Booked Panda Reviews

  Book Review: Kingdoms of Death by Christopher Ruocchio Release Date: March 8, 2022  Genre: Sci-Fi Age Range: Adult Series: Sun Eater Proceeded by:     Demon in White Goodreads  Avg. Rating: 4.45 stars Normally I start with my first thoughts but instead, I will say this book was devastating. It has been a while since a book made me cry (unless that was the sole purpose of the book). Where the last book gave us a glimpse of the wider universe this gave detail to more of our own galaxy. Early on Hadrian and the Tamerlane travel into the Lothrian Commonwealth. The Lothrians control their own worlds in a socialist fashion. There have been clashes between them and the Empire before when the Lothrain tried to colonize the Perseus Arm of the galaxy but now the Emperor would like to make a united front for the Cielcin. On their captial planet Hadrian and Valka are staying at the Embassy shown the sparse niceties of Padmurak. The political climate and how it has and wishes to evolve further wa

  Book Review:   Dragon Rider by  Taran Matharu Release Date: April 23, 2024  Genre: Fantasy Age Range: New Adult Series: Soulbound Saga Goodreads  Avg. Rating: 3.94 stars Thank you very much to Netgalley and Harper Voyager for the ARC copy to review. Once I started this book I was so excited but couldn't remember what it was supposed to be about. A little way in it was coming back as I was questioning does this match at all what the description said?? To a point yes, the description covers the very beginning of the book. Which is a decent job of not giving too much away as many things do these days. The world-building was possibly my greatest drawback of the book. This is because there wasn't much to be had. I can understand Jai was taken from his home at a very young age and then not allowed to learn things about the Empire while there. However, we are given a whole traveling journey and get to learn nothing about this world. Thus I can tell you that the setting of the book i

  Book Review:   To Gaze Upon Wicked Gods by Molly X. Chang Release Date: April 16, 2024  Genre: Fantasy Age Range: Adult Series: To Gaze Upon Wicked Gods Goodreads  Avg. Rating: 3.57 stars After the author's letter at the beginning, I was mentally preparing myself to be wrecked by this book. For a fantasy book, I don't believe there was a lot of world-building happening. We learned bits about the past war over magic users and the one-day war of the invasion. Otherwise, it felt like we barely learned of this content. The book takes place in the Er-Lang Empire, a part of Pangu. There are five countries on this content (or world). All of the countries are living under the turbulent peace of an invader. Twenty years before a portal opened above Jing-City in Er-Lang and Roman planes entered Pangu. In this timeline, the Roman Empire never fell but controls a large portion of our world. It appears to take place in a modern-day timeline as they have technology and the Earth is dying.

  Book Review:   What the River Knows by Isabel Ibanez Release Date: October 31, 2023  Genre: Historical Fantasy Age Range: YA Series: Secrets of the Nile Goodreads  Avg. Rating: 3.97 stars As this is a historical fantasy taking place at the end of the nineteenth century in Egypt there aren't massive levels of world-building. However, this is not exactly our world as we will see with the magic. We are given beautiful details about the city of Cairo and the dig site. The writing style helped paint a picture of the scene while not being too slow with the story. Besides the details of our setting another facet that is leaned into would be the society setting. The glitz and glamor of the upper class while this part of the world was being molded to be just as organized as British society. The opposite side of that coin is the damage caused by the military and how native Egyptians are not given positions of rank in their government. Magic has been lost to time in this world. There are re