Hi, it's Maija here, and it's time for my September 
Wrap Up. And the first book that I read in
September was Any Other Name by Emma
Newman, this is the second book in her
The Split Worlds series. I've talked 
about the first book in the series
before, but I'll just quickly tell you
again that it is a mixture of an urban
fantasy setting and a setting that is
this magical otherworld that is sort of
stuck in the Victorian era. And the main
character is Cathy, who at the beginning
of the first book had managed to escape 
the magical world for a few years and
had learned to live with her new-found freedom, 
when she's snatched back to live in the
stricter Victorian-esque world. There are 
also fairies in a Fae world, and they are
amazing. They are pretty much the 
villains of the story and you never
know what they want. Don't make a wish 
from a fairy, don't owe them anything, that's
what I've learned from all the books that 
I've read. Anyway, these two that I have
read have been very entertaining, sort of 
three star reads, they haven't been that
special, I couldn't say that I love them, 
but I have fun while I read them.
I really do like Cathy, the main character, 
and I do like to follow her on her journey,
even though the injustice of the 
Victorian era world makes me mad a lot
of the time. There's also this bigger 
plot of a conspiracy, but for some reason
I'm not that interested in that, perhaps 
because the characters that have a lot
to do with that storyline aren't as interesting 
to me as Cathy. But yes, I like Cathy
and I like the Fae aspect, but some of the 
characters are boring to me,
so this is a three star read. Next I read The 
Iron Trial by Holly Black and
Cassandra Clare, the first in the 
Magisterium series. And this book was a
bit too young for me. It is about a young 
boy who goes to attend a magic school
after his father has told him all his 
life that magic is evil, this school is evil.
And it's about the kids studying at the 
school, and there's also a sort of twist
on the Chosen One trope. And that twist 
was my favorite part of the book, but
that comes quite near the end of the 
book and I found the book to be
pretty boring before that. Being 
introduced to the magic school, and the kids
there, and the classes there, should have 
been interesting, but for some reason it
wasn't. I liked the beginning with the 
tests to get into the school and I liked
the ending with the twist on the Chosen 
One trope, but all in all I won't be
continuing on with this series. I gave it 
two stars. It was a bit too young for me,
it was a middle-grade book, but I do 
enjoy some middle grade books, but they
tend to have a more of a feeling of 
whimsy to them and this definitely doesn't
have that. The next thing that I read 
was a lot better.
It was William Shakespeare's Star Wars:  
Verily, A New Hope, by Ian Doescher. And this is
the New Hope Star Wars movie written in
Shakespearean style. So it is written
as a play and it also has these 
illustrations. And I found this to be
really fun and really clever. Sometimes 
the lines and the descriptions were done
so well. They were so cleverly changed from 
the movie to fit this Shakespearean
style. One thing that I have to say, that if 
you're a Shakespearean purist: I have a
friend who really knows a lot about 
Shakespeare and he couldn't get over the
fact that Ian Doescher uses 'thou' for 
everyone in this book.
There should be 'thou' and 'you', with 'thou' 
being the more familiar one, but now some
Imperial officers can be a bit too 
familiar with Darth Vader, calling him
'thou', when they should be calling him 'you'. So if you can't get over this fact, maybe don't
pick this one up. But I didn't pay it any 
attention and I had a lot of fun. I also
liked the snark that was sometimes 
evident, especially in scenes that were
later added to the movies. And 
those scenes were still in this, but
sometimes they were sort of commented 
upon that maybe they shouldn't be there. I
gave Verily, A New Hope four stars. Then I read again something completely
different, I read A Room of One's Own by 
Virginia Woolf. This is an essay of hers
written after a lecture of hers that she 
gave in a college and this really
focuses on how women who write 
need a room of one's own, free time, and
money of their own. And this was a really, 
really good read, my favorite read of the
month, actually. I gave this one 5 stars. 
There were some things that I didn't agree
with, perhaps, but there was also some 
really powerful stuff in here.
I remember when I finished this I really 
wanted to create something. She talks about
how women aren't given enough free time, 
how often women are expected to do
everything in a household, for example, 
and also how men's colleges have more
money, because of how many more men have 
studied and then donate money to the
college where they went, when the 
women's colleges have to do
with less, because they are newer, and
women hadn't had the
opportunity to study for that long. This was first published in 1928. And it was
definitely a five star read. And these 
three where the books that I read for the
Read Your Bookshelf-A-Thon in September. And next I read The Otherling and
other stories by Anne Leinonen. She's 
a very prolific science fiction & fantasy
author in Finland, and I've only ever 
read a few of her short stories. So
I wanted to sort of get myself more familiar with her
and I read this, a collection of her short stories. I 
have to say that some of the translation
was a bit clunky, it could have been better. 
But there was good stuff in this,
especially the title story, the Otherling, 
was really good. It was about this
alien race, where they model themselves 
after the race that currently finds them.
So currently humans have found this alien 
race and they are sort of modeling
themselves after humans and to be 
helpful to humans, and it was really, really
interesting. This definitely had a lot of 
different types of short stories, but
like I said, the title one, which is the 
most science fiction one of them, was my
favorite. I gave this one three stars, like I 
usually do short story collections,
because usually there are some that I enjoy and some that I enjoy less. Then it was time
to read some of my Kindle books. I 
started reading the short story Marine
Biology by Gail Carriger. Usually I 
really enjoy Gail Carriger, but this I
think could have used a lot more 
development. It was about werewolves and
merpeople, and this is actually quite an 
interesting premise, but I think it could
have been developed more, I think 
it sort of rushed through
it, it could have been longer. There were 
things happening, and it rushed through
them, and especially the romance 
in it was a bit rushed.
I didn't feel like the main characters 
had that much time to develop a
chemistry between them. It was sort of
 abrupt. I only gave it two
stars. Then I read a novella by Mary 
Robinette Kowal, The Escapement of
Blackledge. And this was a thing that 
started as Mary Robinette Kowal's April
Fools' Joke. So one April Fools' day she 
tweeted that her friend had found an
erotic fan fiction set in her Glamourist 
Histories universe, when in fact she had
written the whole thing herself. And it was 
definitely a lot of fun. It was about a
female thief and a male inventor, and it had 
romance and burglary.
I found it quite entertaining, I gave it 
three stars. One thing that I had trouble
with was because I had read so much Gail 
Carriger before reading this, that I was sort
of in the Gail Carriger universe, and I
had to re-adjust myself - because Gail
Carriger's universe is Victorian era 
with a lot more steampunk elements and
supernatural elements thrown in, 
when Mary Robinette Kowal's universe is the
Regency era, but with just some magic in it,
magic that's called Glamour. And I kept 
expecting more steampunk-y elements in
this, just because I had been reading so
much Gail Carriger, but once I did that
re-adjustment in my head I enjoyed it 
a lot more. I was a bit confused,
I'd been reading too much Gail Carriger, 
if that's possible. Then I finished
another Gail Carriger book, the third 
book in the Finishing School series,
Waistcoats & Weaponry, which I've been 
reading with a couple of other
booktubers, I'll link them down below. And 
this was my least favorite in the series,
mostly because it focused on the love 
triangle, and because I found it quite
boring for most of the time. Most of it 
was set on a train and usually I
like that setting, but now I found it boring. 
There was also a plot element that was
used in the Parasol Protectorate series 
to, I think, a much greater impact. So all in
all I didn't really enjoy this book, I 
gave it only 2.5 stars. Next I finished a
graphic novel called Bodies by Si Spencer 
and a bunch of artists. This was set in a
couple of different eras: some of them were 
historical, one contemporary, and one
futuristic era, where these different 
characters find a similar body - pretty
much the same body. And all the different 
eras were drawn by different
artists. I found this to be a really clever 
trick, but I don't think I really got it.
Si Spencer had this big idea behind 
it, and some philosophical musings, and I sort
of just went "Eh?" after finishing it. So it 
really didn't work for me, I gave it two
stars. Next I finished Hen and Chick Episode 
One, by Tristan J. Tarwater.
This is a story that was first published in 
episodes, but now I think it's only
available as a whole book, or just this 
one, first episode separately. So I read
that, but I didn't give this a star rating ,
because it was pretty much a first
chapter of a book. This is about a girl called 
Azria, who has studied magic and is just
about to take her final exam, and she's 
also waiting for her mother, who is a
pirate captain, to come and take her away 
with her. All the characters are characters
of color, the setting and the characters 
were quite fun, but the writing style didn't
completely convince me, so I think I 
won't be buying the whole book. But it
definitely felt like it would have been a 
whimsical, swashbuckling story, a quick
adventure, but since it didn't fully convince 
me, I think I'm going to pass.
Then I finally finished my Finishing 
School read with Manners & Mutiny, the
fourth book in the series by Gail Carriger. 
This was a very action-packed
installment of the series. I'm not going 
to talk much about it, since it is the
last book, but I gave it three stars. This 
series has been quite steady three stars for me.
The second book got four stars, the third 
one got 2.5 stars, but they have been
entertaining, but I definitely don't enjoy them as much as I do Carriger's
adult books. They were fun, but I just 
didn't connect with the characters as
much as I did with that one. So the 
next-to-last thing that I read was my
second favorite read of the month, that was 
Mind of My Mind by Octavia E. Butler. This is
the second book in her Patternmaster 
series. I have the bind up of the four
books in the series in the inner chronology 
order. So I have
read Wild Seed before, and now I read the 
second book, Mind of My Mind. Wild Seed was
about two immortals with one of them 
really obsessed with creating a
telepathic race of humans of his own. He's 
breeding humans together, and
really doesn't care about their lives. I did 
enjoy the first book, but because
one of the characters was so 
reprehensible, I found it really
exhausting to read about. So I gave that one three stars. So the second book is
set in contemporary times. The focus has 
been shifted so that the main character
is one of the telepathic humans, who is a 
result of the breeding program of one of
the immortals. And that shifting of the 
point of view really worked for me.
So this is focused on one girl who is just 
coming to her telepathic abilities and
she is actually a really powerful 
telepath. And previously the immortal's
telepathic humans either have gone insane 
or they can't stand each other.
The main character of this, Mary, is one 
of the strongest and most well-adjusted
born. And for some reason I found reading 
this was a lot like reading Queen of the
Damned when I was a teen. I don't know 
why that was. There's a lot of
different characters in this one, though 
Mary's the one that is focused on, there
are some other point of view characters. 
This and Queen of the Damned aren't that
similar, but for some reason the mood of 
them for me felt the same, my reading
experience was sort of similar. It's 
really short, but a lot is done in
the time and I gave this one four stars. 
And finally we come to the last book
that I read in September, and that was Harry Potter and the Cursed Child by Jack Thorne,
J.K. Rowling, and John Tiffany. I actually didn't 
hate this one like a lot of people did.
I gave this one three stars. I really enjoyed 
the two new characters, Albus and Scorpius,
the teenage boys, Harry's and Draco's sons, 
who are the main characters on the
adventure in this. I have done a whole 
written review of this on Goodreads,
which I'll link down below, but basically I 
had fun during the first part and less
so during the second part. The plot 
really isn't that great,
but I had a lot of fun, like I said, following 
Albus and Scorpius, and the
first part focused more on them, which is 
why I liked that one and would have
given that one four stars. Scorpius 
especially is a really great new
character. He was my favorite - he 
was so funny, he got the best lines and I
liked how he treated Albus and sort of 
brought him down to earth when he was
getting wrapped too much into his own 
problems. And I also found Draco's and
Scorpius' relationship to be much more 
interesting than the father-son
relationship that the play focused on, 
which was Harry and Albus. I think one
of the reasons that I was able to enjoy this 
play was because back when I read the
Harry Potter books I wasn't that 
invested in the main trio, because I
read them when I was about 18. I was more 
into the teacher characters and the
Marauders than the main trio, so it didn't 
bother me that much when they were out
of character. I have to say that the Harry 
parts in this play were the weakest
and the most boring, and some of them could have been easily left out and the play
would have been better. That was the 
reason why I didn't like the
second part that much, because it 
focused a lot more on the older
characters, so Harry, Hermione, and Ron. I 
could no longer ignore them, and I
couldn't ignore the plot, since it was 
focused on so heavily, so that's why the
second part took the rating down to three 
stars. One thing that I have to say
that the female characters really didn't get 
that much to do. The
shortest end of the stick goes to Ginny, 
who was just there basically as a wife
character to comfort or scold Harry, 
and to Rose. When I heard that
Hermione and Ron's daughter Rose would be 
in the play I thought she would actually
get a part, but she's pretty much not 
even there for most of the play. So that
was my September Wrap Up, it was an OK 
month. I had about three great reads, most
of them were pretty mediocre, so not the 
best month, but not too bad.
Leave me a comment if you want, let's talk more about these books, and I will see you later.
