An Un-Calibrated Centrifuge

This post is marked as having spoilers, but it doesn't really. I just like to be extra cautious about The Queen's Thief (even though I don't think there's huge reason to be*).

Maybe someday I will read books again and review them. Let's all agree that 2020 is a throwaway year though and that nothing really matters and not reading anything for almost two months is fine. Because it is. Also the booklikes challenge isn't tracking correctly so it looks like I've read nothing either way.

While 2020 has been a pretty garbage year, October did bring/is bringing us the following:

1. the conclusion to the Trials of Apollo (I'm stuck in the middle of the second book... nothing is happening and it's so long? I really miss Percy Jackson... I should probably just reread those)

2. a new Philip Pullman (not published yet, but it's the green book and IT'S NOT ABOUT WILL!?!??! Whatever. I'm excited and hope it's better than The Book of Dust Book 2 which I also started and have not finished yet. Maybe at this point I should just wait for book 3?)

and

3. Return of the Thief, aka the final Queen's Thief series book, aka something I have been waiting for for almost 20 years now and read for two days straight (in between playing Animal Crossing) and finished this morning at 2am. This might sound a little concerning, but yesterday was a holiday for me and I don't have to go into work until the afternoon today. 

I debated rereading the whole series. I also debated just waiting a few years to read it (or at least until next year... this probably sounds crazy, but I didn't read The Book of Dust Book 1 for almost three years and I'd been waiting for that forever also).

But when my I got an e-copy from the library I thought to hell with it, just read the damn book like you would have if you were a kid. And I did. And it was fine? I don't know. It just didn't have that spark that the other books did. I feel almost exactly opposite from the way I did when I finished Thick as Thieves.

I wasn't looking forward to that book. I didn't want a stand alone from the perspective of Kamet. There was so much poetry. But ultimately I got into it really quickly and liked it a lot. I was so looking forward to Return of the Thief and I don't really feel anything now that I've read it and it kind of felt like work at times.

I'm going to give it some time and do a reread of the whole series to see if anything changes.

*My introduction to the series was Thief! (a short story published in Disney Adventures) which spoils The Thief. But that didn't diminish my enjoyment of the first book at all. So these books are still good even if you know what's coming but I don't want to take the surprise away from anyone who wants to be surprised.