#AN ACCIDENT OF STARS

[aroaessidhe]

aromantic books: aroallo characters!

I've split this into 3 groups - because there's quite a few who are not the main character but they're part of a larger cast & do have some POV

Protagonists

Baker Thief / adult urban/high fantasy / 1/2 MCs is aro bi, genderfluid

Pluralities / contemporary/sci-fi / aro-coded nonbinary MC

Natural Outlaws and Fractured Sovereignty / 1/2 MCs is an aroallo girl

Compound Fracture / YA thriller / aro-questioning trans boy MC

Two Dark Moons / YA high fantasy / 1/2 MCs is an arospec girl

The Last 8 / YA alien apocalypse sci-fi /MC is an aro bi girl

In The Jaws of an Oak / horror/erotica / 1/2 MCs is aro coded woman

Take Me To Your Nerdy Leader / YA contemporary / aro-het girl MC

major characters - with POV

Rook & Rose trilogy / fantasy / one of the major POV characters is lightly aro-bi coded (and word of god confirmed)

An Accident of Stars / portal fantasy / secondary MC is an aro woman

The Oracle Stone duology / high fantasy / 3rd MC (who has her own novella) is an aro pan woman

Moonshine / historical fantasy / major side character who has some POV is an aro bi man

Bloody Spade duology / urban fantasy / a major SC (with POV) is an aro bi man

Dithered Hearts / adult fantasy romance / one of the major characters who has POV is an aro bi man

City of Spires / high fantasy / many MCs, one is a demiro-allo man, and another (more minor) an aro lesbian

side characters

Daniel, Deconstructed / YA contemporary / MC's best friend is an aro bi girl

The Butterfly Assassin / YA dystopian thriller / major SC in book 2&3 is a aro bi woman

The Liar's Guide To The Night Sky / YA contemporary survival / the secondary main character/ “love interest” is an aro pan guy

The Last / apocalpytic/survival / aro woman SC who the MC is sleeping with

The (Un)Popular Vote / YA contemporary / aro bi girl SC

The Tale That Twines / urban fantasy / aroallo nonbinary SC

#aspec books / aspec database / tumblr masterpost

[haveyoureadthisqueerbook]

[fozmeadows]

Hello 👋

I went to World Con in Dublin 2019 and bought myself a 'blind' book - it was wrapped in brown paper with a brief description of the story. I am so glad that it turned out to be An Accident of Stars, which I Devoured. I've since read all of your books I managed to get my hands on, but nothing will beat the pure joy I had at that first book.

So glad you're on tumblr so I get to tell you this 😘

ahhhh, thank you so much! I'm

[poisindonottouch]

Queer reads: Foz Meadows

For day 13, I bring you Foz Meadows. Meadows recently published A Strange and Stubborn Endurance, which I quite enjoyed, but I wanted to recommend some of their earlier work, The Manifold World duology: An Accident of Stars and A Tyranny of Queens.

These books are portal fantasies, and they’re great. An Accident of Stars tells the story of Saffron Coulter, who finds herself in Kena, a world with fucked up politics, magic, and weirdly fantastic dragons (that’s fantastic as in awesome, but also as in fantasy, because, you know, dragons.) A Tyranny of Queens is a continuation of Saffron’s story after she came back to the mundane world and no one fucking believed her. These books are hella queer, with rep across the whole LGBTQ spectrum.

I’d recommend these to fans of Seanan MacGuire’s Wayward Children novellas, except I’d say Foz Meadows does a better job with character driven story telling than MacGuire does. So yeah, check them out.

[noahhawthorneauthor]

Merry Christmas Eve my friends ✨🎄 📚❄️

[seekerreads]

3 over-hyped, 3 appropriately-hyped, 3 under-hyped books!

been meaning to do this for foreverrrrr and i'm finally getting around to it!! i've been feeling a bit burnt out on reading so i think i might take a little reading break until the new year, so i can do some cool little posts in the mean time!! (spoiler warnings abound, all books are listed in the tags if you want to avoid!! if i hate on a book you love i promise it'll be okay!! act your age please and thanks!)

3 over-hyped books:

✧.* title: The Haunting of Hill House

✧.* author: Shirley Jackson

✧.* explanation: i heard RAVE reviews about this book for a while before i picked up, including people genuinely calling it the sort of founding father of new-age horror novels. here's the thing though: this book is not scary. there are points where it definitely tries to be and i don't know if it's the book showing it's age or if the author just isn't good at writing horror but it's not effective in the least. most of the book is just the characters going "wow this house is creepy!" and the creepiest the house is 99% of the time is just the rooms being arranged weird or the furniture being old fashioned. the one big 'scary' scene was so incredibly trite and low-hanging fruit that it kinda pissed me off. and the ending was supposed to be this big scary twist but it had virtually no build-up and just had me rolling my eyes. definitely didn't enjoy this one.

✧.* title: The Fellowship of the Ring

✧.* author: J.R.R Tolkien

✧.* explanation: let me just start by saying i absolutely adore this series. the movies are fantastic and i love them. i love the story itself, but the book? oh my god. genuinely the slowest thing i've ever read and you can't even say it was for a reason because most of the reason for the slowness is the absolute BLOAT added to the book through traveling scenes. this book made me hate traveling scenes as a whole in any book. and i understand the purpose of having them and explaining the surroundings to set the scene but i'm talking about paragraphs upon paragraphs of the dryest scenery description and "we walked a lot and got tired" that you've ever seen. i had to force myself to finish this book by setting a timer every day. love the story but the books are just NOT for me.

✧.* title: Carmilla

✧.* author: J. Sheridan Le Fanu

✧.* description: this was not queer. this was not scary. there was barely any vampire happenings in this book at ALL. i was soooo excited to read this and so incredibly disappointed when it boiled down to "pretty mysterious lady lives with other lady for a while and says some vaguely lovey-dovey things that can also completely read as the poetic language of friendship of the time and then they just kill her in her coffin without an actual confrontation or confirmation of her being a vampire the end!". absolute waste of time. still hoping to maybe find a good retelling though because the potential is there!

3 appropriately-hyped:

✧.* title: Six of Crows

✧.* author: Leigh Bardugo

✧.* explanation: it is what it is. the SoC duology is fucking phenomenal and there's just no denying it. breathtaking heists, intricate world-building, gritty and sharp character work, complex and heartfelt friendships, and romances so sweet they'll bring your cold dead heart back to life. 5 stars across the board.

✧.* title: The Six Deaths of the Saint

✧.* author: Alix E. Harrow

✧.* explanation: the things this story manages to accomplish in 30 pages should be STUDIED. i can't give too much detail because it's so short that it could be spoiled but the way this could EASILY be a full 300-page novel and still manages to pack in enough depth and emotion and growth in a fraction of that space is truly incredible. you just need to read this. it's so short and you NEED to read it.

✧.* title: Red, White & Royal Blue

✧.* author: Casey McQuiston

✧.* explanation: unfortunately the girlies are not wrong about this book!! an absolutely charming time as long as you can suspend your disbelief politics-wise, but even though I didn't specifically ignore that un-realism it still didn't bother me too much, and i've lived within the american political system all my life. this is such a comfort read for me; there is enough conflict to drive a plot but it's very much a heartwarming, lighthearted read and the happy ending is satisfying every time.

3 under-hyped:

✧.* title: Fireborne

✧.* author: Rosaria Munda

✧.* explanation: this is my favorite series of ALL time. not only is it about dragonriders (!!!) but this series tackles so many hard-hitting and timely topics in such a heartbreaking and sharp way that i was absolutely riveted throughout all 3 books. this series truly has everything i want in a fantasy story: deep and complex characters, relationships with depth and conflict, characters who struggle with their morality and choices, and a world on the brink of revolution. i recommend this series to absolutely anyone who will listen.

✧.* title: Iona Iverson's Rules for Commuting

✧.* author: Clare Pooley

✧.* explanation: this is what i like to call a "state of the human condition" book. this one takes you across the entire gambit of emotion and individual experience that gives books with a larger cast like this the absolute oomph it really needed. seeing these total strangers come together and form a sort of found family for no other reason than they shared the same train during their commute was so beautiful and makes you believe in the inherent goodness of humans.

✧.* title: An Accident of Stars

✧.* author: Foz Meadows

✧.* explanation: it took me working through a bit of hesitation to pick this one up because it IS a portal fantasy (a genre which has always given me wattpad-vibes) but i am so, so glad i did. this is one of the most unique and complex fantasy worlds i have ever encountered in fiction. and even though it's a portal fantasy this series does a REALLY good job of not just focusing on the portaled character (though she does get time) but also on all the other characters she interacts with and their own stories and plotlines. i really need to reread this one; it was like nothing i'd ever read before.

(divider credit: @finnegancosmos )

[grumfield]

quote from the mom movie

[kaprisvn]

Last Names

(Click for better quality)

"KAPRI YOU CAN'T POST THE AFTER STORY FOR CHASING STARS YOU HAVEN'T EVEN POSTED THE FIRST CHAPTERS YET!!!"

🤫🙂‍↔️

This comic is kinda shitty but you get the point XD

Bonus clothed CS Moon!

[opikiquu]

iknow my comics are ugly please just hear me out

[starry-bi-sky]

don't you want to be a cult leader? - danyal al ghul au

this is mostly a joke post but i thought it was funny and had to share so--

his first mistake was, obviously, inheriting his father's inability to see an injustice and stand still. -- actually, danyal's first mistake was his lair being so big. a mountainous island with a large temple in the center resembling his old home in Nanda Parbat? With sprawling foliage and rivers and streams and waterfalls galore? What was he going to do with all that space? Let it go to waste? He had plants there! Native trees of the ghost zone growing from the soil! He couldn't let it all be left unchecked!

So naturally after helping a fellow teenage assassin ghost -- who he later learns is named Akihiko, -- from Walker of all people, he sent them over to hang low at his lair until it was safe enough for them to wander around the Zone. Walker couldn't get through Danyal's astrofield if his life depended on it, and trust him -- he's tried. Danny was clearing out debris from his stupid transport vans for weeks.

Honestly it wasn't so bad, he and Aki really quickly became fast friends and Danny loves having a sparring partner close to his level again -- he hasn't had this much fun fighting since he left the League. Aki was very dedicated and levelheaded, the both of them clicked really well because of it.

Nonono, the real trouble began after Danyal met some long-passed League members and allowed them to come join his island as well. Apparently they had made a few enemies of the zone, and maybe Danyal still felt some loyalty to the League. He couldn't just let them be left to rot. Their zealotry could be overlooked so long as they kept it contained and helped him take care of his island.

And it.. snowballs from there? He meets a teen squire aptly calling himself Ambroise -- whether that was his living name or not is yet to be seen -- who died during feudal france, who is just about as dramatic and passionate as every french stereotype makes them out to be. He calls Danyal "my moon and great muse" -- which is both flattering and little uncomfortable, but Danyal's grown up in the League as the Grandson of the Demon Head, he is used to mild worship. he passes it off as nothing more, nothing less. -- and while his energy is overwhelming on the worst of days, he helps Danny draw out of his shell more in ways that Sam and Tucker still struggle with.

Him and Aki butt heads a lot, but the two seem to hold the other in at least some positive regard, so Danny doesn't worry too much about them fighting while he's gone. It only becomes a mild issue when Aki also begins calling Danny "my moon". It's a little sweet, so Danyal brushes it off.

Then he takes in a troupe of ghosts some time after he defeats Pariah Dark and they begin calling him "great one" just as the yetis do in the far frozen. This is where he meets the twins -- a pair of sibling ghosts who call themselves Trixie and Missy (short for Trick and Mislead) -- who aren't quite as passionate as Ambroise but more energetic than Aki. Eventually they also start calling Danyal "my moon" and attach themselves to his hip, even within the living. They like to hide in his shadow and cause trouble for the rest of the students. He makes sure they don't hurt anyone.

He's pretty sure Aki is jealous, same with Ambroise, but he can't be too certain other than the fact that they become much more lingering (re: clingy) whenever he visits the island.. Something he's trying to do much more often these days due to the increasing amount of people living there now. Since when did he become so popular?

Then there's Pēnelópeia from the Greater Athens, who ran away from home and joined his Island after he ran into her while she was being chased by Skulker -- and he's pretty sure the reason was because of her chimeric appearance. Her strange eyes and mismatched wings and lion's tail and talons. She assimilates into his friend group very easily, she gets along well with Ambroise and Trixie and Danny usually finds the three of them climbing the trees to pluck the most fruit from the top. They can fly and he knows it, but they prefer to climb.

Then finally there's silent poet Akkara who comes from ancient mesopotamia, who gets along most with Aki -- which is no surprise there considering their similar personality dispositions. he watches Aki and Danyal fight each other and leaves comments on this or that that he notices. He writes Danyal poems on clay tablets and leaves them by his room.

They're one big mismatched group of outcasts, and Danny's got the other ghosts on his island to tend to, because they're living on his island and he wants to be hospitable even if he struggles with that. But he spends the most of his time with them.

Sam and Tucker are making fun of him. Tucker jokingly tells him 'careful Danny, at this rate you're gonna start a cult'. Danny really wishes he had taken that joke more seriously.

He just. keeps. collecting people. Wayward souls lost in the zone, looking for shelter or refuge from something or other -- whether that be another hostile ghost, or a past afterlife, or just a purpose. Danyal finds them, he takes them in, offers them a place on his island until they are ready to leave. Many seldom do. He's not complaining -- he has the space, and it feels like it's only ever growing.

His close friends, his "inner circle" as he's heard the others call them, keep insistently calling him "my moon". He starts calling them his stars, because then it only feels fair. They're his stars, this is his constellation. It becomes a thing; little star halos begin forming behind their heads, picking them out from the rest. He loves them so much, it's hard to place. Sam and Tucker are also his stars, but they reside in the living realm, they're his tie to Life. Meanwhile, his friends here know what it's like to be dead, and sometimes its nice to relate.

Those living on his island keep calling him "Great One" and he's beginning to notice zealotry in their care for his island. He really, deeply appreciates it. His close friends gain nicknames -- as his stars, it's only natural for him to pick them out from the cluster in the skies. Akihiko, his Sirius and bright star. Trix and Missy, Castor and Pollux, the twins and troublemakers. Ambroise, his zealous Antares and close friend. Penelopeia, chimeric and loyal Vega. And Akkara, his Arcturus and strength.

It's ridiculous how long it takes for him to notice; he is, of course, a deadly trained assassin. He is meant to be observant -- and normally he is! But somehow this becomes a blind spot. One that becomes too big to be dealt with by the time he realizes it.

He should've noticed when Aki, his Sirius, stood beside him one day while Danyal looked over his island and saw the sprawling spirits carrying on about their afterlife and bowing to him as they saw him, and said: "I looked down into the depths when I met you; I couldn't measure it." They aren't one for flowing prose, it took him so off guard he was silent for over a minute before he finally spoke.

Danyal should've recognized devotion for what it is, and yet he didn't. He should've recognized it when Antares began spouting praises about him, crowing about his radiance and resplendence to the heavens. He just brushed it off as Ambroise being Ambroise. He should've recognized it when Trix and Missy nearly broke Dash's leg after he knocked Danyal's books out of his hands, he excused it as them being protective. Of them coming from times where such violence may have been customary -- after all, that's what he used to be like. What he was still like, sometimes, when his emotions nearly got the better of him.

He should've noticed it when the people living on his island followed his word like gospel, looked at him like he hung the stars in the sky. When his friends gifted him a shawl with the moon phases delicately embroidered into it, with silver, shimmering thread and moving stars lovingly stitched into it. Their constellations seen clear as day in the dark fabric. When he found small shrines dedicated to him -- but they lacked any image of him beyond stones carved to look like moons, so he ignored it. When the religious imagery began popping up.

He really, really should've noticed it when a bunch of cultists accidentally summoned Antares, and Antares had turned to him when he arrived and called them heretics. But he was so centered on the fact that they had kidnapped one of his stars, that he hadn't paid much attention to what Ambroise had said.

Sages say that faith is blind, they should also say faith in you is even blinder.

It really only hits him one afternoon while he's sitting in Sam's room studying with Tucker, Missy and Trixie lounging at his feet, Aki sat on his right, Penelopeia braiding his hair, Ambroise draped against him, and Akkara lurking over him. Its one of the rare few times they're all in one room together.

It hits him like a bolt of lightning. He looks up from his textbook. "Oh Ancients," he says in no amounting shock. Everyone looks up to him.

"I've become my grandfather."

[aroaessidhe]

Aro & ace books: DRAGONS

The Dragon of Ynys - an aroace knight and dragon go on a quest

Royal Rescue - high fantasy about being aroace and making friends with a dragon

A Day of Fallen Night - high fantasy with one of four MCs being aroacespec (sequel also has 2 word-of-god aspec MCs)

An Accident of Stars - portal fantasy with a major POV character who's aro

After The Dragons - sff novella with an ace-spec mlm MC

So Let Them Burn - YA fantasy, one MC is demisexual

See also: The Siren the Song and the Spy, The Grimrose Girls, Adrift In Starlight (include dragons, though not as significantly)

#aspec books / aspec database / tumblr masterpost

[trashmammal-7]

I'm fucking sobbing over this

First of all, what business did Spot have being anywhere near a transporter. Second of all, the transporter can do what?? "Yeah sorry about your cat. We sent her through the transgender operation transporter. Yeah.... sorry again." I'm in tears.

[fozmeadows]

I just found your book A Tyranny of Queens on a new reading app (queerreads) and wanted to make sure they licensed use of it before I read it there. I couldn't find any. I'm suspicious of any new reading places these days with so much blatant piracy happening...

I've never heard of this app before; I looked it up and can't find much information, but as a general rule of thumb, if an app isn't charging you for the cost of the book and it isn't affiliated with an actual library service, then it's probably piracy. If you want to read the book for free, either in print or as an ebook, then I'd recommend looking up a local, state or national library service - libraries buy their books and ebooks from the publisher, and in most cases, authors receive lending rights money based on how often their books are checked out. If a library doesn't have a book you want, you can request it, and the author still gets paid. I do know for certain that there's pirated copies of A Tyranny of Queens floating around on the internet, as it was scraped for the AI dataset used in one of those stupid Chat GPT-style programs, while the first book in the duology, An Accident of Stars, was not. So if this queerreads app has ATOQ but not AAOS, then yeah: it's pirated.

[spookberry]

Im like pretty sure drawing the portal accident a million different ways is a right of passage

[alephstudio]

[sixofravens-reads]

Finished An Accident of Stars!

This book and I got off to a slow start, but once I got into it I really liked it! I don't think it's actually a YA book, but I definitely would've enjoyed it as a teen. Will definitely be picking up the sequel!

This was a really great example of creating a fantasy world with a matriarchal society, and where the power balances and relationship dynamics are different from real life, without being too shallow or having to repeatedly explain things to the reader. It's great to have Saffron as someone for everyone to explain the world to, but the author trusts her reader to pick up on subtext and keep track of things as well. There's a lot of exposition without being info-dumpy.

That said, compared to the other Meadows book I've read, A Strange and Stubborn Endurance, the author's writing style is still a little unformed here. The pacing is a bit uneven, and the final scene in Karavos after Saffron leaves seems a little tacked-on. It almost feels a bit like a nanowrimo where the author came up with new plot points as she went, and while it's still a very coherent book there could definitely be a little more foreshadowing earlier on to tie things together.

But! I still enjoyed it very much. One thing I will say is, don't get turned off by the high school scene at the beginning. I almost did, bc I wanted a fantasy novel and not a YA school story, but the characters very quickly leave earth.

Overall a great portal fantasy, very realistic in how it deals with a teenage girl vanishing for weeks and reappearing with severe injuries. The cast of characters was delightful, and as an adult reader I especially liked having Gwen's perspective, both to relate to, and to fill that essential "who tf is keeping an eye on all these kids and teens who are involving themselves in politics and war??" niche.