Top Ten Tuesday – Book I Need to Clear Off my to-read List

On March 9, 2021 By The Unseen LibraryIn List3 Comments

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme that currently resides at The Artsy Reader Girl and features bloggers sharing lists on various book topics. For this week, Top Ten Tuesday participants have been given a spring-cleaning freebie where we can do any list we want provided it falls within the general them of spring-cleaning. In this spirt (even though it is autumn where I am) I have decided to list the top ten books that I need to “clean” off my to-read list by reading and reviewing them.

Over the years I have received or written about a huge number of different awesome novels, many of which I would love to read and feature on this blog. However, there are only so many hours in the day, so quite a few books fall through the cracks, or more accurately they end up on a bookshelf, silently judging me. I do fully intend to read these books at some point, especially as in several cases I have enjoyed previous entries in the series. So, in the spirit of spring-cleaning, I have decided to focus this list on books I want to read that are currently clogging up my bookshelf (or digital equivalent).

Using these criteria, I was able to come up with a list filled with an interesting variety of different books. I tried to mainly feature amazing-sounding books that have been on my shelf for an extended period, but in a few cases I chose some more recent novels that I particularly want to check out. I have featured several of these books in Waiting on Wednesday articles in the past, which adds to the reasons why I want to check them out. Hopefully, this list will light a bit of a fire under me to encourage me to read some, if not all of these books, soon. So let us see what was on the list.

Honourable Mentions:

Duplicity by Richard Evans

Shorefall by Robert Jackson Bennett

Ashlords by Scott Reintgen

Grave Importance by Vivian Shaw

Top Ten List:

The Devil and the Dark Water by Stuart Turton

The first entry on this list is one of the books that I most regret not reading last year, The Devil and the Dark Water by Stuart Turton. The Devil and the Dark Water is the second novel from Turton following his epic debut, The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle, which was one of my favourite books of 2018. Due to how awesome Turton’s first novel was, I have been really keen to check out The Devil and the Dark Water for a while but have just not been able to add it into the reading schedule. This is definitely one of the top books I want to read soon, and I look forward to seeing what sort of outstanding narrative Turton came up with in his second novel.

Salvation Lost by Peter F. Hamilton

I have been meaning to check out Salvation Lost for a very long time ever since I finished off the preceding novel, Salvation. Salvation was an exceedingly epic science fiction novel set on a futuristic Earth, filled with some cool technology, fantastic mysteries, and a subtle alien invasion. I am a little annoyed with myself that I have completely failed to read Salvation Lost, especially as the third novel in the series, The Saints of Salvation, came out last year. I really want to read this book this year and I know that I am going to love the complex tale contained within.

War Lord by Bernard Cornwell

This is another book that I am quite surprised I have not gotten around to reading yet. War Lord is the latest book from one of my favourite authors, Bernard Cornwell, and serves as the final entry in his long running The Last Kingdom series. I have loved this series for a very long time, and I think I may be holding off reading it because I don’t want the series to end. Still, this is one that I really must read this year and it should turn out to be another fantastic historical read.

#MurderFunding by Gretchen McNeil

The young adult thriller #MurderFunding is the intriguing sequel to the insanely entertaining #MurderTrending. It sees several teenagers get brutally murdered on live television as they get caught up in a dangerous conspiracy. I love the premise of this series and I am hoping to read this book soon, especially after I just finished off the prequel novel #NoEscape a couple of months ago and absolutely loved it.

Star Wars: A New Dawn by John Jackson Miller

Anyone who reads this blog knows that I love Star Wars novels, so it should come as no surprise that one will show up on this list. While I have plans to eventually read all the Star Wars tie-in novels, both in the current canon and in the Star Wars Legends range (an admittedly big job), the entry that I have been meaning to check out the longest is A New Dawn by John Jackson Miller. Serving as a tie-in to the outstanding Star Wars Rebels animated series, A New Dawn is an awesome-sounding origin tale of two of the series’ main characters, and I have had it loaded on my phone for over a year. I am particularly keen to check it out after enjoying one of Miller’s other novels last year, Star Trek Discovery: Die Standing, which was a particularly clever and impressive read. Hopefully I will get through A New Dawn at some point this year, although I may have to prioritise several upcoming Star Wars novels first.

Alien: Echo by Mira Grant

This next entry is an intriguing young adult science fiction novel that ties into the Alien franchise, Alien: Echo. I must admit that while I have never had an amazing amount of interest in the Alien films or expanded universe, this is one book that I am particularly keen to check out. The main reason for this is that it was written by the outstanding Mira Grant. Grant is a talented author who has come up with some epic horror reads, including the incredible Into the Drowning Deep (killer mermaids!), the cool-sounding Newsflesh trilogy, and even a great entry in a Night of the Living Dead anthology. Due to how awesome her previous books are, I really want to see her take on an Alien novel and I have a feeling that Alien: Echo is going to be pretty amazing.

The Ruin of Kings by Jenn Lyons

The Ruin of Kings is an intriguing fantasy novel that I have been trying to read for over two years now. I really loved the concept of The Ruin of Kings, the first book in the A Chorus of Dragons series, when I received it and I then went on to hear some amazing reviews from a substantial number of fellow reviewers, making it an extremely appealing option to check out. I will have to read it at some point, especially as I also received copies of The Ruin of Kings’ two sequels, The Name of all Things and The Memory of Souls. A fourth book in the series, The House of Always, is set for release in a couple of months (with a really gnarly octopus cover on it), and it would be cool if I could read The Ruin of Kings before that.

Words of Radiance by Brandon Sanderson

I had to include the epic novel Words of a Radiance on this list as I have been thinking about reading it for some time. The second novel in Brandon Sanderson’s massive and highly acclaimed Stormlight Archive series, Words of Radiance follows on from the outstanding The Way of Kings, which is quite frankly one of the best fantasy books I have ever read. Words of Radiance continues the amazingly complex story started in The Way of Kings, and I really want to see what happens to the captivating characters next. However, I honestly have just not had the time to check out Words of Radiance due to the sheer length of the book. The Way of Kings was the longest audiobook I ever listened to and Words of Radiance is even longer, with a 48+ hour runtime. Finding that sort of window in my reading schedule is hard, but it will probably be worth it, especially as it will allow me to finally get onto the copies of the third and fourth books of The Stormlight Archive that are currently on my shelf (I received copies of Oathbringer and Rhythm of War), both of which I have not touched because I wanted to read Words of Radiance first.

The Obsidian Tower by Melissa Caruso

This is the latest novel from rising fantasy star Melissa Caruso, set in the same world as her awesome Swords and Fire series. I absolutely loved all three novels in the Swords and Fire series (The Tethered Mage, The Defiant Heir and The Unbound Empire), so I am extremely keen to see how Caruso continues her epic universe. Unfortunately, I did not get a chance to read The Obsidian Tower when it came out and it has languished on the shelf ever since. I really want to read this book and I will have to check it out soon before Caruso releases her next novel, The Quicksilver Court, in November this year.

Bright Steel by Miles Cameron

The final entry on this list is the outstanding sounding release Bright Steel by Miles Cameron. Bright Steel is the third and final entry in the Masters & Mages series, which charts the adventures of a farmer’s son who is thrust into the midst of world-altering events. I had an incredible time reading the first two novels in the series, Cold Iron and Dark Forge, both of which were amazing five-star novels, and I have been hoping to read this final book for some time. I will probably get around to finishing this trilogy off later this year, although I will be reading Cameron’s latest novel, Artifact Space, first.

That is the end of this latest Top Ten list. I think it came out quite nicely and hopefully it will entice me to read some of the above novels soon. All of the above sound really cool and I am highly confident that I will have a blast reading each and every one of them. While I get around to doing that, why don’t you let me know which books you want to clean off your to-read list, as well if you have enjoyed any of the above

Top Ten Tuesday – Books to While Away the Lockdown

On March 31, 2020March 31, 2020 By The Unseen LibraryIn List2 Comments

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme that currently resides at The Artsy Reader Girl and features bloggers sharing lists on various book topics. The official topic for this week’s Top Ten Tuesday was Ten Signs You’re a Book Lover. While that did sound like an interesting topic, I thought I would do something a little different. Today was actually my first day working from home due to the current coronavirus outbreak. While my city is not officially locked down yet, I am going to be spending a lot of time indoors for the next couple of months, which I fully intend to use as an opportunity to catch up on some reading that I have been meaning to do. Unfortunately, it is very likely that I am going to get a limited number of new books coming in, due to businesses shutting down and release dates being knocked back (the main bookshops in my city literally just announced they were closing their doors today). Luckily, I have a huge number of books already on my shelf which I have been hoping to read for some time. As a result, I thought I would take this opportunity to list the top ten books from previous years that I want to go back and read during this homebound period.

Over the last couple of years, I have been building up a massive collection of books which I have been meaning to read. This is a pretty eclectic mixture of novels from across the various genres, featuring an interesting range of topics and authors. I am hopefully going to get around to reading all of them at some point, but for this list I went through and selected the top ten (with an honourable mentions section) that I want to try and check out first. I figure that this list will be a good focusing tool, and hopefully by the time this whole crisis is over I will have managed to get through a reasonable chunk of them. For this list, I am limiting my choices to those books that I physically have on my shelf right now, and I won’t be including books that I want to read that I have to go and buy. I have to admit that this is a pretty random collection of books, and I haven’t always chosen the best books on the shelf. These are the ones that I want to read first, either because I enjoyed the previous entries in the series, I have heard good things about them or because the plot sounds really interesting and I want to finally check it out. So let’s see which books made the list.

Honourable Mentions:

State of Fear by Tim Ayliffe – 22 July 2019

State of Fear Cover

The sequel to the excellent 2018 Australian thriller The Greater Good.

The Warehouse by Rob Hart – 13 August 2019

The Warehouse Cover

The Second Sleep by Robert Harris – 20 August 2019

The Second Sleep Cover

Top Ten List (By Release Date):

The Deathless by Peter Newman – 14 June 2018

the deathless cover

This first entry on my list is rather intriguing-sounding fantasy novel that I picked up a couple of years ago but never got a chance to read. I have been quite keen to check this out for a while and I even featured it on my Top Ten Books I Wish I Read in 2018 list. Newman has already written two fantastic-sounding sequels to this book, so I definitely need to pick up my game and have a go at reading The Deathless.

Watch the Girls by Jennifer Wolfe – 10 July 2018

Watch the Girls Cover

This next book is a rather cool-sounding thriller novel, which I rather regret not reading back in 2018. I really liked the interesting concept that Watch the Girls had, and I always thought that this would be quite a fun book to read.

The Winter Road by Adrian Selby – 13 November 2018

The Winter Road Cover

Now this is one that I have been really trying to read for ages. The Winter Road was probably one of the more awesome-sounding fantasy novels of 2018, with amazing plot about a massive merchant caravan trying to get through a dangerous wilderness. I honestly have no idea how I never got around to reading this one, and I will be extremely happy if I finally get a chance in the next few months.

The Ruin of Kings by Jenn Lyons – 5 February 2019

The Ruin of Kings Cover

The Ruin of Kings is one of the biggest fantasy releases of last year, and I have been hoping to check it out since I first got it. Unfortunately, it has just been sitting unread on my shelf instead, even though I included it on my Top Ten Books I Wish I Read in 2019 list. The third and final book in this series is just around the corner, so I really cannot afford to waste any more time with this one.

The Bear Pit by S. G. MacLean – 11 July 2019

The Bear Pit Cover

The Bastille Spy by C. S. Quinn – 1 August 2019

The Bastille Spy Cover

This was one of the more fascinating historical fiction releases of last year, and I am truly sorry I did not get around to enjoying The Bastille Spy. Following a female British spy who helps free and smuggle noblemen from revolutionary France, this book sounded absolutely incredible. I really need to have a look at this book soon, as the sequel is hopefully coming out soon.

Magebane by Stephen Aryan – 6 August 2019

Magebane Cover

The third and final book in the Age of Dread trilogy, Magebane sounded like an extremely fun and explosive fantasy novel, which I did hope to check out last year. I really enjoyed the previous novel in the series, Magefall, so I have high hopes for this latest book.

Grave Importance by Vivian Shaw – 20 August 2019

Grave Importance Cover

Duplicity by Richard Evans – 1 September 2019

Duplicity Cover

Salvation Lost by Peter F. Hamilton – 29 October 2019

Salvation Lost Cover
Well that’s my list. I am hopeful that I will get a chance to check out all of the books featured above in the next few months, and I am sure that they will keep me extremely entertained and sane during my time at home. I hope everyone is staying safe during these hard times, and I wish you all luck during the difficult coming year. In the meantime, let me know which of the books above you enjoyed and what novels you are hoping to read during your lockdown period.

Top Ten Tuesday – Books I Wish I read in 2019

On January 21, 2020January 21, 2020 By The Unseen LibraryIn List12 Comments

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme that currently resides at The Artsy Reader Girl and features bloggers sharing lists on various book topics. For this week’s Top Ten Tuesday, I am going to take a look at the top ten books I wish I had read in 2019. 2019 was an absolutely great year for books and I managed to get through a massive pile of fantastic reads (make sure to check out my top reads of 2019 list). However, there are always going to be some outstanding releases that you miss, and 2019 was filled with some amazing books that I wish I had gotten a chance to read. So, I thought I would take the time to highlight which 2019 releases I most regret not getting the chance to read. Hopefully by including them on this list, I will encourage myself to read some of them throughout this year.

Readers of my blog might remember that I did a similar list to this at the start of last year, with my Top Ten Books I Wish I Read in 2018 list. For this earlier list, I looked at which books I most regretted not reading in 2018, and made it a priority to try and get through them at some point. I actually made a little bit of progress getting through the books on this list last year, as I ended up reading three out of the 10 books that featured on this earlier list (like I said, a little bit of progress). Each of these three books that I ended up reading in 2019, which included Cold Iron by Miles Cameron, The Ember Blade by Chris Wooding and King of Assassins by R. J. Barker (review still pending), were extremely epic books, and each of them received a full five out of five stars from me. I am still going to try and read some of the other books that were featured on this 2018 list in the future, but it is definitely time to look to the releases of 2019. Hopefully I will enjoy some of the inclusions on this new list as much as the books I went back to check out last year.

For this list any book with a 2019 release date that I have not yet read is eligible to be included. I had a feeling before I started that this will be a pretty diverse list as there were quite a few intriguing-sounding novels out there that I did not get a chance to try out. It turned out that there were quite a few books out there that I wish I had read last year, but I was eventually able to work out what my top ten were. I think that each of the novels featured on this list have a great amount of potential, especially those where I have already read an earlier book in the series. So, let us get to the list.

Honourable Mentions:

Grave Importance by Vivian Shaw

The Russian by Ben Coes

Nottingham by Nathan Makaryk

The Second Sleep by Robert Harris

Top Ten List:

The Institute by Stephen King

For the second year in a row, the latest Stephen King tops my list of books I wish I had read. While The Institute sounded extremely interesting, I just could not fit it into my reading schedule. I think that I will really have to try and get through this book at some point this year.

The Ruin of Kings and The Name of All Things by Jenn Lyons

I’m going to do a double feature for this second entry and feature the first two books in Jenn Lyons’s A Chorus of Dragons series. Both of these books were released last year, and they sounded like particularly intriguing pieces of fantasy fiction that I really wanted to read. Unfortunately, I had to prioritise other books in front of The Ruin of Kings, and I did not want to take a look at The Name of All Things until I’d gotten through the first book. The end result is that I didn’t read either of them, which is a real shame. I must try and have a go at reading both of them this year, especially as the third book in the series, The Memory of Souls (which has a rather cool picture of an elephant on its front cover), is set for release in August.

Salvation Lost by Peter F. Hamilton

This is probably the most surprising novel I did not read last year. Salvation Lost is the sequel to 2018’s Salvation, which was one of my favourite books in 2018. I have been meaning to read this sequel since about July, and yet somehow, I keep completely failing to even pick it up. I will hopefully get to this one very soon, and it is probably the book on this list I am most likely to read next.

The Bear Pit by S. G. MacLean

The Bear Pit is another book whose preceding novel, Destroying Angel, I found to be pretty spectacular. I was really looking forward to The Bear Pit, especially as it featured a really cool sounding mystery in a fascinating historical period. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get a copy of this book (the one copy I saw in the shop was damaged, the horror, the horror) and so didn’t get around to reading it. I will read this book at some point in the future and I cannot wait to dive into another one of MacLean’s compelling and complex murder mystery storylines.

Alien: Echo by Mira Grant

An Alien book, written by horror extraordinaire Mira Grant! How have I not read this book yet? I was really looking forward to Alien: Echo earlier in the year, especially after I enjoyed Grant’s last novel, Into the Drowning Deep. I actually have a copy of this book currently sitting on my shelf, silently judging me, and I will have to carve out some time to get through this one.

We Are the Dead by Mike Shackle

We Are the Dead was a rather intriguing-sounding 2019 fantasy debut that I very much regret not getting a copy of. I have heard some pretty amazing things about this book, and I really wish that I had managed to check it out. The sequel, A Fool’s Hope, is set for release in July, and I will have to make an effort and read We Are the Dead before this second book comes out.

Duplicity by Richard Evans

This was the second book in Evans’s Democracy series, the first book of which, Deceit, was also featured on my favourite reads of 2018 list. Deceit was an excellent political thriller that expertly portrayed chaotic events that occur within Australia’s Parliament House. I was really looking forward to the sequel, especially as it was going to look at Australia’s electoral process, but unfortunately I just didn’t get a chance to read it. This is another one I am probably going to try and read in the next couple of weeks, and I think it is going to be a really outstanding piece of Australian fiction.

The Taking of Annie Thorne by C. J. Tudor

This was fantastic-sounding novel that I heard some good things about from other reviewers. The Taking of Annie Thorne, also titled The Hiding Place, was another dark thriller from Tudor, acclaimed author of The Chalk Man, which featured another of the author’s clever-sounding plots. I really want to check this one out in its audiobook format as it was narrated by Richard Armitage, and I look forward to hearing him tell the story.

Star Wars: Dooku: Jedi Lost by Cavan Scott

Somehow I failed to read all the Star Wars books that were released last year, which is just disappointing. Dooku: Jedi Lost is a deeply intriguing Star Wars novel that somehow failed to turn up on my radar until after its release. This piece of Star Wars fiction began life exclusively as an audio production, although a printed version has since been produced. The book examines the life of Star Wars antagonist Count Dooku and shows why he left the Jedi Order and how he was seduced by the Dark Side of the Force. Because it is a Star Wars novel, I already know I am going to love it, and it is pretty much guaranteed that I will listen to this at some point. I am really looking forward to learning more about the history of Count Dooku, and from the sounds of it, this book will have some strong ties to one of my favourite Star Was book of 2019, Master & Apprentice.

The Wolf’s Call by Anthony Ryan

The final book on this list is The Wolf’s Call by bestselling fantasy author Anthony Ryan. The Wolf’s Call is the first book in Ryan’s new Raven’s Blade series, which follows the adventures of a legendary warrior forced to fight another bloody war. This book has a really intriguing-sounding plot and received some very high praise from reviewers, so I will have to try and read it at some point. I might actually read the three books in Ryan’s Raven’s Shadow series first, as they are set in the same world.

It looks like I have a lot catch-up reading to do if I am going to make a dent in this list. There are some truly amazing-sounding novels on this list and I fully intend to get through all of them at some point, although with all the outstanding books coming out in 2020, it might take me a little time. In the meantime, let me know what books you most regret not reading in 2019 in the comments below.