The month of March didn’t yield as much time to read as some of the last few month including the end of 2016. I had hoped to add a couple more books to last month’s list of books read, but I’m still pleased to be on track to make this year’s reading challenge. The more important thing for last month is that I enjoyed the books that I did manage to finish.

In march I found two new fantasy series that I’ve grown to like and plan to continue reading throughout the rest of the year. Just out random luck I found the entire first collection of the Silverleaf Chronicles for free and really enjoyed The Storymaster and plan to read the next book or two this month. I’ll write more about this later on in a separate post this week if possible. The second series that I picked up by Craig Halloran, The Chronicles of Dragon, is a bit more serious in scope just by its shear size. Over March I was able to read the second book and have really grown to like the main characters. I would definitely recommend it to any serious fantasy lover that is totally into dragons after making my way through Dragon Bones and Tombstones. I plan to read the third book this month should time allow for it.

On the more sci-fi side of things I’m sure you probably noticed it largely got dominated by a single author. I have no shame in saying that I’ve very much enjoyed all of the short stories by G. S. Jennsen over the past couple of month. Over March I finished the last of them and eventually plan to read her actual novels. I read through Venatoris at the beginning of March and was able to add Re/Genesis right at the very end. Both of which I enjoyed for totally differing reasons. I will add a caveat here with Re/Genesis and you can take it how you like since it’s really up to you of where to place its reading order. It really works more as a prequel to one of the books later in the Aurora Rhapsody series. No matter when you do chose to read it if you do so makes little difference unless you are a sucker for reading order. Honestly, though the story can stand on its own as just a taste of the vaster universe Jennsen has created for us that like the space operas.

On the other spectrum I also finished a book I have yet to post about here. Some of you may be familiar with the games of the Mass Effect franchise. You wonder what the hell that has to do with books? With each game release EA releases a novel either just prior or just after. I read the first of four tie-in novels, Mass Effect: Revelation, by Drew Karpyshyn. It was great, but that might be directly due to the fact I own ME2 and ME3. I also read three books by Karpyshyn last year from the Starwars universe (the Darth Bane trilogy) to be exact. So familiarity to both content and author may have contributed to that. Even if you aren’t familiar with the tie-in novels for the Mass Effect universe or never got into the games it really doesn’t matter that much. Revelation was a fun sci-fi space military book that was easy to pick up and just read even though I was more familiar with the events after it.

In my quest to add in more books that I wouldn’t normally read I found myself reading and enjoying a new author P.J. Day. The Last Rhino was a nice easy read, but it took me some time to fully see how to explain my thoughts on it. While the Rhino was the thing that tied everything together story wise it was more about how the animal connected all the human characters together in a rather brilliant way. Thus, I concluded it was more about human connections and human nature that shapes our world and our views of it. If you are looking for a short story that it really different I would give The Last Rhino a fair shot.

I would say March was still a good month of reading and exploring new authors with the exception of Drew Karpyshyn. I found some other things to eventually write about during last month that just haven’t made their way to a page. I did mention in a recent post I hope to add some non-book content that still relates to reading. That is still a work in progress if you will, but I hope to be more active in posting things beyond simple book updates as I finish them. In the mean time I do genuinely hope you enjoy reading those as they come out.