#earthsea quartet

[morhath]

if Arha/Tenar was a tumblr girlie she'd be making posts like "sorry we put your boyfriend in the torture labyrinth" etc etc

[likethewizardyk]

finished tombs of atuan and i swear to god that book was so good i physically can’t start the farthest shore yet. i need to REFLECT. i need a CIGARETTE. a BEER. i need to TAKE A BREATHER.

[isablooo]

I feel like some books are winter books and some books are summer books and if I want to read them it has to be the right season

[imanes]

lathe of heaven or the tombs of atuan??

[lilliankillthisman]

Since I've been reminded - shoutout to Tehanu by Urusula Le Guin for absolutely fucking me up as a nine year old. Shoutout to books that you don't get at all but you know they make you feel sick and wrong and give you nightmares and hurt your heart. Really, really formative experience.

[memeoryalpha]

Bought my first star trek novel on impulse at a book store.

[book--brackets]

Best Fantasy Book Poll Links

Preliminary Rounds

Poll 1: The Hobbit - Circe (here)

Poll 2: The Night Circus - Coraline (here)

Poll 3: The Mistborn Saga - The Stormlight Archive (here)

Poll 4: The BFG - Daughter of Smoke & Bone (here)

Poll 5: The Raven Cycle - Earthsea Cycle (here)

Poll 6: Simon Snow - Legacy of Orisha (here)

Poll 7: Anansi Boys - Legends & Lattes (here)

Poll 8: The Scholomance - The Locked Tomb (here)

Poll 9: Song of the Lioness - The School for Good and Evil (here)

Poll 10: DragonLance: Chronicles - Otherworld (here)

Poll 11: Temeraire - The Queen's Thief (here)

Poll 12: The Liveship Traders - Seven Realms (here)

Poll 13: The Two Princesses of Bamarre - Falling Kingdoms (here)

Poll 14: The Wicked + the Divine - Chronicles of the Black Company (here)

Poll 15: Curse Workers - The Near Witch (here)

Poll 16: Valdemar: Heralds of Valdemar - The Riyria Chronicles (here)

Poll 17: Green Rider - The Deep (here)

Poll 18: Fledgling - The Elric Saga (here)

Poll 19: Young Wizards - Reckless (here)

Poll 20: Her Majesty's Royal Coven - The Saint of Steel (here)

Poll 21: The Magic Thief - Furthermore (here)

Poll 22: Valdemar: Mage Wars - Girls Made of Snow and Glass (here)

Poll 23: Dragonkeeper Chronicles - Faerie Tale (here)

Poll 24: The Hollow Kingdom Trilogy - The Squire's Tales (here)

Poll 25: The Cemeteries of Amalo - Stoneheart (here)

Poll 26: The 13 Clocks - Deeplight (here)

Poll 27: The Chronicles of Faerie - Guides for Dating Vampires (here)

Poll 28: Once & Future - Birthright (here)

Poll 29: Kingdoms and Empires - Lyra (here)

Poll 30: Star Wars: Jedi Quest - Wildworld (here)

Poll 31: Troll Trilogy - The Merlin Spiral (here)

Poll 32: Codebearers - Knights of Liofwende (here)

Round 1

Poll 1: Lord of the Rings vs Spellbound (here)

Poll 2: Howl's Moving Castle vs Zachary Ying (here)

Poll 3: Song of the Lioness vs The Tarot Sequence (here)

Poll 4: Lockwood & Co. vs The Unicorn Chronicles (here)

Poll 5: Circle of Magic vs Dragon Slippers (here)

Poll 6: The Queen's Thief vs Valdemar: Vows and Honor (here)

Poll 7: Magnus Chase and the Gods of Asgard vs The Edge Chronicles (here)

Poll 8: Artemis Fowl vs Star Wars: Jedi Quest (here)

Poll 9: Discworld vs The Fairy Realm (here)

Poll 10: The Locked Tomb vs The Cemeteries of Amalo (here)

Poll 11: The Immortals Quartet vs Deltora Quest (here)

Poll 12: The Sisters Grimm vs Young Wizards (here)

Poll 13: The Keys to the Kingdom vs The Chronicles of Chrestomanci (here)

Poll 14: Princess Academy vs In Other Lands (here)

Poll 15: Simon Snow vs Hexwood (here)

Poll 16: Good Omens vs The Merlin Spiral (here)

Round 2

Poll 1: The Lord of the Rings vs The Chronicles of Chrestomanci (here)

Poll 2: Song of the Lioness vs The Locked Tomb (here)

Poll 3: Howl's Moving Castle vs The Immortals Quartet (here)

Poll 4: Lockwood & Co. vs Discworld (here)

Poll 5: Artemis Fowl vs Young Wizards (here)

Poll 6: The Queen's Thief vs Simon Snow (here)

Poll 7: Magnus Chase vs Princess Academy (here)

Poll 8: Circle of Magic vs Good Omens (here)

Round 3

Poll 1: The Lord of the Rings vs The Locked Tomb (here)

Poll 2: Howl's Moving Castle vs Discworld (here)

Poll 3: Artemis Fowl vs The Queen's Thief (here)

Poll 4: Magnus Chase vs Circle of Magic (here)

Semifinals

Poll 1: The Lord of the Rings vs Discworld (here)

Poll 2: The Queen's Thief vs Circle of Magic (here)

Finals

The Lord of the Rings vs The Queen's Thief (here)

[overthegardenwirtt]

books

there are a few books I've read recently, like in the last year, that no one ever talks about. they're not the booktok or tumblr darlings so it's hard to find other people who are interested in them. anyway most of these are at least subtextually queer and written prior to 1970, and those vintage queer vibes go so fucking hard. like once you read pre-1970s queer lit it's really hard to read a modern LGBT romance.

Another Country by James Baldwin. James Baldwin was an actual icon. He lived between New York City and Paris and wrote profoundly human books about race, gender, and sexuality while also being an American civil rights activist and orator. Another Country is Baldwin's third novel, published in 1962. It follows a group of artists in Greenwich Village and their various relationships with one another. It looks at racism, Black masculinity, interracial relationships, homosexuality, and bisexuality, and it explores all of these societal issues through the microcosms of different romantic and sexual relationships between the characters. Baldwin's writing is like Jazz. It is rhythmic, smooth, and breathtaking. If you liked Giovanni's room, read this. It is much more nuanced in its exploration of both race and sexuality.

The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K Le Guin. Le Guin's mind is revolutionary. She is everything jk r*wling is credited for, except far better as her most famous books center people of color and androgynous people. She published the first The Earthsea Quartet, a series about a boy wizard at a wizarding school, in 1964 and was never credited as inspiration by r*wling. The Left Hand of Darkness was published in 1969 and won both the Hugo and the Nebula that year. The book follows a human who visits a planet where he finds that its inhabitants are all completely androgynous for the majority of their lives. It is a beautiful exploration of love, trust, and the ability to see past societal conventions to truly love and understand other people.

The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson. Shirley Jackson is perhaps best known for her short story The Lottery, or unfortunately for the incredibly unfaithful Netflix TV adaptation of this novel. Published in 1959, The Haunting of Hill House follows Eleanor Vance, a woman in her early 30s who has about the maturity of a 19-year-old, as she is recruited along with a group of others to live at the mysterious Hill House. The book is essentially psychological horror and follows Eleanor as she is driven mad by her own feelings of otherness and isolation from the world. There is also some incredibly lesbian subtext in the novel between the two female main characters which adds really interesting layers to Eleanor's feelings of otherness. It's a quick and compelling read and gives interesting insight into the lives of two women in the late 1950s who cannot adhere to the standards of womanhood set for them in society.

[lokh]

continued reading earthsea quartet in work downtime

[likethewizardyk]

sorry if i’m liking your old art i just discovered the joy of the earthsea quartet

[bropunzeling]

39 and 44 for the book meme, or if those have been asked please pick one you haven't answered an want to!!

answered 39 here so:

44. The book(s) whose stories have become part of your very makeup.

oh gosh. hmm. the tamora pierce ouvre but ESPECIALLY the song of the lioness and protector of the small quartets (and daine but specifically when she decides to go apeshit and resurrect some dinosaurs). the collected works of melina marchetta, who i found as a teen and has stuck with me since. sharon shinn books are a particular kind of comforting read, where the beats are a little worn and well-trodden but still lovely each time, like your favorite beat-up blanket. ursula le guin, and specifically earthsea and the left hand of darkness, and specifically the gender of both of those. i'm STILL thinking about the radiant emperor duology and how perfect it is; same for the teixcalaan books. the raven tower by ann leckie is actually the only good use of second person pov ever im so so serious. wolf hall series????? piranesi???? the collected works of jane austen, which i read age 13 and haven't put down. and of course, discworld, because you can be funny and full of rage and joy all at the same time.

35. Least favorite trope in your most favorite book genre.

i would say i am first and foremost a fantasy fucker and so my Hot Take is that romance should be like, the b plot of any fantasy book at the MOST. preferably a c plot tbh. the BEST fantasy romances are the ones that grow on you slowly because you're so busy running around trying to save the world/learn magic/fight a war/blah blah blah and THEN you see your two little guys like oh? are they? but you have other stuff to do! other things to work out -- wait are they having a moment? and so on and so forth, until by 500 pages later you're a mess. perfect formula because you get the fun plottiness/world-building of fantasy AND bonus kissing AND i don't have to read a lot of tedious attempts at sounding horny. triple win.

[rotationalsymmetry]

Sorry for not offering my reactions in the moment, I got too immersed in the story to want to post about it. Golden enclave spoilers to (almost) end of ch 15.

I am morbidly thrilled that the thing casually mentioned once at the start of A Deadly Education came back around and it turns out that the entire senior class getting wiped out by malificers was either entirely made up or more complicated than that. So evil. Ay.

And that thing where at first we were presented with Orion as shining conventional hero and El as trying hard to not be a conventional villain, as it seems like the entire world expects her to be, and it turns out it's the other way around, Orion was created from unspeakable acts and El was the balance to that.

It's a lot to take in. And it also doesn't change the fact that El's childhood (which she's still in, she's 17, she's presumably turning 18 in December or so) sucked.

And...I wasn't sure how the prophesy thing was going to be handled, but "this is the only way she didn't get you" works as well as anything I guess. It's not even about "you had to suffer so that you didn't die", it's "you had to suffer because otherwise it would have been unspeakably bad for the world." Oof. I mean, it's horrible, but at least it's consistent in tone with the rest of the series. (Also this is one of the points where the book seems strongly in dialog with Harry Potter to me. I do like her mother's love protecting her because her mother lived more than Harry's mother's love protecting him through her death.) (there is a similar..."this sucks for me but it's for the greater good and I wasn't given a choice but also I'm choosing this anyways.) (side note, JKR very much did not invent the concept of the magical school, there other magical schools in fiction before that including a wizard school in a wizard of earthsea. The idea that wizards have to study to become wizards is kind of baked into the wizard archetype. There's also non-wizard fantasy schools: Talia goes to school in the Arrows of the Queen trilogy, and Song of the Lioness Quartet has some kind of extended training thing iirc. It's not a huge stretch to put a school into fantasy stories aimed at an audience that is going to school. Anyways I think the scholomance is in dialog with Harry Potter but I think it would be a stretch to say it's like, primarily bouncing off of it or anything.) (appropriately, there's no quidditch analog.)

I completely forgot what I was talking about.

Anyways. I probably feel more pleased with myself than I should be that I saw the "destroying a maw-mouth destroys the enclave" thing coming.

I really hope someone is letting El's mum know what's going on, because again, I'm pretty sure El isn't.

And I do enjoy that El went to Maharashtra, she was so sure she'd beaten the prophesy and so ready to rub her great grandmother's face in it. Intense dramatic irony.