#I have a book to read on the 10th

[nocasdatsgay]

Eris Week 2024 Master List

Day 1- Bargains

What Could Have Been Chapter 1: Eris and Elain make a bargain. Eris helps Elain rescue Lucien, Elain helps Eris take down Beron.

Day 2 - Legacy

Happiness is a Foreign Concept - Eris is feeling the pressure to wed and have an heir

Day 3 - Betrayal

What Could Have Been Chapter 2: The bargain is called in and while in the continent, they make a decision they hopefully won’t regret.

List will be updated with post links as each day passes.

[junotter]

in-between moments

[asexualbookbird]

insert Imagine Dragons Radioactive Gasp Here

Hi. Coming up for air. I'm surrounded by yarn ends and fabric scraps I'm sweaty and covered in paint. I was a tiny bit productive this July! Made lots of progress on the Irish Lullaby Blanket, painted our balcony, started a few projects I really shouldn't have, and oh yeah! READ EIGHT BOOKS?? Who am I. I'm twelve books ahead of schedule according to goodreads, eleven by StoryGraph standards. It's wild. It helps that my library is holding an adult summer reading bingo contest and I fully intend to fill out the entire board.

The City We Became by NK Jemisin ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐- WAOW. I initially rated this four stars, but sitting on it and coming back to it now, it was absolutely a five star read. I would love to reread it, the world was intriguing, and the AUDIO NARRATOR WAS STUNNING! I do try not to judge the contents of a book by it's narrator, but what a performance! When library bingo is over, I'm listening to book two ASAP.

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson ⭐⭐⭐⭐ - Oh look! A Classic I actually enjoyed! I don't want to judge horror on whether or not I'm scared, because it IS kind of tough to get to me, but this was fun! I could see the spooks! Even if it wasn't spooky For Me, Personally, it was still a fun time!

The Butcher of the Forest by Premee Mohamed ⭐⭐⭐⭐ - Oh. Ouchie. A shortie, but a goodie, I'm kicking myself for returning the ebook immediately because I would've liked to go back and reread bits of it if not ALL of it. A not exactly new take on fae, but an interesting one that I actually enjoyed.

Starling House by Alix E Harrow ⭐⭐⭐⭐- I did NOT intend to read this directly after Hill House but I am SO glad I did. THE PARALLELS!!!! The circular story!!!! THE STARLINGS!!!! I laughed, I cried, I yelled at Arthur, there were surprises I genuinely didn't expect, but made so much sense in hindsight. I don't exactly buy the romance, but I'll let it slide this one time.

Ghost Station by SA Barnes ⭐⭐- Two stars is Very Generous. And I'm sticking to it because the concept is still intriguing and if you squint there was some Leech stuff going on. Maybe I should just reread Leech. Sigh. Ophelia was hired to do ONE. JOB. To make sure none of the team members have Want To Murder Disease. And then Birch shows signs of Want To Murder Disease and she KEEPS IT QUIET BECAUSE *checks notes* HE KNOWS HER DAD HAD WANTS TO MURDER DISEASE. Everyone is stupid. They're scientists and everyone is fucking stupid. It wasn't scary, because EVERYONE WAS FUCKING STUPID. Biting all of them.

Thornhedge by T Kingfisher ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ - Oh T Kingfisher, you have never disappointed me, why do I read anything else. Another fun take on the fae! It's so hard to get me to like a fae book, so GOOD JOB KINGFISHER! I liked the new take on Girl Locked In A Tower, I liked that Toadling was surrounded by love and still encouraged to do what makes her happy. Again, I almost reread (listened. Whatever) this immediately just for funsies. Another banger from T Kingfisher.

The Sun and The Star by Rick Riordan and Mark Oshiro ⭐⭐⭐ - I've been waffling on this rating a LOT. Disclaimer that I haven't read any of Riordan's stuff since the OG Percy Jackson series, and that was ages ago so I can't compare this to that. This was a fun little book, but it felt a little heavy handed with the themes even for a middle grade. It doesn't make me want to read more, but I'm not mad I read it at all.

The Scapegracers by HA Clarke ⭐⭐⭐⭐ - Okay. Listen. Look. Look at me. Was this The Perfect Book? No absolutely not. Was it a banger? Did I have fun? YES ABSOLUTELY YES! It's a book I could've needed in high school, but I wouldn't have been mature enough to appreciate it so I'm glad I have it NOW. Angry Queer Teen Girls will run the world. And I'm here for it. So looking forward to the rest of the series, I need to know what sort of mischief these girls get up to. I hope they curse another fuckboy. They deserve it.

BONUS! I also watched The Haunting of Hill House on netflix! One bingo square said "read a book then what the movie" and I really thought Mike Flanagan's Hill House was a movie but no it was ten (10) hours of spooky fucked up family dynamics. Also Nate Ford was there. Naturally. It was good! It was creepy! I wanna watch it again JUST FOR THE TREE HOUSE. I was skeptical when I first started because who the hell are you people (Steve, Shirley) but no it was fun! But also. Fuck Steven and Shirley. Congrats to Theo and moving in with her girlfriend of one week, peak lesbian stereotypes. Biggest complaint is with Mike Flanagan and his need to not only kill cats, but get close up shots of said dead cats. What's up with that my dude. What did cats ever do to you?

Plans for August (how am I saying that) are The Bone Season side by side comparison with the first edition and the tenth anniversary edition. I'm counting that as two books, I think, because it IS two books, and looking at them next to each other, there's a pretty sizable difference in page count! No clue about word count. This is part of book bingo (reread a book you didn't enjoy the first time), and this has helped me realise that I've been avoiding this for a Reason. I truly and surely did not enjoy The Bone Season and have no desire to experience that again. Don't know what to do with this information. So. I'm rereading it. Yay.

I have a few sewing projects I'm working on, and I am SO CLOSE to finishing the Irish Lullaby Blanket! It's exciting! So lets go!! Bring it on, August!!

[soup-mother]

up to the bit in detransition baby where she's complaining about laura jane grace for some reason ssdsdtdtinis

[farsight-the-char]

Weird bigoted Warhammer fans are getting up in arms about Tau again. I feel.

I think it is because Tau are doing better in sanctioned play?

Also might be rumour mongers (Valrack and the like) are talking about Tau more, given they are a "soon" update.

[deus-ex-mona]

[livvyofthelake]

also. movie that takes place in virginiaaaaa <3 ok it only takes place in va because it was based on a true story but still. that's my state :)

[kaurwreck]

When Yosano tells Kajii that he's an idiot and then he stabs her in the hand. That's me @ Fyodor, except he can't stab me in the hand because I refuse to read Crime and Punishment.

[darkwithasharpenededge]

A Pretentious Bitch's Review of Magician: Apprentice by Raymond E. Feist

Rating: 65/100

Summary: A tropey high fantasy journey through a DND-esque, LOTOR-adjacent fantasy world.

I have actually read this book before, as a kid. I don't remember how old I was at the time, but I was much newer to fantasy and much less critical. I remember liking this book pretty well, but getting bored after the first sequel, and honestly that's an assessment I kind of stand by as an adult. Be warned, my review contains spoilers.

Plot: The central plot of the story is an invasion of the fantasy world of Midkemia by another world through "rift portals" by an empire known as the Tsurani. The majority of the story centers around the journey that the central party makes to the capitol in order to ask the king for aid in repelling the invaders, with a pivot towards the end to being about the warfare between the main characters and the invaders. It's also a coming of age for the main character, Pug, who, through several time skips, changes and develops. At the beginning I thought that the story was going to revolve around Pug's development as a magician, since he starts the story a poor magician, then has an incident where he accidentally uses magic to save the princess. Then he proceeds to never use magic again or really learn anything more about magic.

Some aspects of the plot are straight out of Lord of the Rings, especially the sequence where the party goes down into dangerous old unused Dwarven mines in order to pass under the mountains, where they face a dangerous enemy and are forced to leave one of their party behind. Also speaking of that incident, the author set up some tension where Pug was meant to believe that Tomas was lost, then immediately undercut it by showing the reader in the very next chapter that Tomas was alive. Additionally, Pug's reaction to finding out later on that Tomas was alive was never shown.

The early portions of the book that take place at the castle are enjoyable, and so is the journey that the main party makes. However, the war scenes at the end of the book become dull quickly, and I felt bogged down while reading them. The broadening of the story and the loss of connection with Pug and Kulgan, my two favorite characters, bored me.

Prose Quality: Nothing spectacular. It's fairly serviceable fantasy prose, with some decent scenery descriptions, a tendency towards the simplistic, and some moments of hilariously bad writing that I feel any competent editor should have noticed. A standout illustration is "waving aside Tully's comments with a dismissive wave." The author, when he choses to foreshadow something, is also typically VERY heavy-handed with it.

**Characters: **I enjoy Kulgan (the magician) quite a lot, along with Tully, the priest. In my note as I was writing I kept writing "I love Kulgan" over and over again. I'm decently fond of Pug as a character, and I don't mind Tomas. Every single other character I could quite frankly take or leave.

I will also use the space to talk about the names. The names are SO funny, in that way that names in older works of fantasy tend to be. They range from extremely common real world names to comical fantasy names. The great wizard is named Marcos. The main character is named Pug. The king is named Rodric.

I also commend the author for his willingness to let his male characters cry and be immature. Pug is, at the start of the story, a very young man, and he acts like it for the vast majority of the book, in a way that is endearing rather than insufferable. He also cries, over his friend Tomas when he is lost in the mine, and over several other things throughout the story.

Worldbuilding: The worldbuilding, especially when it comes to magic, has some genuinely interesting bits, and I was enjoying the segments with Tomas' armor that he gets from the dragon that he finds in the mine as well (although of course some of the concepts there, especially the idea of a long dead civilization that had control over the dragons, is done to death [although to be fair it likely wasn't done to death at the time of publication]). The worldbuilding on elves, dwarves, and the kingdom in general is pretty typical stuff. This book was based on the author's dungeons and dragons game and it shows. I will say that the medieval aspect of medieval fantasy is REALLY well-handled in this book. Travel times seem relatively realistic, they use carrier pigeons for messages traveling long distances, the characters typically wear tunics and leggings, which, can I just say that most fantasy series don't have the balls to put their characters in leggings, and most of the clothes of the nobility are in garishly bright colors by modern standards, which is, once again, realistic. There is a lot of death in the course of battles, although all deaths are nameless soldiers, no named characters die. (Once again, this is the author's Dungeons and Dragons campaign). There is some genuinely interesting political stuff that pops up midway through the book, with suggestions that in order to repel the invasion the characters involved may have to commit treason, but nothing comes of it.

Action Sequences: Most of the action sequences don't feel very tense. The style is, in my opinion, a bit dry, and especially some of the later scenes while the war is ongoing felt a bit dry and were a slog to get through. Additionally, they felt as though they had very little stakes. All the combat was quite bloody (in a very early sequence in the forest with the Dark Brotherhood [Drow], the party loses more than half of the soldiers they were traveling with) but no named characters ever died, and any time the fate of a main character was in question, that character's fate was IMMEDIATELY shown to leave the reader in no doubt of their survival, which cuts any tension rather brutally.

Romance: Worse than Sanderson by a long shot. And Sanderson's got the excuse of being Mormon! I will give this book that it no longer appears that Carline (the princess) will be getting with Pug at the end of the story.

Female Characters: Carline is the only notable woman in the entire book. She is pretty cool to be honest and has a couple of good moments, but we only see Carline from her own perspective towards the end of the book. I hate her plotline with Roland, like so much, but I'm glad she got her chance to do some fighting towards the end. At about halfway through the book I found myself really missing the presence of women.

Gay?: Nope. Laughed a lot at the use of the term "glory hole" in a mining context though.

Racism?: I'm hesitant to be critical of the book on this front because I don't necessarily think holding a piece of 80s fantasy to a modern standard is a particularly useful activity, especially when there are MUCH worse books in the genre than this one, but I feel the need to put this out there: The Tsurani are pretty clearly Asian-coded. It's a bit sketchy.

Was It Worth It?: I got this book for a dollar at Goodwill, so I'd say I got my money's worth, and the hardback will look nice on my shelf so there's that. As for the time cost... I'd say yeah, I got a kick out of revisiting the early scenes of the book.

Will I Continue The Series?: This book is the first in a VERY long series. I have the hardback copy that contains both Magician: Apprentice and Magician: Master so I probably will read Magician: Master eventually, just because I have it already. As for the rest of the series after that, I'm going to say no.

Final Verdict: It's a bit derivative and a bit dated and a bit slow. I suspect that although I was once, I no longer am the target audience. Here's to hoping the rest of my 2024 reads score higher.

Review Word Count: 1367

[carebearcody]

goodreads reading challenge and duolingo streaks is the main thing keeping me going from day to day. i’m being so serious

[nomaishuttle]

aughhhhh i wish i had books 2 read i wanna read books so bad rn 🤓 <- i look like this. 2 pictures of me 👇

[nat-seal-well]

Going back to my roots*

*rereading Kingkiller Chronicle and whispering lines and quotes I come across that I memorized years ago and will carry with me for the rest of my life

[homunculus-argument]

Reading a book about slavery in the middle-ages, and as the author sorts through different source materials from different eras, I am starting to understand why so many completely fantastical accounts of "faraway lands" went without as much as a shrug. The world is such a weird place that you can either refuse to believe any of it or just go "yeah that might as well happen" and carry on with your day.

There was this 10th century arab traveller who wrote into an account that the fine trade furs come from a land where the night only lasts one hour in the summer and the sun doesn't rise at all in the winter, people use dogs to travel, and where children have white hair. I don't think I'd believe something like that either if I didn't live here.

[girlivealwaysbean]

i hate being bitter and resentful and holding onto grudges but my god!!!!!!!!!!!! i see people going to college and becoming these cool confident versions of themselves and im like fuck u dad

[flovverworks]

WHENS THE ANIME NEWS i wanna see minion akira again. return her to me. i need proper comparison shots of her outfit premhyk vs the one they established in the manga/stageplay

[mist-dancing]

Even though she’s been leader for like the entire series i really hope Leafstar doesn’t die, because then Hawkwing will just be made leader and we do not need more tom leaders, idk i’m just so sick of them, they have no personality to me.