Books read and finished in May 2026
–The Deaths of Tao by Wesley Chu started April 27, 2026 and finished May 1, 2026- 4/5 stars. This book has a misleading plot summary. There is hardly any mention of either faction that they are going to leave earth. The Genjix have been building towards reproduction of their own kind which they succeed at. Should have put that as part of the plot summary. You know, it’s interesting, from how the first book ends I would have thought that Jill and Roen would not be together. It seems like in the years between the first and second book, they got together, Roen got her pregnant, they got married, Roen left for a special mission Tao ordered, and then they had a falling out. Personally I think if you were conscripted into fighting an alien war you should not start a family. After all, Jill is not with her son. He is being raised by her parents. They are separated in this book but it’s clear that they still care for each other. Also, quite interesting that Jill is a political figure now. I guess that was part of her mission as a host. This book was still quite interesting to read. I still enjoyed it. We get three stories to follow. Jill, Roen, and Enzo. Enzo is part of the Genjix who is essentially made from eugenics. He thinks highly of himself and such. Made to be the perfect specimen after all. Very determined to prove himself worthy and show how great he is. The most interesting part of this book was the ending. Even though I didn’t really like Roen all that much, the fact that he dies is kind of depressing. What was weird is that then Tao goes into his son, Cameron. That’s not going to help things. I need to read the third book. I just have to find it at a library somewhere. It’s stupid to just buy the third book of a trilogy. The fact that it's called The Rebirths of Tao makes me think that Roen gets revived or something.Â
–Spread Me by Sarah Bailey started May 1, 2026 and finished May 2, 2026- 4/5 stars. You know based on the author's blurbs on this book I thought this book would be more horny and depraved. Sometimes you got to read books that make you question the author’s sanity. Like I did with Sister, Maiden, Monster. Anyway, I don’t want to kink/fetish shame Kinsey, the main character, but her fetish is certainly an interesting one. She gets off on viruses. I guess she signed up to be at this middle of nowhere outpost so she wouldn’t be tempted and people wouldn’t know. The story begins with her and her team pulling in a specimen found in the desert. It is revealed to be a lichen/virus and it’s horny for Kinsey and Kinsey is horny for it as well. One by one her team/friends gets taken over and die from the virus. It’s very horror movie like with the thing chasing her around at the end being like “Look look isn’t this what you want? I’m so horny for you and I know you are so horny for me!” Kinsey naturally being afraid and upset that her friends are dead fucking escapes into the desert. She comes back though because she is that into viruses. I guess she will spend her remaining time fucking the thing in the desert. What is she going to do about food? By the time the ending rolled around she hadn’t eaten in a while. Ah well she gets what she wants at the end. Shame about her team/friends. They were cool people.Â
–Greenteeth by Molly O’Niel started May 3, 2026 and finished May 5, 2026- 4/5 stars. Reading stories about the fae is always quite fascinating. They exist on a different level and it’s just fascinating. This book may have started like Motheater but it was definitely not the same. It was mostly a found family fetch quest book. Jenny, Temperance (the witch she rescued), and a goblin named Brackus spend most of the book trying to find certain objects that could be made into a weapon to defeat the antagonist. After it initially doesn’t go the way they planned this book dives into the king arthur mythology which is quite interesting. Usually you choose one or the other. This book was cozy most of the time but there were a moment or two in which I thought “Wow that's brutal.” Everything works at the end and the antagonist is cast out of the town. And I guess Temperance reunites with her husband at the end as she has more children when she is meeting up with Jenny. Overall pretty decent read.Â
–Infomocracy by Malka Older started May 6, 2026 and finished May 8, 2026- 3.5/5 stars. So it took me a bit to get used to reading this book and understand what was going on. That’s okay. Sometimes you read books like that. Anyway, this book was decent. I like the futuristic world and it’s technology. The characters were well rounded and all that. I just didn’t care for the plot that much? I didn’t know this book would just have the plot of this special election and it was just election talk over and over again. This micro-democracy thing they have going on is quite fascinating to read about. One of the parties is trying to manipulate things their way is a plot point. There is an earthquake in Tokyo and its interesting how all the parties try and help their constituents. Two of the main characters hook up. That doesn’t seem wise to do when they there is so much to do with this election cycle. At some point Mishima gets suspicious of Ken and she just stabs him with her stiletto and somehow Ken is still into her at the end? Weird stuff. Anyway, I won’t be reading further as I am not interested and the local libraries don’t seem to have the other two books. Â
–The River Had Roots by Amal El-Mohta started May 8, 2026 and finished May 9, 2026- 4/5 stars. This book was less than a hundred pages long. It was quite short and sweet. I like the world in which it takes place. I kind of wish this book was longer but I don’t know what more could have been added. Two sisters who sing to their willows which in itself magic. They share a bond. One of the sisters is into a fae named Rin. Rin is pretty damn cool. There is also this white rich guy who wants to marry one of the sisters and when she refuses him and chooses Rin, he drowns her in a river. Nobody is more scorned than a rich white man who gets denied the woman he wants. The sister who is drowned is essentially dead in the land of humans but on the fae side she still lives. She has to make a choice on which side to be on. This is a story of sisterhood. She saves her sister from being wedded to that awful man who drowned her. It’s sweet how this is done. I liked this story quite a bit. I wonder if there are other Amal El-Mohta books out there I can read besides the time war book which I have already read.Â
–-Cold Eternity by S.A Barnes started May 11, 2026 and finished May 13, 2026- 4/5 stars. Horror elements in science fiction is something I’m realizing I really like. The main character is desperate to escape her life after a messy political scandal and people are after her so she gets a “job” on a ship that is essentially carrying people in cryogenic status. Right away she figures out that something is amiss about this ship. She is seeing things that shouldn’t be there but they are really there. You know I feel like it’s only the audacity of a rich white man to want to have immortality and would be willing to sell his body off to an alien creature to get that. Only for that alien creature to force you eat people to stay alive. It’s a good thing for the ship is full of essentially dead people. And desperate people like the main character to feast upon. The guy who “hired” her knew the entire time what was happening and also has that white man audacity to want to live a long time and wants to be the next host of the alien body. Karma comes for him as that doesn’t happen. The main character has interesting interactions with the AI bodies of the rich white man’s children. It’s pretty entertaining that when she does send out a call for the people hunting her to get her they come by and the main character is like “Oh thank god you’re here. We got to go! There’s a monster eating people here!” And the other people are like “What the fuck are you talking about? You obviously have been here too long. This seems like the perfect place to store drugs.” She responds with “Did you not hear me? There’s a fucking monster out there!” Things only get going again because the monster does reveal himself. I feel bad for the main character. She gets screwed in the political scandal, she gets beat up, she escapes to this ship, and she starts being hunted by monster while also being lied to about this happening, and then when she does escape the ship she has to answer the questions about what the fuck happened to all those people who died and she ends up going to jail for a few months because of the political scandal. It sucks but at least she’s not on the ship at the end of the book.Â
–Magic for Liars by Sarah Gailey started May 14, 2026 and finished May 16, 2026- 4/5 stars. A murder mystery in a magical school is pretty good set up for a book. I like that the magical school is described as being just like a normal high school. The main character is not magical. Her twin sister is but Ivy is not. So it’s quite interesting that she is called upon to investigate the murder at the magical school her twin sister teaches at. The suspects are all quite intriguing to read about. Ivy’s methods of investigating are entertaining. I just wish she didn’t drink so much. I mean I get it. Watching your mom slowly die of cancer is fucking awful. I know this from experience. I like that the book answers the question of whether or not magic could have saved her and the answer is pretty much no. It would be incredibly hard and she was too far gone. Both sisters are obviously torn up about their mom dying of cancer. Ivy had to see it. Ivy watched and wondered whether her mom could have been saved by her sister. Tabitha had the drive to fix her mom. She was young when her mother was dying and her dad reached out to her for treatment but it couldn’t be done. This seriously messed up both sisters. The fact that this is tied to the “murder” mystery is quite well done. The person murdered wasn’t murdered at all. It turns out trying to drive cancer out of the body with magic is truly fucking hard. It takes a long time and it has to be precise. Three days of surgery with no sleep can be a killer. Something I didn’t like about this book is that is just sort of ends? I wish there was more to the story. I feel like this could be a good series but who knows. I like the idea of a nonmagical private investigator investigating magical crimes.Â
–The Annual Migration of Clouds by Premee Mohamed started May 16, 2026 and finished May 17, 2026- 3.3/5 stars. This book was less than 200 hundred pages which was just fine with me. The most interesting part about books that has a post apocalyptic world or a world more ravaged by climate change is how and where the people live. There is also something called Cad that is a mind altering fungus that is affecting the people of this world including the main character. I wish it was more though. It sounds like an interesting fungus. In it’s interest in keeping the body alive it will lock people in place and prevent them from doing stupid things. It does this several times to the main character. But I wish there was more to this fungus like people can talk to it and such. Anyway, there isn’t much to this story. The main character is obviously a teenager like 17-19 because she is accepted into this college in a different place and she spends most of the book being like “I want to go so badly but how can I leave everyone here! Including my mom who also has Cad!” That got old at some point.Â
-The Elsewhere Express by Samantha Sotto Yambao started May 17, 2026 and finished May 22, 2026 - 4/5 stars. This book has a really cool premise. Being on a train where you have to let go of your emotional baggage and face your traumas is pretty damn cool. I was just constantly reminded of the tv show Infinity Train. Man that was such a good show. Anyway, we follow Raya and Q who both have quite interesting backstories. Raya was clearly born to be spare parts for her older brother Jace who had medical problems. She felt incredibly useless after he died which is quite something. You should not have another child if you already have a first child that has medical problems. That’s a weird and harmful dynamic. Makes it seem like you only had the second child for the first one. There isn’t love, its dependance. Raya and Q are on this train which is pretty interesting. They go from place to place hunting down the stowaway which got kind of old. It felt meandering at times and just sort of aimless. The story picks up however when we are told just how many times Raya and Q have gotten on this train. This trauma time doesn’t exist in linear time. I guess many different versions of people can get on at different times in their lives. Raya’s emotional baggage about her brother causes a lot of problems. It’s quite interesting what will work and what doesn’t work each time around. This train needs to run better if it takes little things to completely destroy it. Overall this book was cool but I think I liked Watermoon better as I liked the world more. I just couldn’t help but think of Infinity Train.Â
-Yesterday by Felicia Yap started May 23, 2026 and finished May 24, 2026- 4/5 stars. Ooof what a book. I sense that Felicia Yap is perhaps writing from experience? Anyway, speculative fiction is quite a genre to read because almost every time it’s like “Wow what a fucked up world. I can see this happening in our world.” The world is divided into two classes: Monos and Duos. Most people can only remember yesterday and some can remember two days. I don’t know how anything gets done in this world if people have limited memory. I mean sure they can write in their diaries all they want but at the end of the day people still have limited memories. And also it doesn’t matter if people are going to write lies in their diaries. There’s nothing stopping them from doing this. It reminds me of another book I read that had a similar concept I think. Can’t think of it right now but yeah. It seems like having relationships and having children would be fucking frightening in this world. You wake up and realize you are pregnant. It’s fucked. Like 50 First Dates fucked. Although limited memory only comes after a certain age. It seems like children have decent memories? It’s so weird to think about. Anyway, there is murder mystery in this book. We follow four characters. Right away you know that Mark is a piece of shit. I don’t know how he and Claire are still together after 20 years. Usually couples break up after their child dies. Claire should have divorced her piece of shit husband like she said she was going to. Somewhat realistic ending with him in jail only for him to probably to get out early and still have his writing career. I am just glad that Sophia/Anna survived and got the revenge she wanted. It sounded like she went through a lot of effort to put it together. Well, at least she has money to spend at the end.Â
–The Rebirths of Tao by Wesley Chu started May 27, 2026 and finished May 31, 2026- 5/5 stars. The war continues on I guess. The war between the two alien factions has been going for thousands of years so I don’t know why I thought it would have some kind of ending at the end of this trilogy. Anyway, the entire beginning of the book I was thinking “How the hell did Roen survive? He flatlined at the end of the second book and Tao went into Cameron!” I guess he was revived or something at a hospital. It didn’t go into too much detail or it did in those sections at the beginning of the chapter. I don’t usually read those. Perhaps I should have. Quite interesting that in the eleven years that has passed, Roen and Jill raised their son, Cameron. I like the dynamic between them all. I like that Cameron sees Tao as a parent too. Its cute. I love how much they all love each other. Roen is not afraid to show his emotions which I do like. He’s finally not an annoying protagonist. Cameron is just as interesting as his father. He’s clearly a teenager. It’s kind of funny the way Tao has to deal with a teen going through puberty. A teen who sees another teenager like him and immediately gets a crush on her. These books sure have misleading plot summaries. The scientist, Rin, is barely in the book and she doesn’t do much. Also, they are not leaving earth. They are actually remaking it to suit their needs which makes more sense. It’s quite interesting to read how Enzo has progressed. Those chapters feel like they aren’t needed but whatever. At the end of the day, Enzo is too ambitious and full of himself and his body is no longer suitable for a quasing at the book. It seems like each book ended with Roen fightiing Jacob with this one Cameron doing so as well. I wonder what would have happened if Chivya went into Roen. I’m glad Jill, Roen, and Cameron all survive to continue to fight on. It feels like a series that could continue on. I got this book as an interlibrary loan while I was reading another book.