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pandabear

I'm an aspiring writer who loves to read (pretty much any genre but fantasy is my favourite)

2275 points

0% overlap
Universe Quest: Lord of the Rings & Tolkien's Legendarium
Every Villain is a Hero
Cozy Fantasy
My Taste
The Poppy War (The Poppy War, #1)
The Starless Sea
A Drop of Corruption (Shadow of the Leviathan, #2)
Remember, Remember
Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil
Reading...
What Is the Name of This Book?
47%
Frankenstein
4%
The Raven Scholar (The Eternal Path, #1)
10%

pandabear wrote a review...

1h
  • Caraval (Caraval, #1)
    pandabear
    Feb 06, 2026
    3.0
    Enjoyment: 3.0Quality: 3.0Characters: 3.0Plot: 3.0
    🎪
    🌹
    🗒️

    I found this book enchanting but not particularly brilliant. The world itself was beautifully constructed, though the writing wasn’t my favourite, and the characters were pretty hit or miss. That said, I definitely want to read more so I will continue the series (but after reading A Curse For True Love I’m terrified the ending will be disappointing again).

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  • pandabear wrote a review...

    1h
  • Three Shattered Souls (The Broken Blades, #3)
    pandabear
    Feb 06, 2026
    5.0
    Enjoyment: 5.0Quality: 5.0Characters: 5.0Plot: 5.0
    🐉
    🌊
    🔥

    This series was wonderfully bittersweet. I wanted a happy ending because I loved the characters and I knew we were never going to get one because I understood the world, but this was satisfying, I think.

    There was so much more about the relics in this book, which I was glad about mostly because I was curious (and it would be weird not to expand on them at all), and while it was predictable what was going to happen, I wasn’t at all disappointed by it.

    My only problem is that I want more, and I know we won’t get it. And we shouldn’t - I think continuing would be a disservice to the story overall - but that doesn’t mean I don’t want it.

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  • pandabear made progress on...

    7h
    Three Shattered Souls (The Broken Blades, #3)

    Three Shattered Souls (The Broken Blades, #3)

    Mai Corland

    100%
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    pandabear commented on a post

    1d
  • The Starless Sea
    Thoughts from 21%

    So I've just got to interlude I and I'm listening via audible. The narrator seems to change and switch again after interlude I. Does it keep changing?

    I'm finding the storyline quite confusing due to it being fragmented. We've suddenly just come back to the pirate and the woman after all this time. We've been jumping back and forth from Zachary and then to parts about the acolytes, keepers etc(three paths? Hard to tell with the audiobook I think when we are switching from Zachary to whatever the other bits are)

    I dunno if I'm just struggling more because it's an audiobook and I've been listening in bits and pieces whenever I do housework. Does it get easier to follow?

    I don't dislike it thus far but I'm not really into it either because of my confusion!

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  • pandabear made progress on...

    1d
    Three Shattered Souls (The Broken Blades, #3)

    Three Shattered Souls (The Broken Blades, #3)

    Mai Corland

    53%
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    pandabear made progress on...

    1d
    Caraval (Caraval, #1)

    Caraval (Caraval, #1)

    Stephanie Garber

    100%
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    pandabear entered a giveaway...

    2d

    Adam Bassett giveaway

    Copper Skin, Oaken Lungs (Copper & Ash, #1)

    Copper Skin, Oaken Lungs (Copper & Ash, #1)

    Adam Bassett

    For a thousand years, The Old Town has stood as humanity’s last bastion against the maalkonis, malignant black mists that reduced the rest of the world to ash. They are kept at bay by rusty machines on the town’s walls. In order to survive, the dwindling population depends on one another. Since a young age, Justīne has embraced the harsh responsibilities that accompanied her apprenticeship on the last farm in existence. Her younger sister, Anna, is beginning her own apprenticeship as well. Learning engineering was not Anna's first choice, but the town's last mage fell to the maalkonis years prior, leaving nothing behind but confusing books and strange runes. When food runs low during a particularly harsh winter, distrust spreads like a plague, and Justīne is blamed for it. As hunger leads to violence, she and her siblings are forced to flee The Old Town, embarking on a perilous journey into the very mists that had formed their cage. Their fight to survive in the dark develops into a hopeful mystery as they follow the breadcrumbs of a mage’s efforts to save the world. Meanwhile something pursues them through the maalkonis…

    print10 copiesUS, UK, and Australia

    pandabear wrote a review...

    3d
  • The Hurricane Wars (The Hurricane Wars, #1)
    pandabear
    Feb 03, 2026
    2.5
    Enjoyment: 2.5Quality: 2.5Characters: 2.0Plot: 2.5

    Learning this book was originally a fanfic wasn’t surprising at all, because it absolutely read like one. Not that that’s inherently a bad thing, but I wasn’t a huge fan of the style. The characters felt less like real people and more like exaggerations of tropes which works for fanfic when the audience already know the characters, but in an original work I found it more than a little annoying.

    There was little character development throughout the book - at the end they were essentially the same people as at the beginning and that also annoyed me a bit.

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  • pandabear finished a book

    3d
    The Hurricane Wars (The Hurricane Wars, #1)

    The Hurricane Wars (The Hurricane Wars, #1)

    Thea Guanzon

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    pandabear TBR'd a book

    3d
    Aphrodite

    Aphrodite

    Phoenicia Rogerson

    0
    0
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    pandabear made progress on...

    4d
    Frankenstein

    Frankenstein

    Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

    4%
    2
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    pandabear made progress on...

    4d
    Three Shattered Souls (The Broken Blades, #3)

    Three Shattered Souls (The Broken Blades, #3)

    Mai Corland

    7%
    0
    0
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    pandabear commented on a post

    6d
  • The Poppy War (The Poppy War, #1)
    ………………….wow….

    Oh… my gosh…. Oh my gosh…. Um…. Okay. Cool….. that ended in such an interesting fashion.

    29
    comments 4
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