chief-cook-and-librarian

[chief-cook-and-librarian]

Getting back into traditional art with some Sabriel fan art!

My favorite fall tradition is getting cozy while listening to Tim Curry’s audiobook recording of Sabriel and drawing 🥰

[chief-cook-and-librarian]

I enjoyed The Lost Story a lot.

Gave me In Other Lands nastolgia.

[chief-cook-and-librarian]

Second half of the illustrations!

Daystar and Shiara vs some wizards

The dragon in the caves

Daystar and Shiara meet all the dragons outside the castle

Daystar handing the sword to Kazul

Mendanbar!

Cimorene and Kazul

Illustrations from the 80s copy of Talking to Dragons!

Cimorene facing Antorell

Daystar fighting the wizard's river snake monster

Morwen! healing Daystar ft Shiara and cats

The Princess and her knight

Daystar vs the fire witch

Daystar kissing the stone Shiara

[chief-cook-and-librarian]

Illustrations from the 80s copy of Talking to Dragons!

Cimorene facing Antorell

Daystar fighting the wizard's river snake monster

Morwen! healing Daystar ft Shiara and cats

The Princess and her knight

Daystar vs the fire witch

Daystar kissing the stone Shiara

[chief-cook-and-librarian]

Kaz and Inej

[chief-cook-and-librarian]

She was not a lynx or a spider or even the Wraith. She was Inej Ghafa, and her future was waiting above. Climb, Inej. (for the @litjoycrate Six of Crows box set)

[chief-cook-and-librarian]

The Last Binding serie of Freya Marske @fahye for Dazzling Bookish Shop special edition 🚢📖🍂

[chief-cook-and-librarian]

And confirmation Folio is doing the rest of the series!!!

Chrestomanci fans, we got Witch Week! Look at these children they're so grumpy and I love them

[chief-cook-and-librarian]

Chrestomanci fans, we got Witch Week! Look at these children they're so grumpy and I love them

[chief-cook-and-librarian]

hi im relistening to artificial condition and just realized that at no point do murderbot or ART make proper introductions and it's making me giggle. ART pretends to be a normal bot pilot to lull mb into a false sense of security, waits until murderbot is effectively trapped and unable to escape, and then proceeds to threaten it and scare the shit out of it by way of greeting. and murderbot, understandably, does not then proceed to ask what to call it or anything, it's just like. this guy fucking sucks. i'm gonna call it "fucking sucks".

AND ART PUTS UP NO PROTEST.

like okay we don't know exactly how much access ART has to murderbot's... data? thought data? we know it derives something from how murderbot interacts with the feed (access to interpretable emotion), we know it just sort of barges in wherever it wants, we know from system collapse that "no, ART can't read my mind, it just knows me really well", so like. it probably doesn't have context for the origin of this new nickname, which murderbot presumably begins calling it with no explanation.

but ART's smart so like it definitely knows what ART stands for, given (gestures at murderbot's entire disposition), and this is just so funny to me. ART refers to murderbot by some complicated string of letters and numbers that any other bot would use, and murderbot refers to ART as "you jackass" and ART's probably just soooo pleased that its newest bestie4lyfe gave it a nickname it's all so unbelievably funny

[chief-cook-and-librarian]

Hey I can finally share these: some behind-the-scenes work for the Tamora Pierce x Dual Wield Studio Anniversary Collection!

You can find my final page overlay in the second wave of the rollout! Supplies are limited (the shirt I designed sold out before I could even tell my family it was there lol) so check it out!

[chief-cook-and-librarian]

So the title of book 2 is…

Are you ready for the Emperor? Are you ready for chaos? Are you ready for Time of Iron Book 2?

I hope you like the title. The green smoke was inspired by Scar from the Lion King and ‘Be Prepared.’ 💚😈

[chief-cook-and-librarian]

Obsessed with the magic system in Sorcery and Small Magics. Casters are completely reliant on spell writers and need to have spells prepped and written up ahead of time in order to do anything. Writers can't perform their own spells (or if they do it'll hurt big time)

And then there's Leo and his ability to cast with music, very curious how that fits into everything.

[chief-cook-and-librarian]

howl: sophie i'm confiscating your dog man and turning him back into a man because he is clearly unwell, seriously why didn't you tell me, he looks awful

sophie: howl is.... evil??? howl is unyielding? howl is incapable of love? i am running away. i am packing my little rucksack and going out to explore the world as a lone vagabond. i can no longer thrive in this household

[chief-cook-and-librarian]

the goose girl chronicles

a sorceress comes to call by t. kingfisher

luckily, i saw the review @howlsmovinglibrary made saying this wasn't really goose girl so i was prepared but

this is BARELY goose girl

it is more an homage maybe? rather than a retelling

like yeah theres a horse named falada and geese and a character trying to changer her social class but. . . there is no identity theft really???? like i need an identity swap for a book to be goose girl

no identity swap, no goose girl!!

i did actually enjoy this book overall, it was light horror and the characters had really good dynamics and it was pretty scary

i loved the role the geese played, they were so fun

i love that the only romantic subplot was for two characters who were in their 50's, they were so lovely together

love a toxic mother, they always make the best villains

as a book overall and fairy tale inspired story, as it felt very fairy tale, i will give it four stars

as a goose girl retelling it gets one star

[chief-cook-and-librarian]

this would catch a lot of you

[chief-cook-and-librarian]

Okay no I need to talk about the book version of Howl's Moving Castle. I love the movie but the book has such a different vibe and you, yes you, should read it.

Movie Howl is a soulful and quiet. Book Howl is a drama queen and Causing Problems and has a long string of jilted exes and couldn't shut up if you paid him.

Sophie and Howl drive each other up the wall at the beginning and it's really funny. Sophie and Howl are (despite themselves) very much in love by the end and they still drive each other up the wall and it's even funnier.

In the movie, Howl has been ordered by the king to participate in The War, and Howl is avoiding it because he is a brave conscientious objector. In the book, Howl has been ordered by the king to rescue his lost brother from the Witch of the Wastes, and Howl is avoiding it by any means necessary because he is a cowardly weasel who wants to stay as far from the Witch as possible.

In the movie, the Witch cursed Sophie because she was jealous about Howl speaking to Sophie for five minutes. In the book, the Witch cursed Sophie because Sophie had been doing surprisingly powerful magic for years without knowing it and it was actually starting to cut into the Witch's plans. (Sophie does not discover any of this until nearly the end of the book, but the reader can start to pick it up much earlier and the way Sophie's magic works is pretty darn cool.)

In the movie, there's a rumor that Howl eats the hearts of maidens, but this is implied to be nothing but nasty fearmongering. In the book, there's a rumor that Howl eats the hearts of maidens because Howl started the rumor so people would stop asking him to do wizard junk all the time.

The book lightly parodies a couple of tropes from Western fairy tales. In particular Sophie has internalized that, as the eldest of three sisters, her "destiny" is to fail so that her younger sisters will look cooler when they succeed, which is why she's so resigned to the hat shop at the beginning. (Sidebar: Sophie's sisters come up much more in the book and they're great.) There's also a really funny bit where Sophie attempts to operate a pair of seven-league boots.

In the movie, the fourth and final location that the magic door connects to is some sort of black void / mindscape / time portal dealy. In the book the fourth location is Wales, in the UK, on Earth, so that Howl can visit his family, because from Howl's perspective this is an isekai story.