Fantasy Books - Blog Posts
The City of Brass by S.A. Chakraborty
I don’t know how I lived without these characters before
Fantasy LGBTQ books besides six of crows (these descriptions are bare minimal, go check out the actual summaries)
The Smoke Thieves
Demons exist and are killed for their highly-prized smoke. Political turmoil with plots for thrones and for war, all with demon smoke somewhere woven in.
Wicked as you Wish
An alternate reality where magic is an important part of life, with the tales of King Arthur at the center.
Timekeeper
When time is dependent on clock towers, it is up to mechanics to keep them up and running.
The Watchmaker of Filigree Street
Set in the 19th century, this story is about a supposedly ordinary man and a clairvoyant.
I NEED this interaction in an actual fantasy book
It would make my day
I don't think fantasy writers play enough with the concept of the different fantasy races having distinct ethnicities. Like imagine a group of mixed peoples, where the dwarves are all roasting each other like dwarves do, and one of them remarks that when he first saw one of the other dwarves in the group, he mistook her for a man. The other dwarves in the group blink in surprise - the closest that dwarves will go to an audible gasp of shock - and she pulls out a knife and tries to stab him.
Once the dwarves have been separated from each other and the situation has calmed, one of the humans asks another dwarf what that incident was about. Naturally a human woman would have been insulted too, but dwarves are so jovial about insulting each other, why was this matter different?
And the dwarf who was asked explains that there are things you can brutally insult another dwarf about, and there are things you simply do not touch. The dwarf-woman in question is from a completely different region of The Great Underground as the others, and her people have different norms about what kind of patterns men and women braid into their beards. The dwarf insulting her wasn't only insulting her appearance, he was being racist.
The human is surprised to learn that dwarves have different peoples, and the dwarf looks at them like at an idiot. Of course they do, they even look completely different from each other. And the human listens as the dwarf lists off various distinguishing clothing details too nuanced for a human to notice, and then how dwarves coming from different corners of the world have different physical traits, according to what kind of conditions their local stone types dictate.
The human spots a connection and goes oh! We have that too, though ours are not about rock types and tunnel air, but the weather aboveground. Humans' facial features vary by how hot, cold, arid or windy their ancestors' homelands were, and our skin tone varies by how much the sun shines in their native region.
The dwarf frowns at the last part, going "I thought you people just paint your skin and dye your hair for fun", and the human admits that yeah, we do that too, but not all the time, and not the whole skin. The dwarf asks, what of that tall woman the colour of dravite, her palms and the soles of her feet were lighter than the rest of her. Does that mean she paints herself dark to be more beautiful?
The human says no, that just happens naturally. Maybe it's because one's palms and feet aren't exposed to the sun as much, so they are paler.
The dwarf nods, still unsure whether this is actually legit or just the human habit of lying for fun, and proceeds to ask about the wild northman of their party. He is as pale as an olm, but the palms of his hands and the soles of his feet are dark. Are they painted, or naturally that way?
No, the human answers. That guy just doesn't bathe.
yeah i’m fine (sometimes fictional characters are the only people i feel loved by)
It’s fun being in a fandom that literally doesn’t exist
If there is anybody out there that enjoys the book series Upside Down Magic by Sarah Mlynowski, Lauren Myracle, and Emily Jenkins, please please make yourself known because I have been alone for too long
Dritten! 💜
okay it got better for sureeee!!
its a bit of a slow start for me personally, but i thoroughly enjoyed the 2/3 and then the 3/3 even more!
im not sure if i will get the sequel or not, ill read a few more books and see if im still thinking about emily wilde after that.
spoilers below
wendell and emily’s dynamic is hilarious after the proposal. they are so direct with each other normally, but when it comes to romance they just avoid actually speaking of it as such.
i really enjoyed how the town accepted emily’s way of being, that she is not good with attention or small talk or pleasantries. they didnt demand any kind of thanks from her, they knew she was thankful without it.
3.5/5 ⭐️
im reading emily wilde’s encyclopaedia of faeries right now and im not sure how i feel about it.
like i like it dont get me wrong. i eat anything up that has fairies of any kind.
but im a very.. emotional person, and so the format of the book being emily’s diary, and her being quite a.. professional and almost stoic? person, doesnt quite engage me as much.
maybe she taps into her emotions later in the story (i’m about a 1/3 of the way through) so idk!! thats just my thoughts so far
im reading emily wilde’s encyclopaedia of faeries right now and im not sure how i feel about it.
like i like it dont get me wrong. i eat anything up that has fairies of any kind.
but im a very.. emotional person, and so the format of the book being emily’s diary, and her being quite a.. professional and almost stoic? person, doesnt quite engage me as much.
maybe she taps into her emotions later in the story (i’m about a 1/3 of the way through) so idk!! thats just my thoughts so far
On Taryn Duarte - from someone who has yet to read the books
I saw some posts about the Cruel Prince and I subsequently fell down the Jude/Taryn rabbit hole. From what I've seen, Taryn gets the most hate from the fandom, even over the actual villains, which is pretty par for the course so I'm not surprised. But most of the excerpts and reasons I've seen come from her being very shallow and vain, and betraying Jude. Okay, that hate makes sense. BUT I am the diehard fan of hated female characters.
Prefacing this with the fact that I have not yet read the series yet, but I've seen multiple posts regarding the characters and have read excerpts and summaries, and the like.
I really hate the woman v woman that we're given so often in media and especially in ya, na, and a books. Those books usually giving the fmc one or two female friends to balance the waters, but they usually don't exist as more than appendages of the fmc.
Not sure if that's the case with the Cruel Prince, but Taryn's character seems to be the one-dimensional female foil, specifically with her overly feminine aesthetic and betrayal for the sake of romance. I think this is why I can't bring myself to actually read the books, because I know I'll hate seeing that.
Because of this I often find myself liking the "villainous" female characters as well when I find them to be anything but that, because I think they're also cool or I think that they suffer from a lack of nuanced writing (see Nesta Archeron). Jude is presented to be the villain, and I do like her and if she was the villain in another story I would also like her, but because she's still the character we're meant to root for she holds a weird place in my head since I'm not sure if Holly Black suffers from the crude idea of characterization and character relationships that is currently very prominent in fiction. I have heard that she gets a new LI apart from Locke, who she killed (yay! I love that), so it does seem to be looking up in terms of escaping the ya writing styles.
Therefore, in my head I will be holding the idea that Taryn is equally as masterminded as Jude and this is all a very elaborate ruse she's carefully cultivated since childhood and that she actually loves Jude very much. I am a sucker for tragic sisters.
I made some fan art in anticipation of Victoria Schwab’s upcoming book! It's unreleased, so I did my best with what I know so far. Unless @torbooks or someone would be willing to slip me an ARC...ha-ha, just kidding...unless??
Me saying that book doesn't mean too much for me, but book looks like this
I was so inspired to make some collages for my three favs after finishing The Starless Sea ~
🐝🗝️🗡️
It's quite ironic that Fey are weak to the element with the symbol Fe
Author Recommendations #1
Genre: Fantasy (No Tolkien, J.K. Rowling, or C.S. Lewis but they are good and should be checked out.) -David Eddings Books: The Belgariad and the Mallorean series. -Tamora Pierce Books: The Immortals and The Song of the Lioness series. -Rachel Hartman Book: Seraphina -Dawn Cook Books: First Truth, Hidden Truth, Forgotten Truth, Lost Truth -Holly Black Books: Tithe, Valiant, White Cat -Amelia Atwater-Rhodes Books: Hawksong, Snakecharm - Martine Leavitt Book: Keturah and Lord Death -Tanith Lee Books: The Claidi Journals -Colleen Houck Books: The Tiger Saga -Peter S. Beagle Book: The Last Unicorn, Two Hearts (story) If you'd like more then let me know.
You know what I’d like?
I’d like more ya fantasy genre fiction that features homeless kids where they aren’t homeless due to the consequences of the fantasy universe...
Like- Growing up it was just cool to see kids in books I liked who had similar experiences to me
But I’m tired of the only examples being things like
“My super powers got out of control and now I’m forced to live on my own on the run”
“I’m the solitary leader of a child rebellion due to the circumstances of my dystopian society”
And even
“You aren’t able to tell what the normal age to move out is in my universe- but there are just plenty of teenagers living on their own or living on the run- and no one ever fucking questions it”
One the one hand- it was cool seeing characters like me with these cool destinies and powers
But at the end of the day it made it that much harder to have to go- “I’m not in this situation because I’m important, I’m here because my mother’s a deadbeat”
I wanna see more homeless kids in ya fantasies that live that way cause sometimes shit happens- not because they’re special- but cause that’s life...