When the Moon Hatched
I had the unexpected pleasure of puking out my butt and face this week. And while that sounds magical and I’m sure you’re all clamoring to experience the wonders of norovirus, I’d suggest that you just… um… not.
Also, to answer the questions that you’re all asking in you mind... No. I wasn’t even on a cruise ship. Just in my house. A place without a buffet, but which does house a dirty teenager who likes to grow black mold in all of my favorite insulated cups.
The good news is not that I have a 15 year old mold farmer in my house. The good news is that I had a stack of actual paper books to keep me company during my convalescence. So, I picked the biggest and baddest of my paperbacks to keep me company between dashes to the toilet.
When the Moon Hatched by Sarah A. Parker is a gigantic book. It’s fantasy, so “gigantic” is kind of expected. In general, I like a girth-y book. It was also much hyped by booktok romantasy influencers who recommend the same books that I recommend.
(This is what I have to resort to when Kristina hasn’t read the book already. Le sigh.)
Here’s what I’m going to tell you about this book.
I would absolutely read When the Moon Hatched again. But it’d have to be a paper or e-book. It’d take me until 2052 to listen to something this long.
I would not read it now. I’d read it much closer to book two's release date. (October 2025.)
The author introduces an interesting elemental magic-based power structure that I enjoyed muchly.
There are dragons.
Some of these dragons are dead… and in the sky… and stone… and occasionally fall out of the sky, causing the decimation of people and desert landscapes.
Sometimes, these dead dragons fall out of the sky and become marketplaces and/or Sarah Parker’s version of a dystopian condominium tower.
It was hard for me to resist yelling “KKKKKAAAAHHHHNNNNN” the first time I read the main male character’s name. (It’s Kaan, but come on. Anyone who has worked in tech and knows even on Trekkie knows what I’m talking about.)
It’s another “female assassin who wants to punish those in power” book, which I’m frankly okay with as long as the female in question is snarky. (Raeve is.)
A crew emerges, albeit a bit late in the story for me. I’m getting bat boy vibes and already love the wastrel friend and badass warrior sister, so it bodes well for witty banter in book two.
It’s not YA. There is graphic sex, but not ACOSF levels of banging.
Honestly, I found it hotter that the main male character made the protagonist assassin lady soup from veggies he grew in a garden twice. Two separate times. Be still my beating heart.
My main complaint is not the length of the book. It’s that very little is resolved at the end of book one. There are some very satisfying murders, but in the last 20%, more storylines were being opened and characters being introduced than resolution. These storylines seem interesting to me, so I’d recommend it to folks for their fall travel, knowing that once they finish, the second book will be there waiting for them.
From what I can tell, this will be a duology and none of us will be punished for years waiting for the next book. Fingers crossed that I’m right.
As a side note, I’ve decided that this year I will keep an Amazon wishlist called “Books that Krissy read in 2025 and would recommend to people she likes.”
You can find the link here for that moment when you need to pick up something dark-magic-sexy with murders (and most likely dragons).
What’s next on my reading and review lists?
I just finished listening to Cassandra Clara’s Lady Midnight: The Dark Artifaces Book 1 while walking my doggies earlier this week. Today, I was finally able to leave my house again, so I dialed up book two in that series (Lord of Shadows: The Dark Artifices Book 2) for today’s doggie saunter. I’ll write about Lady Midnight soon.
At the Cearley cabin over the winter break, I devoured three books: Rachel Gillig’s duology One Dark Window and Two Twisted Crowns and Emily Henry’s, Funny Story, shortly as well.
In non-fiction, I’m wrapping up a book that my good friend Daniel gifted me for my birthday during the summer, and which I read a few pages of every night after romantasy but before bedtime called The Future is Analog: How to Create a More Human World. David Sax does a great job of explaining why I felt so fucking burnt out after a day of back-to-back Zoom calls and why being with real people is fantastic.
Last night, I picked up the last book in The Beautiful Quartet by Renee Ahdieh, The Ruined. I’m 88 pages in. It’s moving fast and I’m reminded of how much I like the world she built.
I put down Jennifer Armentrout’s The War of Two Queens. Fucking bored me to tears and I see that there are like a million more books in the series. I don’t understand what made me like the first three books with the way the first 100 pages went. I hate the male protagonist’s name. :/
I forgot that I was reading book three of The Atlas Complex, The Atlas Paradox, and turned my Kindle wifi back on, returning the book to the library before I could finish it. Rookie move. I’m back on the waiting list again.
And because I’m having night sweats on the regular, I picked up The New Menopause, which I’ve barely started and have been told that it’s probably going to be all about how I need to GO ON MEDS NOW. (I picked up the book not knowing that the author has a social media account that’s devoted to getting people on hormone replacement therapy, which I don’t know is a good or bad thing.)
