#deryni rising

[smbhax]

Cover illustration by Bob Pepper

[haveyoureadthisfantasybook]

vote yes if you have finished the entire book.

vote no if you have not finished the entire book.

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[oldschoolfrp]

Encounter in Dungeon Level Three, Room 2: Three Griffons contemplating a tattered banner (from Under the Storm Giant’s Castle, D&D adventure by Thomas A McCloud, Judges Guild, 1979). The description assumes some familiarity with heraldic colors, but what really stands out here is the casual inclusion of an item belonging to characters from a specific fantasy novel that is not mentioned elsewhere in the adventure. This banner in a cloud dungeon below a flying castle somehow belongs to the Dukes of Corwyn (spelled here as Corwin) in Katherine Kurtz's Deryni Rising, the first of the long series of Deryni novels. The author otherwise leaves it to the DM to decide how the game world is connected to Kurtz's fictional setting and what this might mean for future adventures.

Are the players supposed to recognize this banner and its origins? Who are these griffons that are implied to be more intelligent than the usual hybrid animal mounts in D&D, and how would they even communicate the fact that they don't know the banner's history?

Other encounters in this module include "Ariels of Moab" (small hybrids of snake, scorpion and dragonfly parts, but named for biblical warriors mentioned in certain translations of the Old Testament) and "Satan himself, disguised as a demonic worm" (who is mostly here to observe, but is capable of assuming humanoid form and fighting as a 15th level magic-user/18th level cleric).

[readingtoinfinity]

DNF: Deryni Rising

One thing I have always joked about: subtleties and implications are lost on me. Indeed, it took watching Pride and Prejudice (the series, not the movie) with my neurotypical family members to 'get' it properly. I had thought it would be a burden all my life, that I would never grasp the subtext of scenes properly.

Deryni Rising seeks to challenge this assertion.

Set in a magical world with roughly Medieval-level technology and social progress, it follows a young prince, Kelson, scrambling to ascend the throne in the wake of his father's sudden death. Along the way, he'll learn of his family's connection to the Deryni population (a subset of humans with psychic or magical powers) and a plot against his family.

The book is quite blunt and leans more on the tell than the show. Characters will say outright how they're feeling, histories are dropped on you in pages between spoken words, and the historical precedent is laid out in several tangents that distract from the action. There's a significant level of politicking going on in the story but it's very black-and-white for a wheeling and dealing segment of the government, at least so far as I read of it.

I'm pleased it's short, since that makes for a good entry into fantasy by younger or more experienced readers, and the bluntness may be a feature for people who may not quite be on the level of the subtle scheming in Game of Thrones. I cannot help but feel I've outgrown this book, however; I recognize it's old, so some tropes have fallen into common use (or been discarded) and it's had staying power since the 70s (including having a book published in 2014!) but I couldn't get into it.

(Side note: the book treats foreigners really weird. At one point there are bodyguards for a visiting dignitary who are wearing armor described as barbaric, which may be a flaw of the character doing the narration. This character is meant to be heroic, so if it's a flaw then I didn't see it explored. But the villains are described as having brown skin, and while that's helpfully descriptive for painting a picture no other characters' skin colors are mentioned, and it happens several times in one scene, even for characters that have already been described. I'm not an authority for making accusations of racism, but it stuck in my mind that I would want to direct your attention to it and let you make your own judgement.)

If you're new to fantasy, or want a different kind of young adult novel, I'd recommend giving this one a try. If you're interested in the fantasy genre historically, this would be a good read to start bridging the gap between Lord of the Rings and Wheel of Time. But unless the series gets truly wild in later entries I don't know what it would have to offer veteran readers.

[the-hype-dragon]

Books I Read in October

Books I finished:

The Starry Rift by James Tiptree, Jr. aka Alice Sheldon - 4/5

Collection of three short stories, loosely connected by setting and the overarching theme of self-sacrifice. Much less cynical than anything in the other Tiptree collection I've read, Her Smoke Rose Up Forever (which I thought was excellent). Overall I enjoyed this, though the third story dragged in the middle. "Good Night, Sweethearts" was the only one without non-human aliens and it was also the weirdest, but I liked it the most.

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson - reread, 5/5

(I say this is a reread, but I don't think I really understood it the first time I read it, years ago.) Tragic story of repressed woman who gets possessed by a haunted house. As I was reading this I could tell Stephen King really liked it, The Shining has a pretty similar premise and conclusion. It's scary but I view it as more of a tragedy. Has two adaptations, both called The Haunting, from 1963 and 1999; I don't think either movie really does the book justice but the '63 version is worth a watch. But also: just read the book.

Chalice by Robin McKinley - 4/5

Beekeeper-turned-sorceress Mirasol saves her demesne and her love interest from evil opportunistic politicians from elsewhere. Very weird and whimsical in a way I think I've only ever seen McKinley pull off. Kind of meanders in a way I didn't like at first but once you get into the flow of the story it's easy to follow, plus that's simply how McKinley worldbuilds so I can forgive it. Ended up enjoying it but thought the resolution was a little too convenient.

Red Dragon by Thomas Harris - reread, 5/5

One of my favorite books ever. Been meaning to reread this for a while and decided October was a good month for it. Still love it. Dolarhyde's a great monster, utterly contemptible while still being sympathetic (to an extent; Harris never lets you forget what Dolarhyde has done). Another legitimately scary book. If you like thrillers I recommend just reading it since neither adaptation does it justice (though imo Manhunter is worth a watch).

Deryni Rising by Katherine Kurtz - 3/5

If I was a kid I would have unironically loved this. As an adult I found it clumsy and amateurish but I had a good time reading it. The villains are silly but great. Entertaining in the same way a Terry Goodkind book is. Kind of reminded me of Redwall and Warrior Cats. I've seen reviews that take issue with the two (lmao) important female characters but I liked both of them a lot. Wouldn't necessarily recommend to anyone over the age of 20 tho unless it was strictly to see what all the fuss is about. Kurtz has written a billion Deryni books and iirc the most recent one was published ~2014. Not sure if I will give the series another try, this first book was okay but not good enough to get me interested in the rest. Oh well.

Spindle's End by Robin McKinley - 4/5

A retelling of Sleeping Beauty. The first half focuses on the protagonist's (Rosie's) foster mother, Katriona, and the second half on Rosie herself as a young woman; heavy emphasis on female friendships and female relationships in general (mother to daughter, aunt to niece, etc.). Very funny but ends on a bittersweet note. I liked Rosie's friendship with her BFFL Peony. There is a weird age gap romance that I wasn't a huge fan of, tho I liked Rosie's love interest. I just wish he wasn't like twenty or whatever years older than her lmao. Otherwise a good book, the ending made me cry.

Books I did not finish:

Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo and The Lies of Locke Lamora by Scott Lynch -

Lumping these together because I dropped both of them for the same reasons: I thought they were boring and I couldn't stand any of the characters. Neither author seemed to want to let their stories do the talking and the action kept getting broken up by paragraphs upon paragraphs of info-dumping and exposition, and none of it done in a very engaging manner, either. For being marketed as exciting thrillers I didn't find either one of them particularly exciting or thrilling. I could not take any of the 2cool4me characters seriously either, both books felt very juvenile in the pursuit of being edgy and """mature.""" Also did not like the way the female characters in either were written - I dropped Lies about seventy pages in, and in all that time there was precisely one female character with a speaking role, and she was introduced just to flirt with the protagonist and so that we the readers would know what his type is, pleugh. I understand liking these books if you're a teenager going through an edgy phase but as a 30 something I didn't find either very engaging, not even in a corny so-bad-it's-good way like Deryni Rising lmao

[greggs-mistflower]

I desperately need to refer to this when reminding Katherine Kurtz later today that in Deryni Rising, p. 144 in the first printing, the very European medievaloid duke advises King Kelson to allow himself to be carried like a sack of potatoes.

Fuck that post going around saying "you can have coffee in your story without justifying it :) you don't need to explain everything :)" I want, no, I DEMAND a fully researched ethnobotanical paper on every single food item in your work, if you don't explain to me where did potatoes come from in your fantasy setting or don't explain how the industry of coffee works over interstellar distances with full detail you are doing things wrong and I personally hate you and I hate your stupid story, fuck you

[alfvaen]

Novel Spark

It's the beginning of a new year, but it's also the beginning of a new month. In which I read a number of books. Guess what? I'm going to tell you about them.

Possible spoilers for Jack L. Chalker's Dancing Gods novels, and Glenda Larke's Stormlord series.

John Scalzi: Agent To The Stars, completed December 2

John Scalzi seems like a nice guy online (though we've seen that one before), but I've been back and forth on his books. I've read the first two Old Man's War books and was kind of meh on the second one so I'm setting that series aside for now. Redshirts was great, though, and I read The Kaiju Preservation Society from the library and liked it too. I've been interested in Starter Villain, and when my wife picked it up I was going to put it on my shelf (well, virtual shelf since it was an ebook) when I remembered that I had put Agent To The Stars on after The Ghost Brigades. I'd read his story about how he came to write this book in the first place, etc., and I was willing to give it a try. And after a somewhat grim fantasy like The Briar King, some kind of lighter SF work might be nice. So here I am, giving it a try.

The basic premise is that aliens come to Earth and want to make contact with humans, but they're kind of amorphous gelatinous things (I'm picturing Yaphit from The Orville or Bob from "Monsters Vs. Aliens" here, mostly) and they've consumed enough of our media to know that humans are not going to react well to them. So their first contact is with an L.A. talent agency, where the job is passed off to our first-person protagonist, Tom Stein, who is introduced to specially-created envoy Joshua.

What follows is not actually madcap, but mostly light-hearted, as Tom has to deal with his star client, rising blonde star Michelle Beck who is fighting for a serious role in a Holocaust movie, reporters trying to figure why he's suddenly behaving so oddly, and his neighbours' decrepit dog, while he tries to figure out how to introduce these aliens to humanity. We also get some examination of that nature of life, consciousness, and identity, though not too deep.

All in all, I liked it better than The Ghost Brigades. After some internal debate about whether I should still go on to Starter Villain next (as opposed to The Collapsing Empire or Lock In), I decided to stick with it for now.

Jack L. Chalker: Songs of The Dancing Gods, completed December 6

Continuing with the Dancing Gods reread; this one is from six years after the original trilogy. It includes an introduction which recaps the original trilogy, but also provides some insight into why he wrote it in the first place. Apparently he had the hankering to write some epic fantasy, so he read some recent books (in what would presumably have been the late 70s) and was struck by how everything was either Tolkien or Conan. Which led him to thinking of an actual fantasy world that could exist that everyone was drawing from, where the rules were set down so the stories were all the same.

Now I was trying to think of what he might have been reading to lead him to these conclusions. So what can I find for 1970s fantasy? Katherine Kurtz's original Deryni series. They don't seem particularly generic to me, neither Tolkienesque or Conanesque. Pern is often mentioned, but it was really science fiction on many levels, as was (spit) Darkover, or C.J. Cherryh's Morgaine books. Lin Carter was literally writing Conan, as well as homages to the genre, so maybe he counts. Shannara didn't get going until 1977, but it did instigate a flood of Tolkienesques, which theoretically could include the Thomas Covenant series, though those were a lot less generic. And most of the other ones I think of (like Dennis McKiernan and Tom Deitz) came out later. So, in sum, I don't know what the hell Chalker was reading. But whatever.

Anyway, the book once again starts slowly, mostly focusing on the one character who got body-swapped last book into a slave body, and the Rules are imposing slave behaviour and thinking. In many ways she's the central character of the book as a result. They wander around for a bit near the beginning, then go on a mission up north to infiltrate enemy territory. (One character has gotten obsessed with "Gilligan's Island" since their sojourn on Earth in the last book. I think it's fair to say that Chalker was not a fan.) One interesting bit of worldbuilding is the ice field they have to cross which is actually an ancient frozen battlefield, with powerful magics that leak out if any of the ice ever melts. So they have to cross it without melting anything. Nice obstacle. (An ice obstacle, heh.) Once again manages to pull it together well enough for the end, but it still doesn't really transcend. One more book to go and then I imagine I will be weeding the entire series from my shelves.

Sarah Kuhn: Heroine Complex, completed December 11

Time for another female diversity book. I have a number of choices among authors that I've read before--Michelle West/Sagara, Premee Mohamed, N.K. Jemisin, S.G. Wong, and Fonda Lee, among others--I felt like it was time to try a new one. I was going back and forth between Tasha Suri and Sherry Thomas, when my wife reminded me of this one, which seemed like it had more of a fun vibe, so I decided to go for it.

Kuhn is half-Japanese, like her main character, Evie Tanaka. Evie is the lifelong friend and put-upon personal assistant of Aveda Jupiter, a.k.a. Annie Chang. After a demonic incursion event in San Francisco, Annie got low-level superpowers, but took the opportunity to rebrand herself as an ass-kicking superheroine/social media star. Evie also got some powers, but given that they're flame powers that tend to get out of control when her emotions get strong, she wishes they'd go away, and has been suppressing them and regimenting her existence ever since, not to mention looking after her little sister after their mother died and their father wandered off. But circumstances force her to stand in for Aveda temporarily, and it throws her carefully balanced life out of whack.

It's a pretty fun read, with characters who are not always rational, but you can understand why they aren't. Drops a lot of clues, some of which I picked up, about future plot twists. Oh, and there's a decent romance subplot too. I enjoyed it and will likely continue in the series; my wife has given me to understand that future books are from different POVs, the next one being Aveda and the one after that Evie's sister Bea.

Glenda Larke: The Last Stormlord, completed December 18

I was expecting to deliberate more on what to read after the Sarah Kuhn. I often file superhero books under "urban fantasy", given their modern settings and the fact that magic is often part of the milieu, and in the Sarah Kuhn book they explicitly have demons, as well as having a romance plot which is very similar to many I've seen in urban fantasy books. So that would tend to preclude reading an urban fantasy book next, leaving "epic fantasy", "science fiction", and, um, all the other genres, which are generally not as well represented.

But apparently as soon as I thought of the Glenda Larke book, my brain was like, "Sure, that'll be fine." I mean, it is an epic fantasy, and it's also the final book in a trilogy, so I can close off another series, which is usually a good thing. Unfortunately, in this case, it's been a while since I read the last one. I think it's possible that after I read Stormlord's Exile I forgot to put this book on my shelves, physical and virtual, so it wasn't on my radar for a while. But also there are certain unmistakeable similarities with the Karen Miller series I was reading. It's possible that those similarities are due to them both being Australian writers, which would explain them both writing series where, firstly, all the civilization is near the south coast and there's a bunch of desert to the north, and second, where the magic is mostly concerned with trying to control weather and bring water to dry lands. It's also kinda long, almost 700 pages, which may put me behind on my Goodreads challenge again (even reduced as it is), but I've decided not to care about that anymore, right? Anyway, it's taken me a while to get back to it, and my memory of what happened previously is spotty. I guess I'll get to see how good Larke's recap game is.

Immediately I am thrown off by the that we start with "Lord Jasper Bloodstone", the only extant Stormlord, who's secretly working with a "waterpainter" named Terelle to help shore up his inadequate weather magic…and before the chapter's over I realize that Terelle is calling him Shale, and I don't remember why he has two different names… But Shale is the main character I remember from the other two books, and I vaguely remember waterpainting, and the desert-dwelling tribesmen they mention, who travel using "pedes", or myriapedes, giant many-legged arthropods, to traverse the dunes.

A large chunk of the action in this book seems to take place in the land of Khromatis, which turns out to be a non-arid land across the desert which turns out to have even more people with water magic. This results in the action being a little fragmented, because just when we have established some of the conflicts going on back in the desert regions (the Quartern) we have a lengthy section set in Khromatis. It feels like a weird choice for the last book in the series to be introducing this new land and new characters. (Though I guess Karen Miller did something similar in her last "Fisherman's Children" book, and it refreshed the plot mightily.)

It all more or less comes together in the end, with bonus next-generation characters for potential sequels. Gets some bonus points for having actual trans (transitioned using magic, no less) and gay characters. Still, I don't know if I will be hunting down more Glenda Larke right away or anything.

Cory Doctorow: Walkaway, completed December 24

I've been reading Cory Doctorow from at least the time his first novel came out--at least his novels, if not his short stories or blog posts back then. I read Makers by installments on Tor.com, which was a weird experience. I met him once in Toronto when he and my wife were both nominated for "Forest of Reading" awards. And these days I'm mostly reading his essays on Pluralistic and feeling pretty left-wing as a result. But I'm a bit behind on the novels. The last one I read was Pirate Cinema, which was decent, and I decided to go onto this one next. Now I'm kinda interested in his Martin Hench novels, so clearly I gotta read this one to get it out of the way. (Like my motivation for reading the Scalzi one a few weeks earlier.)

I initially thought that, as less than 400 pages, I might read it in four days. Instead I ended up taking six…partly because it was Christmas season and we were busy, but also because it was just a dense book, possibly small font size and more words per page, I didn't actually check. But also I didn't find it a particularly compelling read.

It's probably unsurprising to find it similar to a number of earlier Doctorow books, like Makers, Little Brother, and Pirate Cinema. I was a little surprised to find myself reminded of Octavia Butler's Parable of The Sower at times. It's done with multiple third-person POV, which I found kind of distancing, unlike the immediacy of some of Doctorow's other books.

It's set about fifty years in the future, where "zottas", the ultra-rich, are dominating "default" society, so your only options are to be a wage slave forever, or to walk away. The technology, replete with "printers" that can produce such things as entire buildings and complicated pharmaceuticals, makes it fairly easy to survive and thrive outside of "default". So at first it seems like it's mostly going to be comparing strategies for walkaway survival. But the zottas and their mercenaries aren't particularly happy with the success of walkaways, particularly when Walkaway U. develops some groundbreaking technology in brain-scanning-and-uploading.

In the end I was kind of meh on the whole thing, which, perhaps inevitably, ended up revolving around the one walkaway who was a zotta's daughter, and quite frankly that plotline was the most interesting. I didn't really care about the handwavy technology which made it all possible.

Also is the second book in a row with a trans, or possibly intersex, character, who seemed to me to be handled well.

From here I guess I have to decide whether I want to try Martin Hench books like Red Team Blues, or The Lost Cause; I'm leaning more towards the latter, now that I've finished the "Science In The Capital" trilogy, but I guess we'll see.

Jack L. Chalker: Horrors of The Dancing Gods, completed December 29

Bringing the reread of the Dancing Gods series to an end, and at this point I'm wishing I could send a message to my past self and say, "Don't bother, toss them out with the Changewinds books." This one came out in 1995 and as far as I can tell did not need to be. According to the author notes it was inspired by a "horror boom" the happened around that time, which I am not familiar with, but then I was never into horror all that much. I have come to like Stephen King, who is a genre unto himself, and I rarely bother to look past that.

It seems like this time he is leaning harder into actual parody, though I'm only guessing because I keep seeing things that look like references that I don't get, though I was mildly amused by their voyage on the H.P. Hovecraft (to the continent of Yuggoth). We've disposed of the "were" curse, which was the most interesting thing about the earlier books, and Joe only gets POV near the beginning of the book, and then we're with Marge and Joe's son Irving.

There's a lot of talking about good vs. evil whose main conclusion seems to be "they're not all that different", and it's possible that once I used to think that way, but now it doesn't have a lot of appeal for me. Far too much dialogue consist of one character saying something provocative, another one saying "Huh?", and the the first character explaining their profound insights. It gets kind of wearing.

This book also had a trans/intersex character, but given that this is Jack Chalker, they were handled with as much shock and drama as possible. ("Oh no, I've fallen in love with this girl, but she's got male genitalia! This may be an insuperable obstacle to our relationship!") Weird to have a three-book streak, though.

It'll probably be a while before I read any more Chalker. I remember last time I reread the Well World books that I noticed a definite decline in quality, so I'm almost afraid to revisit them again; probably the Flux & Anchor books won't hold up either. Four Lords of the Diamond might, or maybe The Wonderland Gambit. But not for a while.

As for nonfiction, I made a little more progress in Sugar, but not much. We've moved from talking about African slaves to South Asian indentured servants, which is actually not much of an improvement. Those plantation folk certainly did suck, though not enough for MAGA Republicans to throw them out or anything. Mostly I'm trying to work through another month of comics on Marvel Unlimited.

And that's it for December, and for 2024! Because I'm not finishing another book in the year, despite getting a good head start in the doctor's waiting room. I will also be doing a separate year-end post, so stay tuned for that.

[reading-into-it]

Going for the 1000 Pages Readathon Challenge set by @books-and-cookies! I picked up The Crow Girl the other week (866 pages) and I promised my dad I'd put Deryni Rising (271 pages) at the top of my to-read list. A little over 1k, but a little extra reading never hurt anyone. Wish me luck!

[pilibdc]

JOMP BPC June 17: Female Author

I may have gotten carried away with the amount of books. However I felt that I should demonstrate that female authors run the gamut of genres and time periods. The authors range from the 970 AD to the present day. Bellow is a list of the books

Pile 1

Darkover Landfall: Marion Zimmer Bradley (I am aware of her personal life and issues)

Deryni Rising: Katherine Kurtz

The Word for World is Forest: Ursula K LeGuin

The Shadow of Murder: Charity Lee Blackstock

Oroonoko: Aphra Behn

Ice: Anna Kavan

Frankenstein: Mary Shelley

Kallicain: Karin Boyle

The Mysteries of Udolpho: Ann Radcliff

The Alexiad: Anna Komnene

The Bloody Chamber: Angela Carter

The Haunting of Hill House: Shirley Jackson

Circe: Madeline Miller

Pile 2

The History if England: Jane Austen

Thyra: Anne R Bailey

The Secret Lives of Married Women: Elissa Ward

Choke Hold: Christina Faust

Around the World in Seventy-Two Days: Nellie Bly

A Woman in Arabia: Gertrude Bell

The Heptameron: Marguerite De Navarre

The Book of Margery Kempe: Margery Kempe

The Wonderful Adventures of Nils Holgerrson: Selma Lagerlof

The Book of the City of Ladies: Christine de Pizan

Revelations if Divine Love: Julian of Norwich

The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon: Sei Shonagon

Mary and Maria: Mary Wollstonecraft / Matilda: Mary Shelley

Selected Writings: Hildegard of Bingen

Pile 3

Murder in the Mews: Helen Reilly

Dragonwyck: Anya Seton

Gate of Ivrel: C.J Cherryh

The Pale Horse: Agatha Christie

Daughters of Earth: Judith Merril

Assassin’s Apprentice: Robin Hobb

The Wayfarer Redemption: Sara Douglass

Seraphim: Michelle Hauf

Kushiel’s Dart: Jacqueline Carey

[witch-niko]

Tagged by @drogonea

Last song: Inkoming! by Wet Floor (from Splatoon 2) the game soundtracks are bangers okay???

Currently Watching: Inside Job, wanted to watch something dumb but it’s better than expected.

Currently Reading: if I could sit myself down to continue, Deryni Rising. It’s an older one but saw a rec on here and found all three at a used bookstore.

Current Obsession: DnD character creation, had a new idea crop up and I love this funky Mixologist Alchemist human in a mullet and waistcoat.

Don’t feel like specifically tagging anyone, so if you see this and like the questions, go for it

Tag 8 people you’d like to get to know!

tagged by @sunflowermews / @sunflower-rb

LAST SONG: idol english cover by rachie

CURRENTLY WATCHING: ...law and order svu and criminal minds tbh kjnKF

CURRENTLY READING: THE INHERITANCE GAMES SERIES,,,,,KNIVES OUT VIBES FOR REAL. also the selection series cause i love me a dystopian ya series but make it princesscore

CURRENT OBSESSION: IT'S THE WAY I CAN'T TALK ABOUT THEM ON THIS BLOG BECUASE MINORS FOLLOW ME. won't specify but there's 2 18+ dating sims that have my autism gripped like a god damn squeaky toy and i suffer for it ;^;

Tagging: @aropride @boymagicalgirl @dragonairice get memed idiots /lh u don't have to do this btw just something silly funny

[extractofword]

Katherine Kurtz, Deryni Rising, 1970 / Burton Raffel (translator), Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, 1970 / Evangeline Walton, The Prince of Annwn, 1974

[smbhax]

Cover illustration by Nico Keulers

[phantastische-illustrationen]

Katherine Kurtz - Deryni Rising (Bob Pepper)

[thespoot]

21 in 2021 Tag

I wasn’t tagged, I just want to do it :D

Rules! Choose 21 books you want to read or goals you want to achieve in 2021. That’s it! It can be a mix of books and goals, or 21 books, or 21 goals…. it’s up to you. Then tag some friends to play along. 

Finish Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn by Tad Williams (Done! Yay!)

Finish the rest of the Osten Ard books by Tad Williams (In progress! Yay!)

Finish Remembrance of Earth’s Past by Liu Cixin (I read Three Body Problem last year)

Finish Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan & Brandon Sanderson (I’m not that far off, I got stuck last year mid-Book 10)

Finish The Chronicles of Deryni by Katherine Kurtz and start on the other books if I feel like it (I read Deryni Rising last year because they’re my mom’s favorite books and then everything went off the rails with mom)

Read more poetry

Read 1 novel in Spanish

Read 3 books on my shelf that I haven’t actually read yet (I was a big fan of library sales pre-covid >.>)

Read 3 nonfiction books

Read a book by an Indigenous author

Read a book by an LGBTQIA+ author

Read a book recommended by my wife 

Read a graphic novel

Read The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Suzanne Collins

Re-read my dad’s Sherlock Holmes anthology

Re-read Deed of Paksenarrion

Try to do a sacred reading style read of Deed of Paksenarrion like HPST

Start that Welcome to Nightvale scriptbook project that has been rattling in my head for a year

Participate fully in at least one month of r/bookclub (I have a bad habit of racing through the book and then never going back to participate in discussions)

Track reading metrics (or at least just do better with GoodReads)

Get a library card to my local library (I got really anxious and uncertain last time and um, never went inside)

[proship-nebula]

pinned post!

Hi, I'm Cariad. I'm 18 and I'm the host of the nebula system and this is my proshipping blog. My main pronouns are star/stars.

carrd | pronouns.page

fandoms list under the cut

Artemis Fowl

Avatar: The Last Airbender

Avatar: Legend of Korra

Batfam

Big Hero 6

Carmen Sandiego Netflix

Castlevania Netflix

Critical Role

Danny Phantom

Deryni Chronicles

Detroit: Become Human

Good Omens

The Greatest Showman

Hamilton

Harry Potter

Henry Danger

Hetalia

The Hobbit

How to Train Your Dragon

The Inheritance Cycle

Lord of the Rings

Lucifer

MCU/Avengers

MDZS/The Untamed

BBC Merlin

BBC Musketeers

Our Flag Means Death

Rise of the Guardians

The Silmarillion

Star Trek: Voyager

Supernatural

Voltron: Legendary Defender

What We Do In The Shadows

White Collar

Wild Wild West

The Witcher Netflix

[s-n-arly]

Books for the Younger Crowd Part 2

This is part two of my top recommendations for folks reading in the classical young adult range. Most of these are speculative fiction (with a few classics thrown in for good measure). These books have a level of on screen violence and physical relationships that you’d see on the television or in a PG film.  Not all of these are marketed as young adult.  I only list the first book in a series, because it’s a good idea to make sure you like book one before picking up all of them.  

Nina Kiriki Hoffman A Fistful of Sky - A girl from a magic family doesn’t get her magic until very late, and then it’s the power of curses. A Stir of Bones - Some teens make friends with a lonely ghost.

Eva Ibbotson Which Witch? - All the local and famous witches try to out wicked each other in order to win the hand of the handsome evil wizard.  Hilarity ensues.

Diana Wynne Jones A Charmed Life - The first book published in the Chrestomanci heptalogy, but is not the first book in chronological order. This takes place in an parallel Britain, where there’s magic. These are clever and often hilarious. Dogsbody - Sirius, the dog star, has been found guilty of murder, and has been sent to earth in a mortal form (puppy!).  He must prove his innocence before the real murderer can identify and kill him.

Ellen Klages The Green Glass Sea - Historical fiction involving the town of scientists and support folks who were working on the atom bomb

Katherine Kurtz Deryni Rising - Sword and sorcery series.  Ritual heavy magic based on hypnotism, adventure, ethnocentrism, and a really nasty archbishop.  We’re reading the third book in this series with our 12-year-old.

Gail Carson Levine Two Princesses of Bamarre The timid, clumsy sister has to go on an adventure to cure her brave sister’s illness Ella Enchanted Cinderella story (it’s better than the movie), Ella was given a gift from a fairy at birth - she must obey any order.  But headstrong Ella finds ways around orders. The Wish Contemporary fantasy.  A girl wishes to be popular, and suddenly she is.  And it’s a bit much, but at the same time, she doesn’t quite want it to end.

Rebecca Lickiss Eccentric Circles - Contemporary fantasy. A young woman inherits her grandmother’s house.  On her first morning, she finds a handsome elf hanging out in her kitchen insisting her grandmother was murdered Never After - Fractured fairy tale.  An adventurous princess goes to explore the castle wrapped in brambles.  She’s captured by someone out for treasure, makes acquaintances with an odd little man with a whole lot of magic, and encounters a plethora of princesses.  There’s also something about a frog.

Anne McCaffrey Dragonflight - Science fiction with dragons. The first book of the Dragonriders of Pern series. Dragonsong - First book in a young adult specific trilogy that takes place in the Pern world, but can be read on its own Sassinak - Science fiction, space opera.  Planet pirates killed her family and made her a slave.  When she was freed, Sassinak joined Fleet to hunt down the pirates.

Go check out Part 1 or Part 3 of this list.