Reading Recap — March 2026

Ahh March.

The teasing seductress of months. 

Here’s some sun and spring weather. SIKE. Here’s some snow stupid. 

I am very much hoping (and knocking on this wooden desk) that winter is behind us. 

March was an interesting month of reading. I decided to try a few different authors that I never have before but I’ve heard a lot about. The results were mixed I’d say. Let’s talk about it.

As per usual, here are the books I read last month, ranked and mini-reviewed.

1 — The Player of Games by Iain M. Banks

The acclaimed Iain M. Banks is one of those sci-fi writers I’ve heard of for years and never picked up. He’s won countless awards, was named one of Britain’s best writers of the 1900s and on and on. I just never read him.

His Culture series is a long-running series of books taking place in a post-Earth humanity named the Culture. They are.. very different from how we live now. From what I understand, most of the Culture books have new characters in different predicaments around the universe. 

The Player of Games was the second book written in the Culture series in 1988. A few different Reddit posts recommended this one as a good place to start. So I did. 

The Culture provides food, housing and security for its citizens, which include both humans and machines, allowing citizens to focus on what they want to do most. Art, games, terraforming, etc.

The Player of Games follows one of the Culture’s best game players. He excels at all sorts of card and board games, researching and writing papers on them as he plays. (Think Chess and Poker, but futuristic!)

(Slight spoiler here!) Our main character is chosen to represent the Culture as a game player with a new civilization they’ve encountered. This civilization chooses its leaders based on how well they play a multi-step board game. 

Stuff happens. 

It was definitely an interesting read. The pacing is a little slow, but it’s similar to classic sci-fi as it lingers on the bigger questions its asking, and relies less on action. 

Writing is excellent. 

I’ll probably read another Culture book at some point. I’d be curious to read the more recent additions to see how his style has changed.

4/5

2 — The Primal Hunter by Zogarth

LitRPG is one of those genres I keep trying. I feel like I like 80% of it, but there’s 20% that drives me insane.

The Primal Hunter series is one of the most popular in the LitRPG space. Book One (this one) came out in 2022. They are now up to the eleventh installment in the franchise. 

Our series follows a loner main character as he’s dropped into a fantasy world with his work colleagues. His penchant for video games pays off as he realizes quicker than the rest of them that they’ve been dropped into a real-world video game. Stats, abilities, levelling, the whole nine yards. 

It’s pretty good. But has the same issues I find with a lot of other books in the genre. Mainly… it’s way too long. We spend countless chapters with our character in a cave making potions. 

The action scenes are fantastic. The world systems he sets up are interesting. But gosh darn is the pacing up and down. 

I’d expect this improves in future books as the levels and abilities of characters go up. We’ll see. 

4/5

3 — The Dungeon Anarchist’s Cookbook (#3) by Matt Dinniman

I have some thoughts on this book. However, this is one of those series that people on the internet do not take criticism lightly. 

This book was far too long and got way too into the details of the train system. 

I loved book one and two of the series. I devoured them in a month. This one took me nearly a year to finish. Every time I started up again, I got annoyed that he was still talking about the train lines and stopped listening. 

The good news is that this does seem to be the one book in the series that most fans agree is the miss. It gives me a lot of optimism going forward. (In fact, the fans say the series really takes off from here.)

This is book three of the Dungeon Crawler Carl series. A series that has taken off in popularity over the last few years. And for good reason. It’s funny, well-written, has great characters and lots of fun action. The audiobook narration is incredible. Truly top-tier. 

And it was just announced that Seth McFarlane is producing a television series based on these books. A perfect match.

Book three may not have been my favourite, but I still highly recommend the series to anyone who needs a listen that will make you laugh, cry and curse.

3/5

4 — The Order (#20) by Daniel Silva

The Order is the 20th(!) book in the bestselling Gabriel Allon series. It’s very much in the same historical thriller lane as Dan Brown and Steve Berry. 

Not to get political, but now was a weird time to read this book. Gabriel Allon works for Israel and this book covers some very sensitive topics on Jewish history throughout the last 2000 years. 

It’s a solid historical thriller. It certainly doesn’t shy away from the topics going on in the book. (Although it is funny how many of these books revolve around Pope elections.) 

Similar to the rest of the genre, our main character is a little too perfect. But the settings and history are the stars of the show. He does those very well.

3/5

5 — Temple by Matthew Reilly

Matthew Reilly wrote one of my favourite action books (Ice Station) and has one of my favourite characters (Scarecrow.) He writes over-the-top action thrillers that combine awesome technology with crazy stunts and wild heroes. 

Clancy on steroids and maybe acid. 

The ultimate male guilty pleasure. 

I was excited to see one of his books pop up on sale that I hadn’t read yet. 

Temple was only the second book of his career. And it kind of shows. It needed a much heavier hand on the editing table. 

That being said, it bears all the hallmarks of Reilly’s books. Fun characters put into ridiculous situations, usually with multiple parties involved. A not-quite supernatural element at the centre they all want. And tons of guns, helicopters, bombs and more. 

He writes action as well as anyone else. And anyone is liable to die at any time. 

I do love seeing the early books of authors I admire. It gives me hope that my own writing can improve. 

3/5

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March, eh?

It was an interesting month of reading. Lots of LitRPG and sci-fi with a dash of hero-saving-the-world-from-strange-religious-thing. 

Let me know if you have any recommendations, or any thoughts on the books I read.

Cheers!

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