November 2025 Wrap Up

November is over. December is here. It is time to talk about what I read in November.

Cat + Gamer, Vol. 8 by Wataru Nadatani - I had no idea this was the last volume in this series. The story went way off the rails near the end of the book and I was really confused. Then I found out it's the last one and it all made sense. This series is so cute. These cats are drawn so well.

Empire of the Dawn by Jay Kristoff - Just wow. I was reading this 800 page brick and really enjoying myself. For half the book, one of the main characters thinks one of the other main characters is dead. She died at the end of the second book. But since she is the direct descendant of The Redeemer, she rose again after 3 days. The whole trilogy is told man who is imprisoned in a tower room in the castle of the Empress. The Empress is a vampire. Everyone in her court is a vampire, except for the humans they keep around to feed from. Our main character Gabriel is half vampire. He requires some blood sometimes to stay functional, but usually he can smoke some dried blood substitute stuff to keep the hunger at bay. Anyway, he was captured by the Empress' forces and is being held until the other vampire clans can come to decide how he should die. See, Gabriel is a vampire hunter. He was raised in a monastery that trained warriors to kill vampires. Yes, he's half vampire. I know. It's complicated. The Empress' nephew has been tasked with interviewing Gabriel to get the whole story of how he ended up in this cell. That story takes up the whole trilogy of massive books. Oh, well, at some point his sister, Celine (who was human but was made into a whole vampire) is also captured and held in a dungeon with a flowing creek through it, since vampires can't cross running water and she is very, very dangerous. She tells quite a bit of the last two books because she was along for most of it, and she and Gabriel have a well-known hatred of each other. So, so, amazingly good.

The Island of Sea Women by Lisa See - This was the November Book Club book. I enjoyed it a bunch. It didn't go where you think it's going at the beginning, but See was not afraid to kill off her characters. Some of it was pretty brutal. The twist at the end that explains the whole reason for the main character's nasty attitude was nice. I didn't really see that coming, although maybe I should have. The story is told from Young-Seok's perspective. She has lived on the island of Jeju off the coast of Korea her whole life. She was once a renowned sea diver. Now she is too old. This island was very different from the rest of Korea because it was matriarchal. The men stayed home and cooked and cleaned and took care of the babies while the women went out into the ocean and dove for food and for things to sell for money. They did not have any diving equipment. They held their breath and dove deep. Young Sook was best friends with Mi-Ja until Mi-Ja was forced to marry a rich man's son and move into the city. They were still friends but Mi-Ja was growing more and more distant. Finally something really horrific happened that broke them apart for good. It was well-written and engaging.

Cat + Crazy, Vol. 1 by Wataru Nadatani - At the end of the Cat + Gamer last volume, there was an ad for this. Lo and behold, we had a copy of it in the library. Naturally I grabbed it. This one is very different. It's told from the perspective of a high school student in Japan whose schoolmate is obsessed with cats. They run into a magical being that is charged with protecting the street cats of the town. The schoolmate begins to train with him so he can also protect the kitties. He passes his first test. The narrator thinks they are both really weird. I have requested the second volume. We'll see if this one gets to carry on. I might not be interested in it for the long haul.

The Invention of Charlotte Bronte: A New Life by Graham Watson - At first I thought this was a biography of Charlotte Bronte that just focused on the last years of her life, after she had revealed her identity as Currer Bell. Her sisters were already gone. She decided to live in her identity. But then she died and we were only half way through the book. It turns out, the book is also about Elizabeth Gaskell and her quest to write the first authorized biography of Charlotte. It turned out to be a more intense quest than she expected. She put out an article with parts of the book and the publisher got sued because the put in print what everyone alreaady knew about the woman who ruined Branwell Bronte. She was a society woman and someone important's wife, so she had to redact all of that. Also, she was fighting against Charlotte's father and husband who didn't agree with her protrayal of them, which she got from letters written by Charlotte to her friends. The men didn't see themselves the way Charlotte had portrayed them. By the time Mrs. Gaskell was finished with her book, she was exhausted and left for an extended trip to Europe. She did write more books after this one, which were very well received, so she didn't kill her writing mood entirely, but no more biographies.

Brigands & Breadknives by Travis Baldree - This is the third book in the Legends and Lattes series. I listened to it on audiobook and it was read by the author, so you can be sure the names were pronounced correctly. This one follows Fern, a ratkin from the first of the books who owned a bookshop and cusses a lot. She turns up in Viv's (the main character from the first two books) new town and plans to open a bookshop nest door to Viv's coffee shop. Everything is going well, but Fern is not happy. It turns out her problem is not geography. It's her. Suddenly selling books isn't making her happy. One night she gets drunk with a local guy and tells him all her troubles. She feels guilty because Viv did so much to help her out. After he leaves, she wanders around town and lays down in the back of a cart in the street. When she wakes up, she is in the middle of nowhere with a legendary warrior elf who is transporting a goblin for a bounty. She carries on with the elf to the next town, with the intention of getting a ride back to Viv's town, but she just never manages to separate herself from the adventures she is having with the elf. And they are having adventures. It's a lot of fun and very funny. It's also full of heart and will speak to anyone having a bit of an existential crisis.

Queen of All Mayhem: The Blood-Soaked Life and Mysterious Death of Belle Starr, the Most Dangerous Woman in the West by Dane Huckelbridge - I have long been fascinated by Belle Starr without realizing she was from these parts. I thought she was in Arizona or California or somewhere. Nope. She was born in Southwest Missouri. During the Civil War, she helped Southern soldiers fight the Union army in and around the area. Her brother was brutally murdered by Union soldiers and she never really got over it. He taught her how to ride and how to shoot. She was going to use those skills. She may or may not have had a thing with Cole Younger, and her daughter may or may not have actually been his, but she was married to Jim Reed. He turned out to be a drunk and a terrible outlaw. And by terrible, I mean he was bad at it. He was involved in a shootout in Arkansas in broad daylight that involved some powerful families. He didn't live very long after that. By that time, Belle had two children. Eventually she married a Cherokee man named Sam Starr and they settled at Younger Bend and provided safe harbor for outlaws who had done some dastardly deed in a nearby state and were hiding in Indian country from the Feds. In the end, she was murdered in the middle of nowhere while headed home from a neighbor's house. No one knows who did it. Theories abound, but there is no evidence.

My Roommate From Hell by Cale Dietrich - I typically like Cale Dietrich's books, so I downloaded this audiobook. I enjoyed it quite a lot. I think I talked about this extensively in another post, but here's a summary. Owen is beginning his freshman year of college. When he moves into his dorm room, he finds out his roommate is Zarmenus, the Prince of Hell. Recently, Earth denizens found out that Hell is a real place, not just where bad people go when they die. In an effort to improve relations between the two worlds, Zarmenus is the first demon to attend college on Earth. And he chose Owen's school. At first he is a terrible roommate. And not just because he has a hellcat for a pet, and there is ghoul living in the bathroom that you can only see in the mirror. But also he never cleans up anything, he plays his video games very loudly, and he brings home boys and makes out with them on the bunk bed while Owen tries to sleep on the top bunk. Ew. Then, just when Owen had decided he was going to ask to switch rooms, Zarmenus's dad showed up (the King of Hell, no less) and reamed Z out for acting so scandalously when he was supposed to be representing demonkind and proving demons and humans can coexist. Z freaks out and tells his dad that he and Owen are dating and he is all done being wild. Owen is like, "Excuse me?" but he goes along with it. Now we have a fake dating situation which I love. They have to convince the world they are boyfriends. And, of course, along the way, they start to actually fall for each other. It's hilarious and sweet. The weird things that turn up in their room because Zarmenus attracts "dark things" are hysterical. I enjoyed it a lot.

Piranesi by Susannah Clarke - This was an interesting reading experience. Firstly, I honestly thought the critter on the cover was the main character/narrator. After finishing the book, I have no idea what that is. Oh wait. Maybe it's one of the statues in the palace/castle/house. Anyway, we start off following Piranesi around this massive house with hundreds of halls and statues. He is working on cataloging all the halls. Some of them have collapsed. Some have no roofs and the birds are roosting there. Whenever he needs something, the house provides it. He meets twice a week with the Other. A man who is a scientist who is trying to prove some thing or another and is using Piranesi's knowledge of the house to gather information for his experiments. Piranesi just calls him the Other. Piranesi knows that isn't his real name, but he can't remember it, so Piranesi it is. One day he runs across another person in the house. This sparks some changes. The Other tells him there is another person coming who wants to do him harm. He should stay away from any strangers he sees. Of course, he immediately runs into a stranger and cannot hide before she sees him. The Other says this person will make him go mad. Through this person's notes to him and his own logical thinking skills, he realizes that the house is not what he thought and the Other is not who he thought. What starts as a fantasy novel, turns into a psychological thriller in a hurry. I love Clarke's writing, and this was no exception. The sentences were beautiful, the imagery was beautiful, it was just great.

Finally, we have come to the end of the books I read in November. 9 books down thanks to audiobooks and manga. I'm currently 2 books behind schedule, but it's definitely better than it was.