September 2018 TBR

Posted On September 2, 2018

I know I said I was going to put this post up yesterday, but yesterday ended up being a lot busier for me than I thought it would be, so I didn’t end up having time to write and post it. Here I am now, though! Let’s get into all the books I want to read this month!

Mistborn: The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson

I mentioned this in my last post, but after reading one of the stories in the Arcanum Unbounded novella collection during the readathon last month, I suddenly felt like rereading a whole bunch of Brandon Sanderson books, so this is my continuation of that. If possible, I might also like to reread the other two books in this series this month, The Well of Ascension and The Hero of Ages, but I don’t know how likely that is to happen, so I’m just going to put the first book, since I have already started it and I am definitely going to finish it.

If you don’t know what the Mistborn series is about, it’s set in a world where magic is based around or fueled by metals. There’s Allomancy, a type of magic where people can ingest metals and then “burn” them, using them to do things like push and pull objects or people, soothe or inflame others’ emotions, enhance their hearing, and a whole host of other things. Burning each metal allows the magic-user to do one of these things, and most people can only burn one metal. Those people are called Mistings. However, there is a small group of Allomancers, called Mistborn, who can use all of the metals. It sounds really complicated, and it is, but it’s such an interesting and unique magic system, and it’s honestly one of my favorite things about Brandon Sanderson’s books—all of his magic systems are so unique and well-thought-out. This first book is basically a heist book with magic. We follow a team of rebel skaa (the name for the lower-class workers in this world, who are basically slaves to the upper-class) as they attempt to overthrow this tyrannical, immortal leader called the Lord Ruler.

Arcanum Unbounded by Brandon Sanderson

Like I said, right now I’m in the mood to read Brandon Sanderson/fantasy in general, and since this is the book that started this desire, I definitely want to read this too. I still have 9 stories left to read, and I don’t know if I’ll get to all of them this month, but I want to get through a huge chunk of them.

This collection is basically just a bunch of stories set on various worlds in Brandon Sanderson’s connected universe of books he calls the Cosmere. It’s got stories set in the world of Elantris, Mistborn, and the Stormlight Archive, among others, and I’m super excited to finally read these stories, since I have had this book on my shelf for a while now.

The Girl Who Smiled Beads by Clemantine Wamariya

This is not a fantasy book. In fact, it’s not even fiction. It’s a memoir about the author’s experience as a child running away from the Rwandan genocide, and her experiences in America since she moved here. It doesn’t seem to fit in with my theme for the month, but I started reading this book last month during the readathon I participated in, and I didn’t end up finishing it, but I got two-thirds of the way through, and I just need to finish it already. I know that if I don’t read it this month, I probably won’t ever get around to finishing it, which is sad because I was actually really enjoying this book (as much as you can enjoy a book that’s about a girl getting displaced from her country because of genocide, that is…). So, I’m going to read it this month. I will.

Legion: The Many Lives of Stephen Leeds by Brandon Sanderson

I know. Three out of the four books on my TBR this month are coming from the same author. Maybe that’s a little excessive. Really, though, of all the months for me to be on a Brandon Sanderson kick, this is the one because of this book. It’s actually coming out this month, on September 18^th, and it’s another collection of novellas, this time 3 novellas all about this man, Stephen Leeds, who is a genius, able to learn anything in less than a day. His genius manifests itself in an odd way, though, as in order to contain all this information, his brain creates hallucinatory people, which Stephen refers to as aspects, who are experts in whatever subjects Stephen has learned. The problem is when these aspects start to take on lives of their own.

I have actually already read two of the novellas in this collection, but I read them a while ago and I don’t remember much from them. The third novella is supposed to complete Stephen Leeds’ story and has not been published anywhere else. I’ve already pre-ordered this book, and I plan to read it not long after it comes out.

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Okay! I think that’s all the books I want to read this month. There are some others I’m interested in that I might end up reading as well, but these four are the ones I definitely want to get to. It’s a lot of Brandon Sanderson, which means a lot of long books, but I’m excited for it!

Thanks for reading, you guys, and I’ll see you soon with another post (on time this time, hopefully)!

-Ariel