Books (General)

[quaint tendon]

I have not that is true

[sleek jungle]

i made a list some time, but it will take a while to dig up
Travis Baldree, obviously, Luke Daniels, Kobna Hobrook-Smth, James Marsters, and R.C. Bray are my faves

[quaint tendon]

The blade itself is one of those

Maybe some day

[junior dew]

I don't know if I've heard Page, I'll have to check. But Pacey for me is second behind Hays

[quaint tendon]

Page does some truly amazing accent work for the Gentleman Bastards books

Simon Jones did great work in the Bartimaeus books

[junior dew]

Oh yeah I have heard Page then. Haven't made it through a full Gentleman Bastards book but he did do a great job, particularly with that prologue

[quaint tendon]

Dang who did inheritance

I remember quite liking them

Gerard Doyle

[junior dew]

Hmm, Pacey vs Page, who wins 🤔 That's a really good question

[sleek jungle]

Sophie Aldred did a great job with UK versions of Skyward. Much better than US version, imo

AND I FORGOT RAY PORTER

[quaint tendon]

The male reader for emberdark was really good too

[sleek jungle]

ONE DOESN"T FORGET RAY PORTER

[quaint tendon]

I can’t remember his name

An audio book of kingdom come wow

[junior dew]

I finished Emberdark before the audiobook was available 😭

[quaint tendon]

Who read Earthsea

Inglis

He was pretty good too

[junior dew]

Ooooo Adjoa Andoh did a fantastic job in The Girl with The Louding Voice

(She also plays Lady Danbury on Bridgerton)

[quaint tendon]

Deverell who reads he who fights with monsters

He’s pretty good too.

Though the American accents in those books

Bleh

Comes out as a day 2 acting class in Australia

[junior dew]

You must do yourself a favor and listen to Best Served Cold or The Devils

[quaint tendon]

Everything else I can forgive

Though he does suffer from some male narrator doing women problems

I know Kramer does too but Kramers women are like

Charming even at their least inspired

That’s another thing that just instantly blew my mind with Hays in dungeon crawler Carl

The moment I first heard a woman character speak my jaw dropped

[junior dew]

Hays really brings it in DCC. It's wild

[quaint tendon]

He does great accent work, he does women insanely well.

He also makes me enjoy like

[junior dew]

He does uhh.... other things.... really well

[quaint tendon]

Smush

Hays uses like. Sound effects

And I don’t hate it

Which is insanely big for me yall don’t even know

I hate too much background noise

[junior dew]

I don't even really remember him ever using sound effects. Voice effects maybe, but I don't recall sound effects

[quaint tendon]

But like the little flavor text sort of sound usage

Oh no not like

I mean like snapping fingers and stuff

When the books text says those things are happening

I’d usually find too much noise distracting but it’s so good

[white pond]

I read DCC but like if it wasn't SUPER EXPENSIVE

I would listen audiobooks.

[hollow hedge]

how expensive is it?

[junior dew]

I can only really comment on audible prices but audible isn't much more expensive than a kindle book and often is cheaper than a hardback book in my experience if you're using credits

Audible's actual prices are a lie, particularly because you can always just buy more credits. Unless the price drops to less than the cost of a credit, then you buy without using a credit

[cloud socket]

Jefferson Mays is really good too, the main reason I did The Expanse on audio

[cloud socket]

I am on DCC 7 and earlier this week listened to a section where a character talked about real estate for a tattoo and slapped their skin, and you could hear slapping noises!

[white pond]

Except that when all the books are free on KU, Audible is suddenly quite expensive...

[junior dew]

Ahh yeah that'll do it

Libby

Except time is money and some libby holds are LONG

[white pond]

Speaking of DCC, uh, DCC 7 personalized shipped 👀

[junior dew]

Gahh my gf said DCC 6 is wild. Luckily I'm doing a lot of driving next week

[white pond]

DCC 6 is... a trip.

Definitely a trip!

[junior dew]

Gahh

[white pond]

There is a small chance my DCC 7 arrives before the official release in stores.

[junior dew]

I have 2 hours left of Fellowship of the Ring in the way before I can do DCC 6

[white pond]

Lul.

Iconic.

[junior dew]

I have definitely been dragging my feet on it. It's good, but also I'd much rather be reading so many other things

(LoTR, not DCC)

[white pond]

LotR is good, I need to reread it. I am just... too tired to read Tolkien's style.

His style is so sloooow.

[old flint]

The lack of Moira Quirk recognition in here is an outrage. In GtN she has to do that confusing 18 person dinner party, and you can distinguish every character

[cloud socket]

DCC 6 has guest voices as well

[cunning estuary]

WE ARE SO CLOSE

[wraith lynx]

EVERY DAY WE STRETCH EVER CLOSER TO PEAK 🤩

[long sorrel]

Yes! Kingfisher is releasing a book on Nov 11th 😌

[merry galleon]

Inheritance ||chirp|| hehe

[ivory cypress]

not oct 30?

.......... sorry, SEPT 30\

[merry galleon]

Inheritance ||lute player seeing Urgals at their tent|| now that is something I want to see

[winter fern]

I lul’d at that part. Lmao.

By the way, anyone else absolutely love to see Angela and Hoid engage in a contest of riddles and insults?

[snow vessel]

WOTM LXIV ||Aequa the GOAT||

|| 🙏 she's so good||

LXV ||I'm sorry vis but why do we have to do the labyrinth right noww?||

||like I get it but the timing of it all has me stressed xD||

[wraith lynx]

wiggles

https://tenor.com/view/eevee-jumps-gif-2696845723667273642

[snow vessel]

LXV ||ok, that went... not as badly as it could've, except that it may have been for nothing||

||but now vis plans to ditch everyone and break all the rules to go run the labyrinth Dx ||

||why does he have to worry me like this 😭 ||

[tight kindle]

I'm rereading Under the Whispering Door again and I forgot just how morbidly funny the beginning of this book was

[junior dew]

My gf is listening to PHM and has 2 hours left. I would so much rather listen to the last 2 hours of that again than my last 2 remaining hours of Fellowship of the Ring

The temptation is real

PHM is so good

[long sorrel]

Ascension all + Wotm ||now imagine if it was Rhys, enables ultra stress ||

[quaint burrow]

WotM XXV ||I get no red flags from Veridius.... why do I think he's actually genuine||

[ancient bay]

DAMN that's absolutely SAVAGE (ReZero Arc 7)

[quaint burrow]

WotM XXVI ||Stupid Vis||

[merry galleon]

Inheritance ||Roran is shot by an arrow|| NOOOO!

[snow vessel]

Nooo

[snow vessel]

Wotm 87% predictions ||i feel like somethings gonna go very wrong, either from veridius or anguis or ulciscor. I worry emissa's gonna switch up on vis, as well.||

[wraith lynx]

https://tenor.com/view/movie-spongebob-watching-eating-popcorn-binge-watching-gif-4713512

Me watching you rn:

[somber timber]

searches room for camera because I just started

[wraith lynx]

All of yhe WoTM reactions got me feeling like

https://tenor.com/view/eevee-jumps-gif-2696845723667273642

[untold leaf]

That will be me soon! After I finish the Howl's Moving Castle sequels.

[snow vessel]

RR/WOTM ||reading red rising has me so worried about this book. Coz im getting similar vibes and it's making me expect something disastrous happening xD||

[wraith lynx]

||honestly reading them next to each other was so fun for this exact reason 😂||

[snow vessel]

Hey, are there any big dc comics readers around at the moment?

I'm looking for some reading directions

[quaint burrow]

WotM XXVII ||If Veridius did bait Vis to the fight, then why would he punish him by keeping him apart from the school for an hour each day? knowing he's up to something, weird.... and suspicious||

WotM XXVIII ||And it's close to the ruins? Red flags all over the place||

[merry galleon]

I’m now at page 202 of inheritance

But I don’t know if I’m going to any further. Family is getting a new puppy. So, puppy training is going to take the majority of my attention.

[junior dew]

WoTM || I heard this book is good ||

I really do need to read WoTM. The frothing fervor I’ve seen from my gf for book 2 does have me really curious

[marble sinew]

Well, you've got like a month and a half until book two, so now's a good time to start thinking about starting it

[junior dew]

Might do it after DCC 6 and 7

I WILL finish LoTR book 1 today

[hybrid kettle]

How do LotR and GoT live actions compare to respective book series?

up to season 6 for GoT, I know people weren't satisfied afterwards

[wraith lynx]

bursts through the door FINALLY!! XD wotm reactions fuel me like blood in my veins 🥴

[old flint]

I have a million quibbles about things they changed for the LOTR movies, but the soul is there so I love them dearly.

[cloud socket]

If you're a Tom Bombadil or Glorfindel fan, you'll be disappointed (mostly/j)

RotK, books/movie ||I was disappointed we didn't get the Scouring of the Shire but the movie had such ending fatigue I get why they cut it||

[low hill]

Thankfully I'm a Tom Bambadil hater, so I was not disappointed. :⁠-⁠P

[hollow hedge]

well if they're gonna do movies like The Hunt for Gollum, they could probably make Scouring and Bombadil movies if they were desperate enough for content

[merry galleon]

I’m now at 252 pages on Inheritance. Making some headway

Inheritance ||the duel between Arya and Eragon|| why am I imagining that they would kiss in this moment?

[quaint burrow]

Eragon... ||isn’t Eragon.... A dragon?||

[main wren]

no

[quaint burrow]

Oooh

[warm leaf]

Tom is only a mystery because Tolkien said he wasn't Eru

I think the truth is that he is simply a Maia who does not retain his physical form at all

[low hill]

He's not a mystery. He's annoying. :⁠-⁠P

[untold leaf]

I love Tom Bombadil. I'm glad he was at least in The Rings of Power, because it filled the void I felt from his absence in the Lord of the Rings movies.

But for real, the character from the books I most wish was in the movies who wasn't was Baragond. (Am I spelling it correctly?)

He's only in Return of the King, but he's a chad. Collectively agreeing on how great he is was practically a bonding experience for me, my brother, and my dad back in the day.

[minor sleet]

Finally

Someone else who thinks this

I do not understand why people wanted him in the film

He would’ve done what he did in the books: been present for no reason then never get brought up again

[analog geode]

But the Maia would know him in that case, but they don’t

[warm leaf]

There is a theory that says that the Maia of Bombadil was in Arda before the world was made by the Valar, a free spirit as he himself puts it, or Gandalf

In fact, Gandalf was the one who said that Bombadil is so free that he would surely forget that he had the One Ring if it were given to him

[viral fractal]

I am a Tom bombadil hater

[lusty meteor]

I think its really funny Tolkien put one unexplained thing in his books and it has tortured people for years

Based, actually

[viral fractal]

He was being a lil quirky

[minor sleet]

As much as we all love and venerate Tolkien and appreciate his watershed influence on the genre of fantasy we must also admit that half the stuff he did a modern editor would not allow

[lusty meteor]

Lord of the rings is completely unpublishable by modern standards

[lusty meteor]

Also read malazan lmao

[alpine drum]

they wouldn't let you write LotR today...

-# because it'd be copyright infringement

[minor sleet]

Absolutely not

[quaint tendon]

My knowledge of LOTR is the result of the oddest nerd osmosis ever

Beyond the movies. Which I’ve only seen like a handful of times

Most of it’s from tik tok or whatever

I didn’t find out until that folding ideas video about bakshis fellowship movie that the question of whether balrogs have wings is a hotly debated thing

[minor sleet]

Please get no information on anything at all primarily from TikTok

[quaint tendon]

Eh

The LOTR people on there no their stuff

Oof

“No their stuff”

Big brain moment thorn

Know* their stuff

[ivory cypress]

i like tom bombadil and also goldberry

[quaint tendon]

Also if you’re a discerning sort tik tok can provide you with some great resources

[ivory cypress]

i LOVE that tolkien was totally willing to just not explain things and wanting everything to be explained feels like an anxiety of the modern young reader

[junior dew]

As someone with 30 minutes left in book 1, absolutely

[quaint tendon]

I follow some actually accredited historians and such

“Why does tom bombadil do x”

Tolkien: cause

[viral fractal]

Yeah well so did grrm and rj so

Can’t fault him there

[lusty meteor]

Lotr should have more modern romantasy elements is what you are saying

[minor sleet]

Frodo & Sam 100% should’ve had a sex scene yes

[viral fractal]

With the way the hobbits talk I don’t think a sex scene would’ve been tolerable

[wet belfry]

I don't care for Tom Bombadil

[minor sleet]

Irrelevant

[wet belfry]

Not because of some idea that he needed to be explained, but because he takes an outsized proportion of LotR discourse when he's not even the most interesting part of the Old Forest sequence, much less the book he's in

[quaint tendon]

https://tenor.com/view/arrested-development-lucille-bluth-idc-earlier-that-day-gif-16931951

[wet belfry]

That is the correct tone to have read it in

[quaint tendon]

If people think hobbit meals are ridiculous they should see the foreplay

[zinc flicker]

I’m a Tom stan

Hysterical

[zinc flicker]

Eowyn is the protagonist and we lose all interesting commentary for girlboss moments with that being her only character trait now

[zinc flicker]

I think (Tolkien) ||Bombadil is like this primordial force connected to Middle Earth itself, more powerful than the Maiar and Ainur, kinda like Mother Earth. ||

[lusty meteor]

Aragorn is toxicly masculine in a “hot” way

[analog geode]

What’s toxic about it?

[zinc flicker]

Aragorn ||ends up with Eowyn because the weird boy next door character is “too nice” and “too caring” and “too weak”. ||

[zinc flicker]

This is a hypothetical modern romantasy LotR

[analog geode]

My reading comprehension died when my room hit 80 degrees

[analog geode]

Don’t forget his ||pointed ears, like all Numenoreans have now||

[zinc flicker]

||cut all the elves. Make them basically humans but with pointy ears so the audience can relate ||

[snow vessel]

||acotar?||

[analog geode]

Cut the dwarves too, too ugly

[junior dew]

I finished Fellowship today! I finally finished Fellowship today

Honestly those last 2 hours were quite good

[lusty meteor]

Cotillion is the greatest romantasy character of all time

[uncut shoal]

The Fellowship adaptation was really good. I loved the callback to the books, and the occasional direct quote. TT started to depart and get weird, and there were a lot of major decisions I strongly disagreed with in TT and RotK

[zinc flicker]

LotR changes a lot for adaption but preserves the spirit and creates a really masterful adaption that is great at turning LotR into something for the big screen.
GoT takes a lot of the books and adapts mostly well, though much nuance is lost. Grittiness is opted for, losing quite a bit of what makes the books popular.

[analog geode]

LoTR feels like LoTR every step of the way

[uncut shoal]

RotK movie version ||"Arwen's life is now tied to the ring" is probably my most hated line in the adaptations||

[snow vessel]

Wotm LXX ||HUH?||

LXXI ||??!!!||

LXXII ||WHAT?||

LXXIII ||WHATTT?!?||

Wotm all ||HUHHHH??????||

[marble sinew]

Congrats, it sounds like you can read the preview chapters!

[snow vessel]

....how do I get to Nov 11th faster

[quaint burrow]

WotM XXXIII ||Even if Ulciscor can’t get me past Dultatis, I at least need something to make sure he doesn’t lose faith in me. Doesn’t decide I’m a failed experiment, and send me to the Sappers.
I don't think he would, Vis. You're Catenicus now||

[quaint burrow]

I clicked that on purpose..... Don't make me finish the book tonight

[marble sinew]

Simple solution, invent an engine that accelerates you to relativistic speeds and back again

[snow vessel]

Wotm all ||what was that ending 😭 ||

||I feel like every chapter, I felt like I knew what was going on. And then the chapter ended with a bombshell and I didn't. And then that last chapter... WHAT???||

||I have no clue what book 2 is gonna be like||

||I'm just stuck in a state of... What just happened.... xD||

[marble sinew]

Here, I can give you a preview...

https://www.simonandschuster.com/p/strength-of-the-few-excerpt

[snow vessel]

I dunno if I wanna read that yet xD

Might prefer to wait for the whole book

[marble sinew]

That's pretty fair, let it stew a little

[quaint burrow]

Ti's not long, 2 moons

[marble sinew]

I look forward to your reaction in like a week

[snow vessel]

Given how wotm ended I kinda wanna go into sotf with that same feeling of ||what the [storms]||

||rather than knowing a bit of what to expect||

[quaint burrow]

End whatcha reading next

[snow vessel]

Not sure

The two I'm most leaning towards are Bury Our Bones In The Midnight Soil or Curious Tides

But I don't totally have a set plan for my next read

[quaint burrow]

Know the first, dunno the second

Read neither

[snow vessel]

Mm I honestly dunno much about the second except it looked pretty in a bookstore xD

I'm really just choosing reads based on which vibes call to me at this point

[quaint burrow]

Same stares at 20 currently reading series

I think after WotM I might read HoC

Or maybe the second Cradle book

[snow vessel]

Oh yeah I could read MT...

But would I really be me if I didn't take 6 months between malazan books?

[quaint burrow]

Exactly!

It took me a year and a few months to continue reading MoI I stopped midbook

[snow vessel]

I think I read gotm in Jan 2024, dhg like... mid 2024?, moi in Jan 2025, HoC in like july-august

[quaint burrow]

WotM XXXIII ||There is something fishy about the alupi.....||

[quaint burrow]

WotM XXXV ||I loooove Eidhin||

(I'm reading secretly in a mandatory military class, that's why I'm slow)

[snow vessel]

That feels... fitting?

[quaint burrow]

I.. Didn't realise, it's kinda perfect

[merry galleon]

I’m at 358 pages on Inheritance. I’m sort of half way through

[snow vessel]

WotM all ||yknow, i love how many things were left totally unanswered. Sure the big mysteries weren't resolved, but there were also a whole ton of little mysteries that we didn't get answers to and those have me really excited for book 2||

[long sorrel]

If you have finished know that the preview of next book is available 👀

[snow vessel]

Yup, choosing not to read yet

[long sorrel]

how'd you like the book overall?

[minor sleet]

https://www.tumblr.com/mikkeneko/779101800260386816/i-just-think-that-a-man-who-could-chase-one-minor

[snow vessel]

I liked it a lot. Was solidly enjoying it for like the first 95%, but the last 5 or so chapters really hit me well

[viral fractal]

Unfortunately Javert is like the archetypal bootlicker

[rose meteor]

urgh no i love javert so much, i don't actually know what he's like in the book or the play but like he is so so autistic in the movie

||the scene where he confesses to mayor valjean that he 'falsely' reported the mayor to be jean valjean, but now they caught the real one, he made a mistake. and he's just waiting to be destroyed, accepting his fate

and then valjean is just like 'it's okay, everyone makes mistakes. go back to policemaning'

and javert just gives him the most stunlocked look ever portrayed, 100% does not compute, 'i made one (1) honest mistake, i should have been smited'||

i hope this isn't too different in the book lol

||later he realises he was wrong about valjean and just instantly kills himself. what a mood. what an idiot. he would have been the most glorious fourth ideal skybreaker and never ever in a million years reached the fifth|| (movie, stormlight)

[wraith lynx]

TCP 7 ||Locke buddy, if youre so bored then please stand on buisness and save this girl from your plastic """""friends"""""||

||Taryn... no, girl 😭||

[wraith lynx]

TCP 8 ||I am astonished at how well the... perspective is! Its a normal ass mall with a JCPenny's no less and it feels like im on the surface of Mars, amazing||

TCP 8 ||oh yes Jude please go humble him queen||

[quaint burrow]

WOTM XXXVII ||It’s Sedotia. The woman who crashed the Transvect and shot Ulciscor. The woman who was helping Melior at the naumachia. The woman from the Anguis.
WHAT THE ABSOLUTE ||

[zinc flicker]

Les Mis musical, Stormlight ||Javert believes in the law and the proper authority of government. He hates Valjean because Valjean represents something outside of the black and white viewpoint of “law vs. chaos”. To him, it’s that the only choice you can make is to obey the law and bend to government. Examples are: “I was born inside a jail, I was born with scum like you, I am from the gutter too.”
He believes it is a moral failing of Valjean’s that he fails to succeed in life and not because of the way life SUCKS for the people born under the monarchy of France at the time. Because Javert succeeded, then that means Valjean’s failure was a choice.
Later:
“Shoot me now, or shoot me later. Every schoolboy to his sport, and death to each and every traitor, I renounce your people's court.”
Javert believes wholeheartedly in his government (and the law that supports it), so when confronted by the mercy of a lawless man, he cannot cope with a world where the law and morality are at odds.
Now, Nale (and the Skybreakers) are most definitely based on Javert. ||

I am very passionate about Les Mis lol

Movie Javert has a softer portrayal

Book + musical Javert are fairly equivalent to each other

[analog geode]

We don’t talk about movie Javert

[rose meteor]

you can't stop me

i love him

[quaint burrow]

Wait trying to translate names to Arabic (read les mis like 5 times all in Arabic)

[rose meteor]

but yeah i get it i get it i just think he's extremely funny

[quaint burrow]

Oh got from context

les miserables + SA ||I always felt major Javert vibes from Nalan||

WotM XXXVIII ||Vis! I’ve been so looking forward to meeting you!
You... You.... Who are you Relucia? ||

[minor sleet]

https://www.tumblr.com/ophthalmotropy/720282180466688000/hey-tumblr-you-like-non-stereotypical-depictions

pro malo

Hey, Tumblr. You like non-stereotypical depictions of autism? What about ✨ neurodivergent protagonists ✨ ? Yes? What about _asexual_​ neurodivergent protagonists that go on chapters-long rants about their special interests? You want gay characters that are important to the plot too? Then I've got the book for you! The author is gay!!! American Psycho, by Bret Easton Ellis, is

-# #l33chsp34k #american psycho

Tumblr · Jun 16, 2023, 11:23 AM

[wraith lynx]

TCP 10 ||Dain time!! Ill lie to you all day long pookie 🥴💖||

[hollow forum]

has anyone here read The Hades Calculus?

as a rule I'm not a big fan of pretty much anything that romanticises Persephone's kidnapping

[wraith lynx]

Oh is it a hades/persephone retelling? 👀

[hollow forum]

yeah 😔

they are both lesbians which is cool

but also isn't because Hades/Persephone is very 😒

[wraith lynx]

Oh okay! I can see how theres potential subversion thwre with it being wlw but... ive played these games before :((

[royal carbon]

I started Terra Ignota even if library doesn't have all of them.

[proven token]

Anybody have any recommendations for a non-Romantasy fantasy series?

I am slowly making my way through the Expanse novels but also magical powers > ||space terrorism|| [expanse gen, spoilered to be safe]

And I don't want to have to wait until '26 for the next Shadow of the Leviathan book

[snow vessel]

Any particular criteria beyond that?

[somber timber]

You do city of stairs?

[proven token]

Yeah

[proven token]

Hard magic systems preferred but not a requirement

[somber timber]

5th season?

[proven token]

Already read

[somber timber]

In the shadow of lightning?

[proven token]

Haven't read yeat

Pitch it to me

[uncut shoal]

Abhorsen!

[proven token]

Already read

[uncut shoal]

Well at least I got it right 😄 Did you read all 5 books?

[proven token]

I read four of them I think? Idk it's been a while

[uncut shoal]

Alex Verus?

[somber timber]

Very fun book with glass based magic. || MC returns to the solve who murder his mother. Has mystery fun battles fun magic good characters ||

[uncut shoal]

Laundry Files?

[versed agate]

Cradle? ( #1404905613674283041 )

[somber timber]

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/58724872-in-the-shadow-of-lightning#?ref=nav_comm

[versed agate]

🤔 how does it compare to TPM?

[uncut shoal]

Magic Ex Libris, Weirkey Chronicles, and Mage Errant are also very good

[proven token]

Time to see how many of these my library has :D

Thanks guys

[somber timber]

Probs more fun than first powder mage trilogy. I think better characters in this book than book 1 of powder mage

[versed agate]

characters is defintely what I was thinking about

[somber timber]

You get better character stuff with powder mage as the series goes on this starts stronger

Like I think the second powder mage trilogy had better character stuff than the first and I think in the shadow of lighting has better stuff than that

[proven token]

What are the first books in all of the mentioned series?

[light drum]

Have you read cradle?

[proven token]

No, what is it?

[somber timber]

In the shadow of lightning

[light drum]

Its 12 book progfantasy sesris that a lot of people on the shard enjoy

#1404905613674283041

[proven token]

Can't find it at my library sadly

The following now have holds on them so I can pick them up tomorrow morning
Persepolis Rising (the next Expanse book)
In the Shadow of Lightning
Fated

[uncut shoal]

Will Wight gives Cradle out for free on Kindle occasionally

[proven token]

I have trouble with ereaders

[uncut shoal]

And they're all on Kindle Unlimited

[proven token]

I might buy it from my local bookstore depending

Thank y'all for the recommendations! I'll post whenever I get to an interesting point.

👀 reacts incoming most likely

[viral fractal]

Book Javert definitely has something going on lol

||he was born from criminals parents (literally “I was born inside a jail/ I was born from scum like you”) and implied to be Romani/gypsy, so he’s vastly overcompensating by deliberately refusing to see the social causes that drive people to crime. He’s also specifically called “a dog born of wolves” (ie dogs being protectors of society while wolves are predators)- and Eponine is actually called the same thing in a roundabout way at one point||

Les Mis musical + books ||javerts suicide in the books is actually quite a bit sadder because right before he dies he writes a list of reforms he proposes and their stuff like “prisoners should not wait barefoot on the floor in this particular room, it’s cold” and just generally really incrementalist stuff. You can tell that there are things that have been bugging him for awhile and he’s just… unable to articulate it in any meaningful way because he’s spent his whole life articulating it||

[viral fractal]

Also Les Mis musical + Stormlight Archive ||the art of Nale literally makes him look like Javert lol||

SA

Norm Lewis as Javert

They copied his whole ass outfit 💀

[zinc flicker]

||and he’s on a bridge with birds flying ala Javert’s suicide where he falls to be free||

[viral fractal]

Good catch

SA + les mis ||and he’s dedicated his life to pursuing a bread thief LOL||

[rose meteor]

urgh this one is so peak

probably my absolute favourite of the herald portraits

[analog geode]

Just finished The New York Magician and I absolutely loved it. Mix of American Gods and the Dresden files, pure, solid urban fantasy. It really made me feel all the layers to New York, and immersed me in the world. The stories were separate, but still felt connected. Highly recommend it.

[hollow forum]

dragonlance and discworld

[hollow forum]

it being wlw makes it slightly less bad for me but I'm tired of the Hades Defense Squad 😔

you want woman rage? Demeter is right there 😭

[wraith lynx]

stares longingly and yet sadly at hera

[hollow forum]

and at least one of them really doesn't like

[hollow forum]

YEAH

we are going to take woman rage and do retellings of greek mythology changing stuff around why not do one focused on Hera???

hell make it one where Heracles is a woman and Hera acts as a godmother

she can even start by being evil until Heracles convinces her to be on her side through being good (which Heracles wasn't, to be clear, but myth retellings and all that)

I mean like obviously people will write about what they want but like

I would like to have more sympathy for women (especially older women) who are righteously angry for having been hurt (or just angry, that's fine by me too) instead of sad pretty goth looks evil and has scary powers but really is just misunderstood

[wraith lynx]

Ive said it before but my biggest issue is always that its played the same way

If you've read one hades/persephone retelling written in the past decade, you've read them all

[snow vessel]

-# apparently acomaf is meant to be a hades/persephone retelling

[wraith lynx]

You say that and i couldnt be less surprised honeslty

[hollow forum]

LMAO

[snow vessel]

Although the only things it has in common with the myth afaik is ||that the love interest gets kidnapped by the evil guy||

[wraith lynx]

Acotar + LO ||rhysand and hades could swap places and nothing would change. Hades us maybe a bit whinier but it is the exact same problem from what I hear||

[snow vessel]

Acotar + Greek myth discourse? ||I think there's also some similarities to the way the myth is perceived/described with the "evil guy isn't actually evil and is secretly the nice/progressive one" but, though I don't totally know the original myth, I expect that's more... fanon than canon, so to speak||

||I mean Rhys isn't even associated with the dead like... ever from memory. It's really just pulling some aesthetic inspiration||

||tho tbf I don't know if the author described it as a hades/persephone story or if readers did. but I expect sjm did||

Oh that reminds me

Acotar#1 is apparently also meant to be a beauty&the beast retelling/inspired

...I watched the movie for the first time the other day and wow acotar is like... the perfect opposite

[hollow forum]

I don't even mind it that much because like, people will write about what they find enticing, right? Like, I can sideeye the Dresden-likes with the male protagonist who feels excluded, is a snarky loner with hidden powers that he doesn't show off too much because he knows his responsibility to not hurt others but will not let himself be bullied by man, god or demon and for some unfathomable reason every woman ever is into him (especially the supernatural seducers) but I can't really judge it

just like

there is a heavy cultural misogyny element to this but like even beyond that

the older female figure that is rough in her own way deserves the attention as much as the broody emo boy/guy 😔

I'd like to see more of that

[hollow forum]

it is very fanon

[snow vessel]

That... is not surprising

[hollow forum]

I still don't understand how Demeter gets the stigma of being the bad guy of that story so often

(it's not always but it is distressingly common)

like dog her beloved daughter just got kidnapped to be a concubine by this dude 😭

starting a new hardcore Frostpunk save seems like an alright response to me at least

[wraith lynx]

Nah naru she was clearly a hovering overbearing mom who never understood persephone 🥴

[snow vessel]

Why are we so quick to forgive kidnappers but not parents

[hollow forum]

https://tenor.com/view/smile-freud-sigmund-freud-sigar-smoke-gif-19155220

[wraith lynx]

LO ||Literally Hades rigs an election to deny demeter being an earth queen, says hed rather be the poorest man on earth than give her power, insults her efforts at peace and neutral trades and is still seen as the good guy afterwards||

[snow vessel]

Like. Complex characters are fun and all but why are loved ones treated as outright irredeemable for a few mistakes, while actually bad people are fine because they had "good intentions"

[snow vessel]

Oh.

Oh that's sooo acotar ||rhysand||

||you were so right about them being able to swap places and change nothing||

[wraith lynx]

SEE 😭

Another issue i have with the retelling is that the writers wont let the gods just... be gods. Theres always an excuse or justification to make them out to be good, and thus theyre never held accountable for what they do. Not only is it disingenuous to the actual myths but it also makes for terrible character growth

[snow vessel]

We want complex/morally grey/whatever characters until they do bad things

And then we need to come out with illogical justiciations so they can still be good

-# this was my #1 beef with acotar xD

[wraith lynx]

Jokes on yall, I like it when ares is an insane maniac and I dont want a "valid" reason why he wants to kill people 🥰

[hollow forum]

I mean, part of it is that the mythical dreamboat is an idealised figure and the parental figures very often aren't

[wraith lynx]

You can be terrible, complex and still have depth

Funny enough, LO did that with Zeus, Thanatos and Minthe, all on accident. The author didnt try to make them perfect because they were all antagonists and they ended up being wonderful fan favorites, especially minthe (my beloved)

Id put ares on the list but Rachel took him out back to throw a brick at his character 🥰 yes I cried about it 🥰💔

[hollow forum]

lmao oof

[snow vessel]

Acomaf was so incredibly loaded with retcons and rewrites and major shifts in the narrative for the sake of making ||rhys|| perfect and justifying the story after book 1

[wraith lynx]

LO ||I still think about the chapter where, during the trial of Persepone mass murdering people, Hades embarrasses thanatos on national television by exposing that Nyx abandoned him because he canonically wasnt as sad as hades. It is then revealed that thanatos was basically emotionally abused his entire life and when his gf forces him to confront it (I want to actually fight Daphne but shes irrelevant here), Hades doesnt apologize, he simply blames his emotional absence on the fact that he also did not have a father. Thanatos leave this conversation with the conclusion that hades did his best and he shouldn't be so hard on him.||

Genuinely, the worst chapter in the entire series

But thats just one of many instances of just... letting the protagonists get away with literally whatever

[snow vessel]

Acomaf ||rhysand has a whole torture city and is just a horrible person publicly apparently in order to protect his secret perfect city and best friends. He's born into danger and bad systems Except him and his best friends are basically canonically the most powerful people ever or something, so I don't know why any of that is necessary.||

[wraith lynx]

We are both in the trenches, it seems 🥴

[snow vessel]

Acomaf ||also let's just totally have everyone forget that rhysand abused/assaulted/sexually harassed feyre for ages because he's actually a feminist and tamlin is horrible and sexist and controlling||

[wraith lynx]

Omg

It is the same thing in a different font 😭

[snow vessel]

||tamlin commits the unforgivable sin of doing harmful things while trying to protect feyre. It's OK they, because she's got rhysand. We thought he was just doing horrible things, but it turns out he was doing harmful things to protect feyre.||

-# wait...

||the thing is book 1 Rhys was so horrible that it's basically impossible for tamlin to be worse than him 😭||

[wraith lynx]

Only difference it seems is (LO) ||Apollo does actually harm persephone. He doesnt get repercussions for it until the second to last chapter in the series (269) when it happened in episode 24||

[snow vessel]

Well... acomaf ||tamlin does become toxic in book 2. It's just that Rhys was so much more toxic for the same reasons||

||so like... I fully support her leaving him. But it's portrayed as "he's so horrible and abusive and Rhys is so misunderstood" when really they're both abusive||

||and tamlin is far more sympathetic in his toxicity imo. He actually watched her die in book 1 because he wasn't able to protect her. So yeah, it makes sense to me that he becomes a little overbearing. Whereas Rhys sucks to... protect everyone... even though they're super powerful... and cares about feyre for... some reason (mating bond, I believe)||

||Rhys is the empowering feminist man while tamlin is the controlling sexist except Rhys is so horrible 😭 he feels like one of those "performative males" or whatever||

||also a lot of the "he's doing what he can, he's trying to protect people, etc." Falls apart because of how outrageously powerful Rhys and co. Are made to be imo||

Honestly I don't even like shadow aplha male characters idk why I do this to myself

[hollow forum]

oh oof

[buoyant sedge]

Have you read "The Final Empire", by little known author Brandon Sanderson?
/s

[quaint tendon]

One Piece

Jokes are always funnier one after the other 👍🏻

[long sorrel]

I got to my dad's and he's gone "i read all the books you recommended me i need more 😠 "

[spring turtle]

https://tenor.com/view/sickos-sicko-haha-yes-creeper-gif-25057805

[long sorrel]

I'm trying to slip in Founders

[hybrid kettle]

My dad believes all modern books are bad

Despite not having read any, that I know of at least

[somber timber]

https://tenor.com/view/jack-nicholson-jack-nicholson-yes-yes-nod-head-nod-gif-17444176260167585294

[long sorrel]

My dad devours any scifi

Good or bad

And some fantasy with some proding

Okay, i got him to get Foundryside, Tainted Cup and Will of the Many

[wraith lynx]

YES!! 🤩

[long sorrel]

And now i most go, silksong my people need me

[wraith lynx]

Have fun spilk stonging

[long sorrel]

I need to do a little shopping first which will surely not include any book store 👀

[wraith lynx]

👀👀👀

Anything in particular youre searching for 👀👀

[long sorrel]

Yup, a spanish book ive been searching for since June

Its called Salitre y Cenizas

(Saltpeter and Ashes)

I lost my soul when I was thirteen, without even having had breakfast. It was a cold and foggy morning in the village, and the echoes of the bells striking six floated across the bay.

Despite the years that have passed, I vividly remember every detail of the series of decisions that led me to begin my journey down the path that ends in hell. Every sigh, every word, every corpse, turned into a monument to my many stupidities and few successes.

In El Cabracho prison, while awaiting four consecutive executions at the hands of the Inquisition, Leo Vicar prepares to dictate his infamous past to a royal scribe.

Beginning with his adolescence, he will recount how he damned his soul one winter morning without even having had breakfast, how he broke each of the thirteen commandments of the Drowned Christ, and how his first love triggered a brutal descent into the abyss.

Leo Vicar will unravel a story of reincarnated witches and demons from the depths, of lost innocence and unquenchable rage, of tears and burns.

(I run it through google so its a bit spotty)

[wraith lynx]

Lowkey free my man, he did nothing wrong 🥴

[long sorrel]

They've gideon in english 😳

A small part of me was hoping for Bury Our Bones in English

They do have half id Schwab's but not that one

Well... i guess its time

[zinc flicker]

I wish romantasy could be good

[ripe tide]

Theres books that are romantasy that are good

[zinc flicker]

I struggle to find them 😭 The Cruel Prince is great

But the most popular ones (ACoTaR and TFW) are both just… such rough reads for me

[ripe tide]

Yeah you just don’t have to go to the most popular ones

[zinc flicker]

Yeah but those are the ones that hit my awareness and bubbles

[ripe tide]

Emily Wilde, Elise Kova’s more recent books, (her first are fantasy romance but I’m not sure if I’d call them romantasy.) Divine Rivals…

Thats just off the top of my head.

[ivory cypress]

ask for recs then

Lord of Stariel series, Witchmark series

[zinc flicker]

I’ve been searching especially for a specific type of romance: gothic vampire. But finding something with that classic vibe that isn’t just pure smut has been hard. Especially because I don’t know just looking at a book if it will focus more on characterization than romance. Like a lot of romances I have read become more about tropes the characters go through than interesting developments in the individuals that naturally bring them together. I’m more interested in the character-to-character conflict than any smut. Like romances that have worked for me are the (BG3) ||Astarion|| romance and the Cruel Prince because both feel more like independent developments that drive the romance than pure romance.

[viral fractal]

Gothic romance is a good word

I just like the bronte sisters

Also @zinc flicker you might like the iwtv tv show

[zinc flicker]

I’ve tried but nearly all the books I find have men shirtless on the covers when I look them up lol

[viral fractal]

It’s based on the Anne rice books

With some of the more egregious elements removed

[zinc flicker]

Okay I would be so down for IWTV and want to read the books but I’m looking for a romance that suits my own romantic interests (IE MXF) rn but I do suspect I will adore the IWTV books when I read them.

[viral fractal]

Yeah iwtv is very gay

It’s also very messy LOL

[zinc flicker]

Which sounds awesome! Lol

The vibes of IWTV seem so excellent

It’s just not what I want at this specific moment in time. Probably in a month or two.

[zinc flicker]

And I shouldn’t have said romantasy is bad because it’s just a matter of taste and what works for you and I’m not quite as interested in what a lot of people who seek out romantasy are interested in so I shouldn’t expect the genre to cater to me lol

[zinc flicker]

I’ll take a look at these recs!

[zinc flicker]

These too!

[hollow forum]

I have learned that the romantasy genre is not for me 😔

well I guess platonic romantasy is kinda cool

I like Temeraire!

and Eragon

[ivory cypress]

Lord of Stariel is largely M/F, Witchmark is a trilogy of various gay pairings

[minor sleet]

I like plenty of the concepts of romantasy it’s just that the genre is too new for much of the dreck to filter out

Also for an older Romantic fantasy (not a romance, although the core of the book is the relationship between two men, Romantic in the literary sense), read Swordspoint by Ellen Kushner

It’s from the late 1980s, about a professional duelist and his perpetually-on-sabbatical scholar boyfriend who get drawn into courtly intrigue after the duelist is framed for murder

[ivory cypress]

yeah there's a lot of good stuff that was written from before romantasy being a term but is still a romance set in a fantasy setting

[viral fractal]

I’ve heard good things about kushiel’s dart?

[zinc flicker]

Yeah. I should be looking more for fantasy with romance than romantasy tbh because that tends to work better for me

[long sorrel]

I have found quite often romantasy that has book 1 be good and then book 2 and 3 they all become the same slop. I think authors try to go for like an interesting unique setting and characters and develop them in book 1 and then they stop being unique as they move forward into fulfilling all the tropes... I'm sure there are plenty of good ones that are good as a whole, but that summarizes most of my experience (which isn't much)

[wraith lynx]

https://tenor.com/view/eevee-jumps-gif-2696845723667273642

[minor sleet]

Kushiel’s Dart is so good. It’s just hard to rec because it’s both really intense courtly intrigue/espionage and equally intense explicit s&m sex

[long sorrel]

ah, by CL Polk I bought a book that had a very cute cover during the literature fair 👀

I've not read it yet

[ivory cypress]

alas, vampire stuff is really not my thing so i regret i don't have specific recs for those

[long sorrel]

Even Though I Knew the End

[ivory cypress]

oooooooooooh

[long sorrel]

the design of the cover is so good

[ivory cypress]

it's cute!

[long sorrel]

Hah?

I think you just recommended this to me by mistake

[lusty meteor]

its also the only book anyone recommends if you want interestingly portrayed sex in fantasy

[minor sleet]

That’s because so few books do it as well as Carey does

[minor sleet]

You’d like it.

[ivory cypress]

literally had to get a mass market paperback version of swordspoint off amazon because i literally cannot find this book on ebook anywhere

[minor sleet]

It’s very out of print yes

[ivory cypress]

VERY 😭

[minor sleet]

Comes from being from 1988 and being remembered primarily for being one of the first gay fantasy novels

[ivory cypress]

most of them don't have listings, and if i can find a listing, they straight up just say "UNAVAILABLE"

that's crazt

[minor sleet]

It’s either this one or the trilogy with iconic sadboi Vanyel Ashkevron. The Last Herald Mage by Mercedes Lackey was published 1989-1990, but much more successful due to the whole Valdemar universe & Lackey continuously publishing since the late 1970s

[ivory cypress]

how's ellen supposed to be getting her residuals 😠

[minor sleet]

I dunno but she’s still alive to theoretically enjoy them

Unlike the equally elusive Tanith Lee’s books

[ivory cypress]

oh yeah i can find tanith lee's everywhere, thankfully

and janny wurts, too

[minor sleet]

[ivory cypress]

sometimes authors have their own ebook shops on their websites

i'm enjoying victoria goddard's stuff a lot, and her being indie means her book catalogue on her website is also a storefront

[minor sleet]

Lee doesn’t & also she died ten years ago

As far as I can tell she doesn’t have a website

[ivory cypress]

wurts was the one i was thinking of there

that "sometimes" was on purpose

[minor sleet]

The only Janey Wurts I’ve read was her collab with Raymond Feitz. Mara of the Acoma my beloved

[ripe tide]

Her name sounds familiar, but what did she write?

[long sorrel]

The Emperor's Hands!

[ivory cypress]

the hands of the emperor and sequel, at the feet of the sun. i've been reading her greenwing & dart series which is in the same universe but very elsewhere

[long sorrel]

Oh

I wrote that and thought "that sounds really weird"

lmao

silksong has friend my brain

it's the same title in spirit 😌

[ivory cypress]

it is!

[astral atlas]

Started katabasis on the plane

[hollow forum]

the witchmark trilogy sounds fun

[analog geode]

@ripe tide I’ve started A Discovery of Witches, I’m loving it so far

[ripe tide]

Feel free to share all your reacts here or in my DMs.

I was at Oxford today and I was just fangirling over all the ADoW locations while thw tour guide was talking about the HP filming locations. I wanted to go inside the Bodelian though and that couldn’t happen. I was thinking I had to go back anyway.

[analog geode]

I love when books make me do that

I just read The New York Magician and now I want to go back to NYC and visit all the locations

[hybrid kettle]

I'm scared of New York

[vital ibex]

Last time I was in Oxford I had a bite to eat at the cafe just down the road from the Bodleian last time I was there, the library itself unfortunately was closed though that day

Did you go to Blackwell's?

Definitely the biggest bookshop ive ever been in, it was very cool

[snow vessel]

This is my experience so far

Enough politics that I would find it hard to recc for the smut & whatnot, and enough smut & whatnot id find it hard to rec for the politics

Curious Tides 4 ||I'm struggling a little with... the prose, I think, of this book. I feel like it's repeating a lot of information across these first 4 chapters. And also there's a few more mini flashbacks than I'd like, personally||

[ripe tide]

I didn’t have time. But I’m going back.

[analog geode]

DoW 9 ||Hes so angsty||

[hollow forum]

does anyone know any good uh

I don't know what this subgenre is called

[analog geode]

Cant help you there lol

[brazen pilot]

yeah just read warbreaker

[hollow forum]

I was getting food 😭

anyway does anyone know any good like

uh I think it'd be called like portal or rift progression fantasy or smth?

basically a world where there's the 'normal' world and then portals start opening to dungeons and stuff

kinda like Magi

it's a subgenre of progression fantasy/isekai/xianxia/litrpg

can be published or royal road or manhwa or fan translated LN or whatever

[brazen pilot]

yeah just read warbreakwr

[versed agate]

solo-like

[hollow forum]

LMAO

[hollow forum]

I don't get the reference 😔

[ripe tide]

||Matthew? Yeah.||

[minor sleet]

Alice in Wonderland

https://tenor.com/view/alice-falling-bye-goodbye-gif-15186749

[ripe tide]

Also, Youre just a little ahead of the real time read @analog geode chapter 2-3 happens yesterday calendar wise. Mabon eve. So it really is the perfect time to be reading.

[analog geode]

It is!

[hollow forum]

https://tenor.com/view/i-guess-memes-meme-gif-17950413

[versed agate]

https://tenor.com/view/well-yes-but-actually-no-meme-aardman-the-pirates-pirate-gif-26563702

[minor sleet]

https://tenor.com/view/lee-wav-gif-13027744700205481657

[versed agate]

I think the reference was that there's no good recommendation and your time is better spent reading warbreaker

[minor sleet]

Ok but actually Alice in Wonderland is very good

[ripe tide]

Yeah

It’s a weird book but it is good

[brazen pilot]

the reference was my prior messge

[minor sleet]

I’m not just being a smartass its a very enjoyable book about a girl who falls through a portal and has a Bad Time going on adventures

[quaint burrow]

WotM XLVII ||"Half of them seem afraid of me.” “They are afraid, and it’s more than half."
I like this Scitus already, he reminds me of myself||

[quaint burrow]

WotM XLVIII ||How long did you take to save your little friend down there? How many thousands died while you chaperoned her through the sewers? Own up to your blame, Catenicus.”
I agree with Iro here, it has been bugging me that Vis never once laments choosing Aequa over thousands of people, I know he hates all of them, but still. Touché, Iro.||

Oh hell nah

||SUUS???? VIS IS GOING TO SUUS????
-# James please I don't want the secretly alive sibling trope, let his sister stay dead||

[wraith lynx]

||this part kills me because Indol is like "hey wanna come to my sick summer house, its on this lil island called suus, it'll be fun!" And vis is all :)||

||because aint no way you invite me BACK to the land you stole from me 😭||

[quaint burrow]

WotM XLIX ||My little sister, washing out to sea. I never even heard whether they found her body.
Mr. James Islington, please||

WotM L ||So gambling is illegal All year round except during the Festival of Pletuna. It is curious that it's allowed/tolerated in the Academy, unless the ban is from Government, rather than Religion||

||"The decision may have been made by the few, Diago, but it’s the Will of the many that killed your family.”
🔥 🔥 🔥 🔥 🔥 🔥||

[wraith lynx]

https://tenor.com/view/katonen-leo-pointing-katonen-leo-pointing-gif-25198793

||thats da name of da book :3||

[hollow forum]

o lmao fair

[hollow forum]

I still don't get it 😔

[hollow forum]

yes but it's also not what I'm looking for lmao

I'm trying to get reference material to see how people do this specific trope? subgenre? subtrope?

[quaint burrow]

WotM LII ||Oh Diago......||

||I wonder how much my view for teen characters will change as I grow older, currently, I imagine myself in their place, when I'm older, will I think of them as just children?||

[wraith lynx]

Same tags ||if it helps, im only a few years older than vis and he is my precious son ||

[quaint burrow]

This book is good

Better than I thought it would be

[wraith lynx]

Mhmmmmmmmm

[brazen pilot]

the original message was referencing how people will ask for literally any kind of fantasy rec and people will say brandon

so it didn't matter that you couldn't remember the subgenre

[hollow forum]

o lmao fair

[analog geode]

DoW 14 ||So much innuendo that I can’t be sure actually is innuendo because I don’t know how smutty the book is yet ||

[quaint burrow]

WotM LV+ WoR ||Cave flashbacks||

||At least those kissed||

||.....or more||

[long sorrel]

Oh, this week the second book for Thief of Night comes out

[quaint burrow]

WotM LV ||I.... Don't like you, Ulciscor.... I may understand you, but I don’t like you||

||Is there a map of the world?||

||of course homosexuality is illegal in Caten||

WotM LVI ||Military helped the Anguis attack the naumachia.
I beg your finest pardon?||

[wraith lynx]

TCP 10 ||"Tell me what you want Jude" Dain... you better chill before I act up 🥴||

||also I am exactly 5 days older than Jude! ||

||spy mode?? Oh heck yes||

[ripe tide]

Do you want the answer to that?

[analog geode]

Too late, I’m on 29 lol

I’m really enjoying the book

[ripe tide]

Hahah. Omg Youre flying through it

So excited Youre liking it

[quaint burrow]

WotM LXI ||I may have said a swear word... Or three... At Vis.... ||

LXII ||Vis may be Cosmic's son, but Eidhin is my brother||

||OMG I'M GONNA SEE DIAGO (the alupi) AGAIN, WON'T I??? AWWWW||

[analog geode]

@ripe tide I just finished. I can’t wait to read the next one

[ripe tide]

Amazing. That was me. But I had to wait for my holds to come in.

Who’s your favorite character so far?

[analog geode]

I really like Em and Markus

[ripe tide]

Marcus is great.

I think my fave is Ysabeau. I do think the fandom sometimes forgets about ||All the terrible things she did in her past|| but she’s an absolutely fascinating character.

[analog geode]

||We don’t exactly get much about her past beyond killing a bunch of Nazis out of vengeance to be fair||

||I expected her to be way more hostile to Diana||

[ripe tide]

There’s some more in the later books.

I really want physical copies of these, but I like the US editions more. Obviously I can’t get those here. I saw some on Amazon, but I’d rather use an indie bookshop or bookshop.org and I haven’t seen those there.

Also because I haven’t seen a hardcover online either and I’d prefer that because I know how much I’ll read it.

[random dome]

That's honestly a very fun dynamic to have with a main character. Feels like the story matches you a little bit 👀

[snow vessel]

I hate how close in age I am to some of these characters because I could not do what they're doing

[quaint tendon]

Mood

Idek what book you’re talking about but

Mood

[wraith lynx]

Right? This is even better than me just pretending the mc is a scorpio 😂

[random dome]

Pffffft

This does make me want to reread this series very bad but there's so many other things I should be doing instead

[long sorrel]

I do have a permanent minor urge to reread TCP

but the urge to read new things is much more stronger

[random dome]

I did have someone buy me the first audiobook of Dungeon Crawler Carl recently

[long sorrel]

I'm currently reading Long Live Evil and a spanish one that's sci fi about spies and identity?

(I'm slightly confused what the book is actually about yet, I've only just started)

[wraith lynx]

-# or you could read TCP with me hehe 🤭

[long sorrel]

lol

I am, by proxy

so read more

👀

[wraith lynx]

Oh I will 🥴

[random dome]

Every day I check Books, hoping to see more TCP tags 🙏

[snow vessel]

Yknow...

Don't tempt me into a TCP reread

I'm already bouncing off this current read a little, don't need more temptation to drop it xD

[junior dew]

@desert socket I started DCC book 6. Feels great to be back with these characters. Hays also killing it as always

[junior dew]

https://tenor.com/view/good-clapping-sarcastic-gif-14772054

[light drum]

If you like DCC, you might also like cradle...

[desert socket]

Hays is a kandra, I'm fairly certain.

From what my friends have said, DCC6 and onward is really where the series ramps up. I have no context from where I'm at in the series, but I've heard 6, is good. 🙂

[junior dew]

I think I have all the cradle books but haven’t started them yet

Or I have a bunch of them at least

[junior dew]

It all makes sense now!

[junior dew]

Yeah my gf said 6 was really wild so I’m curious

I must say I like the characters in DCC so much more than Fellowship of the Ring

[desert socket]

absolutely wild, yet valid, take

As much as I like the high octane insanity of some of the characters, I genuinely love the down to earth vibe some of them have.

Anytime Carl reflects about his childhood feels like a gutpunch

[random dome]

I haven't started DCC yet so I can't say if it'll be my taste or not

[desert socket]

It's a very, very good junk food read, imo. It's a lot of crazy action and wild characters, with a good helping of wacky video game shenanigans.
I can see how it could be very hit or miss for a lot of people though.

[hollow forum]

I respect DCC a little but very much not a fan of it

it has a couple of highlights few and far between but in general eh

very litrpg slop, though with more than a point than the rest of the litrpg slop

[hollow forum]

okay this one is wild to me

[hollow hedge]

I could imagine someone looking at LotR these days and finding the characters a little dry tbh, just because the archetypes have been used and developed so much since then?

not that 'spoiled talking cat' hasn't been done before, though

the DCC AI is a pretty interesting character but it doesn't have that much else going for it

[alpine drum]

Stopped by the local comics shop while I was downtown

[zinc flicker]

I oughta read DCC because it’s such a popular book for prog fantasy

[hollow hedge]

the audio version really elevates it, I think

[junior dew]

The fellowship characters are fine to me. They’re good. Well written. But they’re not over the top interesting to me

[royal carbon]

I am still trying to figure out what TCP is in this context.

[random dome]

The Cruel Prince, first book of The Folk of the Air series

[long sorrel]

I keep seeing the collection on stores in spanish and although i really want to own it physically I think I want a nicer edition 😔

[hollow forum]

oh that ultimate x-men cover is banging

[junior dew]

Again based on book 1 alone

[long sorrel]

like, this is a thing

buuut

the books inside are pretty much the regular cover

[alpine drum]

Momoko's work output is insane for the quality she's able to hit

[hollow forum]

question, is the Absolute line just like

collection of old comics?

or is it a new continuity?

[alpine drum]

new continuity

often with big departures from the normal canon

for instance superman arrived on earth as an adult, batman's mother is alive and he's working class, wonder woman was raised in hell

[hollow forum]

ooo I see I see

[marble sinew]

That's brutal, taking away both of Batman's superpowers

[alpine drum]

well he's also enormous

[north flint]

Trying to catch up on the great books that released this year, so far I've read A Drop of Corruption and the Raven Scholar and loved them, are there any other amazing books I havent read?

[minor sleet]

Well there’s this indie author named Brandon Sanderson who dropped a book called Isles of the Emberdark….

Ok obvious joke aside here’s a good place to start looking https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/226506.Hugo_2026_Eligible_Novels

[snow vessel]

Katabasis came out this year

[minor sleet]

My top pick off this list is The Devils

[snow vessel]

And Bury our bones in the midnight soil but I've not read that yet and so can't vouch for/against it

[mild lance]

I understand the confusion since DC also uses “Absolute” for its collection titles

[long sorrel]

Hemlock & Silver was quite fun!
The Devils was fantastic.
Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil was really good as well

[north flint]

DNFd katabasis, I really dislike Kuang.

[long sorrel]

Ive forgotten what else I read that came out this year that isn't a sequel

[minor sleet]

I’ll say this for Kuang, nobody is ever neutral on her and her books

[north flint]

Her books are not for me, its her I dislike.

[snow vessel]

...I'm really tempted to start bury our bones at the moment

[north flint]

Good recs! Thank you!

[long sorrel]

Do it!

[snow vessel]

I might...

I'm about 100 pages into another book but I'm struggling with its pacing and prose

And Bury our bones was the other one I was thinking of reading now... and I want to...

[long sorrel]

Do iiiit

[north flint]

What book?

[snow vessel]

Curious Tides by pascale lacelle

Thing is, I love the cover, a lot of the interior design of the book, the vibes of the magic and setting and the mystery

It's just... the way its actually written feels like it's been un-hooking me more and more each chapter

xD

[ripe tide]

I just caught up with the chat

[north flint]

Agaha, saw that, lol

[ripe tide]

No need for that rec

[long sorrel]

Bury my bones in the midnight soil, plant them shallow and water them deep, and in my place will grow a feral rose, soft red petals hiding sharp white teeth.

[north flint]

: P

[snow vessel]

....oh no it somehow came off my shelf and into my hands....

Yeah I've been convinced

[long sorrel]

Oh no! Whatever shall you do??

[ripe tide]

It hasn’t come out yet so I haven’t read it, but I’m looking forward to Local Heavens. Cyberpunk queer/bipoc Gatsby retelling.

[snow vessel]

I'll come back to curious tides sometime when I can more look past my issues with it

[ripe tide]

By KM Fajardo.

[long sorrel]

Tomorrow is Book of Thief's second (and last) book so I'll probably read that next week or so

[snow vessel]

Maybe ill get my hands on the devils if I want a spooky read for October 🤔

[long sorrel]

Errr, Book of Night.

[north flint]

Ill explain it just a but, I think Kuangs upbringing in the highest of high class makes all her books Classist, whether shes aware of it or not.

[long sorrel]

Second book is called Thief of Night and my brain did a missmatch there lol

[snow vessel]

Ahh

What's that about?

[ripe tide]

Can you point to specific aspects of the books?

Because if its about the academia, I think she’s very well aware of how those institutions perpetuate positions of power and colonialism (She did write 2 dark academia books that are that beyond the aesthetic and have it as a main thematic component)

And it’s not like you need to have studied those things to understand the books anyway.

[north flint]

I think she places too little emphasis on how class affects status and too much on how race affects status

[ripe tide]

Those things are very intertwined a lot of the times. And I think both Babel and Katabasis are very aware of that. Actually, all of her books are. All the way back to Poppy War. You can see those effects even if it isn’t always the #1 thing that’s focused on.

[north flint]

I think she touches on it but its in a very surface level way that sweeps it under the rug.

I dont blame her, I just dont think she has the tools as a writer to discuss the topic given that shes always been exceptionally wealthy.

[ripe tide]

Poppy War is majorly concerned with the problem of class. And sure shes grown as a writer since then, but the theme isn’t absent from her work.

[ripe tide]

If there’s one thing abkut Rebecca that Ive seen over and over again in both books and interviews is that she’s very self aware and always pushing herself to do something new. I’m sure she knows how her privilege affects things. Ive seen that she is actually.

You can’t tackle every topic in every work. But I don’t think she’s unaware at all.

[north flint]

I listen to her interviews and get the exact opposite impression tbh.

I grew up wealthy, know a lot of wealthy people. And they all talk Like That.

Anyway, at this point its not something she could fix if she wanted to.

[ripe tide]

You can’t fix your background but you can absolutely work to be aware of it and shore up those unconscious biases. It’s not a monolith. She isn’t even 30 yet, people change.

[north flint]

Maybe, she could prove me wrong, but I havent seen anything from her that has given me that impression

[long sorrel]

So it's the newest Holly Black series. And it's a world where you can alter shadows and the MC was sort of part of the shadows mafia/black market as a con artist but she's trying to stay away.

It was a fun read

[minor sleet]

Happy Birthday Bilbo Baggins

https://youtu.be/CiRu_W9tzM8?feature=shared

Happy Birthday to Frodo Baggins as well

[long sorrel]

This book I'm reading is so weird

Confusing to follow

The mc has no... defined anything, she/he/they permanently change identities in the span of seconds. (Visually too)

Like you can see the morphing happening flowing constantly

And so the povs are from the mc but it's a different new person every other paragraph

All connected, shared memory etc. It's like a flow state

[ivory cypress]

i finally got back to All the Hidden Paths and i forgoooooot how much Foz Meadows can GRAB ME and how much i wish more of my favourite authors would make things gay like he does. and also sex scenes.

[zinc flicker]

Happy Birthday Bilbo

[spring turtle]

mmm. really enjoying Bear Head. I should probably put a hold on Bee Speaker already

[ivory cypress]

omg Victoria Goddard took over from Tamora Pierce as my most-read this year 😭 13 books from her (some very long, some VERY short)

[north flint]

What book?

[quaint burrow]

WotM LXXIII ||Today is my eighteenth birthday........I don't know what time Callidus dies........ oh my............||

[quaint burrow]

WotM.....||what just happened?||

||There are three worlds, Res, Obiteum, Luceum||

[wraith lynx]

Yay, youre done!!

[quaint burrow]

||The original Vis world is Res, but then Vis was copied to Obiteum.... Along with Caeror..... Were they copied to Luceum too? ||

[wraith lynx]

WoTM all ||welcome to the end of the book, we have alternate dimensions :3||

[quaint burrow]

||Of course we do.... But what did Caeror mean "we need to get a message to you in Res" ||

||I don’t think it meant the WAIT RU.... Right? As the version of Vis that went through Obiteum also had it..... Unless there is the third Vis... That went through Luceum? ||

||also, isn’t Obiteum "lost" whatever that means||

||also synchronous is death...... Does that mean the Luceum Vis died? ||

[wraith lynx]

||so many questions I love it~||

[somber timber]

lol almost clicked out of habit

[quaint burrow]

WotM ALL ||No, he didn’t have a toll to ensure validity.... There is no Vis in Luceum..... ||

||unless..... The toll is his arm.... ||

||also what the hell happened with Lanistia.... She didn’t break the commandment of isolation.... Did she? ||

||also..... Is his father alive in another world? Luceum? ||

[snow vessel]

Adam you are making so much more sense of this than I did

[quaint burrow]

I am gonna read the preview

Need to get my theories in order

[wraith lynx]

Right? My brain was just like

https://tenor.com/view/eevee-jumps-gif-2696845723667273642

WoTM all ||I was HYPED for those alternate dimensions 😂||

[snow vessel]

Wotm all ||I was just like... dang that was a lot of cool stuff. No clue what it means||

xD

[wraith lynx]

Now that youre done.... there is a preview chapter for SoTF online 👀👀

[quaint burrow]

Just finished reading it

[royal carbon]

The Devils hold is ready, I have a lot of reading to do this week

[wraith lynx]

Welp, now youre stuck with the rest of us waiting 😂 november where art thou

[quaint burrow]

Who said so

I haven't read Red Rising yet

[wraith lynx]

THE PIPELINE CONTINUES 🤩

[quaint burrow]

Darrow here I come!

[wraith lynx]

https://tenor.com/view/eevee-jumps-gif-2696845723667273642

[somber timber]

SMH he’s not even the coolest character

[quaint burrow]

He's the only character I know

[snow vessel]

Darrow is great

[wraith lynx]

And hes so... 🥴💕💖💖💖💕

[quaint burrow]

I need to confess

I think Vis is 🥴💕💖💖💖💕

[snow vessel]

[quaint burrow]

I wonder though.... WotM ||why.... Why did they kill the ruling family of Suus? ||

||This seems to be unorthodox, they didn't kill the ruling family from Stryc.... Whatever... And those killed many of them ||

[snow vessel]

WotM ||conquest? I just assumed that was a normal conquering thing||

Ahh

Nvm someone was paying more attention than I was, clearly xD

WotM ||wasn't there a suggestion that the Suus people were invaded over the magic weapon from the start? Maybe it was the cover up knowledge of the... everything||

[quaint burrow]

||I am like.... 90% sure that Vis asked someone about that and was answered that, no, it had nothing to do with Suus||

||That is.... If they are truly dead anyway.... ||

[snow vessel]

||didn't the weapon give him a flash of somewhere else? The cover of sotf I think? So maybe the weapon involves other dimension stuff, is my thinking||

[quaint burrow]

||Even if, the hanging was public, the people knew Diago...... They wouldn't know the kid who's being hanged instead isn't Diago? And if they hanged no Diago, wouldn't the whole people of Suus be wondering if Diago is alive? ||

||There is something there||

[snow vessel]

||was it public?||

||man I've really forgotten a lot xD||

[quaint burrow]

||Fadrique claims it wasn't.... But I could swear... ||

[snow vessel]

Wotm ||I thought it was private||

||also especially since fadrique and the bar guy both seemed to pretty easily accept diago being around||

[quaint burrow]

||Fadrique did say it was private||

[snow vessel]

Absolute batman ||I hope I never anger someone as much as Bruce angered whoever's writing/making this comic/universe||

[quaint burrow]

Red Rising prologue? ||I would have lived in peace. But my enemies brought me war.
Ay sir slow down||

[analog geode]

Red Rising all ||That is a really, really funny quote looking back||

[quaint burrow]

Red Rising prologue ||This is the Noble Lie of Demokracy. Typo?||

[wraith lynx]

||no, they just spell it that way 😂||

[analog geode]

||Scifi with cool scifi misspellings||

[quaint burrow]

||I feel a lot of Animal Farm influence from the prologue||

Animal Farm + Red Rising prologue ||"All animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others" "All men are not created equal" ||

[prime stump]

I made a terrible mistake.

I binged all of Saga

What the hell am I supposed to do now?

[quaint burrow]

Red Rising 6 ||Did Darrow just..... Die? ||

7 ||Apparently not||

||Eo was pregnant, no?(rhetorical)||

[snow vessel]

Bury Our Bones 1 ||oooh ok I'm hooked||

[long sorrel]

Good things to wake up to

[snow vessel]

I've gotta ask

What is it with the crab emojis here?

I swear I keep seeing them and I've never known what they mean xD

[sleek jungle]

WotM all ||Vis' dad knew about other worlds. My theory is that Suus has/had a gate and that was the true reason for the annex. So there's a non-zero probability that some of Vis' family are alive in either Luceum or Obetium. Or both. ||

[snow vessel]

Usha by the way do you happen to know if there's any art around of BOB 1 ||the widow||

||well. I'm assuming she's important enough to have art based on the blurb||

[long sorrel]

I haven't looked sorry, do you want me to see if i can find something?

[snow vessel]

Mm im just having a little trouble picturing them is all

[long sorrel]

I believe these are essentially Vecna happy noises.

[snow vessel]

So if you could that would be appreciated

Ahh

[long sorrel]

Hm i havent found anything that would help with what you're at right now

I did however find something else, that is, that i need this special edition 😳

Bury Our Bones all

[snow vessel]

....is this me-safe

[long sorrel]

Technically no but i don't think it depicts anything crazy

[snow vessel]

...yeah I don't have enough context for that to mean anything to me

[long sorrel]

it just looks really good!

[snow vessel]

@wraith lynx absolute superman feels very built for you

I'm not very far in but... I'm getting those vibes

[quaint burrow]

RR 13 ||"I do not want to make you a man. Men are so very frail. Men break. Men die. No, I’ve always wished to make a god.”
A red god? 👀 ||

||Someone has to dot God’s i’s
I like this quote ||

[snow vessel]

Bury Our Bones 2 ||ooh. OK. This book is good. I like it||

||I really like the way María (I think that's right?) Is written||

[long sorrel]

that is correct, yes

[quaint burrow]

How the hell did I finish 31% of Red Rising while reading in secret in mandatory military class?

my choices of books in that class are..... Noticable

[snow vessel]

Crazy pattern you've got going

Wotm then rr

[quaint burrow]

I don’t know why I even started RR

I was thinking of either HoC or Soulsmith, maybe Yellowface

I found myself going to libby and taking RR

[tight kindle]

Cosmic's subliminal messaging has taken over your free will

[wraith lynx]

https://tenor.com/view/eevee-jumps-gif-2696845723667273642

[wraith lynx]

Which is so funny because I did tbe exact same thing back in march 😂

Also Adam i finished RR in 4 days, both because its peak and it's really short

I feel like reading them together hits different because there's a lot of overlap but enough of a difference to make them both stand out in their own right

[hollow forum]

👀 👀 👀 👀 👀

[snow vessel]

Bury Our Bones 13% ||this is good. I'm enjoying this a lot. I really like María, and I like how... Andrés sucks but he doesn't even really feel like that bad of a person - he just sucks like a lot of regular people do/probably did||

[long sorrel]

Mhmmm

I loved the prose aside from everything else

Really flows

[snow vessel]

||he sucks but not in a particularly evil/uniquely horrible way. Very human||

[snow vessel]

Yess

The prose is really nice

[long sorrel]

I do in general like Schwab's prose but I feel this one excels a bit more

[snow vessel]

Also BOBITMS 13% ||I'm so curious to see what, if any, connections form between the stories||

[long sorrel]

Bob!

Why had i not thought of that

It reads like you have a severe case of Bob, also known as Bobism

[wraith lynx]

Bobitms 😂

Brilliant acronym

[snow vessel]

It has such a poetic title... that turns into bobism

[minor sleet]

https://www.tumblr.com/smokiedokie/738889428178812928/i-opened-my-copy-of-the-tale-of-the-body-thief

Lestat’s Root Touch-up Specialist

I opened my copy of The Tale of the Body Thief & immediately had to close it again because of this silly little annotation...

Tumblr · Jan 7, 2024, 8:37 PM

[snow vessel]

Modern TVC adaptation where lestat is a vlogger:

[ivory cypress]

oh Bury Your Gays came in on libby, yay

just in time for me to need to go to bed 😅

[quaint burrow]

RR 18 ||Damn, one family owns Phobos and Deimos? ||

[analog geode]

||Rich people smh||

[analog geode]

@ripe tide I’ve finished Shadow of Night! I enjoyed it, but I didn’t like it as much as the first one

[quaint burrow]

RR 18+WaT ||They must be Battar's or something||

[quaint burrow]

does RR get better?

[snow vessel]

Hmm in what way?

Like what's the issue you're having with it

[quaint burrow]

The prose is boring, and the characters feel bland

[snow vessel]

Hm

From memory I'd say the prose stays similar

I haven't read RR in a while so it's possible it changes, but I remember it feeling pretty consistent across

With the characters, I do think they get more fleshed out as it goes on. Book 1 doesn't do much with a lot of the cast, but I think that improves across the series

[wraith lynx]

As someone who finished the whole thing a couple weeks ago, the prose gets a bit stronger in the back half of the series, but the og triolgy stays the same for the most part

[analog geode]

yep

[quaint burrow]

I'll read the first trilogy and see if I wanna continue (I hear the later 2 are the best but eh)

[wraith lynx]

Golden Son is peak, yeah

[snow vessel]

Whole series vague (mainly structural stuff) ||IMO book 1 is very Darrow-centric, to the point where he felt to me like the only character with much character at all. I would say 2&3, while they stick solely to Darrow's pov, build out & develop the rest of the cast a lot more. And then 4-6 bring in more povs and a much larger cast, the majority of whom I would say are pretty well developed||

[wraith lynx]

My ranking rn is probably

1. Lightbringer
2. Dark Age
3. Morning Star
4. Golden Son
5. Iron Gold
6. Red Rising

My favorite chapter in the series is in morning star btw

[quaint burrow]

I mean the later two

Lightbringer and.... Dark Age?

[snow vessel]

Mmmmm I haven't read most of the series since last year but for me I think it's... LB>DA?>IG>GS>MS>RR?

Actually yknow thats basically just reverse series order so maybe it's just recency bias

[quaint burrow]

So..... Red Rising is unanimously the worst?

[snow vessel]

Its quite different

[wraith lynx]

Yes, it only goes up from RR

[snow vessel]

Not only does the series shift a lot towards space opera politics, the writing in general improves a lot imo

I like RR but it feels rough compared to the others, from memory

[wraith lynx]

It is, yeah

RR general ||There's this vibe that its trying a bit too hard to be edgy, whereas the others after find that footing naturally imo||

[snow vessel]

I like RR just fine but I feel like Pierce locked in with GS and then kept improving

[snow vessel]

RR general ||a lot of RR feels like... weird early installment stuff imo||

[wraith lynx]

Classic First Book pains

[snow vessel]

||some of the handling of violence, the edginess, the whole hunger games thing in general, a decent amount of the character writing||

[wraith lynx]

They're a lot easier to notice now, Eragon has them too 😂

[snow vessel]

RR feels very first-book-y, yeah

I've heard some of it may have been aimed at getting published so the rest of the series could be told?

Which, it definitely feels very... over-the-top towards certain demographics ig?

RR general ||it totally feels like an edgy macho hunger games knock-off to me, so I could totally see that being aimed at like... maybe late teen boys/early adult men?||

||while some of the series does keep some of those vibes, they feel a lot more natural going forward imo||

[wraith lynx]

same tags ||"Its the hunger games, but what if it was war and everyone pissed on each other 😈 ||

[snow vessel]

||I really dont know why there's so much pissing early in the series||

[wraith lynx]

||I dont know!! It's every chapter too in RR... so glad that died down as we moved along. I get it being there, RR is raunchy and edgy and brutal but every chapter, Mr Pierce?? 😂 ||

||Shoot, when we MEET darrow, hes talking about his pee pee suit 😭 ||

[snow vessel]

||Yeah Pierce definitely got better at choosing... what to include and what to tone down xD||

||same goes for the rape imo||

[wraith lynx]

RR all ||Yeah, theres a lot of it in book 1... I still think of that chapter that described the screams... and also Tactus randomly trying rape a poor girl 😭||

RR SAGA ALL ||I love going fron that to the breakdown of Pinks in society and how disgusting it truly is for them to exist. That alone shows how much Mr Pierce changed as a writer||

[snow vessel]

RR all/series minor ||yeahhh. Obviously its still happening across the series because yknow, war and the Society and all, but toning down the amount that it directly comes up on page (and the amount of sort-of protagonists doing it) was a good choice||

RR book 1 only ||funny thing is, with the characters, I barely remember anyone who wasn't majorly in the sequels||

RR series ||I'm sitting here not totally sure of which one tactus was ||

[wraith lynx]

||Tactus is apple's brother! 😂 you dont even know your mans family, wow haze 🥴||

[snow vessel]

||I couldn't remember what was him and what was titus ||

||titus, quinn, pax, tactus, 90% of the howlers... these are all people I know exist and know like... one thing about but otherwise may as well not exist to me||

||was there a leah?||

[wraith lynx]

RR series ||Which! I also love because in GS, Darrow says that Tactus barely stood a chance with the family he had and then we see that deranged family in IG and beyond and you go "yeah he really didn't" 💀||

[snow vessel]

RR series ||listenn if one guy has to get traumatised so my man apple can blast music while he seiges a city... ||

||honestly in book 1 I just went all in on Darrow & Cassius (though I couldnt remember who cass was for like half the book xD) and didn't pay as much attention to the rest as I should've||

||someday I gotta do a full reread so I actually know who people are||

[quaint burrow]

End I am late teens boy/early adult men

[snow vessel]

Hey I didn't say it'd work

[quaint burrow]

True true

I also had 12th grade reading level at 6th grade....

[wraith lynx]

Yeah tbf i am a grown woman and I ate the fist book up like it was a kit Kat bar so everyone has their flavors, and this series is mine 🥴💖

[ripe tide]

Yeah I have a problem picking a favorite in this series. The first one took me in so much, I’m a sucker for history so the second one was really good, the third one has all the climax. Only one I rated lower than 5 stars was Time’s Convert, but it was still very good. And Black Bird Oracle was great with the time skip.

[rare edge]

Oh, the secret WB sequel! 😂

[grim veldt]

OK, the title and cover makes it look rad
This might be an interesting read

Apparently it's a trilogy, and it does indeed look rad!

[analog geode]

The Book of Life 24 ||I don’t like how the characters have lost depth. Matthew has lost a lot of his subtlety, and Diana has completely dropped stuff like her perfect tea regimen||

[junior dew]

Yeah the cover kind of sold me too. Rabbit-Deer-Pegasus? I need to see what THAT is about

[marble sinew]

It's a flying Jackalope!

[spring turtle]

Godkiller is good

[light drum]

Have you finished lightbringer?

[white pond]

Dark Age spoilers ||The scene with Atlas and Darrow is still haunting.||

[wraith lynx]

I did around last week, yes!

Red God cant get here any FASTRR

[light drum]

Quote i mentioned form before from LB ||I am Cassius Bellona, son of Tiberius, son of Julia, brother of Darrow, Morning Knight of the Solar Republic, and my honor remains.||

[somber timber]

I have the same ranking. You could flip MS and GS and I wouldn’t fight you on it

Also DA and LB could be flipped and I wouldn’t fight you

-# I just would rather read one more than the other lol

[wraith lynx]

Yeah i agree. LB and DA are suuuuuper close and then MS and GS are suuuuper close!

[wraith lynx]

LB ||the way that scene had me crying.... I said it before and ill say it until the end of time but I HOPE darrow tears Lysanders spine out 🥰||

[somber timber]

Iron Gold ||suffers from some actual like structural issues with how the book was put together. To the point where he changed how he did things in 5 and 6. But it’s still solid. ||

[somber timber]

|| DEATH AND VENGEANCE. WE’RE GOING TO BURN THAT <REDACTED> ALIVE||

|| ooooooooh we should pick out the death song for when we get to read him dying next book||

[light drum]

Its a low point in the seris

[wraith lynx]

And then you get to DA ||and the series skyrockets because whoopdie doo mustang povs!!||

||im not a simp like some people (lol) but she easily has the best povs in the back half of the series||

[somber timber]

RR series all || look the books are just better with her involved ||

[somber timber]

Skill issue

[wraith lynx]

LB ||If i had to have one gripe about LB it would be that theres not enough of her tbh||

[somber timber]

|| this is always my gripe so I agree. But also eh so much of the book was about Cass. God I really loved that dude. I’ll be your millstone. The ultimate big bro move. Seeing his little bro go full evil and being like this is the only way to stop you. From the inside.||

|| I’m so glad he got to be the morning knight again to be Cassius bellona. No gold signifier. Just the hero himself. ||

|| hero of the republic ||