Books (General)

[somber timber]

|| bastards making me cry again ||

|| little turd space Nazi ain’t got grandma to wipe away the pain from his brain this time ||

[wraith lynx]

||hes actually insane and I hope darrow and diomedes my goat chop him into space bits 🥰||

[brazen pilot]

interesting take https://reactormag.com/with-the-serial-numbers-filed-off-the-problem-with-trad-pub-fanfic/

[lusty meteor]

I think the underpinning here is that fanfic is held to a different moral standard than published work, and when you take fanfic out of its box it doesnt necessarily function as published work

[hollow forum]

genuine question, wouldn't it be a good thing if the people who can't leave the giuseppe stromboli fandom gave money to non JKR authors who write derived settings instead of giving more money to her?

[long sorrel]

I did skim the article pretty quickly but it reads to me like basically it no longer is what they want it to be 🤔

[versed agate]

not giving money to JKR: good
giving money to the capitalism machine sucking on fanfic: bad

up to you how those balance out

[brazen pilot]

i'm not sure that's really an "instead", but yeah it's a complicated mix of factors both good and bad imo

[lusty meteor]

I do think the capitalism machine is a bit of an oversimplification

The demand for these stories came from the ground up

[brazen pilot]

i don't think it's a good thing that media continues to get consolidated into franchises in indirect ways like this

[versed agate]

well, natural except for the part where apparently the dramione resurgance was driven by algorithms?

NGL I thought dramione was deep past stuff

[long sorrel]

I'm not defending or saying it's a positive thing but the almost anything that gets popular ends up going through the capitalism machine, this isn't good or ideal or overall positive for artistry. But the opposite solution to this is just "let's keep it not in demand". If an alternate solution, which isn't about bringing fanfic into publish works or not came about I think that'd be perfect but alas.

[lusty meteor]

Facilitated by is probably more accurate

[alpine drum]

the framing of these types of genericized professionally published fanfic as in the same bucket as MCU slop is interesting but the position that fanfic has to subvert the original story or it's not fanfic is weird to me

[long sorrel]

As I said.

It seems part of the complain is that the published fanfics do not fill the role the author specifically wants from fanfic

which...

[lusty meteor]

I think it touches on a broader problem, where the author simultaneously wants queer stories to be mainstream and also completely independent of the primary trends

[alpine drum]

specifically the thing they quote and seemingly agree with

I'm not really sure how the first part of the thing they quote is relevant to the argument that professionalizing fanfic should be stigmatized

[ivory cypress]

I don't know that I would tie "trends" and "IPs" as being the same thing

[long sorrel]

It's obvious that fanfic is a space in which people can go into this far more than in published works because they are not tied by certain standards/demands. But I don't think that's what makes fanfic fanfic. It's just more common

[lusty meteor]

My bigger issues with the love hypothesis are its writing and framing, not really the reylo angle

[long sorrel]

(I don't mean standards positively here btw)

[lusty meteor]

Although i dont read fic so i fully defer there

[hollow forum]

I think like

[ivory cypress]

I saw nothing to complain about with the article, but the writer of it and I clearly have a lot of overlapping values

[hollow forum]

is there a fundamental difference between a story that started completely original and a fanfic without serial numbers when they use the same tropes?

[ivory cypress]

yeah

[lusty meteor]

Yes

[wet belfry]

My only exposures to this book are this channel and an Angela Collier video where she crashes out about how badly it frames science and the science community and it is very funny to me how seriously people take this book

[hollow forum]

Two of the three Dramione novels coming out this year feature a female main character enslaved by her male love interest.

That’s gross, although slavefic is hardly unique to this ship or this fandom.

I do take an issue with this because like, this isn't just common in fanfics, it's also common in published too

there's plenty of bodice rippers like that

[brazen pilot]

well i think one facet of the issue (among many) is that it creates a financial incentive among certain fanfic writers to create what has the best odds of getting picked up by a publisher, which promotes orienting things around the same core media franchises, and around the same (often regressive) tropes. i don't think this is big enough to "ruin fanfic" or anything, since all the other fanfic will still exist, but it does make the field a bit worse on average.

[hollow forum]

I don't know if that's true tbh

it's like, those people would still write those stories they just wouldn't sell them

in my experience, people write stories they'd like to read so like, even without financial incentive someone who really likes the tropes common in romance fanfiction will still write those tropes even in a completely original, not inspired by anything, setting because they like those tropes

[versed agate]

hey Naru, what's the state of Korean/Japanese Webnovels at the moment?

[ivory cypress]

there is also a way that fanfic is written that is way way worse when I see it in published fiction

they're way "emptier", way more skeletal

they make worse books

[versed agate]

as an example of a free form writing environment (presumably) heavily influenced by financial trend chasing

[ivory cypress]

worse fanfic, worse published books, hopefully just a bit of extended trend chasing that will die soon

[alpine drum]

it would be interesting to read a smart person's comparison of old victorian novels that were initially serialized to modern professionalized fanfics in terms of structure and such

[versed agate]

Cribbing & paraphrasing from Dan Olsen, fanfic gets to assume as a baseline not just tropes and archtypes, but specific characters and worlds
they then get to sketch out the differences the author is interested in, and leave the rest unsaid

[hollow forum]

from what I've seen, a lot of the genre isn't just trying to cash in on solo leveling's money printing ability, it's solo levelling fans wanting to write their own solo levelling

same for isekai tbh

like people aren't trying to ride the coat tails of SAO to make money, they really enjoy SAO and want to write their own world similar to it

especially because most of this genre comes from webnovels, which yeah can turn a profit but people write for fun

[wet belfry]

Hmm. Eragon has historically lost points with me for being something of a Star Wars fanfic, and I do have other beefs with the series, but I'm not sure that I'd consider being a Star Wars fanfic terribly causal or even correlated with the other beefs I have with it, at least not in the same way I have seen criticisms leveled at similar projects in the romance sphere

[brazen pilot]

people generally write what they want to, but that still gets influenced by the financial incentives and systems they exist under, even if not consciously

[hollow forum]

there's absolutely going to be people who are just trying to make money off it but I don't know if there's many of them

[alpine drum]

I don't know if I'd call Eragon a Star Wars fanfic, isn't it just a very close following of Campbell's hero's journey?

which star wars also was

[wet belfry]

Its much closer to Star Wars than being simply a Campbell's hero's journey

[lusty meteor]

tbf star wars is a star wars fanfic

I think eragon is trying to be a serious novel that took inspiration from a source. The fanfic type stories are something different if you read them

[minor sleet]

It’s just that the author was 16

[long sorrel]

I think Eragorn is anecdotical and ultimately not actually very good, even if it does try to be rather fleshed out

[minor sleet]

If not for his parents’ vanity press, I doubt Eragon would’ve made it to print

[wet belfry]

Are the modern romance stories that are fanfic based not trying to be "serious novels"?

[long sorrel]

Not like every single published fanfic, or fanfic-like is going to be horrible, but generally they have less construction

[hollow forum]

ERAGORN SON OF ERATHORN

[minor sleet]

It’s just not…. Very good or original

[alpine drum]

what I mean is, at any point was Eragon written with Eragon being Luke and so on?
If not I would not call it a fanfic because there isn't any canon from star wars which the reader is expected to know. Using the same tropes is different from what Dan Olsen was describing, as Null said

[minor sleet]

It’s not awful, I really liked it as a preteen, and he very much improved as the series continued but I don’t think the og book would’ve made it though a trad publishing gatekeeper

[ivory cypress]

I'd call Eragon derivative before I called it actual fanfic. this phenomenon of fanfic with the serial numbers scraped off is far more specific than traditional fiction with heavy/uninspired influence

[versed agate]

(TBF, I'm the only one that brought up Dan, as support for Grey's point)

[lusty meteor]

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/228691356-problematic-summer-romance

No.

[hollow forum]

I think calling Eragon a Star Wars fanfic seriously like "this is actually a fanfic" instead of just derisively is a bit unfair

[lusty meteor]

i dont thinkn checks notes maya and conor in this story are actually well considered characters, but vehicles for deliverity the scenes, dialogue, and tropes associated with an age gap romance

whereas a well written romance has fleshed out characters that lead to those scenes

[versed agate]

production line romance (or any other genre) is a different issue

[ivory cypress]

there is a way that fanfic is written that, having read a lot of it, does not translate well to "real" books and it's not about copying plot or character archetypes

[hollow forum]

is this one a reylo?

okay this one from the article I don't like

how about we let the authors get the bag for their writing even if it's fanfic 🙏

[ivory cypress]

hey, I'm not going to be buying Harry Potter styled books

what is "let them" when I'm not contributing to their bag

[versed agate]

I'm signed up to a few web authors' patreons 🤷

[minor sleet]

The author Ali Hazelwood is a Reylo but I don’t think this specific work (Problematic Summer Romance) is

The current trend has moved past redone Reylo fanfic and into redone Draco/Herminone fanfic

[hollow forum]

I'm not talking to individuals here, I'm talking to the article

[ivory cypress]

I'm talking about your talking to the article

[versed agate]

I was responding directly to Naru I guess

[ivory cypress]

what is the writer of the article actually doing to stop these books getting published

they're being public with an opinion about these kinds of books they have, as we all right now

[versed agate]

... And Naru was expressing a contrary opinion

[hollow forum]

it feels a lot like the "punk band I like is selling out", which very often is about the sensibilities of the listener, ignoring the material reality in which the band exists

[ivory cypress]

right....?

[hollow forum]

personally I'm happy for authors to make money off their writing, even if it is fanfic with the serial numbers filed off; if they can make a living out of writing store brand reylo, then good for them 🙏

that is living the dream

[hollow forum]

the whole "a modest proposal let's establish a new fandom stigma [...] we will feel free to disdain the practice of shadow franchising"

[sleek jungle]

that's my impression after years of reading rr serials. absolute majority, bar something like 3 stories, are just people writing what they enjoy with their own twist, not as a literary trend chasing scheme

[wet belfry]

I mean just because it appears to be operating in the cheesy Hallmark angle doesn't necessarily mean they aren't serious about it. If I'm being honest, the cheesy Hallmark romcom people often strike me as entirely too serious

[ivory cypress]

I was already doing that by disdaining to purchase or rec them, so nothing has changed for me

[hollow forum]

I have many criticisms of those genres in general but the money chasing is not one of them 🙏

[wet belfry]

Put another way, I'm not sure how much I'm willing to dismiss what's going on here out of hand because of the genre its happening in or its packaging, because it has happened historically quite a bit in sff (there's a good 15-20 years' worth of LotR knockoffs floating around and those were not well-packaged either), and because it frankly reminds me a bit of the sneering tone litfic people take towards fantasy

Angela Collier has fully convinced me that Love Hypothesis is a bad book, on its own merits, but I am a lot less convinced that what it is trying to do is representative of A Bad Trend In Literature and where I get lost is people getting bent out of shape over it for that reason

Sword of Shannara is also a bad book, in many or most respects independent of being a LotR knockoff

[ivory cypress]

I don't see them as being knockoffs

knockoff or derivative of something is different than being fanfic of the thing

[wet belfry]

I tend to think the only real difference comes when you start making active attempt to remove serial numbers and prepare for publishing

[ivory cypress]

right, which was the topic at hand

the books that have been through that process

[wet belfry]

I'm saying once they've been put through that process they go into the same bucket as Sword of Shannara for me

[minor sleet]

Ugh sword of shannara

One of the few books I’ve quit

[ripe tide]

Yeah it definitely isn’t. Certain IPs push trends, but the trends exist independent of IPs

[ivory cypress]

sure! it's just as someone who's read a lot from all categories, there is a really big gap between those things for me. there is a tangible difference between something that was once fanfic and something that's just being unoriginal/obvious about its influences

[lusty meteor]

I dont think the influence fanfic has had on the romance genre can be understated

And that influence affects who gets published

[long sorrel]

I was looking at the stats due to the #1342603794370007050 convo and look at when silksong came out (no, it wasn't March)

[ivory cypress]

mine looks super weird

and won't tie like that 😅

[long sorrel]

March is when I read Malazan 1 btw

[ivory cypress]

THAT'S funny

[long sorrel]

it took me 10 days!

unlike most books

[wet belfry]

https://tenor.com/view/star-wars-admiral-ackbar-its-a-trap-meme-gif-8125029

[low hill]

Out of interest, which bits were you thinking of?
-# I just finished it.

[long sorrel]

Mercy of Gods all ||I think the Swarm and the Carryx are written in a very inhumane way||

Did you like it?

[low hill]

Yes, I thought that's probably what you were thinking of. :⁠-⁠)

And yes, I did also enjoy it.

[long sorrel]

||I think many books take non-human writing and end up writing it too human-like or human-centric by mistake. I felt the authors do manage to make it feel like they're in fact not human.||

[low hill]

Yep, yep.

[long sorrel]

I don't think you usually read novellas but Livesuit is very good 👀

Just bringing it to your attention

[low hill]

chuckles Novellas aren't too bad. Short stories I usually draw the line at.

[long sorrel]

Did you have a fave character?

[low hill]

[Mercy of Gods] ||Dafyd, the swarm, the original librarian, the horse thing that built the buildings. I could do without most of the characters that died at the end, so that worked out. :⁠-⁠P||

[long sorrel]

The first 2 yes

||I think mine has to be the swarm||

||i really liked the woman... I've forgotten her name ... the one with the pills||

[low hill]

I know who you mean. I was less invested.

[long sorrel]

||Swarm and Dafyd go first for sure.||

Book 2 comes out next year

[low hill]

nods

[long sorrel]

April I believe, aaaah, I got all excited again

[north scaffold]

Mercy of Gods ||Horse things were the Phyllarchs of Astrdeim. Woman with the pills was Jessyn. I remember these off the top of my head even tho it was a year+ ago. It was a good book.||

I am very much looking forward to The Faith of Beasts.

I will say tho the artist JSAC get to do all their English covers sucks and I do not like any of the covers of The Expanse or The Captive's War.

[long sorrel]

Huh

I like the art

I don't care for it as covers

The special edition of Expanse have the full artwork

[north scaffold]

I don't like it as covers or otherwise.

[long sorrel]

Fair fair

So get the anniversary editions

The cover art is hidden 😌

[snow vessel]

I'm pretty sure 10 days is my average for most books 😭

[merry galleon]

The urge to start Words of Radiance is strong, but I set myself a goal of finishing the inheritance cycle AND Elantris first. Please help

[frozen glacier]

nothing we can do you just need to read

[snow vessel]

How far into each of them are you?

BOBITMS 21% ||🍿 🍿 🍿 ||

||we've got our first vampire turning||

[long sorrel]

Oooh~

[snow vessel]

||lol, the funny thing is, the blurb kind of labels Marìa's story as "about hunger" and I was sitting here thinking, I see it but I don't totally see why this one was picked as hunger. And then she drank so much blood that Sabine just died xD||

||so yeah I see it now||

||honestly I'm really enjoying this book. I think it'd keep going like this and easily end up as a 5 star for me||

||like... there's not even been that much vampire stuff yet - I'm just really enjoying these stories. I'd probably enjoy it fine if it never had any vampire stuff||

[untold leaf]

So the book Howl's Moving Castle has two sequels, with no set reading order for them. It seems the sequels are mostly standalone stories featuring the main cast of Howl's Moving Castle as side characters but don't have much of anything to do with each other.

Which means I really didn't have much to worry about reading the purported book three before book two. 😅

[long sorrel]

Well ||María's story is all about ambition, she starts by manipulating those around her with all her tools to have a better life, to have what she wants, etc. She kinda fails at it by naivete and circunstances but the ambition is there, the hunger for more||

[untold leaf]

(It's not my fault Libby had one available before the other!)

I just finished the "third" book and I'm onto the "second", but book two is definitely the most unique out of them. It's quite... Orientalist so far.

Speaking of finishing books, I'm now at 30 out of my goal of 40 for the year!

[long sorrel]

Right on track!

[untold leaf]

According to Storygraph, 1 book ahead

[snow vessel]

||ahhh true. Yeahh I see it. All the desire to change her fate basically||

||I was sort of thinking of the... rage against her situation angle||

[untold leaf]

Which for me is right on track because I'm inconsistent with my reading. I'll likely be "behind" according to Storygraph soon enough if the next book I read after this one takes me a while.

[snow vessel]

Bury our bones ||but that basically ties into the hunger||

[long sorrel]

||that is why she takes Sabine's offer after all, that and deeply wanting to [redacted] her maybe but alas, too late for that||

||i think the rage comes after, once they're married, i think originally wanting to get out of her town is pure ambition||

[snow vessel]

||yeah. I'm reminded of the description of her as a... candle smothered before it could burn? I think||

||her ambition is being smothered by this life and that's fueling her rage. They're tied together||

[long sorrel]

Btw I've been to her town

500+ years later

[snow vessel]

I was gonna say, is it accurately described? Before I remember the time gap

[long sorrel]

Yeah no clue lol

It's a pretty standard town of the area

[snow vessel]

🤨 but usha can you prove that you aren't a 500+ year old vampire

[long sorrel]

Nope 😔

But i can prove i was on the town this century!

[snow vessel]

Oh yeah also BOBITMS 21% ||I love how like... not unhinged, but almost that, María is||

||just very casually||

[long sorrel]

You're making me want to reread it

I feel i didn't savour it enough

Heh

Bob is such a good book

[white pond]

I think I unequivocally put Golden Son above Morning Star because of, well, uh, chapter 12 and the ending. Lightbringer is so good, and honestly Dark Age was so long I forgot what happened in half of it.

[wet belfry]

They really like it so it is unlikely to change, basically ever

[hollow forum]

that's really funny lmao

[quaint burrow]

RR 19 ||If I read the words bloodydamn or gorydamn again.... I'm killing Darrow myself||

[quaint burrow]

||Did Darrow just.... casually kill Julian?||

RR 20 ||Can I pretend to be as cold as Augustus? I now know why he did not flinch in hanging my wife. And I am beginning to understand why Golds rule. They can do what I cannot.
....... Oh....||

[low hill]

Starting book 60 for this year, and @ripe tide this might be one for you as well.

[ripe tide]

Yes its on my TBR, I think because you'd mentioned it

[low hill]

Then I'm finally getting around to it. :⁠-⁠P

[snow vessel]

I had a moment where I thought you were saying this was book 60 in a series

[low hill]

Heh.

[analog geode]

@ripe tide I have finished the trilogy! The third book was really good

[low hill]

You've been reading All Souls right?

[analog geode]

||Im pretty sure I’m going to have nightmares about what Benjamin did to that witch, I have never felt such visceral fear before||

Yep!

[ripe tide]

It was.

[low hill]

I need to get around to Blackbird Oracle. So many books, so little time...

[ripe tide]

Oh yeah same. All Souls books + show ||I watched the show first, read the books then rewatched the show. The sheer visceral hate for Benjamin on rewatch the first time he shows up before we know who he is….||

[ripe tide]

Yeahhh

[analog geode]

Are the next 2 direct sequels? Because there are still a few loose ends

[low hill]

Time's Covenant felt more tacked on the end of the trilogy, to me, than strictly a sequel.

[ripe tide]

Yes so Book 4, Time’s Convert is ||focused on Marcus and Phoebe and takes place while shes getting turned. But we also get POVs from Diana and what’s going on with her and Matthew.||

[analog geode]

Book of Life ||I still can’t believe Em died off screen||

[ripe tide]

With Black Bird Oracle we skip forward about 6? Years. ||And it’s about the kids but also a different part of Diana and her family||

[ripe tide]

The scene is in the show btw.

If you want that.

[analog geode]

Yeah I gotta watch the show

[long sorrel]

Oh, I finished book 150 last night

[ripe tide]

It’s good. Obviously makes changes, and BoL is especially compressed location wise, but it is how I fell in love with this universe in the first place.

I’ll just say that with the sequels, Deb has said that she’s not even halfway through the story she wants to tell. The Falcon and the Rose, book 6 is in editing, but we have no word on release date yet.

[analog geode]

||You know, I really wish we had gotten actual war. The most we saw was like 20 Knights ambushing 9 of Benjamin’s kids. None of the fights lasted more than a few seconds||

[ripe tide]

Not even what it’s about beyond what’s left hanging and 5 little hints Deb gave.

[analog geode]

Oh they’re still coming out? Nice

[ripe tide]

Yeah

[ripe tide]

||Yeah that’s mostly an artifact of POV. We so rarely get anyone beyond Diana and Matthew||

[analog geode]

Yeah

She also really misunderstood demographic numbers lol

||I think it was like 1 in 10 people was a creature? Then a couple dozen witches in the entirety of London||

[ripe tide]

||Honestlu I didn’t do the math. It’s not an easy balance between having enough humans, and enough creatures of each type, but also have it make sense for the population problem.||

||By my reckoning, witches would be the most common. Vampires don’t reproduce that often, though it might be a cultural thing with specific families and you have the lifespan to consider, and the way demons are described leads me to believe that if there were too many of them people would absolutely notice.||

I’m going to have to ask to see if there’s hardcovers anywhere. I spotted one paperback of the UK edition of the first book, but I know I’ll read these a lot and especially since they’re so big I want hardbacks.

[abstract elm]

I love the cover, though kinda funny reading the blurb for the book when they just throw some czech words there 😄

[long sorrel]

grumbles I guess it can go into my tbr

[mossy gyro]

Aight I've gone through LotR and my Warhammer books so its time for City of Brass

[random dome]

Yoooooo!!!!!

Ok I've been obsessively lurking in here in hopes of seeing The Cruel Prince stuff but I will absolutely take some Daevabad thoughts too! 🍿

[mossy gyro]

City of Brass 1 ||okay so something is up with Nahri but also dang girl she got those Turkish nobles good||

||also they mentioned Napoleon so this is way later than I thought it would be||

[mossy gyro]

City of Brass 1 ||okay I know very little about this book but I do know spirits and Djinn are real so I'm betting that this attempt to fake an exorcism isn't going to go well||

||I'm assuming that she's part Djinn and her native language is that of the Djinn. Using that language for this exorcism was probably a bad idea||

[random dome]

The popcorning commenceth

[long sorrel]

I am here for this. 👀

[random dome]

I am very curious to see Ander's thoughts

[mossy gyro]

City of Brass 2 badly summarized

||so yeah she's definitely part Djinn, the girl she was exorcising is actually possessed by a Djinn, and her use of what I presume is Djinn language in what looks like a summoning ritual has summoned some mighty Djinn warrior who's apparently supposed to be dead||

City of Brass 2 ||so I'm guessing this guy is an Efreet or however it's properly spelled. I know about them from DnD but don't expect that's a very accurate portrayal. Also he pulled like 5 weapons out of the ground like he's doomguy||

[long sorrel]

Multiple spellings are correct in the romanization of the arabic word

It might be because I'm spanish but I generally see it as ||Ifrit||

[mossy gyro]

Makes more sense with how it's pronounced

[random dome]

This book uses "ifrit" as the spelling!

[mossy gyro]

So City of Brass 2 ||the demon who posssed that girl is an Ifrit who I guess then are like an Islamic equivalent of Christian demons, and this warrior dude is a Djinn with some kind of fire powers. Or maybe Djinn is a blanket term and he's something else, but I'm sure that will get explained. Anyway turns out ghouls are part of Islamic folklore/myth so that's nice to know||

[wet belfry]

https://tenor.com/view/ifrit-reveal-cinematic-final-fantasy-16-clive-rosfield-gif-3399483703656546778

[wraith lynx]

TCP 11 ||Honeslty these kids need to be punched in their mouth, every last one of em||

||and I have an idea where its going so im not too fustrated. "No one's standing up for Jude because shes going to get stronger and humble (and hopefully even kill at this point tbh) them herself" but good GRAVY is it annoying watching everyone bully her every chapter 😂||

||at least daddy Maddy wants to stand on business for Jude 🥴 if he needs a second wife.... im right here, thats all im sayin||

[mossy gyro]

Oh right

[long sorrel]

sorry ma'am, I was here first!

Folk of the Air ALL (not safe for cosmic at all) ||He is the only one of my 3 fave characters left too ||

[long sorrel]

||I didn't know where it was going exactly and I found this bit a bit dragged, not much just a bit but it was worth 😌 ||

[wraith lynx]

TCP 11 ||Jude sweetheart I am failing to see the issue with daddy Maddy crashing out on your plastic classmates but thats just me idk 🫣||

[random dome]

TCP 11 ||"daddy Maddy" is killing me||

TCP 11||just like Jude and Taryn's parents||

[long sorrel]

Lmao

That made me burst out laughing

[random dome]

Sometimes you see the shot and you gotta take it

[long sorrel]

||just like... ||

[wraith lynx]

TCP 12 ||aww the map has a riding toad to Hollow Hall, thats so cute! ||

[mossy gyro]

City of Brass 3 ||ah so he's a Deva (Daeva?). Which I think is like an angel?||

||also lmao a flying carpet||

[random dome]

City of Brass 3 ||Daeva!|| If you want a little bit of vague worldbuilding assistance: ||Daeva, djinn, and ifrit are all interrelated categories, but I'll let the book explain how they overlap vs. exclude each other||

There is some lore in this book for sure

[mossy gyro]

Thanks for spelling assistance. Audiobook problems are real

[random dome]

I have never done the audiobooks so you'll have to tell me how they are!

[long sorrel]

Feather, having TCP and CoB reactions at once has made my day

I figure you understand

[random dome]

Yesssssssss

I am sitting here looking at this channel like

https://tenor.com/view/excited-fuego-gif-26833875

[wraith lynx]

TCP 12 ||oh of course cardan lives with the drunk party brother 😭||

[mossy gyro]

Pretty good so far

[wraith lynx]

TCP 12 ||oh no... I dont know why I didnt think he was being abused, but it all clicks now. Hurt people hurt people :((||

||"I do it because I love you" yeah I wish faerie land had cps right now because ewwwww||

[random dome]

TCP 12, but also kind of general ||I really appreciate how Black handles this part of Cardan's character, because he is genuinely a bad person himself who is doing bad things, but he's also acting out because his home life sucks and that's very understandable, but ALSO it doesn't excuse the bad stuff he chooses to do ||

TCP 12 ||I think a lesser book would go "uwu it's not his fault, he has no blame at all" and TCP doesn't do that. ||

[wraith lynx]

TCP 12 ||Yeah I like that Jude said it made him "real, but not good" and his abuse still made her feel bad on a fundamental level. Really captures the complexity of it all||

||in general, I like a lot of the ways Jude has been describing the people shes been around tbh. Recently with cardan, and with madoc too when he was about to crash out. She was like "yeah when you get like this i get reminded that you did, in fact, kill my parents" which... yeah 😭||

[long sorrel]

Jude! Jude! Jude!

||~~I'm not into Cardan because I'm the Cardan in this scenario 😌 ~~||

||not the being a bully part, (maybe a bit of an asshole and an attention whore tho)||

[random dome]

TCP early ||Honestly the book starting right out the gate with the Madoc/Jude relationship really locked me in on "oh okay this is an author who is not afraid of relationships that are complex and not black and white on who's a good guy and who's a bad guy" and that won me a lot of instant trust in her writing skills||

[long sorrel]

I realize the follow up was awful though it was mostly at me going Jude Jude

I keep forgetting Black's new book just came out

dammit

gonna buy it right now lol

[random dome]

TCP early ||Black starting right off with "yeah she genuinely sees the guy who killed her bio parents as her father and she loves him even though it's complicated" got me locked ALL the way in||

[wraith lynx]

||also also, homeboy who killed her parents is fine af sooooo honestly I can look the other way im just sayin 🥴||

[long sorrel]

I love that TCP is basically "wow this book touches this topics in a complex and deep way and it fleshes them out in fun and/or interesting ways" or "we are horny" for the reader

Or both at once

[wraith lynx]

Both is good 🤭

[random dome]

Cosmic I distinctly remember you starting to have an opinion and then asking if this character was hot and immediately changing your mind upon seeing fanart

[long sorrel]

we must have imagined that, cosmic wouldn't do that

Thief of Night acquired!

I don't remember much of book 1 and I don't wanna reread it though

I'm hoping starting book 2 will make my memory come back

[mossy gyro]

City of Brass 3 ||the heck is this bird?||

||also Nahri is in fact part-Djinn/Daeva/???? and has powers from a family of healers that's believed to be wiped out||

[wraith lynx]

Yes, I switched to the correct path its fine 🥴💖

[mossy gyro]

||ooooo title drop for the series. And I think this bird just gave up the Daeva's name (Dahra?) lol. ||

City of Brass 4 ||pov in Daevabad. So it seems the Djinn are just really magically powerful people, more like faeries than angels||

||also they have things like religion, drug addicts, and energy potions||

[mossy gyro]

City of Brass 4 ||wow this place sucks. Safrit (I think I spelled that right) are allowed to live here but only in one part of the city and as second-class citizens compared to pure Djinn. The Djinn are also divided into multiple tribes from different regions of the Islamic world, but one calls themselves the Daeva and that's also the name of their race as a whole. So Djinn are a subtype of Daeva but Daeva can also refer to a specific type of Djinn. That group are also referred to as fire worshippers which makes sense with Dahra's powers||

||the heck are these people involved in?||

[random dome]

Some spellings for you: ||Dara, aka Darayavahoush e-Afshin. The human-djinn descendants are the shafit.||

[mossy gyro]

Thanks

[random dome]

City of Brass 4 ||The way I think of the Daeva/djinn divide is that djinn is the generic term now, but daeva used to be the generic term. But now that one tribe calls themselves the Daevas it mostly just refers to them. Kind of like if there was a country that called itself the Homo Sapiens and looked down on everybody else for calling themselves "human" instead because it's a lesser word or something ||

[mossy gyro]

This is gonna be real bad considering audio and my complete lack of familiarity with Islamic mythos and folklore

City of Brass 4 ||though what the heck are these people doing buying a Shafit baby who looks like a pureblood?||

[random dome]

City of Brass 4 ||Daevabad is a nice place with no problems whatsoever, don't worry about it 🙏 ||

[long sorrel]

Everything's normal and moral 😌

[mossy gyro]

City of Brass 4 ||okay I guess the cover story is that the shapeshifter (Hanno?) is a pureblood noble who wants a child that can pass as his since its evidently difficult for pureblood couples to conceive ||

[mossy gyro]

||yup they just said as much but apparently this is really common. Also now they're in a trap||

||oh wow I did not expect an F-bomb in this book||

[hoary path]

I'm looking for a book that gives the vibe of the video game 'Witchbrook', would anyone have any recommendations?

[mossy gyro]

City of Brass 5 ||girl don't steal the magic ring||

||see now you're stuck in a vision||

[long sorrel]

||she should definetely steal the magic ring||

[mossy gyro]

||ohhhhhh the tattoos are some kind of slave brands||

[mossy gyro]

City of Brass 5 ||wait a second, a guy named Suleiman who lived 3000 years ago and summoned demons to build a temple....
This is the Arabic name for Solomon isn't it?||

||different spelling than I assumed but yes it is the same name||

[spring turtle]

new Amina al-Sirafi book finally announced

[long sorrel]

Is this book 2?

[spring turtle]

https://www.harpercollins.com/products/the-tapestry-of-fate-shannon-chakraborty?variant=44311791403042

ye

[long sorrel]

There were a lot of special editions on the bookstore the other day

But I've not read book 1 yet

[spring turtle]

-# oh thank God my book 1 is hardcover so I don't have to wait to preorder

[mossy gyro]

City of Brass general ||wait a second. Does Daevabad just mean "city of Daevas?"||

[snow vessel]

Bury Our Bones 31% ||ah.||

||sooo this is where this is going||

[long sorrel]

Hm? 👀

[snow vessel]

||new-sabine has found her little trio and things have been going well, but we're now seeing the start of issues between them||

||well. Hector reckons he's more important to Renata than Sabine will be, Sabine is mad about this + feels trapped by her promise to stay||

[long sorrel]

||You know, I kept wanting to say Sabine the entire time but having to force myself that she's María when talking to you. Now I can default to Sabine again ||

[snow vessel]

Bury Our Bones 31% ||oh, also, it's really interesting to me that we haven't gotten any signs of the third main character. My guess is they must be Lottie, from Alice's plotline||

||oh I also totally forgot to mention that Alice seems to be a vampire now xD||

[long sorrel]

just tiny details

||I didn't know Alice appeared so soon tbh||

[snow vessel]

||We've been alternating between alice segments and sabine segments for most of the book||

||I think there was one lottie pov earlier||

[long sorrel]

So I had sort of forgotten Book of Night and indeed book 2 has slapped me in the face with all that happened in book 1

[long sorrel]

Thank you, Holly Black

Thief of Night 2 ||She had felt a little like she was nursing a baby and a little like a witch cradling her satanic familiar to some magical third nipple.||

[merry galleon]

I’m so close to reaching 400 pages on inheritance

[mossy gyro]

City of Brass chapter 7 ||in which we get a lot of worldbuilding. The Daeva were once fire spirits without mortality but became jealous of humans and tormented them. Suleiman was sent to punish them, gave them mortal (if much longer-lived) bodies and split them into tribes scattered to West Africa, Egypt, Arabia, western India, either China or the surrounding steppes, and Persia where the Daeva tribe ruled. When they realized they could have children with humans who would also inherit Daeva magic, the Daeva tribe and their Nahid (Narid?) council banned such relationships and until now there have never been any confirmed Shafit of Daeva tribe origin. However the Arabian tribe became human weebs, adopting their religion (at that point Islam since that's around 400 AD) and culture and trying to defend the Shafit while adopting the human term Djinn. They rallied the other tribes and invaded Daevabad, where they killed many of the Daeva tribe and made themselves the rulers to this day. That explains why Dara hates modern Daevabad so much as he fought for his tribe in that war, and why the Daeva are the main troublemakers in the city now. And why they're the ones who are most adamant about segregating the Shafit. However this doesn't explain why Dara is so old, how he was imprisoned somewhere until Nahri summoned him, or how he was bound to grant wishes||

||oh also the Ifrit are the Djinn who didn't obey Suleiman and thus retained most of their original forms and powers. They hate the Daeva and especially the Nahid(?) bloodline and have worked very hard over the millennia to exterminate them, which is why they want to kill Nahri||

[long sorrel]

Isn't it cool? 👀

[random dome]

Ayyyy the lore drop!

[junior dew]

Gah I’ve been wanting to read city of brass

[wraith lynx]

TCP 14 ||I like the Bomb ||

[light drum]

TCP ||Agreed!||

[wraith lynx]

||shes a tiny lil brown girl!! And shes just so!! 💕💖💕💕||

[long sorrel]

||she's the bomb?||

[random dome]

Some more Frostbite Studios art for you!

[long sorrel]

I won't ever get tired of all the frostbite studios art being thrown again into the channel 😌

[wraith lynx]

https://tenor.com/view/adorable-omg-gif-26491199

Shes like literally perfect omg

Welp I have a new favorite character

[long sorrel]

she's absolutely gorgeous

[long sorrel]

There's a reason when we talk about hot characters i specify "fave male character" because like, the women in this book take the peak

[buoyant whale]

👀

[long sorrel]

Hi Mia, any particular reason or just passing by coincidentally at the mention of women?

[buoyant whale]

just passing by yes uh huh

[wraith lynx]

Mhm 👀👀

[buoyant whale]

i'd read this book for the hot women but i am not at a spot where i can manage to have a bisexual awakening

[random dome]

Definitely a risk with this one

But also: there's sapphics in this book too 👀

[long sorrel]

I think you might enjoy some of the men as pathetic creatures, but not that far that they'd actually have a real effect on you

[wraith lynx]

I keep thinking about this and doing a cosplay for her ngl

She hasnt left my head for 3 hours

[long sorrel]

omg 👀

[buoyant whale]

hmmm i see

[wraith lynx]

It is VERY helpful she kinda has my exact build... Im really leaning into it, I actually might do it for ren fair 😂

[long sorrel]

with white hair?

[long sorrel]

Idk if your very little amount of men tolerance leans towards twink men though, cause that's what the book has and why it doesn't do a lot in that department for me

y'all know who not withstanding 😌

[wraith lynx]

.... Ill figure that part out 🤣

[long sorrel]

I mean, it works perfectly well without but it does add to the whole fae feel

[wraith lynx]

Agreed~ plus it goes so well with her skin tone

[mossy gyro]

City of Brass 8 ||Ali learns customer service||

||bro forgot to take notes lol||

||who the heck sent these women ||

||ah it was the vizier. I assume he's sus because viziers are never a good sign||

[mossy gyro]

City of Brass 9 ||ah right I forgot Nahri offended Dara||

||oh wait he's back now||

City of Brass 9 ||dang you two should just kiss already||

[mossy gyro]

||attacked by a giant bird sent by the Peri(?) (bird people) and then while healing Dara, Nahri saw another of his memories in which he was killed by Ifrit and somehow this made him into a slave for humans???||

||they should still kiss btw||

[alpine drum]

Man /r/ImaginaryWesteros is obsessed with genderbent Robert Baratheon

[mossy gyro]

Why???

[marble sinew]

Hmm, Betty B just doesn't have the same energy as Bobby B though...

ASoiaF general ||Hmm, new head canon on a gender bent character, Roberta's Rebellion was started after she was spurned by Rhaegar. She still caves his chest in at the Trident.||

[alpine drum]

I would say 90% this reason

[mossy gyro]

Fair enough

[alpine drum]

ASOIAF ||Also the sub doesnt like Rhaegar and imagining Robert bullying him as her husband is funny ||

[viral fractal]

Asoiaf ||I’ve seen so many genderbent Robert x Rhaegar art lately||

||it is genuinely really funny tho||

[alpine drum]

https://www.reddit.com/r/darkwingsdankmemes/comments/1nrbh5z/she_drained_him_like_a_succubus/

[alpine drum]

||yeah i think more often its with Ned||

[snow vessel]

Bury our bones 38% ||yess get him alice||

[long sorrel]

half of the book be like ||Yesss get [XXX] [one of the mcs]||

[snow vessel]

And that's why it's great

[ivory cypress]

me picking up a horror novel by Chuck Tingle "oh my god it's scary in here"

the Pikachu face I've been making

[snow vessel]

Bury our Bones 40% || 👀 we've picked up a mentor and his "human pet" now||

[minor sleet]

https://www.tumblr.com/batmanisagatewaydrug/795770894536605696/what-characters-in-comics-would-actually-be-more

[lusty meteor]

Shallan

[long sorrel]

Thief of Night 11 ||I didn't expect this book to be about romantic/sexual power dynamics between the mc and her shadow, but somehow that's where we're going ||

[pastel tide]

Having almost finished abercrombies The Devils, I can say that A: it's one of the best books I've ever read, B: Balthazar Sham Ivam-Draxi is my boy and I would fight for him, and C: its pretty obvious that ||the pope is Brother Diaz's bastard child || though the later is just a theory

Its up there with Rhythm of War and the name of the wind in terms of my favourite books

[alpine drum]

The Devils ||interesting, my theory major is that Alex is the savior reborn ||

[long sorrel]

Balthazar ||and his swinging penis|| is indeed the best

[long sorrel]

||i think Alex is gonna be fully irrelevant moving forward||

[long sorrel]

......
............ ||this does match grossly how long Díaz was in the monastery doesnt it?||

[alpine drum]

||that's certianly possible but I think that the return of the Savior is a pretty big loose thread that, if the books go long enough, will be addressed||

[long sorrel]

Mhm, I agree

||which is to say i think it'll be unrelated to Alex||

[alpine drum]

||I guess my name has been unchanged for a long time so you might have forgotten that I'm the correct theory haver||

[long sorrel]

I would never forget!

[light drum]

The Hydrogen Sonata All||Wow that is an ending||

[royal carbon]

I have been meaning to get back to that series

Finished the fourth Dresden Files book and started The Devils today.

Acquired the next DCC book and the next bookclub book as well. Still working on book 6 though.

[light drum]

Dresden Files are greatcand we have a new onr in January iirc

Actually probably about time for a reread

[royal carbon]

This is my first time reading all of them (and in order)

[light drum]

Curious if there is any intrest in a first time/reread along as the approach goes near?

[royal carbon]

I believe my first one was Turn Coat and I've read most of them since then plus the short story collections.

[pastel tide]

I don't know about that, but it would be cool

[pastel tide]

That's what I'm saying! Though I accept it may be wrong

[zinc flicker]

This is the Dramoine one right?

[minor sleet]

One of them yes

The other one I know is called Rose in Chains

There’s a third one too

[zinc flicker]

Yeah. I saw it on a YT short lol.

Was just browsing Barnes and Noble and saw it pop up

[zinc flicker]

Okay I looked it up and read up on it and it’s gonna be a pass for me lmao

Alchemised, CW: rape ||I’m down for a dark retelling or “what if the good guys lost”. I am down for dark romance. But there is a line that is crossed that repeatedly comes up in reviews: Draco’s character equivalent rapes Hermoine’s character and they are supposed to just move past that and get together. Idk. I don’t think I can read that. ||

It seems popular tho, so there is surely an audience for it

[main wren]

imo that kind of thing is like, if there are tone promises early on that this is on the table and you can dip out early if you don't want that, it can be fine. but if it's just a Thing ™ and you have to just deal with it, that can be grating

[minor sleet]

Rose in Chains is about Draco stand in’s kingdom conquering Hermione stand in’s kingdom and enslaving her

[zinc flicker]

Yeah

[ivory cypress]

so Bury Your Gays was good, but the flashbacks to ||traumatic experiences of growing up as a gay kid in the 90s was way heavier and inflicted way more dread than the scary parts. hard to imagine that was an accident. woof.||

on to Hemlock and Silver now, finally

[long sorrel]

Thief of Night 19 ||Charlie giving me second hand embarrassment ||

[spring turtle]

God I loved Bury Your Gays

[hollow forum]

extremely valid 🙏

I have no idea why it started but I approve 🙏

[hollow forum]

this would fix asoiaf 🙏

[hollow forum]

WHERE 🥺

[hollow forum]

also would like those 🙏

[alpine drum]

https://www.reddit.com/r/ImaginaryWesteros/comments/1mc84v0/fem_robert_and_ned_sketch_by_etceteraart/

[hollow forum]

ASOIAF ||I think I still prefer doomed yaoi but this is good thank you 🙏 ||

[alpine drum]

||just to clarify I think Ned is a woman here also||

||apparently there's a very popular fan fic about female robert that's prompted all this. I really wonder what GRRM would think about this lol||

[hollow forum]

👀 👀 👀 👀 👀

[alpine drum]

https://archiveofourown.org/works/43269546/chapters/108759393\

[lusty meteor]

Aaks just dealing drugs in the books channel

Also @viral fractal

[long sorrel]

Thief of Night 33 ||I've a really bad feeling about the ending of this book ||

||nvm Holly Black pulling a romantic arsonist last page lmao||

[snow vessel]

Bury Our Bones 46% ||not an actual vampire getting kicked out of the vampire club xD||

[proven token]

Thanks again for the recommendations! I finished the two that my library had in. Here are my unhinged ramblings:

In the Shadow of Lightning ||Perfectly fine but not my favorite. The worldbuilding didn't quite gel and the plot felt very forced. The prose was fine and the dialogue was well written. Pointless romance subplot was pointless. The magic system tried to be too many things at once; Glassdancing, Galaziers, and Sorcery aphasia didn't fit at all with godglass, and also weren't super interesting to begin with. Godglass had too little information to be a hard magic system and relied too much on magical craftsmanship to be soft.

The characters were the high point of the book. Demir's journey was especially fun to read, and Thessa, Kizzy, and Idrian were all well-written.

The twists at the end with all of the discount cthullhus and the Golden MacMuffin getting stolen felt dissonant and forced, respectively. Probably not reading the sequel.||

Fated ||Enjoyed this one a lot more. I don't read hardboiled detective fiction a ton, but this one nicely scratched my itch for the genre while doing a twist on the "secret magical world" trope that wasn't obnoxious. I enjoyed most of it, although it felt pretty misogynistic at times. I might pick this series back up when I'm done with the Expanse.||

Now onto Persepolis Rising! Unhinged thoughts soon to come.

[merry galleon]

I’m now at pages 466 on inheritance. I’m getting there

[quaint burrow]

RR 21 +nsfw? ||“I was. I sent her a great phallic cake filled with live woodpeckers.”
I beg your pardon, Fitchner?||

[snow vessel]

||I cannot imagine what the context of this possibly was||

[quaint burrow]

||a trick Fitchner did on the Proctor of House Diana||

[snow vessel]

Ah. I see

[quaint burrow]

RR 23 ||I have sulfur matches and that makes me the god Prometheus.
Wonder if that's intentional, Prometheus isn't a god, he's a titan||

[snow vessel]

Bury Our Bones 48% ||yikes, matteo||

[long sorrel]

Oh my god, what Stalks the Deep is out in 3 days!

How time flies! (Highly and lowly at once)

[low hill]

[The Devils] ||I think that everyone left behind is going to be out of the story now.||

[merry galleon]

I had some more time to myself and I read up to 522 pages on Inheritance. 300 pages to go!

[long sorrel]

This is what I think too

[long sorrel]

||perhaps they'll be mentioned, I presume Sunny might think of Alex some times but I don't think any more than that will happen||

||kind of a shame i warmed up to Díaz a lot but the 2 new characters do sound pretty interesting||

[low hill]

Yep, agreed.

[long sorrel]

||I do appreciate Abercrombie doing this tho, building relationships and leaving them behind like nobody's business ||

[quaint burrow]

RR 23 ||are you telling me not a single person knows how to make fire from....Wood? They never learnt it?||

||are we sure that Darrow is smart?||

[white pond]

||I believe there was some handwavey explanation about the way the stones don't spark and that the environment is basically made so that they couldn't just make fire that easily. But, it is uh. kinda silly.||

[ivory cypress]

hemlock and silver 8 ||.... oh man, is snow the villain at work here? like is she the witch somehow?||

[snow vessel]

Bury Our Bones 63% || 🍿 now we get lottie/charlotte's story||

[long sorrel]

I really like the way it's structured to deliver the story

[snow vessel]

As in the way the plotlines are woven together, or the structure within this plotline?

[long sorrel]

the way the plotlines are woven

[snow vessel]

Misc. Bury our bones ||I find it a little funny how worried I get every time a male character is introduced now 😭||

BOB 63% ||I'm also really feeling like... the tragedy of Alice's story. She's really just kind of lost her life and there's not anything she can do about it||

[long sorrel]

Bob

[long sorrel]

||I love all their stories so much, how much have you learnt of Lottie?||

[snow vessel]

||we've gotten a lot of the backstory with jocelyn, why she was sent to her aunt, and she's met Sabine a few times at events||

[long sorrel]

Mhmm

[ivory cypress]

okay Hemlock and Silver rules, this is one of her best

[wraith lynx]

The premise to it sounds really fun

[ivory cypress]

highly recommend

[wraith lynx]

I realized I like a lot of... mystery-uncovering in stories? WoTM helped me see that and I want more of that

[ivory cypress]

yes!!

exactly

i think that's why i like my faves so much, is that they have a heavy mystery element

[wraith lynx]

It also is such a fun way of showing how smart your character is! Like yeah solve those mysteries 🥴✨️

[zinc flicker]

I recently discovered I find Eldritch horror really cool

Which is also mystery unraveling ☺️

[wraith lynx]

Ooooooo 🤔✨️

[zinc flicker]

Magnus Archives set me off but I’ve been searching a little bit for some books

[analog geode]

Could always read Lovecraft

[zinc flicker]

Yeah. That’s true.

[snow vessel]

Mag archives is great!!

I'd also be interested in any recommendations you get 👀

[white pond]

Lovecraft has a lot of great stories.

Obviously, call of chthulu is iconic, but i found that a lot of the shorter stories are much more fun.

I didn't get caught in Mag Archives, but I desperately want to give it another try eventually.

[analog geode]

Just don’t read his poetry

[snow vessel]

I think I've read a few lovecraft

Azathoth, nyarlathotep, most of innsmouth, the... haunter in darkness?, hypnos

I think

[rugged tartan]

Just started the Bewdley Mayhem series (Which includes the book that the movie Pontypool is based on) today at work. Definitely an interesting intro, but also just... I miss reading 😭

[merry galleon]

I’m wonder if anyone has read Ryan Cahill’s Of Blood and Fire series. I’m interested in reading it

[somber timber]

Yet you still won’t read tainted cup

[light drum]

TMA is so good!

[light drum]

Rereading Rerising

[long sorrel]

Its very good! And like, it has themes I wasnt expecting when described as "snow white retelling" that made it even better

[viral fractal]

Reading more YA has forced me to concede that Harry Potter is, indeed, actually good

[brazen pilot]

nobody forced you to say this camille

[viral fractal]

I feel in my heart I have to say this

[long sorrel]

did you lobotomize yourself again?

Regardless I think this is telling of where you're putting your bar more than anything about HP

[viral fractal]

Okay I think if you compare HP to books I genuinely consider good (like Bronte, Asoiaf, Wolf Hall) it’s bad

If you compare it to the standards of YA books, it’s probably one of the best

[long sorrel]

I think if you want to compare HP to books within its range you should compare it to other books for a younger audience

not YA

I'm not arguing that it's terrible or anything, it tries to do some specific things and it does manage (not all but a bunch of it)

I just don't see the comparisson lol

[light drum]

Middle Grade books better than HP that I remember reading

• His Dark Materials
• Percy Jackson and the Olympians
• The Kane Chronicles
• Unwind
• Wonder
• The Dark Hills Divide
• A seris of Unfortunate Events
• Holes
• The Chronicles of Narnia
• The Giver
• Michel Vey

• Artimist Fowl

[wraith lynx]

Wonder

[viral fractal]

PJO and Narnia were pretty good, I’ve heard the Giver is good but have not read it

[brazen pilot]

do you need help

[wraith lynx]

And Holes

[brazen pilot]

it's artemis

[viral fractal]

I will say Narnia has vastly inconsistent quality though

[long sorrel]

mhm

[brazen pilot]

so when i think back to holes

i'm like

wasn't there that guy whose whole thing was he only ate onions

that guy was cooking fr

[long sorrel]

i'm not sure I'd call Narnia having better "quality"? 🤔

[brazen pilot]

did not appreciate his wisdom at the time

[viral fractal]

Damn I’m kinda nostalgic for PJO now

[long sorrel]

But it's hard to judge for things i read as a child

[analog geode]

Narnia is amazing all the way through

[viral fractal]

Books 2-4 were straight bangers

[long sorrel]

I mean, HP was amazing all the way through to me too

I'm not sure this is representative of what I current adult me thinks of its quality

[viral fractal]

Magicians nephew and the last battle kinda sucked

[brazen pilot]

voyage of the dawn treader was a real banger imo, i think had a foundational impact on my love for adventures past the edges of the map, into the surreal

[low hill]

Narnia was fine, except for A Horse and His Boy, which was awful...

[long sorrel]

I do not remember crap

[viral fractal]

I loved Boy and His Horse

That was easily the best book for me

It was a bit racist but only a bit

[light drum]

Magician nefrw is my favorite Narnia books

[viral fractal]

Why did you correct the spelling to be worse

[brazen pilot]

i like the part where ||jadis comes into england and yells at policemen||

[ripe tide]

I haven’t read all of those but the ones I have I agree. Though I DNFed Narnia.

[minor sleet]

There were better YA books than Harry Potter even before Harry Potter was made

[brazen pilot]

honestly, i'm not saying i could fix her

but who says i need to

[viral fractal]

I keep meaning to read the christomanci books

[minor sleet]

Just because the genre is and has been plagued with dreck doesn’t mean that Harry Potter is the best of the best

[viral fractal]

It’s on the list somewhere

[light drum]

I kinda want to revist a bunch of middle grade books. I alresdy am doing a His Dark Materials reread in prep for the new book this November

[viral fractal]

Nah the book I’m reading now isn’t even bad

It’s a solid 7/10

[light drum]

Is Eargon Middle grade?

[viral fractal]

Eragon is marketed towards teens and adults

[long sorrel]

I've read YA books better and worse than HP

But also like... I think a lot of demographics are plagued with literal trash, that's the nature of media

[viral fractal]

I would consider pjo better than Harry Potter

[long sorrel]

I DNF PJO

but also I read it as an adult

while I read HP as a child

[ripe tide]

School for Good and Evil, Land of Stories in the middle grade category.

[viral fractal]

Yeah I was pretty biased cause I had a massive crush on Percy reading it

[long sorrel]

I think I'd not have liked PJO as a child either, but probably better than I dislike it now

[light drum]

I dnf'd as an adult but ate that serisus up when I was but a wee lass

[long sorrel]

I do not understand what that sentence means, sorry

besides DNFing it, I did get that

[long sorrel]

Yeah I am not about to get a crush on a child

I tried reading it with this server eary this year

[lusty meteor]

WHY ARE YOU SCREAMING

[long sorrel]

I read 3 books?

[long sorrel]

They are all acronyms!

But i can shout louder if you want?

[lusty meteor]

i know but it was funnier to imagine you bursting into a room yelling GUYS I DNFD PERCY JACKSON EVERYONE MUST KNOW

[long sorrel]

I am an attention whore but I do have limits

[viral fractal]

I was eleven or twelve 😭

Percy was perfectly written to be middle school crush bait

[long sorrel]

Oh yeah I absolutely get it

But I read it being 34 lol

That said I feel a lot of the humour is very culturally targeted in a way that I just went while reading it

and not much else

I don't think child me would have enjoyed that much either

[viral fractal]

Did anyone read the Young Royals books by Carolyn Meyer?

Those books changed my life fr

[wraith lynx]

Real honeslty, if i read it at the right time I would have been down BAD for him probably, but I was a woman and just constantly thinking "oh percy..." 😭

[ivory cypress]

yeah I missed the boat on PJO (and Warrior Cats) and I don't think I should read them now

[viral fractal]

I read them in third grade and I was obsessed

[ivory cypress]

I think it'd be unfair to the series

[light drum]

A lot of YA doesn't really age with you
(Unlike His Dark Materials which you should all.read)

[viral fractal]

Oh damn, Warrior Cats mention

[wraith lynx]

Me realizing this when I read eragon for thr first time in 6 years:

[long sorrel]

I did love His Dark Materials, probably my fave middle grade book in my childhood

[ivory cypress]

my ability to judge what, of the things I read and liked as a kid or even teen, still holds up is obviously borked, I don't think I could tell what would be good to the first time adult reader

[long sorrel]

but I refuse to reread it

[ivory cypress]

I'm like, everyone would still like animorphs right?

[light drum]

Ive reread it a few times

[ivory cypress]

I think I'm good on rereading it

[viral fractal]

I feel like there’s a lot that went over my head in hindsight. There’s a bit in Carolyn Meyers Tudor books about whether or not a marriage was consummated, and the bride cuts her foot and smears blood on the bed the night after, and I had no idea what was going on

I just thought it was a thing people did

[long sorrel]

I think I'd still like it but also I don't care enough to reread, and I do like to hold to the memories and feelings that something produced, even if they're unrealistic

[ivory cypress]

I had the same but reverse reaction some people have to Narnia in adulthood and going "it was an allegory for what??" but with pullman's beliefs

[brazen pilot]

i think i've reached the point of actually not caring about the narnia allegories

maybe it's just because i grew up with them, but i feel like it's propped up as this example of like "whoa! these books are christian? whaaat!"

when it's like well yeah the guy was a christian and he believed in it fully and decided to use that in his story

[long sorrel]

Yeah, I had that when I was a teen (I had read it when I was like 8)

[ripe tide]

It does work for some adults, Mike Schubert being the prime example.

[lusty meteor]

if you get suprpised narnia is about christianity that is on you

[viral fractal]

Narnia was the least subtle allegory of all time

It was, in fact, barely an allegory

[lusty meteor]

warrior cats is a tougher sell

i have went back and spot read

it is has some jank to it

PJO i think just holds up

[long sorrel]

I had a casette I listened to, for Narnia. I was a small child and completely detached from religion, no way I'd have realized it's any religious allegory

[light drum]

||What you mean the lion sacrificing himself to save the land and rising three days latter was a allgory||

[lusty meteor]

except for the fifth book of the second series

what was that

[wraith lynx]

I dont know how to feel about it honestly... because on one hand youre right! Theyre old and whoever wrote them were Christian and thats pog but uhhhhhh... well its not like im gonna read them so it doesnt really matter anyway 😂

[viral fractal]

||the lion then says “I was also in your world, go and seek me there”||

[brazen pilot]

i think i'm way more comfortable with the idea that like, yeah every book by every author is going to bring in their own beliefs, whether it's an explicit intentional allegory or just the underlying themes

[long sorrel]

even nowadays my brain is so detached that I do have trouble noticing religious references (I'd notice something like Narnia), well, I'd not call it trouble, more that I don't really care to notice them most of the time

[viral fractal]

Tbh warrior cats is just a soap opera

[brazen pilot]

whereas as a kid, my reaction felt more like "whoa! narnia is christian? that is a weird specific case, while every other story is normal and definitely unrelated to the author's beliefs"

[lusty meteor]

real

[long sorrel]

Religion is something completely out of my mind until someone brings up the topic with me-kind of thing

[viral fractal]

Everyone’s cheating on each other and swapping babies

[minor sleet]

CS Lewis when kids these days fail to notice that the Lion is literally Jesus: ☹️

[lusty meteor]

remember when that one cat got reincarnated

weird

[viral fractal]

Yall didn’t go to enough Christian after school programs

[minor sleet]

Don’t forget having cross clan kits, having magic powers, etc

[light drum]

Woah is warrior cats a Christian allgory

[viral fractal]

They had really good food

[low hill]

I didn't go through any.

[lusty meteor]

did jesus get hit with a range rover

[minor sleet]

Reincarnation is not a Christian belief

Last I check anyway

[light drum]

Mine didn't 😭

[lusty meteor]

it is emphatically not a christian belief

[viral fractal]

Jesus coming back from the dead is a separate thing

Christians don’t believe in reincarnation lmao

[brazen pilot]

if a hero who seemingly dies only to come back makes something a christian allegory then half of western fiction is christian allegories

[long sorrel]

I went to the perfect amount actually, zero.

[light drum]

Idk maybe, I dont think cars were as safe then

[lusty meteor]

PJO is a christian allegory

[viral fractal]

I still remember the kids Bible study trying to explain the story of Esther without bringing up the fact it was a harem drama lol

[light drum]

Duh, who else could Zeus be

[viral fractal]

True, myths about dying and rising gods predate Christianity

[light drum]

(Tho if getting in semantics there is a lot of similarities in the depiction of the Christian god to earlier deities, specifically Egyptian and Mesopotamien)

[viral fractal]

The rising and dying god mythologies are present in Orphic Dionysus and in Adonis/ Tammuz

It’s based on the changing of the seasons

Tammuz is actually indirectly mentioned in the Bible

[ivory cypress]

ehhhh

and a switch to #academia at some point

[hybrid kettle]

Never read it, but I've heard it has the best pacing of all time

[wet belfry]

I think the comparison is invited because YA started in an attempt to capture some or all of the HP jetstream

[long sorrel]

I... don't even know how to reply to that Kon

Like... what?

[wet belfry]

Initially aimed at the audience who were children when HP was new and older teens when it finished

[long sorrel]

but YA is much older than HP...?

(I'm exactly that age and I still don't see it)

[wet belfry]

YA as a classification existed as a vague idea but the modern "movement" if you want to call it that started with HP

It has picked up its own "genre" conventions since then, but HP was absolutely formative to the modern conception of YA

[long sorrel]

It's still a different target audience

Like, using myself an example, which is ofc anecdotical, you try to aim a book at me who has grown up reading HP, but me as, idk, an 18yo is a completely different target audience than me who was reading HP

And a lot of us read HP as an old teen out of love an inertia

Like, idk that I'd have picked it up as a 17yo

[royal carbon]

The narrative voice in The Devils is fun

[alpine drum]

maybe the later books qualify as YA

the first few HP books are solidly middle grade

[long sorrel]

Right, like I get what Kon is saying,more or less, but that doesn't make it grounds for comparisson to me

Because they're firmly just different genres

[ripe tide]

No actually. YA existed before HP happened. The Outsiders and The Catcher in the Rye were some of the first titles.

[tight kindle]

It might be time to start my WotM reread

[long sorrel]

What Stalks the Deep tomorrooooow

[viral fractal]

Would hate to see the worst pacing of all time tbh

The later two books dragged sooo much

[long sorrel]

Kingfisher is feeding us good 😌

[hybrid kettle]

probably Anna Karenina or some other book from realism

[ivory cypress]

I think I'm going to be sick tomorrow so I might not get to it

right away, at least

[viral fractal]

Okay expecting Russian novelists to follow conventional pacing is too much

[tight kindle]

@wraith lynx are you going to do a WotM reread? Or have you done it already?

[wraith lynx]

I wasnt......................... but 👀👀

I could, but I want to see where I land when I finish the folk of the air triolgy 👀

I have to stay on track 😂

[cloud socket]

late in the backscroll but meeeee; I adored Mary, Bloody Mary

[viral fractal]

Doomed Queen Anne changed my life fr

[cloud socket]

Actually on the shelf behind me of books I took from my parents' house lol (the Isabel Royal Diaries is also by Carolyn Meyer so I consider it a bonus prequel)

[long sorrel]

You did finish Hemlock & Silver though right?

[ivory cypress]

yeah

yesterday

that was my comments on it, I came back after I finished

[long sorrel]

I thought so but wasn't sure

[viral fractal]

Also, the border between middle school and YA is kinda blurry considering most middle schoolers read at a YA level

I would consider it more of a matter of themes and content than writing level

But I think most of the Harry Potter books except 1 and 2 are YA

[main wren]

by the time the later books came out it had kinda turned into "these are for everyone and how do we even market?"

[cloud socket]

yeah honestly, a year separated me reading those Young Royals books and Wheel of Time, and I think I was already reading dragonriders of pern at the time too...

[viral fractal]

I read Young Royals in Grade 3, PJO and Harry Potter in Grades 4-6, the Other Boleyn Girl in Grade 5 and ASOIAF in Grade 7 (which in hindsight I would not necessarily recommend)

In terms of the writing level (not the themes) the majority of books written are fairly accessible to someone with a grade 5-6 reading level

[old flint]

As someone who lived though it (I was 23 when HP1 was published), I really think YA took off as a proper market after HP. I stopped reading for several years because there really wasn't anything aimed at me between Roald Dahl (which I grew out of at 11 really) and adult books (or more like, I didn't know which adult books would have suited me, and the ones I was made to read in English Lit were ... not to my tastes, and my house had no fantasy or sci fi). Then my mum bought be a book of Asimov short stories when I was 15 and then I was off to the races.

There's a much more natural progression now of books I would have loved in my early teens, though in retrospect the books were always there I could have got from the library. There was always a lot of (very average) fantasy like Brooks and Eddings and boy's own stuff like Alastair Maclean and Desmond Bagely around.

[cloud socket]

I do think HP woke publishing marketing up to the "hey, there is this GIANT audience you could hype up for releases", yeah. but I also think it was generational lightning in a bottle that happened to age with its target cohort

[main wren]

I think a big thing that HP did was get a lot people who didn't read fiction to read HP, and so even if YA existed before, this like pulled a bunch of new customers into the market

[viral fractal]

I think brand wise Harry Potter worked because it wasn’t literary fiction or SFF or genre

It was just kinda a book

[cloud socket]

mm it IS fantasy though because of magic (hilariously so, if I remember evangelicals who were against their kids reading it because of the witchcraft aspect- there are some people I knew in college who hadn't read it until adulthood)

weirdly I think my first coming across of it was an excerpt of Prisoners of Azkaban in a Disney Adventures magazine, and it reminded me my parents got the first book a little bit ago but I hadn't read it yet

[old flint]

"Tom Brown's Schooldays in a magic school" is an obvious combination in retrospect since there are so many familiar tropes she can tap into and come at from a new angle, and I maintain they're really well done. The reveals in Azkaban are masterful. It's why her transphobia was so painful and felt like such a betrayal.

[viral fractal]

Azkaban is legitimately a really good book

even outside of the YA niche, it stands on its own merits

the rest of HP has some highs and some lows

[long sorrel]

Azkaban is really good I agree but also it isn't YA at all imo

[viral fractal]

rowlings transphobia is pretty unfortunate given she got radicalized in real time

like the joke after harry potter just came out was that she was overly progressive in a cringe/ tryhard way

[long sorrel]

I don't think it was much of a joke, her attempts at saying her characters were actually black, gay, etc felt super biggotted to me and people around me before she started going into the more transphobic commentary

[viral fractal]

Did it? her ||gay|| dumbledore thing was kind of silly but it felt like she retroactively felt bad for not having more rep in the books

and ofc she supported the idea that hermione could be black

[long sorrel]

The one thing I truly at even though I was like 13 HP all ||was the elves wanting to be slaves||

[low hill]

What?

[viral fractal]

harry potter kinda avoided being fantasy despite being technically fantasy

like, most harry potter readers are not fantasy fans

[alpine drum]

I think it's still genre fiction though

[long sorrel]

Its definetely fantasy

It just became popular enough to trascend genres

[low hill]

It's fantasy with a large enough draw to bring in non-fantasy readers, but it is fantasy.

[long sorrel]

I bet there is a chunk of GoT series audience that aren't fantasy fans

Or like...star wars, or hunger games, etc

[wet belfry]

I'm aware the term existed but throwing Catcher in the Rye in the same bucket as Divergent seems like it is being used to describe two firmly different things in two firmly different times

[viral fractal]

i have never known any person to willingly read catcher in the rye

im sure its a better book than divergent

but i would not call it YA

[mossy gyro]

City of Brass 11 ||THEY'RE GONNA KISS!!!||

||YYYYYEEEEAAAAAHHHHH||

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

||stupid thunderstorm ||

[mossy gyro]

City of Brass 11 ||there was way more than a thunderstorm. At least one Ifrit tried to kill them and nearly captured Nahri, but she stabbed it with a dagger that she'd accidentally cut herself on and it turns out Nahid blood is poisonous to Ifrit. Before it died, it revealed that the Ifrit were sent by her mom to capture her. Also that Marid are involved somehow||

||there are more Ifrit now||

||the heck did this one do to Dara||

[ripe tide]

Oh it definitely evolved. But if you look at the scholarship, Catcher is one of the 3 books they pinpoint as the start of YA.

[mossy gyro]

||and now Marid are here||

||and a Peri is here too because why not||

City of Brass 11 ||whatever this guy did to save them from the Marid, it was against Peri law and now he's dying. Seems all three groups are after either Nahri or Dara but it's still not clear what's going on||

[mossy gyro]

City of Brass 12 ||this secretary seems sus||

||con artists selling magic apples for iron poisoning treatments was not on my bingo card||

[random dome]

Yaaaay more cob, thank you 🙏

[snow vessel]

Bury Our Bones 69% ||I like how we've got a bit of a consistent theme of vamprisim being gifted as freedom from everything. Also interesting how that's very different to Alice's experiences. I wonder if that could be part of the ending arc, her learning to get her "new alice" life from it.||

||honestly I have no clue where the ending of this book is going. Are we killing Sabine?? Are we doing a big ending at all, or just coming to the end of these stories?||

[long sorrel]

This book might have one of my favourite ending lines

... second maybe to Mercy of Gods

[snow vessel]

Honestly the ending has me a little stressed xD

Coz I feel like it's gonna really make this book for me if it hits, but I have no clue what it could be

[mossy gyro]

City of Brass 12 ||yes indeed he was||

CoB 13 ||"oh yeah the Marid cursed this lake" ?????
Just casually dropping that????||

[snow vessel]

Also I'm kind of tempted to rec Bury Our Bones to some friends but I have no idea if it'd be their sort of thing

I worry it goes too hard on some things for them

[long sorrel]

Id say to finish it first

Without any spoilers the book does a really good job on delivering and tying up the themes it presents

[snow vessel]

Yeah I'll wait til I'm done at least

[little dock]

Remind me? On both books actually if you can easily. I’d have to recheck them out on Libby

[hollow forum]

(censored) cursing in the comic in the thread https://bsky.app/profile/megsyv.bsky.social/post/3lzrf3rb4l22p

Meg Syv (@megsyv.bsky.social)

Here's a comic from a couple years ago about Spider-Man helpin out in a Mutant Crisis. (1/4)

Reposts

152

Likes

498

Bluesky · Sep 26, 2025, 9:13 PM

[long sorrel]

Bury Our Bones ALL ||Until the sound of her steps beats like a drum inside her chest, reminding her she is alive. Alive. Alive. And she is hungry.||

Mercy of Gods ALL ||Dafyd, my love, it is not just your war. You and I. We will burn this world down together.||

[snow vessel]

...I wanna click them

[long sorrel]

Do not!

[snow vessel]

I won'ttt

[low hill]

They are good lines.

[long sorrel]

They're sufficiently edgy for me but not cringe. 😌

[snow vessel]

I know they'll hit better if i read them in the book first

[long sorrel]

Correct

[snow vessel]

In other news, I'm considering taking a break from Kushiel's Dart...

I'm not having problems with the book but I'm just generally struggling with motivation to keep listening in general, so I'm thinking of starting something that I might get through a bit faster

[long sorrel]

👀

I know what I'm reading today 😌

[snow vessel]

Oh?

[long sorrel]

What Stalks the Deep

Book 3 of Sworn Soldier, which comes out today

[snow vessel]

...This looks fun 👀

[long sorrel]

Hehehehe

I think you'd like just about all of Kingfisher

[snow vessel]

From memory you've recommended them a few times and their stuff has looked cool

I've just not quiiite gotten around to them

[long sorrel]

Mhm

Maybe one day

She's putting out 4 new books in like an 8 month span

[snow vessel]

Hey if nothing else comes up I'll probably give What Moves The Dead a try next month

-# that's not tomorrow... nuh uh

[uncut shoal]

I'm re-reading A Fire Upon the Deep and I'd forgotten ||How hilarious the image of the tines using bows is||

[long sorrel]

😌

Gotta work first though

[wraith lynx]

Usha I just have to say how fun it is to see you find/read a new book almost every day 😂

[sleek magnet]

Any Will of the Many lovers?

[long sorrel]

Lmao and you don't get most of the stuff I read talked about here

[long sorrel]

Many

heh

[sleek magnet]

Just finished a reread in prep for book 2

My body is ready

[wraith lynx]

manifests hi hi hello hi :3

soooooooon!! Every day we get closer and closer 🥴

Its almost october which practically means november is here!! 🤩

[alpine drum]

https://tenor.com/view/dog-bonjour-gif-20697323

Will of the Many fans appearing

[long sorrel]

Yes! I do have 4 books I want releasing on Nov 11th lol

I'm probably gonna read Kingfisher before I get to Strength of the Few

[sleek magnet]

I found one strength of the few sample chapter

SO MANY ANSWERS ALREADY

[long sorrel]

yep

wild sample chapter

[wraith lynx]

This is so funny actually, what 4 books?? 😂

[sleek magnet]

I also watched a ‘spoiler free’ review that confirmed my theory about Luceum’s vibe

[long sorrel]

I am looking forward to this one 👀 https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/f3211efd-d37c-4e96-bebd-5a765d73e5b3

[wraith lynx]

Oooooooooo that sounds fun 👀👀

[marble sinew]

Damn, I didn't know they were making a MGS3 book

[wraith lynx]

-# the song played in my head the moment I saw the title 😭

[sage crystal]

Current tbr stacked, what should I read next?

[alpine drum]

is you pick Gardens of the Moon, we've got #1404515195941945455 where you can put reactions or questions

[long sorrel]

What Stalks the Deep seems really short

[random dome]

I adore Priory of the Orange Tree!

[sage crystal]

What makes it so good?

[light drum]

Ooh I have it on my TBR...almost with now 20 other books 😭

[light drum]

The Rise of Endymiom. Hyperion Cantos my belov and that will finish off the seris

[sage crystal]

I loved the first two books but wasn’t so hot on Endymion

[light drum]

Ya unfortunately Endymion is the least interesting character in his books

[sage crystal]

Did you like the last boook better than the third?

[light drum]

Yes significantly so. However the ending may have just been strong enought to overshadow the rest lol

[sage crystal]

Okay that’s reassuring

[uncut shoal]

I love the concept and explanations/world building in the Hyperion saga but yeah there are some major writing issues with it heh

Brawne Lamia was a much better character than Raul Endymion too

[cloud socket]

Barnes and Noble version of Court of the Dead arrived yesterday! I, uh, will pickup my Riordan read again after I get through my current queue which includes the Star Wars readalong

[long sorrel]

What Stalks the Deep 30% ||so we're going into cave and there are red lights at the bottom 👀 ||

||Alex passing as a frenchman to convince American ladies ||

[random dome]

I found Priory just had such a rich, lush kind of fantasy worldbuilding style and very compelling, complex characters. The main protagonists are women with really interesting perspectives and goals. It's a fantasy story that feels very unique in its focus and scope

It has some irl-mythology glossing in the setting, so dragons are a major part of the story, but you have the wyrms in the west which are these destructive, terrible monsters but the dragons in the east are peaceful, wise, and revered, and you have characters from different cultures interacting and needing to question their assumptions about each other and the world, etc etc.

[minor sleet]

https://www.tumblr.com/ryttu3k/796105620787003392/happy-the-greater-london-polycule-are-assembled

Conclusion: Dinosaurs

Happy 'the Greater London Polycule is assembled' Day!

-# #dracula #dracula daily #greater london polycule

Tumblr · Sep 30, 2025, 9:44 AM

[mossy gyro]

City of Brass 14 ||mmmmmm sanitation bribery||

||king isn't happy with Ali's performance so far since he hasn't been arresting Shafit||

||Dara is arriving which is making people freak out||

||well now Muntadir is doing something||

[random dome]

Mmmm, now you're getting to some fun parts ||where all the cast finally gets to come together||

[mossy gyro]

||why are we in a giant tomb?||

||why is there a Nahid tomb???||

City of Brass 14 ||ah so the Djinn always burn their dead, but the royal family has been entombing the Nahid for centuries because they were terrified that they might come back from the dead or something. ||

||and all Djinn have relics that somehow bring them back from being enslaved by Ifrit||

||ohhhhhh the royal family threw the Daeva's rebel leader to the Ifrit, but never told anyone so everyone believes that he just disappeared||

[random dome]

City of Brass 14 ||tfw the book you picked up looking for simple paranormal romance about hot djinn is actually "oops, all war crimes" instead 😬 ||

[versed agate]

||isn't that just romantasy?||

[wet belfry]

||Heavier emphasis on the fantasy than the term normally implies but also yes||

[versed agate]

It was a joke kon, I've read CoB

[hidden jolt]

just finished devolution by max brooks

#1: the action sure feels like wwz action

makes sense

#2: good book

I don't really feel horror when I read horror books but the action is still good

[mossy gyro]

CoB general ||you misunderstand, I came here for the mythology and politics, but get hot Djinn romance as a bonus ||

Also City of Brass 16 ||okay this might just be an issue of me being a dumbass but I didn't realize Dara is the same guy who led the Daeva rebellion. I guess he was thrown to the Ifrit somehow||

||oh yeah Nahri also might be a pureblood who's just under an enchantment, or perhaps is Shafit but shouldn't look human||

Hello I accidently triggered the timeout

||oh also the Shafit riots against the Daeva quarter are a plant by the king but I have no idea what he's planning||

There we go

[cloud socket]

this is reminding me I should probably reread before I attempt book 3 (or maybe see if reactor put out a quick 'n dirty recap or similar), and reminding me what potential connections there are to the Amina al-Sirafi book (takes place centuries earlier than the daevabad trilogy)

[long sorrel]

I thought they were entirely unrelated?

I've not read Amina al-Sirafi yet

Huh

Well, im probably reading it soon

[snow vessel]

Bury Our Bones 80% ||yikes. Sabine's decayed a lot since we first met her||

[long sorrel]

||I love her, far away from me but love her nonetheless||

Also, you can recheck the fanart I had sent now

This one 😳

[snow vessel]

||I also love how... like the stories all inform each other I guess? We've got a much better understanding of Sabine, of what's going on, and this sense of oncoming tragedy thanks to Sabine's story||

[cloud socket]

they are mostly unrelated- I think of it more like a cameo in Amina for supernatural elements

[long sorrel]

Aaah gotcha

Well either way I'm fine with it

I'm very excited for that series. I just keep getting excited for other things in the way too!

Right now though, back to Alex 👀

I'm loving this secondary character in What Stalks the Deep

Around 40% ||I could think of nothing that I would like less, so naturally I volunteered. (If this doesn’t make sense to you then I suggest you reflect for a time on the Spanish word macho, and on how even sworn soldiers who damn well ought to know better still occasionally find themselves with something to prove. Besides, I wasn’t claustrophobic.) Alex what||

||okay... they are trying to convince themselves ghost aren't real so they don't have to accept what happened in book 2 ||

[snow vessel]

Mm I kind of want to start Memnoch the Devil audiobook...

[long sorrel]

Ooooh

I kinda forgot you were reading that series

What Stalks the Deep general ||I feel Alex's voice is a bit different than before? Not bad, it's still them but it's different, perhaps a bit more alive. 🤔 I think I like it better||

[mossy gyro]

City of Brass 17 ||brutal execution methods, the king knows Ali funded the Shafit, Muntadir apparently stood up for him and that's why he's still alive, and the king wants to get Nahru married to Muntadir. Dara is gonna lose it when he hears that one||

||also I'm pretty sure this expedition is meant to get Dara killed||

[long sorrel]

What Stalks the Deep 10 ||huuuuh, wtf. So we have some clearly sort of horror creatures here but I think they're friendly?? And I'm only halfway through the book so the "issue" must be something else||

Okay... prediction having read up to like 65% ||a part of this hivemind broke apart and imitated a bear and is running rampant outside. They're clearly sapient, as much as humans, likely so it explains the "bear" strange behaviour (deliberate rather than beastly) and somehow Alex and co will need to take care of the fragmented part of this... hivemind?||

||I like this creature(s) 👀 ||

[mossy gyro]

City of Brass 18 ||Suprise! Lab practical time!||

||also these descriptions of Djinn "health" problems are hilarious and such a shift after...last chapter ||

||okay I didn't see reading and economics lessons coming||

[minor sleet]

Sapkowski did a Reddit q&a and chose to answer my dinosaur question

[brazen pilot]

pterodactyls aren't dinosaurs

[minor sleet]

I know but I don’t think he does

https://www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/s/8A94VI2Leg q&a here

It never fails to amuse me how he stonewalls lore questions, refuses to explain the meaning of his story, and nitpicks all the adaptions of his work

[versed agate]

there is no need to prove the superiority of the written word over images, it is obvious
never change Sapkowski

[minor sleet]

Also he said that he thinks the English translator did a good job. Which I don’t think is true

Also he would like Jarsoslav Hašek’s books. If he said that The Good Soldier Švejk specifically influenced the Witcher, I wouldn’t be suprised

[versed agate]

honestly, on his response to WoB Fishing (WoS fishing?), go off king.
I hope writers coming up in a post Brandon world don't think they need to have intricate details of the length and breadth of their universe figured out before hand

[random dome]

this is the correct mindset

[junior dew]

Not with that attitude they aren’t

[quaint burrow]

Pterodactyls aren't dinosaurs?

[merry galleon]

Sigra’s Roost by TD Orel is coming out in November, IM SO EXCITED!

Also, 31 days until I attend my first book convention

[minor sleet]

Nope, they are flying reptiles. Plesiosaurs and similar species are also not dinosaurs, but marine reptiles

[analog geode]

You are on this council, but we do not grant you the rank of dinosaur

[minor sleet]

Sept book wrap up

New job with tedious repetive tasks that they don’t need me, a person with a MA to be doing (🙄) = more audiobooks

[analog geode]

That’s so pretty

I should start using story graph

Maybe next year

[long sorrel]

September has been a month without many reads for me

[minor sleet]

https://tenor.com/view/doja-cat-star-wars-gif-25078126

It autogenerates these graphics

[snow vessel]

Oh this was a pretty slow month for me

If September had been a few days longer I probably would be finished Bury Our Bones and be closer to my average book/month count this year

Does storygraph have a reading challenge like goodreads?

[minor sleet]

Seeing everyone’s list of books is the best part of the first day of a new month

[small bloom]

Not on StoryGraph but here have this

[snow vessel]

Anyone planning on reading anything spooky for October?

[minor sleet]

What app or service is this?

[small bloom]

Fable

[minor sleet]

Depends on which of my holds come in, but I’m eyeing the new Kingfisher novels & a trans horror called “You Weren’t Meant to be Human”

[analog geode]

Yeah you were obviously meant to be a cat

[ivory cypress]

i think the interesting part of the month is trying to square silksong's release with it and how there was one book that still prevailed when skong was new

well, two

[minor sleet]

Like so?

[long sorrel]

September 4th

I can't tell the 5th book title

[light drum]

I may have gotteb really into Cradle

[minor sleet]

Love the cradle sweep with one other guy

[low hill]

• September: Jade City [Fonda Lee], The Black Hunger [Nicholas Pullen], Jade War [Fonda Lee], The Mercy of Gods [James S.A. Corey], The Lights of Prague [Nicole Jarvis].

[modest olive]

Unfortunately It is kicking my butt so my stats were affected by that

[mossy gyro]

City of Brass 19 ||bruh Dara just up and left the search party 💀 ||

||and then proceeded to insult Ali in a language he doesn't understand||

[wraith lynx]

Ander youre purple!

[marble sinew]

He's more than purple, he's Lowrie!

[mossy gyro]

Yeah I've done this every October for the last couple of years

Anyway City of Brass 19 ||oh no Ali and Dara training alone is maybe one of the worst possible things that could happen right now||

||how did he hear about the plans to marry Nahri to Muntadir||

||oh lol he didn't, he just guessed and Ali's reaction confirmed it||

[mossy gyro]

City of Brass 19 ||girls girls you're both pretty, can you guys chill for a moment?||

||(the answer is no)||

[hollow forum]

OH WHAT A THRILL

seeing Chuck Tingle as a like "similar to" is crazy to me

[long sorrel]

Oh right I was going to post my september stuff

very little

[hoary path]

https://tenor.com/view/invisible-mgs-naked-snake-big-boss-kommanderwar-gif-11268187986122270631

[long sorrel]

What Stalks the Deep 13 ||Not-Oscar stood very still, holding his slate, and probably it was unwise to project human emotions on what was effectively some kind of a land jellyfish, but he seemed forlorn. I suppose nobody yells at you when you’re a jellyfish. this book is definitely very different than the other 2||

[minor sleet]

reading a fantasy novel that is an interesting mix of modern vernacular and purple prose

its very confusing and distrating

[analog geode]

What book?

[junior dew]

DCC 6 Chapter 46 || Carl’s dad is Kronk. And the Alpha Male Carl Pokémon is Kronk. Kronk is a Pokémon ||

I can’t with these audiobooks