March 2026 Reading Recap
I managed to get more reading done in March than I had anticipated. Especially as I spent the bulk of my month watching One Piece. I’m still only in the first season, but I am enjoying how silly it is. Anyways, on with the book reviews.
The Eye of the Bedlam Bride by Matt Dinniman
The sixth installment of the now world famous Dungeon Crawler Carl Series sat on my nightstand partially read for months. That has nothing to do with the book, it’s an ADHD thing on my end. I had spent the previous few months reading nothing but DCC and I was a bit burned out on it. Yet, when I finally picked it up again I could hardly put it down. I’m staring at book seven on my shelf as I write this and I am highly tempted to go pick it up.
Carl and Princess Donut find themselves in Cuba with a new dungeon twist to deal with, a Magic the Gathering-esque card game they have to play when fighting monsters or other crawlers. This was a fun read. The stakes are getting higher the deeper into the dungeon the Princess Posse goes. They are having to make hard decisions on who their friends truly are, or if they only have each other.
If you have not read DCC, I can’t recommend this Lit-RPG enough. It is just fun to read.
Crusader by Ben Kane
Book two of Ben Kane’s Lionheart series follows Richard the Lionheart as he sets out on a crusade to Jerusalem. I love a good medieval setting for a historical fiction book. This is the first series by Ben Kane I have read, but he is now up there with the historical fiction greats like Bernard Cornwell and Christian Cameron.
Book 3, King, is in my TBR and I hope to get to it soon. Based on my knowledge of English history I am sure it will end with Richard’s death, and lead into the mess that was King John’s reign. But we did get the Magna Carta out of it, so I guess it wasn’t all bad.
I actually saw an original Magna Carta on a trip to Washington DC last year in the National Archives. Very cool, and a bit humbling, to see such an important document of human history like that on display. But I digress.
Show Your Work! By Austin Kleon
This is a quick little book on putting yourself out there as a maker of things. I read it from a writing perspective, but I think the advice applies to all creative efforts. I read the e-book, but I want to get my hands on a physical copy as the illustrations are quite engaging.
Daughter of Crows by Mark Lawrence
This is the start of the latest grimdark trilogy by Mark Lawrence. I was granted an advanced reader’s copy of this book through NetGalley. You can read my full review here, but in short it was pretty decent. Great magic system, memorable characters, and lots of death.
The story follows the elderly Rue as she tries to live out the remainder of her days peacefully in a rural village. Unfortunately, her past as a Kindness, a type of necromancy-wielding assassin, comes back to cause her all kinds of problems that her old bones are not as capable of handling as they once were.
The Crossroads by C.J. Box
I have mentioned before how much I enjoy a Joe Pickett novel. I have read all 26 books in this series. Joe Pickett is a game warden in Twelve Sleep County, Wyoming. He’s a bit of a Dudley Do-Right in the early books, but that’s what I love about him.
The latest entry, The Crossroads, finds Joe Pickett with a bullet wound to the head. Stuck in the hospital on life support, his three daughters and his wife Marybeth set out to discover who ambushed Joe in the wilderness.
You can get all these books and more at your local public library, but if you're the type that has to own the book, please consider picking it up through my bookshop.org page. I’ll get a small commission at no extra cost to you. You get a book, and you get the happy feelings that come with supporting small business.
Thanks for reading!