#fevered star

[inspiredbyabook]

endless list of favorite books/series [3/∞] ↝ between earth and sky by rebecca roanhorse

↪ a man with a destiny is a man who fears nothing

[motherfucker-somewhat-limited]

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spot the difference

[lowcountry-gothic]

French covers the Between Earth and Sky trilogy by Rebecca Roanhorse. Art by Magdalena Pągowska.

[mmxxviii]

Serapio, Odo Sedoh, Carrion King

Carlyle's House and Other Sketches, Virginia Woolf // pinterest // George Seferis // Goodbye Stranger, Rebecca Stead // pinterest // Anecdote of the Pig, Tory Adkisson // Places I’ve Taken my Body: Essays, Molly McCully Brown // Andromache, Euripides // pinterest // pinterest // Anatomy Titus: Fall of Rome: A Shakespeare Commentary, Heiner Müller // pinterest // Eating Snake, Margaret Atwood // pinterest // Madness: A Bipolar Life, Marya Hornbacher

naranpa

[serapiocarrioncrow]

It's here it's here my spreadsheet is here!

[ninesartblog]

Please Read This Series

This is completely unrelated to anything I post and I know I haven't really posted here in a hot minute (I'm gonna try again I promise). But I am two books into this trilogy and the community feels tragically tiny for it on any site I'm on. I want this book series to be incredibly popular it is so beautiful. The few posts I've seen here so far, keep it up please!

Do you like fantasy? Epic fantasy with magic? Do you like queer/LGBTQ+ characters treated naturally within a fantasy world? Do you like awesome stories about gods and wars? Please read this series.

Between Earth and Sky is a series by Rebecca Roanhorse and currently all three books are available to purchase. I will say now I am not indigenous and can't comment on the accuracy of portrayal but I find her use of indigenous north and south American and Polynesian cultural influence in her worldbuilding to be soooooo refreshing in a sea of medieval/renaissance high fantasy. Not there is anything wrong with those, but it is so nice to see someone do something new and the way she describes everything I feel like I'm there, like I'm seeing these people. Rebecca's description, characterization, and overall writing is incredible in my opinion. This was the first book I haven't been able to put down since I was devouring books in high school. I struggle to remember characters in most content I consume but I do not struggle at all with this book. Every name sticks in my head and I can always remember the details of their motivations and goals.

Mild spoilers ahead!!!!!!!

The story follows Serapio and his destiny to become a god reborn, Naranpa trying to fix the corruption of Tova's leaders, however fruitlessly, and a disgraced sailing captain named Xiala, a teek woman who ferries Serapio and falls in love with him. Despite these three being the main characters, the books pull back the curtains on others such as scheming merchant lords and a matron's son trying to do his best for his clan.

There are gods fighting for power and a political power struggle between so many groups it feels dizzying in a good way. Everyone's striving for power over the city in some way or another. There is magic and a balance of elements and it honestly reminds me of the series Avaryan Rising, specifically the first book The Hall of the Mountain King by Judith Tarr in the struggle between light and dark and the push for political power. Except it doesn't have a weird pseudo-incest subplot in the second book and has actually queer characters. (Mirain and Vadin should have gotten together and I fucking stand by this)

Regarding queer/LGBTQ+ characters: Xiala is canonically bisexual, multiple characters have very fluid sexuality and it's mentioned frequently, and there are 'non-binary' characters, specifically Iktan's gender is referred to as bayeki and xe uses xe/xir pronouns. It feels so natural and accepted within the various cultures depicted.

If this interests you, then start with Black Sun. The other two books in the trilogy, Fevered Star and Mirrored Heavens are also available both in print, ebook, and audiobook formats. I admittedly have not begun the third book yet as I just purchased it, but the first two are so good that I have faith Rebecca can round off this trilogy near-perfectly.

[books-to-add-to-your-tbr]

Title: Between Earth and Sky

Author: Rebecca Roanhorse

Series or standalone: series

Publication year: 2020

Genres: fiction, fantasy, LGBT+, science fiction, historical fiction

Blurb: In the holy city of Tova, the winter solstice is usually a time for celebration and renewal...but this year, it coincides with a solar eclipse, a rare celestial event proscribed by the Sun Priest as an unbalancing of the world. Meanwhile, a ship launches from a distant city bound for Tova and set to arrive on the solstice. The captain of the ship, Xiala, is a disgraced Teek whose song can calm the waters around her as easily as it can warp a man's mind. Her ship carries one passenger. Described as harmless, Serapio is a young man, blind, scarred, and cloaked in destiny. As Xiala well knows, when a man is described as harmless, he usually ends up being a villain.

[literary-illuminati]

Finished Fevered Sun!

Not entirely sure what I think, honestly. I didn't mind it? Very readable, I like the setting, will probably read the sequel at some point. But like, feels like a failure of craft? I see what the book was trying to do, and it doesn't really manage it.

Fundamentally just goes to show you really can't do GRRM-style epic fantasy with a half-dozen POVs and then try to cut the book down to 380 pages, I think. Feels more like an outline or storyboard of key scenes that a finished story with all the necessary connective tissue.

[droids-in-disguise]

Favorite Books I've Read in 2023 (so far)

So fun fact I read a lot, here are my top 10 books that I’ve read so far this year, in the order I read them. Never really posted this sort of thing on tumblr before but I thought I’d give it a try.

Book details and some of my thoughts under the cut.

A Thousand Steps Into Night by Traci Chee (2022)

YA Fantasy

A Thousand Steps Into Night is a book I 100% picked up because of the cover and because it was super cheap. I hadn’t ever heard anything about the book or author. The best way I can describe this novel is that reading it conjured up the same feelings that I get from watching a Ghibli film. Our protagonist Miuko is an ordinary girl from a small village until one day she is cursed and slowly begins transforming into a demon. Hoping to find a way to break the curse, she begins to travel the land meeting lots of colorful characters, gods, and mythic figures along the way. It’s a very atmospheric and wonderfully written book that pulls a lot of inspiration from Japanese mythology and folklore

A Restless Truth by Freya Marske (2022)

Romance/Fantasy

This is the second book in the Last Binding trilogy. I feel like you could probably get away with skipping the first book if you wanted to since both books are somewhat self-contained, but why would you? The first book (A Marvellous Light) is awesome. Our story takes place in an alternate-Edwardian England where magic is real and certain people can practice it, unbeknownst to the rest of the non-magical population. Maud Blyth, a non-magical person who has the privilege of knowing about magic, is working with members of the magical community as well as her brother (the protagonist from the first book) to prevent a dangerous magical contract form falling into the wrong hands. She is travelling on an ocean liner when the old woman in her care ends up dead. Cue the murder mystery shenanigans and sapphic romance!

Kiss Her Once for Me by Alison Cochrun (2022)

Romance

I actually read this book twice this year, once by myself and once for my book club. It has what is quite possibly one of the most bonkers rom-com plots I’ve ever seen and I love how ridiculous it is. Basically, our main character Ellie meets a women in Powell’s books and they have a magical, Christmas one-night-stand. Fast forward almost one year later, Ellie is having a difficult time out here in good-old Portland, OR after getting fired from her dream job and having to instead rough it as a barista. In a last-ditch effort to not lose her apartment, she agrees to marry her job’s landlord so he can get his inheritance and Ellie gets a percentage in exchange. However, it turns out that her one-night-stand from last year is her new fake-fiancé’s sister. GASP! The only place this book loses points for me is that there’s too many goddamn Taylor Swift references.

The Darkness Outside Us by Eliot Schrefer (2021)

YA Sci-Fi

If I had to pick a favorite out of all these books it would be this one. Reading this book felt like getting hit by a bus. Our POV character is Ambrose Cusk, an astronaut aboard the Coordinated Endeavor who has been sent on a mission into deep space to rescue his sister. His only companion is another boy named Kodiak who comes from a rival nation (think Cold War-ear space race). As they slowly start to interact with one another it becomes clear that for some reason neither one of them have any memory of the ship’s launch. The only knowledge they have of what’s going on comes from the ship’s internal computer and infrequent communications from Earth. As they begin to investigate, they discover a lot more than they bargained for. The first half of this book is like your typical gay space adventures and then at like the 50% mark onwards the rug gets pulled out from under you and you just have to go WHAT THE FUCK and then when you finish the book you just have to pretend like you’re fine and can move on with your life (you can’t). My only complaint is that this book should not have been YA, like there’s absolutely 0 reason for it to be.

Firekeeper’s Daughter by Angeline Boulley (2021)

YA Thriller

This book was unexpected for me. I have a habit of just reading books I know absolutely nothing about because someone, somewhere said it was good and because I think the cover is pretty. For some reason I assumed this would be a fantasy book but it’s actually a thriller/mystery novel, which is not at all a genre I typically go for. Our main character, Daunis Fontaine, is a biracial Ojibwe girl who loves hockey and her community. Her status as an unenrolled member of her tribe has her stuck with a foot in each world. After a family tragedy, circumstances push her to agree to work undercover with the FBI in order to find the source of a dangerous substance that has infiltrated her community and threatens the lives of those she cares about. I found Daunis to be an extremely compelling character with a strong narrative voice. Watching all the layers of the mystery getting peeled away through her investigation was extremely satisfying. She uses mainstream scientific knowledge in tandem with more tribal specific knowledge of botany and medicine in order to figure things out, which I thought was super cool. This is another book where I feel like it could’ve gotten away with not being YA, but I don’t feel as strongly about it as I do in regards to The Darkness Outside Us.

In the Lives of Puppets by TJ Klune (2023)

Sci-fi

Where to even begin this one… Have you ever wanted a book that was partly a story about a robot found family on post-apocalyptic Earth and partly a Pinocchio retelling? Yeah me either, but I’m so glad I got it. Victor Lawson is a human raised by robots. He has a peaceful existence with his android father and other mechanical friends until his curiosity unknowingly alerts robots from his father’s former life to their existence. Vic’s father is captured and it’s up to the rest of the family to rescue him. Victor is also asexual and how he describes and navigates his asexuality was so similar to my own it was like looking in a mirror.

Hijab Butch Blues by Lamya H. (2023)

Memoir

This was a wonderful memoir about a queer Muslim as she reconciles those two pieces of her identity, and the struggles she faces finding community. Growing up religious, there were a lot of experiences in this memoir that I personally related to. Something I really enjoyed is how the author retold stories from the Quran and used them to frame her own queer experiences. There was a lot about this book that was very comforting to me, and I feel like it was written in a way that was accessible and easy to understand.

Black Sun (and by extension it’s sequel, Fevered Star) by Rebecca Roanhorse (2020/2022)

Fantasy

Black Sun is the first book in the Between Earth and Sky trilogy, an epic fantasy series with a world inspired by pre-colonial American civilizations. This series has such a large and complex cast of characters, with chapters from multiple POVs, so it’s impossible to say if there is really any one protagonist. Essentially, the upcoming solar eclipse foretells the return of the crow god and the unbalancing of the status quo that has previously been maintained by an order of priests. Some characters are working to make sure this comes to pass, some hope to prevent it, and some aren’t quite sure where their loyalties lie. By the end of the first chapter I already knew I was in for a wild ride (the book opens on a mother sewing her 12-year old son’s eyes shut, ew). This series also features a queernormative world, where non-binary characters and same-gender relationships are commonplace.

This Poison Heart by Kalynn Bayron (2021)

YA Fantasy

This book was so cool and really had a lot going for it. Briseis Greene has the uncanny ability to grow and control plants. She and her two moms live in Brooklyn where they run a flower shop. One day, a visitor arrives to tell Bri that she has inherited an old country estate in upstate NY from her birth family. Bri wonders if this house could be the answer to her family’s financial woes and so they travel upstate where Bri begins to learn more about her abilities and her family’s history. Every answered question leads to dozens more unanswered and between strange individuals wandering the estate, townspeople who seem to know secrets, and increasing instances of violence and vandalism, Bri begins ask herself if staying here is worth it if it means her family might be in danger. This book is a queer, mythology inspired, part urban fantasy, part thriller/haunted house story, of a modern fairytale. Truly something in it for everyone.

[kazz-brekker]

reading fevered star by rebecca roanhorse and i need to lie down and recover from the fact that serapio was supposed to die after fulfilling his destiny but the crows that he had befriended loved him enough to sacrifice their lives for his and bring him back

[inspiredbyabook]

between earth and sky by rebecca roanhorse

i am the only storm that matters now, and there is no shelter from what i bring.

[lowcountry-gothic]

The Meridian

The world of Rebecca Roanhorse's Between Earth and Sky trilogy.

Image sources: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21.

[mmxxviii]

Naranpa, Sun Priest

Cassandra, Florence + The Machine // pinterest // (could not find) // Selected Poems 1: 1965-1975, Margaret Atwood // Sunlit, R. Wright // Marialuisa Tadei, Il Castello Di Sole (2013) // V for Vendetta, Alan Moore // Joel Ross, Everything's On Fire (2016) // Camille Paglia // pinterest // pinterest // pinterest // Holy Wild, Gwen Benaway // seven word poems, a.h. // Holls Walck/pine.bones (2022) // Persephone The Wanderer, Louise Glück // The Unabridged Journals, Sylvia Plath

serapio

[serapiocarrioncrow]

Serapio Carrion Crow

image sources below the cut

1/2/3/4/5/6

(I pulled these all from Pinterest but tried my best to find the actual image sources, otherwise I linked to the pin I used - please let me know if you know the original source for these!)

[melanielocke]

Book recommendations - Morally complicated/unhinged protagonists

I usually tend to gravitate towards characters who are good. Most of my own written characters will fall firmly on the good side of an alignment chart even if they are complicated, have trauma etc. But every once in a while I do enjoy some characters who are kind of unhinged or morally complicated. Here are some of my favorites.

I'm going to start with the book I just finished reading and am currently obsessed with: Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh

In this book, earth has been destroyed, and Kyr has trained all her life to avenge earth. She was raised on an isolated space station with what she believes are the last humans, taught to hate the Majoda, the aliens who destroyed earth. Kyr has never questioned anything she's taught and worked hard to be a model soldier, but then her brother is assigned to a suicide mission while Kyr herself is relegated to the Nursery to bear children.

Kyr decides to take her fate into her own hands and rescue her brother from what she believes is pointless and leaves the space station together with her brother's brilliant but kind of unhinged friend Avi and a lonely Majo captive Yiso. But when Kyr enters the wider universe she must confront that not everything she's been taught is true and that the universe is a lot more complicated than she believes.

Essentially, this is a story of someone indoctrinated by a cult slowly breaking free. Kyr starts out not very likeable. She wants nothing more than to be the perfect soldier, is mean to everyone and is pretty clueless. But slowly she learns through the book and I loved watching her journey.

My favorite in this book has to be Avi though. He's unhinged. He's a genius, way too smart for his own good. He's gay and has a very complicated relationship with Kyr's twin brother Mags. I can't say too much without spoiling the book.

Mind the content warnings for this one, and keep in mind that Kyr is heavily indoctrinated by what is pretty much a fascist cult and as such she shows some queerphobic views (such as refusing to use they/them pronouns for a genderless Majo at first), though it also seems relatively watered down compared to how bad it probably was in the cult. It's also pretty obvious to a reader that Kyr is wrong about most things at this point.

The copy pictured is my Illumicrate edition, which has the UK cover (and very pretty edges)

Iron Widow by Xiran Jay Zhao is up next

Iron Widow is a YA sci fi with characters inspired by people from Chinese history. The main character, Zetian, is inspired by the only female emperor in Chinese history Wu Zetian.

Huaxia is under attack by hunduns, a type of mechanic aliens, and to combat them they fight in chrysalises, machines taking the shape of creatures of Chinese mythology piloted by a boy/girl pair using spirit presence. Unfortunately, the girls often die due to the mental strain.

Zetian's sister was murdered by one of the pilots outside of battle, and she enlists as a concubine pilot to kill the man responsible. She gets her wish in an unexpected way, when said pilot takes her with him to battle, she kills him through the mental link.

Labeled an Iron Widow, Zetian is paired with the most powerful male pilot, a convicted murderer who is only kept alive because of his exceptional spirit presence. But Zetian has had her taste of revenge and is not going to go down quietly.

I love how unhinged Zetian is in this book, and the author is very good at making us root for her. They could probably have Zetian blow up an orphanage and still have us cheer for her. Zetian's anger is understandable, she's a girl fed up with the patriarchy and girls dying as pilots. This book also has a poly main couple, with all three being bi and into each other.

The book is the first in a duology and book 2 will be out April 2024 (it was delayed)

The Locked Tomb series by Tamsyn Muir is already pretty well known but it fit this category well and I only started it recently

There's three books out, but book 3 only comes out in paperback this September which is why I don't have it yet (nor have I read it)

The first two books focus on Gideon and Harrow, who are both from the ninth house. Harrow is a necromancer and heir to the ninth house, whereas Gideon is a warrior who would much rather leave the ninth house altogether. But when Gideon tries to escape, again, Harrow makes her an offer, become her cavalier when she answers the summons of the emperor, who called the heirs of all nine houses and their cavaliers to become lyctors.

The first two books are already very different in tone. Gideon in book 1 is funny, the language is very modern and Gideon is often not paying attention because she's describing all the attractive female characters in full detail, but otherwise she's relatively reliable as a narrator. Then comes Harrow the Ninth, which is one of the most confusing books I have ever read. It pays off in the end, everything will make sense (mostly).

What I found very funny in book 1 was just how childish and petty Gideon and Harrow could be towards each other. They hate each other but in a very childish way. Harrow calls Gideon "Griddle". Gideon considers that Harrow would never leave her alone in their rooms on purpose because then Gideon would mess up the buttons of Harrow's clothes.

Book 2 in comparison has a much more serious tone, which much written in 2nd perspective as well as some flashbacks to previous events that do not add up to what we saw in book 1. I have yet to read book 3 but I've heard it's amazing. After Nona there will be one more book which comes out 2024.

Last up is Black Sun and Fevered Star by Rebecca Roanhorse

This book is not so much unhinged, but very morally complicated. The world is based on pre Columbian americas and it shows a complicated conflict between different cultural group through the POV's of a couple different characters. The main character Xiala is a Teek who was banished from her own home. The Teek are very recluse and not super involved with the main conflict.

She is given the task of sailing Serapio to city of Tova, where much of the conflict takes place. Serapio's mother made him to be the reincarnation of their god, the Carrion Crow, and avenge their people.

We also follow Naranpa, who is the Sun Priest in Tova but grew up in a poor section with a group of culture who were excluded from the clans that make up the city.

And then there's Okoa, the brother of the leader of the Carrion Crow clan within the city, who only wants to protect his clan but doesn't really know what is the best way to do this, meaning he often changes his mind and alliances.

The first book builds towards the Black Sun, a rare solar eclipse that will change the world.

There are currently two books out and the third and last is scheduled for 2024.

@alastaircarstairsdefenselawyer @life-through-the-eyes-of @astriefer @justanormaldemon @ipromiseiwillwrite @a-dream-dirty-and-bruised @amchara @all-for-the-fanfiction @imsoftforthomastair @ddepressedbookworm @queenlilith43 @wagner-fell @cant-think-of-anything @laylax13s @tessherongraystairs @boredfangirl16 @artist-in-soul @aliandtommy @ikissedsmithparker

[slowdripsunrise]

ok more book talk. about to go to work and i need something to do for like 20 mins so. book talk. spoilers for various books under the cut

pretty sure the last book i ended on was the ghost bride, so next up i read Silver Under Nightfal by Rin Chupeco ! tbh. it was fun it was entertaining dont remember much from it other than vampire sex and . actually yeah political intrigue and plagues but mostly vampire sex. read through the audio book pretty quickly i had a good time i just really im sorry but i couldnt get over the fact that the mcs name is remy like. the rat. and thats on my thats my bad but yeah. i do have the second one and i am planning on reading that i dont have my hopes up for more than like. a little bit of plot and a Lot of vampire sex which is fine like the bits of plot i did get were interesting enough to keep me with it so. thumbs up from me :)

next i read The Binding by Bridget Collins, which. who boy that was a ride and a half. definitely 100% enjoyed it would recommend! I did read this a long time ago so a lot of it is lost to me but i remember absolutely devouring that book like easily. if you do want to read it tho, i would recommend going in knowing as little as possible; about halfway ish i think it takes a total 180 turn and just. puts you on a lil rollercoaster ride it was good. look at trigger warnings though! there are a lot of explicit discussions of heavy topics so do read those first.

after that i read Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang, a collection of sci fi short stories that I enjoyed..... quite a bit? dont remember many of them, and to me i feel like this collection was wayyyy overhyped and i didnt enjoy it as much as i could have tbh. overall if you like sci fi i would recommend and there were some interesting conversations brought up throughout, so i do think it's worthwhile, i just didn't like it as much as i thought i would.

after that i read The Six Deaths of the Saint by Alix E. Harrow, a very short novella that like kinda destroyed me a little bit. like the love story was so lovely and felt genuine even in such a short amount of pages, and it's something i would go back and read again and again. 10/10 would recommend i read this in one sitting at like midnight and i think it changed my brain chemistry just a little bit

then i read Flux by Jinwoo Chong, and i really dont have much to say about it. it could have been a me thing where i wasnt in the mood for this story but i did not connect to any of the characters at all and i was confused pretty much the entire time. its one of those time travel things were like. a crime has happened and they start from the beginning before the crime but also after looking back on it and like the mc is supposedly in a simulation but neither he or the reader can tell if/when he is or not but like. yeah i just didnt vibe with it.

then i read Sorrowland by Rivers Solomon, my first book of theirs ! i thought the concept was really cool and i cared about a lot of the characters, not much has stayed with me since i read it but i am excited to read more of Solomon's work! also the romance was sweet and cute or whatever.....

after that i read Chain-Gang All-Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah!!! oooohhh this book was good. this book was so fucking good it messed me up by the end of it. and I did appreciate the footnotes adding details about both the world/time the book is set in and about their technology, but also about the prison system as it is today. and ohhh the two fmcs and their relationship was so lovely to read about, how they knew each other and cared for each other so well just. AUHDJNS. yeah. 10/10 loved and i'm excited to see more from this author

last one for this post unless i really wanna push it for work, i read the first two books in the Between Earth and Sky series by Rebecca Roanhorse! also very good 10/10 im very interested to see where it goes especially with Serapio and his whole godliness shtick, the magic and worldbuilding was super interesting and i am frothing at the mouth for the third i know its out but like i also want the audiobook and i havent seen if there is one yet but like i need to listen to it ok its just not the same without it.

ok thats it theres still more but i need to stop myself, almost gotten through it. i havent read as much recently ive been a knitting warrior but looking to get back into it more soon !