We Have Always Lived In The Castle, by Shirley Jackson

I went in expecting a darker story. Merricat had this almost satirical tone to her that didn't expand to the rest of the family - once I realized they weren't mocking their stories, but rather trying very hard to make some sense of it, the tone of the book shifted in my mind.

It has a lot of things I liked. Merricat weirdness, the uncle's humorous scenes, the discovery of what happened to their family. But it hit me that it wasn't a scary story, or a ghost story.

Actually, it very much was a ghost story! But not the way I thought of it initially. I felt a bit disappointed and intrigued by this idea. I gave it a three because of my uncertainty about it.

Date read: 2026-01-15

The Wandering Inn, by pirateaba

This is a web series with isekai tones (as in, someone from our world is transported into a new fantasy world), where the Innverse has levels, skills and functions somewhat like a fantasy world or rpg game. Normally I hate those types of stories because they tend to be about becoming overpowered or about just accumulating skills or anything like that.

The Wandering Inn (at the moment) has not become this. It is both an epic spanning different characters, continents and different races of people, and a slice-of-life series. I enjoy a lot the slice-of-life elements of it, the way the world reacts to the characters and the characters react to the world is something I never seen before.

The fact that it has a cast bigger than A Song of Ice and Fire and I still remember them - while the author does not use tags for their characters! (tags being the "- Person 1 said") - it's honestly amazing.

The series is looong long. It currently has more than 10 million words, 9 volumes (divided currently into 18 books). This makes it very hard to recommend, especially because the beginning is rough, even with the rewrite. But is worth it if you enjoy immersive world-building and character-driven stories.

Date read: 2025-11-19 (Book 6: The General of Izril)