth dies, meets a god, and ends up reborn on a planet that uses D&D-ish stats, classes, etc. (It's LitRPG, you never question the setup.)

She's reborn as a baby, and the story picks up when she's eight years old. The death of a friend prompts her to take a healing class. From there she escapes an arranged marriage and joins up with a group of Rangers (Rangers are sort of half adventurers, half cops).

Editing: I do not believe that Selkie Myth knows the meaning of the word editing. So bad, so unprofessional. I saved so many examples. Just a few:

So many exclamation points: "A typo!!" (seriously, that was a line of dialogue), "DUH mages had mana!!", "ride a bloody (mini) T-Rex!!!!"

Kindle notes don't preserve character formatting, but the use of italics was just as bad as the exclamation point issue. Like: I FINALLY saw what I had to do and now I just had to DO IT!!!

Such casual writing: "misc. plants", dialogue: "we'll work on finishing your armor, k?" 6th, 7th, "I can't wa-" *GURGLEGURGLEGURGLE*, "literally twice as long as the normal person, thankyouverymuch".

There was no reason for her to hold back anym- (the chapter ended there, the word not even completed)

The sections have a small graphic between them, but they're annoyingly off-centered.

On top of all those issues was the usual bad editing: Tons of misspelled or otherwise incorrect words, missing/incorrect punctuation, sentence fragments, everything.

What I Liked/What I Didn’t Like: Since I covered the editing issues, the only other big issue was the naming system. Why did everyone on this alien planet have a Roman name? Not only that, but stupid ones. Like the doctor was named Medicus -- none of them even slightly subtle at all.

Apparently this book started out on Royal Road, which explains why the editing got slightly better by the end of the book. It was still unacceptably poorly edited (not edited at all), but it wasn't as bad as the earliest chapters.

Rating: 1-Hated / 2-Disliked / 3-Okay / 4-Liked / 5-Loved: Editing would get one star/hated, story would get four stars/liked, so sort of averaging it to: ⭐️⭐️⭐️ - Okay

Somehow there are 17 more books in the series (all of them published in the last six years). I'm going to try the next one and see how it is.

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DNF #27: Magic Has No Borders: A Young Adult Fantasy Anthology Reimagining South Asian Legends and Epics by various. I HATED the first story (a goddess who has reincarnated 3,000 times used slang like "hella", and the rest of the writing was so so so bad. Stereotypical teenage romance stuff.) so I DNFed it. The writing in the second story was better, but the plot didn't interest me at all. The third one didn't work for me either, so instead of forcing myself to continue and try every story, I DNFed the whole thing. One day all the anthologies will be off my Kindle. One day...

DNF #27: To Turn the Tide by S.M. Stirling. While this story seemed like it would work for me (end of the world, a professor and his graduate students go back in time to Rome), it really really did not. The main character (who was not just a professor, but he had been a member of the special forces) was too perfect. But more than that, this book seemed to exist more for the author to show off how much he knew about Rome than the story. Talk about getting bogged down in facts! DNFed pretty early on.

Off Leash by Daniel Potter.

Quick synopsis: An unemployed librarian turns into a cougar and learns that there's a whole magical word overlaying the one he knew.

Brief opinion: Reread from 2016, original review here. Back then this book didn't work for me because I hate urban fantasy, but I guess in ten years those feelings have mellowed. I wouldn't seek that genre out, but I mostly enjoyed this book.

Plot: Thomas doesn't have much in life. He lost his job as a librarian and has been unable to find another. For some reason his girlfriend leaves for two weeks out of every month and won't explain why. After witnessing an old man die in a car accident, the next morning Thomas wakes up as a cougar.

Worse than being just a normal cougar, he's a magical one: A familiar. And a rare one as well (most are small animals, like squirrel or a housecat). Most of the magical world wants to catch him to sell him to the highest bidder, making a slave out of him.

In an effort to keep some small bit of control over his future and his freedom, he bonds with a "magic cop" named O'Meara before anyone can sell him off. Yet he still gets stolen by a werewolf pack.

In the end there's a big fight between wizards, familiars, and a "dragon".

Editing: Quite good for a self-published book. A few errors (mostly a word dropped from a sentence), but nowadays it's rare for any book to be perfectly edited.

What I Liked/What I Didn’t Like: The biggest thing I disliked is that the main character's name is Thomas Khatt. And he turned into a cat. That's not at all funny to me.

The end of the book had too much action/fighting for me, though the story had lead up to that. The first third of the book was the best though.

There was one illustration in the ebook version, but it felt very much like "furry" art, not what I'd expect to see in a book. The werewolf in it looked more like a "wolf furry" than a werewolf.

I liked that the author's supernatural characters weren't as you would expect them to be: A dragon is really some kind of eldritch horror, werewolves are hillbilly/redneck types.

It was a lot of fun seeing Thomas trying to get used to being a cougar, things like refusing to groom himself because it's gross to clean yourself by licking (which is reasonable!), even though his instincts told him to do it.

Rating: 1-Hated / 2-Disliked / 3-Okay / 4-Liked / 5-Loved: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ - Liked. In 2016 I also rated this 4 stars/liked, but based only on the fact that it had been written well -- I hadn't enjoyed it. This time I mostly did enjoy it.

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The Other (Animorphs #40) by K.A. Applegate.

Quick synopsis: The kids meet a gay Andalite couple. Also the usual: Lots of morphing and fighting.

Brief opinion: Marco was my least favorite character in the beginning of the series, but I think he's my favorite now. He went from pre-teen sense of humor to deadly cold.

How does this opinion compare to my original review in 2019: That's funny, not only do I feel the same, but I even used similar wording: "This was a Marco POV story. In the beginning of the series I hated his books, because they were just "funny" (fart jokes level funny). But now, later in the series, he's become so cold and calculating that he's probably my favorite character."

Plot: There just happens to be more Andalites on Earth. One is disabled by Andalite standards, the other is dying of a genetic disease. It's clear to adult readers that the two are a couple and have been for a long time.

The disabled one (disabled in that his tail blade/the end of his tail was cut off) was captured by the Yeerks. How? No clue. But that sets up a lot of fighting and action.

Marco morphs a bee for the first time, and we got a rather nightmarish scene of him being caught by a a bug that eats bees/sucks them dry...

More fighting before they successfully free the disabled Andalite. The story ended with a nice scene between Marco and the disabled one, talking about what would happen once his love died of the genetic disease.

Editing: This was easily the worst edited book so far. A whole section of pages was somehow repeated (and I think a section lost). Lots of other scanning issues as well.

What I Liked/What I Didn’t Like: Marco! I disliked him so much in the beginning, it just amazed me how much I like him now.

Also Jake is getting so mature! Such a good leader. I love seeing how these kids are growing and maturing. PTSD is a hell of a drug?

Rating: 1-Hated / 2-Disliked / 3-Okay / 4-Liked / 5-Loved: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ ½ - Liked a lot

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DNF #26: Marking Territory (Freelance Familiars #2) by Daniel Potter. While there was nothing wrong with this book, it just didn't hold my interest at all. (One day I'll like a second book as much as I did the first. One day...) DNF at 20%

The Hidden (Animorphs #39) by K.A. Applegate.

Quick synopsis: The Yeerks somehow find and repair a Helmacron ship. As Helmacrons are about a sixteenth of an inch tall, finding one of their crashed ships is quite a feat... At the same time, in contrast to all the lore in the series so far, a buffalo just happens to gain the ability to morph and then just happens to acquire Cassie. And then an ant does too...

Brief opinion: I really, really, really did not like this one. The logic made no sense (the buffalo and ant gaining ability to morph), and in the entire series thus far you need to touch an animal and concentrate on the DNA to acquire it. Plus, from the height a bird flies, Cassie unmorphs and remorphs into a whale to hit a helicopter... Morphing takes minutes to do.

How does this opinion compare to my original review in 2019: In 2019 I had said "The most I can say about this one is that it wasn't the worst book of the series. I guess it wasn't even bad?". This is one of those rare times when I completely disagree with past-me. I hated this book. Really really hated it.

Plot: For completely unbelievable reasons, the Yeerks end up with a damaged Helmacron ship. And somehow they repair the tiny thing. The Helmacron ship has some kind of tech to detect "morphing energy" (I can't remember if that was a thing in the Helmacron book or if it was made up for this one). So now the Yeerks can find the Animorphs (and the cube that gives the morphing power).

So the Animorphs race around the world across their state through their city around the woods near their homes, trying to avoid the Yeerks. And, while they "can't morph" while doing this, they endlessly morph. Like more than in any other book so far.

Just by complete chance a cape buffalo is being transported in a truck. Cassie, with the morphing cube, hides in that truck. She sets the cube down on the floor, and when a Yeerk opens the truck's loading door and the buffalo rushes out, it just happens to touch the cube. And then it brushes by Cassie and just happens to acquire her.

Later in the story, for no reason at all, Cassie sets the cube down on the ground. An ant just happens to crawl across it and gains the ability to morph. Then that same ant just happens to crawl up Cassie's shoe, across her sock, and onto her leg. Thus, in contrast to all the lore in the 40+ books so far, acquires her.

The kids argue and angst about killing the buffalo (it has human DNA now, so is it okay to kill it? is it a person now?). Cassie doesn't give even a single thought to killing the ant with human DNA though.

In the end, the plan to destroy the Helmacron ship is for Cassie in bird morph to fly above the helicopter carrying it, morph into a whale, and so fall on it, causing it to crash. This is the plan, even with all the kids knowing it takes multiple minutes to morph...

Editing: More errors than previous books, but no idea how many are scanning issues vs actual editing issues.

What I Liked/What I Didn’t Like: There wasn't a single thing I liked about this book. The idea of a buffalo being able to take human shape (though still having the mind of a buffalo) could have been really interesting, but even that wasn't handled well.

Rating: 1-Hated / 2-Disliked / 3-Okay / 4-Liked / 5-Loved: ⭐️ - Hated

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Starstuff: Ten Science Fiction Stories to Celebrate New Possibilities by various.

Quick synopsis: From the official summary: "A collection of hard science fiction for curious middle-graders and an antidote to despair in the face of dystopian uncertainty."

Brief opinion: As with all anthologies, some stories worked for me, most didn't.

Plot: The ten stories:

To-do List for the Apocalypse by Jenn Reese. An interesting story to start with, because it was pretty heavy and sad until the very end. A giant asteroid is headed straight for Earth. At the same time, River's parents are getting divorced, so River and her mother are driving from New Jersey to their new home in California, leaving all her friends and her whole life behind. At the very end of the story there was a twist as to what the asteroid really is. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ ½ - Liked a lot

Calm Down People! It's Just Space Bees by Carlos Hernandez. A young girl becomes the first minor to go into space. On one hand, I really liked this story. Orquidea Bandana is a really smart kid and it shows, yet her interactions with the adults were perfectly realistic and believable. On the other, even though this was set far in the future, she uses current (2025) internet slang. I guess that would make the story more accessible to young readers, but it kept marring the believability for me. ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️- Loved, even with the slang issue

The Whistleblowers by Kekla Magoon. I DNFed this one. A drug company is lying to the public for profit. The message seemed heavy handed, the two main characters weren't distinctive enough to keep straight who was who, and the story being told in a non-linear way didn't help at all. ⭐️⭐️ - Disliked

Aesop's Elevator by William Alexander. I thought I was going to love this one, but it ended up being heavy handed. A barely disguised Elon Musk races his environment-killing, ego-fueled rockets against an environmentally friendly space elevator. The footnotes with science facts were so distracting as well. ⭐️ ½ - Really, really disliked. No one needs more Musk in their life.

Zabrina Meets the Retro Club by Maddi Gonzalez. This story is a graphic novel, and it was just too small on my Kindle screen to read. Skipped it, no star rating.

The Most Epic Nap in the Universe by A. R. Capetta. Even though this is a book for MG readers, this is the first story that felt like it was written for child readers. It was about a girl trying to keep her best friend, when the reality of space travel made it seem impossible. Plus I hate second-person POV. ⭐️⭐️ - Disliked

A Proposal to the Animal Congress by Eliot Schrefer. Based on the title alone, I thought I would love this one, but it was nothing like what I expected. Set in the future, AI lawyers(?) represent animal species. The whole story was two AIs texting to each other. DNF. ⭐️ ½ - Disliked a lot

Of What We Never Were by David Robertson. This one was another weird one to be included in an anthology of positive stories. A girl has a best friend, Adam, who is AI (or seems to be). She has no connection with the real people around her because she spends time only with Adam and talks only with him. Then the company who created Adam turns him off... Only the last paragraph was positive (and even then only somewhat). Another heavy-handed story that I didn't enjoy much. ⭐️⭐️ - Disliked

Red, Right, Returning by Fran Wilde. In this one a young girl "borrows" some software her father is working on, and somehow it pulls in copies of her from other worlds. I usually like multiverse stories, but this one just did not work for me at all. DNFed it towards the end. ⭐️⭐️ - Disliked

The Traveler by Wade Roush. What is it with these authors and Musk? Can no one envision a future of humans in space without him? *huff* Anyway, this lackluster story was about a girl who sent a time capsule into space. At least it was more positive than a number of other stories in this book. Didn't really work for me though. ⭐️⭐️ ½ - Meh

Editing: Very good.

What I Liked/What I Didn’t Like: I wish anthologies worked better for me. There are always too many stories I don't like compared to ones I do. I had planned not to get any new ones, so I'm not sure why I picked this one up. Anyway. This one worked for me no better than they ever do. I felt like I read a whole book that I didn't enjoy.

Rating: 1-Hated / 2-Disliked / 3-Okay / 4-Liked / 5-Loved: Average of the nine stories (skipping the graphic novel one): ⭐️⭐️ ½ - Disliked. Feels about right, though I'd drop that half star.

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DNF #24: The Ravenous Sky by Kurt Kirchmeier. After loving the first book so much, it pains me to DNF this one, but I just wasn't enjoying it. I didn't believe that the teenage characters so quickly figured out the (new) problem with the world. And, unlike the first book, the voices of the two characters weren't distinctive at all -- I kept losing track of which character's chapter I was reading.

DNF #25: Orconomics by J. Zachary Pike. Clearly my sense of humor doesn't match a lot of other people's. Some reviewers called this the funniest book ever, the funniest piece of media ever. It didn't even mildly amuse me. If anything, the jokes tended to annoy me.

I like my fantasy books to be fantasy books, not a "satire that attacks the tenets of capitalism". DNFed about 20% in, but I really should have dropped it right away. Just not the book for me.

The Arrival (Animorphs #38) by K.A. Applegate.

Quick synopsis: The other Andalites have finally arrived on Earth! Is this the fleet that's come to save the planet? (There are 16 more books to go, so probably not.)

Brief opinion: This was a really good one! Ax was torn between two worlds, and the Animorph kids get even more depressed. Great story idea and a really good twist at the end.

How does this opinion compare to my original review in 2019: Back then I said "This was easily one of the best books in the series. This was a very good book, Animorphs or not." and I agree in 2026.

Plot: It's hard to talk about the plot without spoilers, so skip this section if you're avoiding them.

After a couple years of the kids and Ax trying to singlehandedly defend the Earth from the Yeerks, Andalites have finally arrived on the planet. The kids have been waiting all this time for the Andalite fleet to come help them fight, so at first they were very excited...

But it turns out there are only four Andalites, and they're the dregs of society. A pilot straight out of prison, a former spy who is now only a teacher, the commander of the little mission who also was released from prison just for this, and a young Andalite girl.

As all the Andalites are, they're incredibly condescending and do not want to work with humans at all. To them, humans have no value -- just the opposite, they're a threat to the entire universe since the Yeerks are taking them over. (This becomes important by the end of the story.)

Unlike so many other books in this series, this story touches upon so many previous stories. The four Andalites want Ax to come over to their side, but because this had happened in an earlier book, he's not at all conflicted about it. The Animorphs know the Andalites are listening in on their plans using Earth morphs, so they pretend they have a fake one, which is exactly what they did back in the David trilogy.

Ax hacks into the Andalites's ship's computer and learns that all four of the newcomers are marked as KIA -- dead in all of the official records. Plus there's a rather disturbing lab on the ship. And that random Andalite girl with them? Isn't it an odd chance that she's actually a genius when it comes to creating viruses?

Turns out the four are on Earth to commit genocide on a planet-wide basis, to keep the Yeerks from using humans to steamroll over the rest of the universe.

Editing: Like most of the other books in the series, this one had a handful of errors. I'm not sure if they're scanning issues or if they appeared in the original text.

What I Liked/What I Didn’t Like: I loved that the story was so much more mature than usual! This is one of those books where I wonder if young readers would get as much out of it as adults do.

There were so many emotional moments, like humans in a cage forming a line to protect the Animorphs, acting as human shields. Poor poor Ax losing his chance to go home and actually crying in the end (a first for him). This was a rough book for all the characters, but especially for Ax.

Rating: 1-Hated / 2-Disliked / 3-Okay / 4-Liked / 5-Loved: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️- Loved

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The Shadow Road by K.D. Kirchmeier.

Quick synopsis: Set in the real world, a few years ago some creatures appeared. Aliens? Dragons? Monsters? No one knew, but whatever they were the creatures killed all electricity... and all humans they saw too.

Brief opinion: I loved this book so much. The author is a great writer, I loved the worldbuilding and how answers slowly came as the story went along, and I really liked both of the main characters (though I liked them apart more than together -- teenage crushes never work for me).

Plot: The blitz, dragon-like flying creatures, appeared without warning. Anything electric they flew over died, so humanity very quickly fell into ruin... and into hiding, since the blitz ate every human they spotted.

Bookworm Thomas's mother died before the blitz arrived, and his father gave up. Soon enough the father died, leaving Thomas alone in a destroyed, abandoned town. When truckdriver Dani drives through town, he takes a risk and joins her.

Cassie is a girl who knows what she wants and intends to get it. Post-blitz, her father was a Scout (and vanished while doing that), and Cassie intends to be one as well. She also has a gift: her intuition. When danger is near, she feels a vibration in her feet.

It's not until about the halfway point that the two characters cross paths, Thomas and Dani arriving in her truck. Though they physically separate again soon after, Thomas and Cassie continue to work together to try to bring hope (and safety) to what's left of humanity. And to steal a blitz egg too.

Editing: Perfect! Not one single issue spotted.

What I Liked/What I Didn’t Like: Some negative reviews for this book mentioned not liking the magic/mythology stuff never being explained, but 1) it was explained by one of the character... or at least he guessed about the reason, and 2) I loved that we didn't know. None of the characters knew, so I didn't feel like I needed it explained to me.

I loved the slow buildup of the strange stuff. In the beginning of the story there were just hints of things, but by the end there was a spell that actually worked and a handful of mythological creatures.

While at first I didn't like the chapters alternating between two characters (that rarely works for me), but pretty quickly I came to like it. We got to see two different versions of the world that way.

Another thing some negative reviews mentioned was disliking that the chapters were short and that each one ended on a cliffhanger. They didn't seem short to me and the cliffhanger thing was great because it always made me eager to read more.

Rating: 1-Hated / 2-Disliked / 3-Okay / 4-Liked / 5-Loved: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️- Loved. On to book 2!

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DNF #23: The Last Hope School for Magical Delinquents by Nicki Pau Preto. This was a cute idea and I loved the cover, but there was something missing from the story: that spark that makes it interesting. The story takes place on Earth, except there's magic. So young kids start out in magic schools to make sure they can control their powers. When kids get expelled from every other magic school, the Last Hope School for Magical Delinquents is where they end up. That sounds like the makings of a really fun story, but something was just missing for me. DNF at about 25%.

Way of the Wolf (Magnetic Magic #1) by Lindsay Buroker.

Quick synopsis: An older woman/werewolf manages an apartment complex. She just wants to get through the month without running out of money, not deal with her family/former pack and the odd British man who just showed up, let alone the intern pushed onto her.

Brief opinion: Of the other Buroker series I read, I wrote "The series wasn't deep and meaningful, but not everything has to be. Each book was fast-paced, had enough action to be interesting but not so much I wanted to skim, and the characters were all good from major to minor" and I mostly feel the same about this book. It was a fast read, I liked the world and the characters, and there was just enough action to be interesting, though the minor characters worked less well for me.

Plot: Luna (her werewolf-mother named her that, so... I guess the name is okay) spent a long time getting back on her feet and out of debt after her ex-husband cleaned out their bank accounts, including their sons' college funds. 20 years after that, she has a steady job managing and doing all the repair work for an apartment complex. The salary isn't good enough that she can be too comfortable though, so money is an ongoing worry.

Before she even met the man who would become her ex, Luna left the werewolf world. While a wolf, she killed the man she loved, and she never got over that. So she's been living for a couple decades as just a normal human.

One day Duncan, an older British man, shows up at her apartment complex. He seems to be oddly attracted to her. And he just happens to be a werewolf too. Can she trust him? Will her family/previous pack continue to let her live peacefully?

Editing: Surprisingly good for a self-published book! I spotted only one minor issue in the whole thing.

What I Liked/What I Didn’t Like: Even though there was in-story reason for it, I hated "Luna" as the name of a werewolf woman.

I think it might be a paranormal/urban fantasy thing, but I didn't like how quickly (and painlessly) the werewolves took their wolf shapes. Maybe Animorphs messed up my view of that, but I expected there to be bones crunching, feeling of internal organs moving, all that. ...Okay, no maybe about it, it's Animorphs's fault.

I loved that Luna is an older woman. I love her budgeting in envelopes (I know that's not original to this book, but I've never seen it used in a book before). I really liked her and Duncan feeling out things in their friendship.

As a side note, Lindsay Buroker writes so quickly! In 2025 she wrote this five-book series plus two other books.

Rating: 1-Hated / 2-Disliked / 3-Okay / 4-Liked / 5-Loved: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ ½ - I liked it quite a bit.

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Relics of the Wolf (Magnetic Magic #2) by Lindsay Buroker.

Quick synopsis: Apartment complex handywoman-slash-werewolf Luna and mysterious-background-slash-werewolf Duncan are all lusty over each other. They're also getting jumped by bad men high on potions. There are evil scientists in the mix too.

Brief opinion: A big "Ehhhhhhh". I was okay with the beginning of the book, but it quickly went downhill, and by the last 25% I was ready to DNF it but pushed through to the end. I should have DNFed it.

Plot: Luna is just getting back with her family/pack, when massively muscled men (high on potions that make them stronger and bigger) attack her pack, shooting the place up with magical silver bullets (because plain silver bullets aren't enough of a threat to a bunch of werewolves?). Luna and Duncan basically spend the whole book investigating them (in the most stupid ways) and then fighting them.

In the last few chapters, between all of the fighting, we learn that werewolves were brought to this world by dragons... Also the two-legged werewolf form, which all werewolves thought was long gone, was able to be achieved by Duncan. Also Duncan was created in a lab...

Editing: Perfect, no complaints at all.

What I Liked/What I Didn’t Like: The only thing I liked was Luna (though I still HATE HATE HATE that as a name for a werewolf). I had liked Duncan in the first book, but his whole background and the lore introduced through him about werewolves just 100% did not work for me. Sadly little about this book worked for me.

Rating: 1-Hated / 2-Disliked / 3-Okay / 4-Liked / 5-Loved: ⭐️⭐️ - Disliked. I'm not going to continue with the series, but I'm open to trying other books by this author.

The Weakness (Animorphs #37) by K.A. Applegate.

Quick synopsis: Jake is away visiting family, so Rachel takes over. She has a plan. A really really bad plan.

Brief opinion: Fandom HATED this book, but I didn't have as big of an issue with it. Was it stupid? Yes. Where the plans god-awful? Yep. But a lot of the other books have similar issues.

How does this opinion compare to my original review in 2019: I hope I had been being sarcastic when I wrote "While the plot of this one was kind of pushing believability a tad (they stole a jet plane and successfully flew it...)". All in all, I was more positive about the book then than I was this time.

Plot: Jake is away for the weekend, and the team have discovered Visser Three's new feeding ground. Rachel pushes to take advantage of that. For unbelievable reasons, she becomes the leader of the group (Marco would be the more realistic choice, for multiple reasons).

The attack fails, but during it the kids learn that there's a Yeerk Inspector here to... inspect the job Visser Three is doing??? Weird and not very logical, but maybe it's just something Yeerks do.

Against the opinion of all the other kids, Rachel decides to make Visser Three look bad. Try to make it seem there are a lot more Animorphs than just the six of them.

So they hit target after target in the city. If a business has one single Controller working at it, the Animorphs go in in their battle morphs, destroy the store, terrorize the non-Controllers, injure and likely kill innocent people, and give the Controller a warning to "go home" -- leave Earth.

Because all of these attacks are awful plans, Cassie gets captured during one. For some reason the kids steal a plane from an airport (in their human form, hop a fence, run from security... with their faces fully visible). Ax flies it to the middle of the city and they purposefully crash it into a building. Because that's faster than morphing birds and flying there.

In the end they save Cassie (of course), Jake returns home and tells Rachel she did a good job (WTF) and that the rest of the team said she did "okay" (all through the book they had giant honking issues with her, there's no way they would have said that).

Editing: There were a number of errors, but I think they were all scanning issues.

What I Liked/What I Didn’t Like: The only thing I liked was that they used cheetah morphs (my favorite animal).

There are two things I'm not liking about the series as a whole right now. We're 37 books in, and Every Single Book spends so much time on recapping the story since the beginning of the series. These are tiny books and so much time is wasted on that and describing the morphing (so many pages of morphing descriptions!).

The other thing is that these kids are big on not killing anyone. But in this book Cassie (in polar bear morph) slammed two peoples' heads together. All through the books the kids throw people into walls, "knock them out" by hitting them on the head, and lots of other stuff that would clearly kill people. Yeah they're kids, but they have to know they've killed innocent people by this point.

Rating: 1-Hated / 2-Disliked / 3-Okay / 4-Liked / 5-Loved: ⭐️⭐️ - Disliked

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Fanfic: The (Real) Weakness, by dragonmorph, available on AO3 here.

Fans really, really did not like the real The Weakness book, so one wrote a new one. I had thought dragonmorph was going to rewrite book 37 to make sense, but instead it was an original story.

I would have completely bought this as an actual book, it was so well written and all the characters were perfectly in character. In it the Iskoort aliens (the ones with the symbiotic relationship between an Isk and a Yeerk-like Yoort) visit Earth and unwittingly cause serious trouble for the Animorphs.

At 22 chapters, it was about as long as the real The Weakness book, but a much more enjoyable read.

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DNF #21: Ghost Fleet by P.W. Singer and August Cole. Take a heaping helping of jingoistic American military porn, add really bad dialogue and writing, and most annoyingly at all: Endless completely useless footnotes. So many footnotes. Want more info on some weapon? Some engine? Some jet? Click the footnote and get a description and a URL for even more information. They were so pointless and distracting. DNFed early on, just not a book for me.

DNF #22: Starlight Farm's Kennel for Talking Dogs by Carson Long. This was such a cute idea, it should have worked for me, but the writing was so rough and it was in dire need of an editor. Set on a farm, a woman just happens to get some talking dogs (the logic didn't make much sense, they were about to lose the farm because they didn't have enough money, but she paid a lot for them).

I could have stuck with the somewhat unbelievable story, but the dogs' voices just didn't work for me. They sounded exactly like humans, including calling their owners ma and papa, which was just so weird to me.

Unfortunately the number of typos was unacceptable. The author did run spellcheck on his book, but it didn't catch wrong word choices. Even basic ones, like "up" when he meant "us". The writing itself had issues as well.

DNF about 30% in.

The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2017 by Charles Yu (editor).

Quick synopsis: 20 stories, 10 sci-fi and 10 fantasy, ranging in size from short story to novelette.

Brief opinion: Well.... this was better than all the other anthologies I've read? Most of the previous ones have one or two good stories and the rest not worth reading. This one had three good ones, three that didn't work at all for me, and the rest were okay (or at least readable).

Plot: Mentioning only the ones I liked:

My #1 most favorite story in this book and one of my favorite short stories (novella) ever: Everyone from Themis Sends Letters Home by Genevieve Valentine. All those litRPG books where the MC gets trapped in a videogame? This story took that idea and made it work so well.

Set in the near future, a videogame company (VR games, where you go inside them and can't tell it's not real) tests a new game on prisoners. The prisoners have no idea they're being used as test subjects, they just wake up seeming to be on another planet, with different memories. They're the first people living on that planet, getting it ready for more settlers.

What happens when the game's beta test ends and the prisoners are returned to prison from what seemed like living on another planet?

The City Born Great by N. K. Jemisin. A young black man who lives on the street helps New York City go from being just a city to a living, sentient entity. This only happens to a few cities through time.

Though the character is never named, I loved both him and the city itself.

Welcome to the Medical Clinic at the Interplanetary Relay Station | Hours Since the Last Patient Death: 0 by Caroline M. Yoachim. This one was crazy-fun! A Choose Your Own adventure story about how god awful our current medical system is. I was smiling the whole time I read it -- the format was so much fun, and even though the subject is deadly serious Yoachim made it funny.

Honorable mentions:

The Future Is Blue by Catherynne M. Valente. The worldbuilding in this one was great. Set in the near future, the Earth is covered by trash. Every inch of it. A girl lives on a floating island of trash, and she reaches the age where she has to go out and find her name.

Edit: I just noticed that the four stories I liked were all written by women. Interesting!

Editing: Mostly fine. One story had some issues in it, the rest were good. The writing style of one author (Peter S. Beagle) drove me crazy: He wrote such long; sentences, and they, went on; and on, and on; and on, with so many commas, and semicolons used incorrectly; so many of them, all used incorrectly, and his sentences just never ended, oh time for more commas; and a final semicolon.

What I Liked/What I Didn’t Like: I picked up a bunch of anthologies in hopes of finding new authors to read. Unfortunately when I find one I like, usually the only other stuff they've written is stories in other anthologies. That held true in this book as well. (Other than Jemisin, I've read her books before and love her.)

I deleted most of my other anthologies, but somehow I had missed this one.

Rating: 1-Hated / 2-Disliked / 3-Okay / 4-Liked / 5-Loved: ⭐️⭐️⭐️ - Okay

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Book #59: Re-listen to (third time) of Dungeon Crawler Carl book #3: The Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook. One day I'll get back to listening to my podcasts. One day...

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DNF #20: Nuts to You by Lynne Rae Perkins. The adventures of some squirrels living in the woods near some power lines. When one gets carried off by a hawk (though oddly not killed), the squirrel's friends head off to save him.

I was probably just not the right audience for this book. It was supposed to be funny, but the humor mostly annoyed me instead.

A Dragon Rider's Guide to Retirement by Julia Huni, Lia Huni.

Quick synopsis: Two 50-something adults retire to a tropical island. Become friends, find love, tame dragons, have exciting magical times.

Brief opinion: I loved loved loved loved the idea behind the story, but unfortunately the execution of it didn't do the story justice.

Plot: Set in a fantasy world, two nations have been at war for generations. William is a dragon rider (and the dragon riding guildmaster) from one, Calantha is a war witch from the other.

After William loses his dragon and is badly injured in a battle, he's forced to retire. Due to generic political stuff, he has to leave the country and moves to a magical tropical island.

Meanwhile, in the other country, war witches don't usually get old enough to retire. Their magic explodes and so their deaths are used as a final big attack against the other country. Cala is an exception to this, and so as her magic fades, she retires to the same magical tropical island as William.

William is attracted to Cala at first sight... even though her nation, and perhaps her personally, is responsible for killing his dragon-partner. The two have a couple of very small arguments, but soon enough their mutual attraction overcomes the generations of hatred between their two nations...

While the two are becoming close, fires break out across the island's village, so William decides they should tame the local wild dragons (sea dragons) to help fight the fires.

While the story never covers what was causing the fires to begin with, the dragon taming plot is successful and Cala becomes the first woman in the world to be a dragon rider. (In William's nation, only men are permitted to be one.)

Editing: The editing was outstanding, especially for a self-published book. I spotted no errors at all, which is rare even in traditionally-published books.

What I Liked/What I Didn’t Like: The two characters became friends/attracted to each other way, way, way, way too fast for me. The authors' goal was romance, so the characters had to get over their hatred fast, but it was so unrealistic to me.

Also I really did not like the romance at all (or romance in general), but the book is labeled fantast/romance, so that's on me. I thought the story would be good enough for me to put up with the romance, so I gave it a try.

On the plus side, I did love that the characters are older. Plus the story (sort of) explored that Cala has hot flashes (though they're magical ones).

Rating: 1-Hated / 2-Disliked / 3-Okay / 4-Liked / 5-Loved: ⭐️⭐️⭐️ - Okay. Book 2 is out, but I'm not going to continue with this series. Romance books just aren't for me, and the rest of the plot and story logic is taking a backseat to romance stuff.

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The Mutation by K.A. Applegate.

Quick synopsis: Atlantis is real and it's full of "aliens" who evolved from humans. Aliens who debone and stuff humans while those people are alive and awake. Seriously, WTF.

Brief opinion: The biggest WTF of the series so far, a series which is jam-packed full of WTF things.

How does this opinion compare to my original review in 2019: Back then I said: "While the plot had some silly elements, mostly I enjoyed this one.". Once again I agree with past-me (surprising as that seems on this book).

Plot: For unimportant plot reasons, the Animorphs have to go deep under the sea to try to destroy a new kind of Yeerk ship.

It turns out some evolved or devolved humans (a race called the Nartec, basically aliens, green humans with gills and webbed hands/feet) have been living under Earth's seas all this time.

The Animorphs (remember they're about 14 years old at this point) are captured. The Nartec inject them with a drug that will make them unable to resist anything, to be happy about anything that happens, and will keep them awake. The Nartec tell the kids that they're going to cut them open from the base of their skulls down to their butts, open them up, and take out all their bones.

They will do that while the kids are awake. They start cutting into Jake.

That seriously disturbed adult me, I cannot image having read that as a kid.

Anyway, of course the kids get rescued and succeed at destroying the ship. Their lives go on as if some alien race under the sea wasn't going to cut them apart while they were awake and aware and then mummify them.

Editing: Like all the other books in this series, there are a handful of errors in it. Most (if not all) of them seem to be scanning errors though.

What I Liked/What I Didn’t Like: This book was both pointless (it has no impact on the overall plot and is never mentioned again) and horrific. What a combo.

Rating: 1-Hated / 2-Disliked / 3-Okay / 4-Liked / 5-Loved: I have no idea how to rate this one. The images in it were horrific, and it had no impact on the overall plot of the series, but reading it wasn't bad? ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ - Liked, I guess. Though it feels weird to say I liked it. Really, what the Nartec did to people was just nightmareish.

The War I Finally Won by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley.

Quick synopsis: Sequel to/continuation of The War That Saved My Life, Ada is still struggling to get over her abusive past and to accept the love of her new guardian. Also, World War II continues.

Brief opinion: While I didn't like it quite as much as the first book, I still loved it and the ending was wonderful. In the beginning of this story I had hoped there would be more books, but it ended in the perfect place and no more are needed.

Plot: World War II is getting more intense. Food is being rationed and Susan's home is struck by a bomb, so they lose everything.

Since Susan now needs to have a job and to earn money, the family takes in Ruth (a young Jewish girl who escaped Germany with her family, also a math genius) so that Susan (who has a degree in math from Oxford) can tutor her.

Being German, no one trusts Ruth. The general public doesn't know the truth of what Hitler was doing, so that she's Jewish didn't change anything for her in England. (Imagine having been Jewish in Hitler's Germany and having everyone in England hate you for being German...)

The reader learns a lot about life in England during WWII (like growing fields of potatoes and spending weeks picking them, so they can help feed the country).

In the end Susan gets very sick and is hospitalized, but she recovers and the family finally becomes a whole.

Writing/editing: Like the first book, both were perfect.

What I Liked/What I Didn’t Like: In the beginning of the story I was just a little annoyed that Ada was still angry at the world, but it's fair that it takes a long tme to get over such abuse.

I liked everything else, though I felt really bad for Ruth. What an awful position for a young girl to be in!

Rating: 1-Hated / 2-Disliked / 3-Okay / 4-Liked / 5-Loved: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️- Loved.

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Visser (Animorphs #35.5) by K.A. Applegate.

Quick synopsis: Part courtroom drama, part wartime romance story, part alien invasion of Earth, with elements of rape, lots of child abuse, torture, and other themes that wouldn't usually appear in a MG book. It's fun for all ages! (Not...)

Brief opinion: 1) I can't believe Scholastic published this for children. 2) I can't believe young readers would like this book. Do kids care about courtroom dramas? Wartime romances? It was so mature!

How does this opinion compare to my original review in 2019: Back then I said "This really was one of the best Animorph books. I just wish it had been longer." and I fully agree now. It might just be the best Animorph book so far in the series.

Plot: Visser One (a Yeerk in a human woman's body) and Visser Three (a Yeerk in a male Andalite body) are enemies. One outranks Three, but Three is handling the on-the-ground invasion of Earth (and is doing such a bad job of it).

Three accuses One of many capital crimes, and this book covers the Yeerk trial for One, with Three as the prosecutor and sole witness. Through flashbacks and memory-technology, we see the life of the Yeerk who is Visser One -- the very first Yeerk to arrive on Earth, the first to take over a human body.

Writing/editing: Better than other books in the series so far. Very few editing issues.

What I Liked/What I Didn’t Like: What an interesting, effective way to tell a story! And what a dark story it is. Rape, mind control, abuse of a character's biological children... and of course the child soldiers themselves.

While this may be the best story so far, it's easily the worst cover. Not even just the quality of the artwork -- that's Visser Three on the cover, but the whole story was about One.

Rating: 1-Hated / 2-Disliked / 3-Okay / 4-Liked / 5-Loved: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️- Loved.