Musing Mondays - Lords of the Underworld & reading while sick

Musing Monday, May 1, 2017

Musing Mondays is a weekly meme that asks you to choose one of the following prompts to answer:

• I’m currently reading…

• Up next I think I’ll read…

• I bought the following book(s) in the past week…

• I’m super excited to tell you about (book/author/bookish-news)…

• I’m really upset by (book/author/bookish-news)…

• I can’t wait to get a copy of…

• I wish I could read ___, but…

• I blogged about ____ this past week…

I’m currently reading…

The Darkest Torment (Lords of the Underworld #12)
by Gena Showalter

I've been waiting to get my hands on this since it was first announced in 2015. So why am I only getting to it now? Well first, I had to wait for it to get released in paperback which took absolute ages after it was first released. And then I made the mistake of reading the blurb on Goodreads and became very unsure because of the female protagonist.

See, I've been daydreaming up my own story for Baden since I first read the fourth book, The Darkest Whisper back in 2013. My story that I'd written in my head was massive and super involved and evolved with each subsequent book I read in the series. In other words I had a mental fanfic going, that maybe I will actually commit to writing one day haha. Needless to say - I like the story I had in mind for Baden and I was now a little wary of seeing his actually story after having built my own up so much. Oh the life of a fangirl haha. But I did finally buy the book at some point, and then for the last couple of weeks it's just been calling to me from the shelves to finally read it. I had to wait until I'd worked my way through The Gunseller though so I wouldn't feel guilty about setting it aside a second time. I did finish it on the weekend, so then I immediately picked up Darkest Torment.

I'm up to page 152 as of this morning. Here's the summary:

Can Beauty tame her Beast? 

Driven to his death by the demon of Distrust, Baden spent centuries in purgatory. Now he's back, but at what cost? Bound to the king of the underworld, an even darker force, he's unable to withstand the touch of another and he's quickly devolving into a heartless assassin with an uncontrollable temper. Things only get worse when a mission goes awry and he finds himself saddled with a bride just not his own.

Famed dog trainer Katarina Joelle is forced to marry a monster to protect her loved ones. When she's taken hostage by the ruthless, beautiful Baden immediately after the ceremony, she's plunged into a war between two evilswith a protector more dangerous than the monsters he hunts. They are meant to be enemies, but neither can resist the passion burning between them and all too soon the biggest threat is to her heart.

But as Baden slips deeper into the abyss, she'll have to teach him to love or lose him forever.-- via Goodreads

So far, I am still not 100% sold on Katarina as Baden's love interest but she is growing on me a little. I still absolutely adore Baden though, and not just because he's a redhead even though redheads are totally my weakness. He's probably the most complex and even most sympathetic of Showalter's Lords, which is saying something because they have ALL been complex and sympathetic so far.

        THIS WEEK’S RANDOM QUESTION: Do you like to read when you are feeling under the weather?

 I was just sick in mid April there. Super-duper sick. Like off work for a a week, drag myself into the doctor to get meds, couldn't breathe properly, actually went back to bed in the mornings sick. I got hit very, very hard with a nasty sinus infection. It made my nose become about 99% non-functional for a week, and it took about 2 weeks before the pressure finally cleared from my ears. During this time I was trying to read The Gunseller because I had it on loan from the library, but I found it near next to impossible to concentrate on reading due to my lack of being able to breathe properly. I wanted very much to be reading though because reading does help me feel better. That was why I ended up picking up Stardust finally/ I love to read while I'm sick but when I'm as ill as I was a few weeks ago what helps is reading something where I don't have to focus/think as much/hard. Stardust fit the bill because it's short, simple, and I was already familiar with the story because Angie and I watched the film together during one of my previous visits. What I mostly did during those sick days though was plow my way through 5 out of 6 seasons of Star Wars Clone Wars on Netflix.