Magical Readathon Wrap Up 2

So my Magical Readathon leaked into January a bit but this is how it finished.

My fourth week I received one prompt: to read a book with an author's surname that started with a "T', "M", or "R". I chose to read both volumes of manga of My Brother's Husband by Gengoroh Tagame. This manga is about a Japanese man who has a gay twin who moved to Canada and married a man. The twin died and the husband visits Japan to meet his brother-in-law and his niece. The adult brother-in-law is homophobic and very unaccepting but the girl has no preconceived notions and accepts him as a loving uncle that he is. She slowly brings her dad around and it is such a heart-warming story that I immediately felt the urge to pick up the second volume. I gave both volumes 5 stars.

The fifth and last week's prompt was to read a book with a sword on the cover. I chose to read the book Trail of Lightning by Rebecca Roanhorse. This was an urban fantasy story based on Native American folklore invoking gods and monsters. I really thought I would like it and I'm quite split. There is so much potential for interesting world-building and the characters could be very complex. But the ending became quite cliched, shoe-horning some romance in where it was unneeded, and trying to surprise us when we definitely had received enough clues to not really be surprised. The main character was a bad-ass female warrior in the beginning and became whiny and pathetic. In addition, the author would put the characters in tight spots, and then just create ways for them to get out without explaining the new powers or reasons they survived. There seemed to be a lot of plotholes and the author got very lazy in explaining why some characters survived when they really shouldn't have. Overall, I gave it 3 stars because they were so much potential. I will read the next book but if it doesn't improve, I will drop the series.

Overall, this was a fun additional to the Magical Readathon series. I do however like planning my readathons out ahead of time and am looking forward to the O.W.L.s in April when I will be able to do that.