#JM Miro

[bigcats-birds-and-books]

Books of 2024: Wrap-Up.

Hello world!! I read sixty-three (63) books in 2024, and here they are! The pages-out books are stand-ins for library books and other borrowed books (which were ADHD for Smartass Women, When Among Crows, Ghost Station, and The Killing Floor). Mostly these are shelved in the order I read them, save for the stack at the end (Ordinary Monsters is Too Tall to fit on my current shelf arrangement, and the borrowed books are out of order).

I posted individual photos (and sometimes reviews!) of everything pictured here, which you can find tagged with their titles or authors, or you can see all of them if you peruse my "books of 2024" tag. Now, for the Highlight Reel, in order of when I read them:

FIVE FAVES

The City We Became by NK Jemisin ★★★★★ Always love Jemisin, but this duology had me laughing more than I remembered for her other books, which I definitely needed! Excellent cast (your honor I love Paolo so much and also literally all of the boroughs), I tore through this by staying up past my bedtime too many nights in a row.

The Butcher of the Forest by Premee Mohamed ★★★★★ Perfect tiny little gutpunch of a book MADE FOR ME, I loved it so damn much. Everyone please go read this immediately.

The Actor and the Target by Declan Donnellan ★★★★★ I was not expecting this to rewire my brain, but it DID, over and over and over again. Very dense chewy book, which I read hoping to get inside an actor character's head better, but honestly I think anyone who does any kind of art or creative endeavor should read this, because OOF was it insightful. (I have ordered his second book that came out this year, but it's hugely on backorder apparently.)(Go figure: The first one was SO GOOD.)

Leech by Hiron Ennes ★★★★★ This was a reread for me, and I'm so glad I revisited it--it holds up even better than the first time through, because so much of it falls into place once you know what's really going on. Masterclass in POV, very gothic, very fucked up, very Deep Winter book, I very much think anyone who was An Animorphs Kid would enjoy the hell out of this (but mind the content warnings, of which there are Many).

Self-Portrait with Nothing by Aimee Pokwatka ★★★★½ This one also hit my perfect trifecta of weird-and-funny-and-fucked-up exactly right, which I wasn't expecting? Pleasant surprise there at the end of the year. Come for the family heart crimes, stay for the unhinged overseas texts to your husband about an art heist, what a blast.

TWO TWOS

turns out i didn't actually read any 1-star books this year, so here's the bottom of the barrel, and yes i DID write lengthy salty reviews about both of these, if you're interested in the particulars of My Beef

Ordinary Monsters by JM Miro ★★ This was too damn long and ~Messy™~, and all of that just to end on a cliffhanger because it's a trilogy. Why did I bother with this 600+ page brick (oh, right: because it sounded promising)(it was Not, or at least not Enough).

Ghost Station by SA Barnes ★★ This was TOO DAMN FRUSTRATING (bad science, bad scientists, stupid characters, etc), and there was JUST ENOUGH neat promising worldbuilding in the background that Could Have Been Cool to make this otherwise mediocre experience enraging. Super bummed, because I wanted to read this author's other stuff, but now I don't trust her and therefore shan't.

Overall! Had a great reading year--those Two Twos were the only things I rated that low, and I enjoyed everything else! Looking forward to another fabulous year of books :)

[elliepassmore]

Bringer of Dust review

5/5 stars Recommended if you like: historical fantasy, epic fantasy, multiple POVs, powers, magic, mysteries, morally gray characters

Ordinary Monsters review

Bringer of Dust opens weeks to months after the ending of Ordinary Monsters. The Cairndale group is spread out across Europe working to find a way to bring Marlowe home. It was a little confusing to start in media res after so much time had passed in the book, but luckily the characters did each provide an overview of what had been going on since the conclusion of the last book.

The big cast is back, with most POV characters from Ordinary Monsters getting a POV in this one as well (as long as they're alive). That being said, Alice and Mrs. Davenshaw switched roles in terms of prominence, with the latter getting far more POV chapters than the former. I wasn't really sure what to think of Mrs. Davenshaw in the first book, so I'm glad to have gotten to know her better here. Same with Mrs. Fick, who showed up for only a couple of chapters in book 1 but is a very important character here. I didn't really like her the first time, but reading her here provides a lot of perspective about her and her life and it shows a side to her that we didn't get to see in OM.

There are again a lot of intersecting threads that all feed into the main storyline. Charlie is off in England and joins up with Mrs. Fick to try and see if she'll help decipher old texts. Ribs and Alice are in Paris searching for the other orsine. Komako is in Spain looking for the Spanish Glyphic. Then we have some new characters: Jeta, a bone witch with a bone (haha) to pick with Cairndale and the Talents; and Micah, an exile who reviles Talents. Then there's the Abbess, someone with eyes everywhere who seems to be pulling strings behind the scenes, and Claker Jack, the person who runs the exiles in London and, like Jeta, absolutely loathes Talents. Both the Abbess and Claker Jack have their own agendas that put them at odds with the survivors from Cairndale, and it was interesting to see how everyone's desire for a particular thing (once Marlowe, now something else) can have very different results.

I definitely feel like the world of the Talents has been expanded with this novel. The first one was mainly about Marlowe and Charlie getting to Cairndale and the danger that Jacob Marber posed. It was a fantastic setup to the trilogy, and in this second book we get to see that world and its threats expanded. I enjoyed seeing the different areas Talents gathered and how different leaders created different 'havens.' Dr. Berghast and his predecessors had Cairndale, the Abbess has an abbey of Talent women in Paris, Claker Jack has his exiles under London, and the Agnoscenti, an ancient sect of Talent with esoteric purposes, had their base in Sicily. We also get more background into Talents and their lore, as well as why everyone seems interested in Marlowe, from Dr. Berghast to Jacob Marber to the drughe.

Like with the first book, a lot of the actions the characters take are couched in gray morality. Komako and Charlie in particular struggle with this, as they've both done things in the past that haunt them and are now also dealing with a darker, more dangerous world. I actually feel particularly bad for Komako, she's not in a fantastic place mentally when this book opens and while it seems to get better for her for a time, the ending of this book is so much more devastating than OM's ending, so I feel like she's going to ricochet right back to a bad place. Jeta, one of our new characters, also does a lot of terrible things, some of it for the right reasons but a lot of it...not so much. I actually really enjoyed Jeta's arc and am looking forward to seeing more of her in book 3.

I'm glad Onwukwe came back to narrate this book, and I'm really hoping he does the third as well. He once again brought a lot of character and quality to the characters and it was always easy to tell which character he was narrating for at any given time.

I really enjoyed this sequel to Ordinary Monsters and while it wasn't what I imagined, it fits the characters and the world so well! I listened to the audiobook and normally I only listen when traveling or commuting, but I could not stop thinking of this book and ended up listening to it at home too.

[aurorawest]

Reading update

White Trash Warlock by David R Slayton - 4.75/5 stars

Urban fantasy with a protagonist from a trailer park, who, for bonus points, got sectioned by his older brother as a teen. Daddy issues, mommy issues, and brother issues, what's not to like? I ordered everything else by this author I could find when I finished the book, including the other two books in this series.

The Fascinators by Andrew Eliopulos - DNF

Boring.

The Revolutionary and the Rogue by Blake Ferre - DNF

Boring, with the added crime of actual plot happening but still, somehow, nothing actually happening. I kept reading whole pages and realizing I had no idea what I'd just read.

The Red Scholar's Wake by Aliette de Bodard - DNF

OMFG CAN I CATCH A BREAK. This was such a disappointing DNF, too, because I'd really been looking forward to it. One of the characters is a spaceship and it bills itself as a space opera? Yes please. But after the initial marriage of convenience setup, it's just all a bunch of pointless, boring conversations. Nothing happens. I flipped ahead. Still nothing happening. Not a space opera but definitely cozy sci-fi, which I think I officially hate.

Honeytrap by Aster Glenn Gray - 5/5 stars

An FBI agent and a GRU agent get assigned to work a case together in 1959 and they fall in looooove. But oof, this book was so good. I'm not sure I've ever had a time skip hit me in the gut so hard. I really can't recommend this book enough, it fits squarely in my niche interest of mid-century America or Britain m/m romance. I think Natasha Pulley also awakened something in me with The Half Life of Valery K, because I seem to be a sucker for gay Soviet men. Speaking of, if you liked The Half Life of Valery K, I bet you'll like this too! Anyway, read this, but be prepared to be hurt by it.

Ordinary Monsters by JM Miro - 4/5 stars

X-men meets Strangers Things with a dash of English boarding school, set in Victorian Britain.

Human Enough by ES Yu - DNF

Promising until it devolved into boring, pointless conversations and tumblr posts on neurodivergence.

Olympic Enemies by Rebecca J Caffery - DNF

I put this down on page 12 and my wife grabbed it to flip through it, cackling at the amateurish prose.

Frost Bite by J Emery - 4.5/5 stars

Snowed-in cabin fic with an enemies to lovers romance between a vampire and a (former) vampire hunter. It was cute and a quick read.

The Lost Apothecary by Sarah Penner - DNF

Very Not Like Other Girls. Also read a review that said pregnancy was a huge focus of the book, and that's a squick for me.

Reverie by Ryan La Sala - 3.75/5 stars

This book didn't quite live up to the promise of its beginning (missing memories, bizarre disruptions to time and space) and the writing was a little twee at times, but overall I enjoyed it. This was the author's debut, so I suspect subsequent books will probably be better. I did feel like the teenage main characters were weirdly inured to death, which also contributed to me knocking of a quarter of a star from what would otherwise have been a solid 4 star book.

All Souls Near & Nigh by Hailey Turner - 3/5 stars

If you like The Tarot Sequence by KD Edwards, this series might be worth picking up. I will say, though, that it's nowhere near as good. I think it's a combination of pacing and too many characters that detracts from my enjoyment of this series. This is the second book and I enjoyed it more than the first, probably because I sort of remembered the massive cast of characters from the first one. It's one of those things where I really don't think they're all necessary and some should be combined with others. The pacing is also...weird. It's pretty much nonstop action. At one point I think the main character drove back and forth between various crime scene locations and his office like 5 times in a day.

That said! Despite the issues, clearly I still picked up book 2, and I'll probably read book 3 at some point. I really like the two main characters.

[anwhitebooks]

Ordinary Monsters (Book 1): For the adults who loved Miss Peregrine’s

March 21, 2024 Spoiler-Free Review If you ever wished for a darker, more adult version of Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children – you may just love Ordinary Monsters. Click here for content warnings. What’s Ordinary Monsters about? In 1880s Scotland, there is an Institute for children with special magical talents. An evil entity wants to eat these children, and only a select few can…

[dreadfutures]

Has anyone read any of these books? I'm looking for a place to start with comp titles 😮‍💨

**"The Last Cuentista" by Donna Barba Higuera (2021)**

**"The Golden Mole" by JM Miro (2022)**

**"Elder Race" by Adrian Tchaikovsky (2022)**

**"The Hacienda" by Isabel Cañas (2022)**

**"A Far Wilder Magic" by Allison Saft (2022)**

**"This Woven Kingdom" by Tahereh Mafi (2022)**

**"The Last Shadow Warrior" by Sam Subity (2023)**

**"The Rivals" by Violet Webb (2023)**

**"Lark & Kasim Start a Revolution" by K. Tempest Bradford (2023)**

**"The Bruising of Qilwa" by Naseem Hrab (2022)**

**"The Last Tale of the Flower Bride" by Roshani Chokshi (2023)**

**"The Counselors" by Jessica Goodman (2023)**

**"The Gilded Ones" by Namina Forna (2021)**

**"The Unspoken Name" by A.K. Larkwood (2020)**

**"The Priory of the Orange Tree" by Samantha Shannon (2019)**

**"The Bone Shard Daughter" by Andrea Stewart (2020)**

**"The Fifth Season" by N.K. Jemisin (2015)**

**"The City We Became" by N.K. Jemisin (2020)**

**"The Ninth House" by Leigh Bardugo (2019)**

**"The Unspoken Name" by A.K. Larkwood (2020)**

**"A Psalm for the Wild-Built" by Becky Chambers (2021)**

**"The Shadow of the Gods" by John Gwynne (2021)**

**"The Jasmine Throne" by Tasha Suri (2021)**

[aricastmblr]

BTS LAND SEASON2 ep7 230822

(3 ultimas fotos son del siguiente capitulo)

Estar en una habitación con un perro VS Estar en una habitación con un gato

jm-Solo ustedes dos están en la habitación..

jm-Ah, es un perro o un gato

jk y yg rojo

jm-tengo alergia a los gatos

v-Jimin-ie tiene alergia a los gatos

jk-¡Pero te gustan los gatos!

jm-Claro que me gustan

jm-¡Pero ahora, solo miro de lejos!

jm-En una habitación.. :s

--------------------------------

Estar cansado incluso después de dormir tanto VS Tener hambre incluso después de comer tanto

bts- rojo

jh-Está bastante claro: tener hambre incluso después de comer tanto, ¿no?

jin-Jungkook-ie finalmente dormirá de todos modos kkk

jm-No es (rojo) algo que pueda lastimarlo

jk-Definitivamente elegiré dormir/ir a dormir

--------------------------------

Quedarse en casa toda la vida VS Andar toda la vida pero sin casa

jm-Ahora son preguntas para JK~

jk-(lee la pregunta)

jk-

jk yg v jin (azul)

jm nj jh ( rojo )

jm- a jk ¡¡No mientas!!!

nj jh- Ah, ��¡de verdad!? ¡Ya!

jk-No, pero no tengo casa!

jm-¡Pero también dice que solo estás en casa!

jk-Si es quedarse en casa pues la casa..

jm-¡Aunque siempre vas a las casas de los miembros!

jk-Dice que no tendría una casa en toda mi vida

nj-¡Puedes simplemente alquilar un lugar!

jk-Incluso si muero, seguirá siendo mi casa

--------------------------------

Solo comer el relleno de manggaetteok VS Solo comer tteokgomul

bts-(rojo)

jk-(azul)el único diferente

jk- Espera... ¿por qué estás eligiendo a tteokgomul?

jin-(rojo) Será demasiado dulce si solo te comes el relleno, te dolerá la barriga y te marearás.

--------------------------------

Jimin, que se acuesta en la cama de Jin con su atuendo para salir VS Jungkook, que se come todo el ramyeon después de pedir un bocado

bts-(rojo)

jm- (azul)

jk-Jin hyung realmente odia cuando su cama está sucia

jin-(rojo)Es mejor cocinar otra olla de ramyeon, yo cocinaré otra

--------------------------------

No comer pollo toda la vida vs No comer ramyeon toda la vida

bts-(rojo)

jm-No, me cambio a esto (sacan rojo)

jm jk - cambian rápido de rojo a azul XD

nj-les dice- Ah no hay cambio de respuestas y jh baja la manito a jm

jm-¡Ah, está bien! XD

jm jk- se ríen y cambian de azul a rojo (regresan al anterior XD)

jk-¿Pero no debería ser al revés?

jin-(azul) Como ramyeon a menudo pero pollo, no lo como tan seguido como pensaba

[damosays]

Review: Bringer of Dust by JM Miro

The follow-up to Ordinary Monsters is no less bulky, but this is still a leaner animal, and all the more compelling for it. This is an absolute Empire Strikes Back of a sequel! By which I mean, the pacing is lively and perfectly balanced, the characters are deep in their personal darknesses, fighting for air and light, there’s a load of chewy father-figure drama that I could eat all day with a…

[weirdchurchgirl]

rly sad to see the lack of talk around ordinary monsters by jm miro :-(

[zannolin]

Zanna you should read Ordinary Monsters by JM Miro I swear to god its so worth it

sell me on it. do your worst.

[bigcats-birds-and-books]

Books of 2024: June Wrap-Up.

Okay, y'all have Convinced Me--I'm going to start doing little wrap up posts! Behold: a shelf of what I read in June (not pictured: the bookmark at page 466 of ORDINARY MONSTERS, because despite having read two (2) books worth of book so far, I'm still not quite done with that one).

June was kind of a slow reading month for me (I did a LOT of writing, looking back--nice). I wanted to take OTHER TERRORS and THE ELEMENTS OF ELOQUENCE a bite at a time so the horrors and figures of rhetoric (respectively) didn't all run together. Both of those, much like A SHINING, turned out to be pleasantly leisurely wanders, whereas MONSTERS is kind of a plod.

I already did bigger write-ups for TERRORS and SHINING, linked in the bullets below.

OTHER TERRORS - ★★★★ Great bite-sized horror anthology with a really inclusive mix, as promised! I enjoyed most of these (always nice in an anthology!)

A SHINING - ★★★★ Weird fucked up heavy little book in translation, lit-fic flavored, but very approachable, I thought. Tiny enough to swallow in a sitting, but also kind of exhausting to do it that way? I'll definitely reread this one in the future.

THE ELEMENTS OF ELOQUENCE - ★★★ Fun romp through rhetoric! The examples were fun, and I appreciated the humor, but I also find myself still uncertain what a bunch of the figures actually ARE, definitions-wise, despite having read a book full of so many of them (I did just buy his recommended A HANDLIST OF RHETORICAL TERMS to help with that, at least, which is. almost entirely. definitions by volume). Neat thing to have on my references shelf, but it wasn't as excellent as I was hoping it'd be.

ORDINARY MONSTERS - 466/658 pages read; will report back later (but it's not looking good, folks).

[aurorawest]

7, 8, 20, 22 for the book ask?

7. What was your average Goodreads Storygraph rating? Does it seem accurate?

4.24 stars out of 5. Seems pretty accurate. If I finish a book, I'm pretty generous with my ratings.

8. Did you meet any of your reading goals? Which ones?

My only goal was to read 100 books, which I met handily.

20. What was your most anticipated release? Did it meet your expectations?

Probably A Power Unbound by Freya Marske, and yes! I was pretty sure I wouldn't like it as much as A Marvellous Light, which I didn't, but I still loved it.

22. What’s the longest book you read?

Seveneves by Neal Stephenson, clocking in at 880 pages. Second longest was Ordinary Monsters by JM Miro (660 pages), and the third longest was The Emperor's Bone Palace by Hailey Turner (635 pages).

Thank you for asking!!

end-of-year book ask

[bigdreamsandwildthings]

Summer (book) lovin’ ✌🏻

[ladyinrosso]

No... not again....

*wispered her while starting hyperfixating on books with no fandom*

[elliepassmore]

Ordinary Monsters review

5/5 stars Recommended if you like: fantasy, epic fantasy, multiple POVs, powers, magic, mysteries, morally gray characters This book was a nice surprise for me. I thought the concept sounded cool, then decided not to read it, but then needed something to listen to while going on a couple of trips, so I ended up finally getting it and absolutely loved it. I would not be surprised if this ends up being one of my favorite reads of the year. (Also, I will probably make spelling mistakes, I listened to the audiobook and only glanced through a physical copy, so have no idea how to spell 90% of the words from the book, lol). This book has a pretty big cast and a lot of POVs, but it's definitely something that was enjoyable about the book. I liked getting in the heads of the good guys, the bad guys, the guys in the middle. It was really interesting seeing how everyone thought and the ways that they saw the worlds differently. Miro also does the different POVs well because I surprisingly did not have one that I consistently wanted to skip in favor of one of the others, which I feel usually happens with multiple POV books. The book is complicated and it is an epic fantasy, so it takes a while to get to the part where everyone's at the institute and the schemes start coming together. I found that I rather liked getting Marlowe's background and seeing where he started off and how he ended up where he did when Alice found him, and likewise, I think having the longish stretches with Alice and Charlie prior to arriving at the institute also helped me like and understand them as characters. I also am a big fan of 'stories within stories,' so the fact that we get several chapters dedicated to Jacob Marber (and by extension Komako and Ribs) in the middle of the book is something that I really liked. I was equally invested in both the kids' side of things and the adults' side, and I liked that the adults clearly cared about the kids and wanted to do what was best and what would keep them safe. The main goal during this book was to stop Jacob Marber from reaching the kids and Cairndale, though more forces than not conspire to help Jacob. The kids, for their part, also don't want Jacob reaching Cairndale, but they've also stepped into another mystery, one much closer to home. Something I really enjoyed about the book was how everything was colored in shades of gray. The kids, often accidentally or in self-defense, had all done 'bad' things. The adults, even the ones who fully supported and wanted to help the kids, had done things that can't be considered 'good.' I enjoyed this well-roundedness of the characters and how the good guys didn't always make good or moral or correct decisions. Another thing I liked was that every character has a backstory (which I suspect is one of the reasons for the book's length). Virtually every character who plays a significant role in the book has a past that has shaped who they are and that we get to learn about over the course of the book. Even Marlowe's original two caretakers, who are collectively in the book for no more than three chapters (I think), get a backstory. The kids are all orphans and have all come from bad situations, though those situations as we see are quite varied (and really, Marlowe's situation isn't that bad, he's just in danger because of Jacob). This helps us better understand their motivations and actions and why they act in certain ways. I definitely think this helped with characterization and with making the characters feel like real people. This is also not solely focused on the kids and the people protecting them, but everyone who is significant gets one, which I think does something really interesting in that, despite them doing bad things, knowing the backstory elicits sympathy for Jacob Marber and the main lich. The fact that we get so many POVs contributes to this as well. It's difficult to get a solid feel on a lot of the adults in the book because so much is masked and they have secrets covered by secrets. On top of this, each character obviously has their own perceptions and thoughts about all the other characters, and as readers that is all we have to go off of. But when characters have their POVs, we get to see a little more about how they think about things and we get to understand what their true goals are, which complicates perceptions and muddies the waters into that "everything is gray" area. I also wanted to say that the narrator for this was perfect. Onwukwe definitely enhanced the experience and I liked how he not only did different voices, but also different voice qualities (i.e., talk, whisper, etc.). Some of the time when he whispered it was kind of hard to hear since I was driving, but overall the audio narration was very clear and understandable. Onwukwe also nailed the accents for each of the charactes, which I loved. I enjoyed this book a lot and have found that it is one of those books that stays with you even when you're not reading it. I look forward to knowing what happens in the sequel!

[dramaswithasideofkimchi]

Kmuse's Book Reviews (June 23, 2022)

Looking for a bit of fantasy and murder in your summer beach read? Come check out this week's book and Manga recommendations. #BookReview #WomanInTheLibrary #OrdinaryMonsters #DeathNote

Are you looking for something with a bit more magic or mystery for your summer reading? Come find out the new and classic books and manga that Kmuse thinks might be the perfect distraction from reality. (more…)

[sshannonauthor]

Thank you for all your book recommendations! It means a lot that you take the time to help your readers discover new books/voices by showing your support of other great authors even though you must be terribly busy - you are so inspiring and kind! I was wondering if you happen to know if your talk with JM Miro was available to watch/listen anywhere?

Thank you again for all that you do!!

I don't think it is, sadly – neither of the events were recorded, as far as I know. I'm so glad you like my recs!