This month is marching on at a solid pace. I’m beginning to feel hints of spring in the air. I suspect that soon I’ll be getting more of my reading done outdoors. I got a fair bit done this week. First off, I finished off the one I’d started last week. I then read through the first Fae Isles book leading up to the release of the 4th and final installment on the 31st. After that, I completed my first non-fiction book of 2025! Here’s the full recap.

1. Black Maria – Christine Boyer

CW: Child Death, Blood, SA, Drug Abuse, Heavy Drinking, Infidelity

I ended up getting into this one much more than I usually do with this subgenre. As I said last week, I don’t read many police procedural mysteries. I prefer my mysteries to focus on the action or character arcs and less on the tedious legwork and workplace politics. While one title won’t change my opinion of a whole subgenre, I will likely now be more open to it going forward. Even when the elements I’m less fond of did show up, Boyer found a way to make them fun. For example, office politics didn’t frustratingly slow the pacing as I tend to expect. It increased the tension and added new twists and challenges.

Additionally, I was pleasantly surprised by the strong female characters present. During the first few chapters, the characters we meet that have any notable degree of influence over the story are entirely men. The setting is largely within a police department in the early 70s, so the cast was realistic, but homogenous at first. Too many similar voices makes reading through a story a slog very easily, but thankfully that’s not what happened here. As it went on and the investigators on the case dig deeper, new characters come to the forefront and brought that variety that I crave.

While cop mysteries will probably never be my first choice overall, I’ll definitely be looking for more titles from Christine Boyer in the future. She’s got a great voice, creates full and interesting characters, and her banter is fantastic. Black Maria is her first novel and was just released in October of last year, so it might be a while until I get another full book to sink my teeth into. Luckily, she has a number of short stories and other shorter works available on her website to help sate my appetite.

2. Court of Blood and Bindings – Lisette Marshall

CW: Blood, Graphic Depictions of Violence & Injuries, Torture, SA, Child Abuse, Sexual Content, War, Slut-Shaming, Abandonment

Court of Blood and Bindings is the first book in the Fae Isles series by Lisette Marshall. The author gifted me books 1-4 of the series, and I’m excited to get to all four of them before March 31st to celebrate the release of the digital box set! In addition to these four books, there are another three titles that are “spinoffs” that are set in the same world. I’m already beginning to suspect I might have to grab those too. I’m invested in the story, the characters I’ve met, and this world as a whole.

I know that I’ve been saying this a lot lately, but it’s only because I’m on a hot streak: this is another book with a thoroughly intriguing magic system. Although Brandon Sanderson has been sitting in my physical TBR pile for a little while now, this is actually the first fiction I’ve read that uses color magic. I knew it was going to be fun. This first book’s narrative arc focuses primarily on the protagonist Emelin learning to use her magic, so the reader gets a deep dive into its workings.

The characters are just as fun. The villain of the story has a fascinating origin. One of my favorite archetypes makes an appearance, which is the adult or immortal mind in a child’s body. Where some fantasy novels with female leads will give them random niche skills at just the right moment without explanation, Emelin’s skills always make sense with her backstory. Her skillset is certainly eclectic, but there’s always solid reasoning for how she developed it that way. Most of all, I loved the nonverbal representation. The male lead is unable to speak and communicates with Emelin via sign language.

I would have liked to see a greater variety of natural skin tones, but I’m hoping that will come in subsequent books. From online discourse, I know that they’ll take a sapphic turn, which I always appreciate. I think I know which characters too, and I hope I’m right. Lisette Marshall did a phenomenal job of building up the tension and yearning between two characters in a forced proximity setting. The ship I’m thinking of consists of two characters separated by seemingly insurmountable circumstances as well as distance. I’ll be getting to the second book in the series next week!

3. The Myth of Progress – Tom Wessels

CW: Climate Change, Famine, Late-Stage Capitalism, Environmental Collapse

This is my first nonfiction book of the year. That was a shock for me to realize considering we’re already in March. I must be craving some extra escapism with the whole state of the world. However, keeping my head in the sand doesn’t help much besides my emotional regulation. This title was a great one for getting back into the swing of also reading about reality.

It’s an older title. Its publication was almost twenty years ago. Through the introduction, there were a couple of very dated references. It that made me worry that the whole book had become obsolete. Fortunately, that was far from the case. While the problems that it outlines have intensified in the past two decades, it only makes the book’s contents more true. The threats that our world is facing have grown larger and nearer, are expertly detailed here. Wessels makes the information accessible in a way that feels actionable. I finished this book very aware of impending danger, but also inspired to deal with it.

If you’re looking to get a better handle on your understanding of the complex systems of ecology, of the economy, and how they interact, this is the title I would recommend. It’s a quick read that’s easy to start with. There are other titles out there that will dive a lot deeper. This text even cites many of them, and it provides an excellent foundation to build and expand from.

Marching On Another Week

So far, March has been great, and I expect it’ll keep marching on that way. I’ll be getting to three more books from the Fae Isles series, starting with Book 2 next week. I’m also planning on reading more nonfiction in the coming weeks, and I’ll hopefully get a chance to highlight some banned or challenged books as well. I recently got to read a passage from Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye for a news segment with Worcester Magazine. A big shout out to Worcester Public Library (and all libraries) for making it possible. Remember to support your local libraries and independent bookstores! If you’re in or near Massachusetts, I’ve got a whole video playlist of options for you!

Keep an eye out on my YouTube channel or the main updates page here to follow along on all our bookish adventures. My reading recaps go out on Mondays and our bookstore adventures go out on Thursdays. As always, I want to hear from you! What have you been reading lately? Are you having fun with it? Have you read any of these titles, and if so, what did you think of them? Tell me everything, and follow along for more!