#a bone in his teeth

[transbookoftheday]

A Bone in His Teeth by Kellen Graves

When a fall from the mast leaves Alba Marsh unable to sail, he finally has the chance to run away from his family debts in search of a better life. He hopes to reunite with his mother, Edythe, where they always promised to meet if things went awry, but finding the small, secluded, secretive town of Moon Harbor proves a greater challenge than Alba ever expected. Worse, upon arriving, no one seems to know anyone by the name Edythe Marsh at all.

Taking a job as the local lighthouse keeper while waiting for her to come, Alba attempts to find peace in his stolen freedom--but the sea has other plans. First come the shadows, then the voices, then watery trails left on the floor while he sleeps. He's inundated with erotic dreams of sirens calling out to him, and distant singing haunts his waking hours, all while the townspeople claim to hear nothing.

After a debtor catches up with him and he's forced to dispose of their body in the harbor, Alba is interrupted by Eridanys, the last merrow of Moon Harbor, who curses him from leaving until he can find out what happened to the other merrow that once filled those waters. Eridanys' demands, both mental and physical, are exhausting and endless--but as their relationship deepens, and Moon Harbor’s long-kept secrets are butterflied open to see, it becomes clear they may both be prey to the town in ways neither of them ever anticipated.

[tickatocka]

kellen graves coming for me specifically with this combination of art and tweets

[snotsloth]

August Reading Log

My August was full of political machinations, capricious gods, trauma recovery, and outrageous amounts of slow-burn mutual pining, yes even in the smutty books. I finished seven books this month and DNFed one. Overall, I had a great time and I’m excited to continue several of the series that I started. 

First off, I finished Godkiller by Hannah Kanner. This is book one of The Fallen Gods series and it was a fun fantasy adventure with good characters and an interesting world. Kissin, one of the main characters has very strong Geralt from The Witcher vibes, and she, along with Skedi, a minor god of white lies were my two favorite characters. It was quite short for an adult fantasy, so in some ways, it felt more like a teaser than a full novel, but it still packed in some cool world-building details and set up a larger quest for our protagonists along with a mystery to solve. So I’m invested enough to keep reading the series. I’ve already purchased the second book, Sunbringer.

Meanwhile, I listened to The Obelisk Gate and The Stone Sky, written by N. K. Jemisin and narrated by Robin Miles. These are the second and third books in The Broken Earth trilogy that started with The Fifth Season. I had previously listened to the first few chapters of The Obelisk Gate but then lost steam and set it aside. This time I was determined to finish the whole series and god, it was so worth it. 

Some people will tell you that The Fifth Season can function as a standalone and while they are technically correct, the first book is just the tip of the iceberg. You don’t understand even half of what is actually going on until you are at least a few chapters into The Obelisk Gate, and most of the real answers and resolutions don’t come until The Stone Sky. This series as a whole is a masterpiece of narrative structure, world-building, and character-building. It is so worth the effort it takes to finish all three books. 

After Godkiller and The Obelisk Gate, I was in the mood for something more romantic, so I picked up A Strange and Stubborn Endurance by Foz Meadows. This is one of the most beautiful love stories I have ever read. Val is possibly the most sympathetic, multi-dimensional, nuanced depiction of a sexual assault victim I’ve ever seen. And it’s within a larger story about slowly becoming a happier, healthier, kinder, and braver version of yourself when you are suddenly removed from a hostile environment and placed in one where you can thrive in the open. I think one of my favorite quotes from Val sums it up really well, “I have lived a cramped life, it seems. So shy of having my greatest indiscretion discovered that I seldom dared indulge in the simpler ones.” 

Moving directly from such a tender love story to a filthy monsterfucker romance might seem unhinged. But the heart wants what the heart wants and I wanted A Bone in His Teeth by Kellen Graves. I went in expecting eerie atmospheric coastal settings, a smattering of the kind of delicious body horror only non-cis people seem able to write, and lots and lots of freaky genderfucker monster smut, and boy howdy this book delivered on all that, and then some. What I was not expecting was a surprisingly tender love story about two people who could never quite fit right into the unjust systems they were born into and chose to burn it all down for the chance of finding a way to fit all their jagged, broken edges together. Alba is my favorite protagonist of any book I’ve read this year, and Eridanys is a literal force of nature with two dicks and a thirst for human flesh in more ways than one. This is Graves’ best book yet and I cannot wait to read what they publish next. 

Riding the high of several delightful books in a row, I started Silver Under Nightfall by Rin Chupeco with confidence that I had another banger on my hands. With vampires, body horror, a gloomy atmosphere, and a poly romance, this book had a lot of elements that I expected to love. However, the clunky prose, sloppy world-building, and meandering plot so drastically reduced my enjoyment of the book that I abandoned my read at 70%. 

Needing a palette cleanser after that, I turned to a guaranteed hit and picked up A Restless Truth by Freya Marske. And Marske did not miss! This is the sequel to A Marvelous Light which I read earlier this year and loved, so I was excited to pick it up. Marske is a master of character-driven smut, a.k.a. Sex scenes that serve a purpose to the story and reveal aspects of the characters we would not otherwise know. The setting and core murder mystery were also excellent and kept the plot moving at a decent clip. Maude had been one of my favorite side characters from the first book, so having her as one of the main characters really worked for me. Her love interest, Violet was charismatic and brought her own interesting baggage both to the plot and to her romance with Maude.  On the craft level, Marske is one of my favorite authors working today. Her prose is so bright and evocative in both its emotional and physical details. Her settings are lush and full of historical easter eggs. And her characters breathe with multi-dimensional life. I have one book left in The Last Binding series and I will probably devour it this month, seeing as it just arrived in the mail this week.

My final read of the month didn’t quite measure up to A Restless Truth, but I still had a fun time with Winter’s Orbit by Everina Maxwell. This was another arranged marriage romance set against a backdrop of courtly intrigue, espionage, and a fantastical setting, except this time it was a space opera instead of a historical fantasy. I thought Maxwell struck a good balance between romance elements and space opera elements. The settings were appropriately grand and gorgeous in scale and the political web was an effective tangle of different conflicting interests with no clear immediate solution. However, I felt that the two main characters lacked dimension and uniqueness. I fear part of the problem was that I had so recently read A Strange and Stubborn Endurance, and Winter’s Orbit just could not stand up to the inevitable comparison. Still, it was an easy, entertaining read that kept me engaged while stuck in bed on a sick day. Maxwell has a second book set in this universe and I think I will probably pick it up at some point.

Overall, it was a great reading month with only one dud. For September, I have a few books I know that I want to get through. While I don’t keep a strict order to my TBR, I know I want to finish The Jasmine Throne by Tasha Suri for my local book club (I’m about ⅓ of the way through at the moment). I am also still listening to A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine, which is really starting to pick up in the second half. One of my most anticipated reads of the year, Reclaimed by Seth Haddon arrived in the mail this week, along with the conclusion to The Last Binding trilogy, A Power Unbound by Freya Marske. So, while I’m not certain of what I’ll finish this month, I have a few suspicions of what I will gravitate towards. 

Hope you all had as good of a reading month as I did. Let me know what your best book of the month was and what you thought of any of the books I read this month. If you pick up any of the books I recommended, please let me know your thoughts. I’m especially excited to talk to anyone else who reads A Bone In His Teeth. It was such a unique read!

[ryllen]

the next thing u know, yuu would have the possession of malleus' bones

[bacchuschucklefuck]

while teen while goblin while aroace while injured while doing your best

[shush-you-insolent-fool]

Sunday on Sunday :)

Also yes they’re at a Denny’s… they give off “has-formal-meetings-at-Denny’s” vibe.

Design a mash up of @/szafiraka and @/S4FFI on Twitter

[manderleyfire]

BOYD CROWDER & AVA CROWDER in 'JUSTIFIED' (SEASON 2)

I lied for you taking that mining money. This is different, Ava. I guess me taking you in and building you up was a mistake. Just set you back to square one. That's not true. You took me in, and you healed me, Ava. You give me a reason to wake up in the morning. For that, I'll be eternally grateful.

[galvatronsthighs]

Jealous.

[sysig]

Chewtoy (Patreon)

[beepboopappreciation]

AM + P03 = .... 3AM?

[fumifooms]

Canines

The hand that feeds

Mickbell Tomas & Kuro Dungeon Meshi

^ 1: Ink-the-artist, I will remove my teeth / 2: Margaret Atwood / 3: C.S. Lewis, The Horse and His Boy / 4: Mitski, I’m your man / 5: Ojibwa, I love you like a rotten dog / 6: KotOR II / 7: Stardrop, Everything that’s ever been mine is covered in teeth marks / 8: Sodikken, People Eater / 9: Mitski, I’m your man / 10: maxime., The life and death of a dog / 11: Mitski, I bet on losing dogs / 12: maxime., The life and death of a dog / 13: hun, I did not bite with Malice / 14: C. Michael Davis, Don't Pet the Dragon / 15: Mitski, I’m your man

v 1: Early versions of the myth as in aeschylus orestes / 2: Ink-the-artist, I will not remove my teeth

[hmtaxidermy]

Another deer with a slight wry nose! (A nose that curves off to the side. Left, in this case)

[dykealloy]

one piece filler ep where they run into another peto-peto villain of the week guy but this time instead the devil fruit power rearranges people's brain chemistry so they have the thoughts behaviours emotional intelligence etc of a dog. zoro gets hit but he's just exactly the same

[thesoupisburning]

right so you guys ever think about the spectre telling the narrator that hes more similar to her than to a person?

what "her" was she referring to? the fragment we call the spectre? the way he can only be perceived, not perceive himself? the ghost of him, the ghost of her? all of her?

im just. thinking. i always think about spectre. she has. a lot to say that i think is overlooked in favor of more common favorite routes like moment of clarity and the tower, but shes one of my favorites, and shes one of the only ones who SEES the narrator, save for wraith, who is. also her. or nightmare. and she says that hes not really a person. like her.

of course, that makes sense, we think shes a ghost and dead, so she is. but him. is the echo a ghost in the classical sense? is that what she meant? or are there layers?

she says he's not really like a person. what is a person to her? is she comparing the narrator to the "shards of broken glass on the floor" are her interactions with us and the voices the only "person" she knows?

i love love love when this game separates the narrator from us and our voices. i love it so much i think about it daily. props to tower for "layer of grime" that fucks so hard.

i don't have a thesis im just. thinking. how much of the narrator is left. really.

[pettyprocrastination]

cringe brainrot cod thought but Alien!au Simon Riley where he's a retired veteran who takes on a job of being freelance security which means accompanying a collection of scientists led but some capitalist billionaire onto an non-domesticated planet where they all inevitably get picked off one by one until he's the only one left to find their murderer is an alien gal who wants to be left the FUCK alone on her planet. Builds a little hut deep in the forest and learns if he leaves her alone she'll leave his alone on separate sides of the world- eventually they fuck idk what to tell you.

[thaliasthunder]

and to think these motherfuckers all saw him as some creepy weirdo they needed to keep a safe distance from and debated to just LEAVE HIM TO DIE. i am trembling with rage i will burn them alive i will fucking stab them open i will feast with their guts i will