#melissa Bashardoust

[ace-artemis-fanartist]

Recently re-read Girl, Serpent, Thorn so I thought I'd try a mock cover.

[queereads-bracket]

Queer Fantasy Books Bracket: Round 1

Book summaries below:

Girl, Serpent, Thorn by Melissa Bashardoust

There was and there was not, as all stories begin, a princess cursed to be poisonous to the touch. But for Soraya, who has lived her life hidden away, apart from her family, safe only in her gardens, it’s not just a story. As the day of her twin brother’s wedding approaches, Soraya must decide if she’s willing to step outside of the shadows for the first time. Below in the dungeon is a demon who holds knowledge that she craves, the answer to her freedom. And above is a young man who isn’t afraid of her, whose eyes linger not with fear, but with an understanding of who she is beneath the poison. Soraya thought she knew her place in the world, but when her choices lead to consequences she never imagined, she begins to question who she is and who she is becoming…human or demon. Princess or monster. Fantasy, young adult, retelling, romance

The Rise of Kyoshi by F. C. Yee

F. C. Yee’s The Rise of Kyoshi delves into the story of Kyoshi, the Earth Kingdom–born Avatar. The longest-living Avatar in this beloved world’s history, Kyoshi established the brave and respected Kyoshi Warriors, but also founded the secretive Dai Li, which led to the corruption, decline, and fall of her own nation. The first of two novels based on Kyoshi, The Rise of Kyoshi maps her journey from a girl of humble origins to the merciless pursuer of justice who is still feared and admired centuries after she became the Avatar. Fantasy, young adult, adventure, epic fantasy

[lesolehabitantdelalune]

"𝑾𝒉𝒚 𝒅𝒊𝒅 𝒚𝒐𝒖 𝒍𝒊𝒌𝒆 𝒎𝒂𝒌𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒎𝒆 𝒂𝒏𝒈𝒓𝒚?" 𝐒𝐨𝐫𝐚𝐲𝐚 𝐚𝐬𝐤𝐞𝐝 𝐢𝐧 𝐦𝐨𝐜𝐤 𝐨𝐟𝐟𝐞𝐧𝐬𝐞.𝐏𝐚𝐫𝐯𝐚𝐧𝐞𝐡 𝐠𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐧𝐞𝐝 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐬𝐰𝐞𝐩𝐭 𝐚𝐬𝐢𝐝𝐞 𝐒𝐨𝐫𝐚𝐲𝐚'𝐬 𝐡𝐚𝐢𝐫, 𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐟𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐞𝐫𝐬 𝐛𝐫𝐮𝐬𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐒𝐨𝐫𝐚𝐲𝐚'𝐬 𝐜𝐡𝐞𝐞𝐤𝐛𝐨𝐧𝐞. "𝑻𝒐 𝒔𝒆𝒆 𝒚𝒐𝒖𝒓 𝒗𝒆𝒊𝒏𝒔, 𝒐𝒇 𝒄𝒐𝒖𝒓𝒔𝒆," 𝐬𝐡𝐞 𝐬𝐚𝐢𝐝. 𝐇𝐞𝐫 𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐦𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐝 𝐝𝐨𝐰𝐧 𝐭𝐨 𝐭𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐝𝐮𝐥𝐥 𝐜𝐥𝐚𝐰 𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐤 𝐨𝐧 𝐒𝐨𝐫𝐚𝐲𝐚'𝐬 𝐜𝐨𝐥𝐥𝐚𝐫𝐛𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐡𝐞𝐫 𝐟𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐞𝐫𝐭𝐢𝐩𝐬. "𝑰 𝒂𝒍𝒘𝒂𝒚𝒔 𝒕𝒉𝒐𝒖𝒈𝒉𝒕 𝒚𝒐𝒖 ... 𝑰 𝒕𝒉𝒐𝒖𝒈𝒉𝒕 𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒚 𝒘𝒆𝒓𝒆 𝒃𝒆𝒂𝒖𝒕𝒊𝒇𝒖𝒍."

— Girl, Serpent, Thorn by Melissa Bashardoust

⤷ Comm. by me

⤷ Art by @imlouise_art (insta)

⤷ HAPPY PRIDE MONTH EVERYONE 🥹🌈💖✨

[haveyoureadthisqueerbook]

[miasbraindump]

I don't think I have a favourite trope...

...girl who hurts everything they touch + love interest who isn't affected/don't care >>>>>>

[bookcub]

Best Books Read in February 2023

A recap of the best books I read each month of 2023

An Island of Missing Trees by Elif Shafak

I read this because my sister loved it and she's got good taste! This is a book from the perspective of a fig tree about a family over the course of a few decades. It's a multigenerational novel about generational trauma, yet it feels quite mystical. It's emotionally heavy but really beautiful.

Monster by Walter Dean Myers

I was assigned this book for class and I'm glad because I wouldn't have read this on my own. It follows a Black teenage boy who was arrested for a murder and is imagining his trial as a movie. I highly recommend it, very emotional and harrowing.

Honorable mentions:

Girl, Serpent, Thorn by Melissa Bashardoust

A story inspired by Sleeping Beauty and a Persian myth, where the princess is also a monster, so to speak. I'm excited to reread this.

Lost in the Moment and Found Again by Seanan McGuire

Another fascinating installment in The Wayward Children series, proving why this is one of the few series I continue to follow.

[sapphic-book-tournament]

[haveyoureadthismgyabook]

[loverrrworld]

i’m always searching for ‘the smell of meat cooking mingled with everyone’s happy laughter and it felt like home’ and ‘one thing was clear: the pariks were a family’ and ‘if i had grown up in that house i couldn’t have loved it more’ and ‘our people. when had that happened?’ and ‘it was strange to think that…she trusted no one in the world as much as the people in this room.’

lost boy, christina henry / girl, serpent, thorn, melissa bashardoust / the secret history, donna tart / ruin and rising, leigh bardugo / rule of wolves, leigh bardugo

[melanielocke]

Book recommendations: Retellings part 2

As I said in my previous book recommendations about retellings, there were far too many to put into one post, so I made a second also featuring retelling. Remember how the first one featured a sapphic Sleeping Beauty retelling? This post features two sapphic sleeping beauty retellings. And yet the three different sapphic sleeping beauty retellings are all very different and unique stories.

I'll start with Briar girls, the first of the sleeping beauty retellings

This one is not well known, I think, but I did enjoy it and it's sapphic. I'm honestly not sure if the characters are people of color but the author is.

Lena was cursed before she was born, and her touch is deadly. Interestingly, there's another book on his list that starts with the same premise. Lena has lived in fear and isolation her entire life and because of a mistake she recently moved to a new village. In the village, people are disappearing into the forest called the Silence and sometimes go back having gone mad. One night, Miranda appears from the forest, a girl from Gather, a city in the Silence where magic exists. She's on a quest to defeat the tyrannical rulers of the city, and offers to help Lena break her curse in exchange for help against the tyrannical rulers. To defeat these rulers, they'd need to wake the sleeping princess, which is where the sleeping beauty part comes in. This is a less traditional retelling, the major characters don't really follow the sleeping beauty characters, but the sleeping princess is a pretty major plot line.

Also by this author: Shatter the Sky duology

The Bone Spindle is the second sleeping beauty retelling, and follows two main characters in the first book.

Fi is a treasure hunter who loves books, ancient ruins, and mysteries. She goes on adventures alongside her sometimes partner Shane, a tough warrior axe lesbian.

During their explorations of old ruins, Fi pricks her finger on the bone spindle, which connects her to the ancient sleeping prince Briar Rose. Now she has no choice but to go on a quest to find and wake the prince, with magic, witch hunters and bad exes trying to stop her. And there's a mysterious witch that shows up sometimes, but they can't trust, and Shane might just end up falling in love with her.

This is the first in a trilogy, with book 2 coming out in February, and I'll have to reread book 1 before book 2 comes out because I don't remember enough. I think there's a cw for past abusive relationship for Fi, with the ex playing a big role in one section of the book.

Now for something completely different, Pride by Ibi Zoboi

This is a contemporary retelling of Pride and Prejudice set in a modern day afro latine community.

Zuri Benitez lives in "the hood", but the neighborhood she knows is rapidly gentrifying. The newest inhabitants are the Darcy family, a wealthy Black family with two teenage sons. Darius Darcy is this book's version of mr. Darcy, whereas his brother Ainsley is based on Mr. Bingley. Zuri instantly hates the Darcies, even as her older sister Janae is falling for Ainsley, but she and Darius are forced to find common ground.

This book is a hate to lovers romance, especially Zuri really hates Darius at first, but also deals with themes like gentrification and cultural identity. I loved how all the different P&P characters appear in this one and how many plot points are adapted to fit a modern day afro latine story.

Next up is Dark and Deepest Red by Anna Marie McLemore

In the Netherlands we have a big theme park called the Efteling which is based around stories and primarily fairytales. The oldest part is the fairytale forest, which has buildings and talking and moving statues and puppets depicting various fairytales. As a child, I loved the dancing red shoes, which is based on a fairytale that I didn't know at the time, but is about a girl who puts on red shoes and then can't take them off and is forced to keep dancing.

This book is a retelling of that fairytale. It is split up in two parts, one set in modern US and one set in Strasbourg in 1518.

In 1518, a strange sickness starts affecting the women of Strasbourg. A dancing plague that forces women to dance until they drop dead. Lala is a Roma woman hiding her cultural heritage in a time where it was legal to kill Roma. In public, she goes by the name Lavinia and explains her darker features by telling people she has Italian heritage. When the plague worsens and rumors of witchcraft arise, Lala becomes a suspect.

In the modern day story, Rosella comes from a latine family of shoe makers known for their red shoes. When she puts on a pair of red shoes, she can't take them off again. The only person who could help her is Emil, a Roma boy whose ancestors were blamed for dancing the plague in Strasbourg.

I love this author's writing, and have read two other books by them, both of which are magical realism. I think this one might count as magical realism too. Not all the strange events and magical happenings are explained in the end, so that might leave readers unsatisfied, but I think it was a conscious choice here. At its root, this is a story about racism, both in the 1500s and modern day. I also really liked that Lala's love interest Alifair is a trans boy who lives in the 1500s. Alifair is sort of adopted by Lala's aunt, whom Lala also lives with, so if you don't like those kinds of relationships, I wouldn't recommend this one.

Girl, Serpent, Thorn by Melissa Bashardoust starts out a bit similar to Briar Girls

The protagonist, Soraya, was cursed and her touch is deadly. This book has been mentioned as sleeping beauty inspired, which would give us a fourth sapphic sleeping beauty retelling, but very loosely, and I couldn't really see it. It is, however, a retelling of a few stories from the Shahnameh, the Persian book of kings.

Soraya is the princess of Atashar and twin sister of the Shah, but she has spent her life in isolation, scared that she might hurt someone by accident if they came too close.

When her mother was young, she found a girl trapped in a net, and freed the girl. Then she encountered a div, a demon who told her she'd just freed his prisoner and as a punishment he would curse her daughter.

When the Shah's army captures a demon, Soraya sees an opportunity to find out if there's a way to break her curse, and learn more about why she is the way she is.

She makes some decisions that lead her to paths she never could have imagined, discovers the truth behind what really happened to her, and that her curse might really be a gift.

This story is about loneliness, and the early part especially feels heavy with how lonely Soraya is, and how much her curse weighs on her. Her complicated relationship with her mother, who may not have told her the truth about her curse, was very interesting and I loved Parvaneh, the div girl who was captured by army.

Lost in the Never Woods by Aiden Thomas is a retelling of Peter Pan, set in a small coastal town in I think Oregon

Five years ago, Wendy Darling and her brothers disappeared. Several months later, Wendy turned up again with no memory of what happened to her, but her brothers stay gone. Now, children start disappearing and it might be connected to what happened to Wendy.

One night, she almost runs over an unconscious boy who turns out to be Peter Pan, a boy she told stories about but never realized was real. Peter tells her he needs Wendy's help to find the missing children, or they might disappear forever like her brothers.

This was an interesting take on Peter Pan, focusing primarily on Wendy and Peter Pan, with Peter's shadow as an antagonist. Wendy was a soft but strong main character, and I think the trauma of losing her brothers and not knowing what had happened was handled very well with lots of care and compassion.

Also by this author: The Sunbearer Trials, Cemetery Boys, both of which I covered before

The last book on this list is In Deeper Waters by F.T. Lukens

Prince Tal has spent most of his life hiding away in the palace to keep his forbidden magic secret. At sixteen, he finally gets to go out on a coming of age tour across the kingdom. After two days, they discover a burning ship abandoned on the sea, and on it a prisoner.

Tal instantly feels a connection to the boy, Athlen, but not longer after his rescue Athlen jumps into the sea and disappears. But a few days later he runs into Athlen again on land, very much alive. Then Tal is kidnapped by pirates holding him for ransom, and Athlen migh be his best chance of escaping.

This is a romantic fantasy retelling of the little mermaid, with Tal as the prince from the fairytale. It's not very long and the world could have been more developed, but the focus is mostly on the adventure and romance between Tal and Athlen.

Also by this author: So this is Ever After, which I covered in retellings part 1

Upcoming: Spell Bound, which will be about rival magicians with an m/nb romance, coming april 2023

@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 @bottomdelioncourt @ikissedsmithparker

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

Title: Girls Made of Snow and Glass

Author: Melissa Bashardoust

Series or standalone: standalone

Publication year: 2017

Genres: fiction, fantasy, retelling, LGBT+, romance

Blurb: 16-year-old Mina is motherless, her magician father is vicious, and her silent heart has never beat with love for anyone...has never beat at all, in fact, but she’d always thought that fact normal. She never guessed that her father cut out her heart and replaced it with one of glass. When she moves to Whitespring Castle and sees its king for the first time, Mina forms a plan: win the king’s heart with her beauty, become queen, and finally know love...the only catch is that she’ll have to become a stepmother. 15-year-old Lynet looks just like her late mother, and one day, she discovers why: a magician created her out of snow in the dead queen’s image at her father’s order. But despite being the dead queen made flesh, Lynet would rather be like her fierce and regal stepmother, Mina. She gets her wish when her father makes Lynet queen of the southern territories...displacing Mina. Now, Mina is starting to look at Lynet with something like hatred, and Lynet must decide what to do - and who to be - to win back the only mother she’s ever known...or else defeat her once and for all.

[the-library-and-the-teashop]

📖 Book-Tea 🍵 Association

Girl, Serpent, Thorn (by Melissa Bashardoust)

Will be magnificently paired with

Iranian-style Darjeeling black tea infused with rose petals and cinnamon.

[the-final-sentence]

And as they walked back from the garden together hand in hand, Lynet knew that this would be their legacy, the story they had chosen - two girls made of snow and glass who were more than their origins, two queens who had come together to reshape their world.

Melissa Bashardoust, from Girls Made of Snow and Glass

[webedragons]

What I read in 2023

And what I thought about it. Pretty much all Scifi/YA, read on if you want book reccs or just to be nosy <3 Have you read any of these books? What did you think of them? Do you have a favorite book of 2023? please let me know <3 Images and image descriptions included below the cut.

I will be using a 5 star system to rate each book.

(Image Description, 4 books covers in a collage including half a soul, the house of lost wives, Saint Deaths Daughter, and The stargazers war). Half a soul By Olivia Atwater. I picked this book up on sale on kindle, and I liked it! It was easy to read but covered some interesting topics. The main character is cursed by the fae as a child and the book covers her dealing with this curse as an adult in victorian england. Think pride and prejudice but with curses and wizards. 4/5 stars. The house of lost wives by Rebecca Hardy. This was another kindle sale book and while i liked it, I think it could have used another run through editing as the pacing was strange. This book follows a young woman who can see ghosts and is trying to find answers behind the death of her sister. 3/5 stars. Saint Deaths daughter by C.S.E Cooney. This book was probably my biggest surprise of 2023. I loved this book, its beautifully written and very fresh. It follows the daughter of 2 famous necromancers as she struggles with family members both alive and dead. 5/5 stars, excited to see more from this author. The Stargazers war by JP valentine. This author has become one of my favorites this year. I love his sense of humor and the fact that his books often have found family feels. 5/5 stars, cannot wait for the next book.

(Image description, 4 book covers in a collage including Briar heart, The false princess, Nona the Ninth, and This quest is Bullshit). Briar heart by Mercedes Lackey. This is a fairy tale retelling that plays with the usual tropes of that genre. Any book by this author is very comforting to me and this one was fun but not stunning. 3/5 stars. The false Princess by Eilis O'neal. This felt like a book 12 year old me would have been obsessed with, and 24 year old me really liked it too. It follows a princess who finds out she was a body double this whole time, and her journey after leaving her childhood home. 4/5 stars. Nona the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir. Listen, this is Tungler dot com, I do not need to sell this book here. 5/5 stars, I will break into your house and leave copies of this series for you to start reading :) This quest is Bullshit! By JP valentine. This is this authors second appearance on this list and for good reason. This book was my first foray into LitRPG - fiction written as though the characters are in a roleplaying game. It was extremely funny and very fresh and exciting to me. If you enjoy playing DND or baldurs gate, you will probably like this series. 5/5 stars.

(image description; 4 book covers in a collage including Terrier, A coup of tea, Wolfsong, and Hyperbole and a Half). Terrier by Tamora Pierce. This was a reread! I love Tamora Pierce, she is one of my go-to comfort authors. This series is not my favorite of her Tortall series, but it still stands up! 4/5 stars. A coup of tea series by Casey Blair. This series follows a princess who chooses her own path - which turns out to be making tea! If you loved Uncle Iroh, you will like these books. 5/5 stars, I wanted more! Wolfsong by TJ klune. This was my first TJ klune book and it delivered. This book will have you asking "Did TJ klune grow up reading high quality werewolf fanfiction?" because it reads like high quality werewolf fanfiction. 4/5 stars. Hyperbole and a Half by Allie Brosh. This is the only nonfiction on the list but for good reason! It is an absolutely hilarious collection of true stories that had me hooting like a goose. 5/5 stars.

(Image description; Just one book cover, Girls made of snow and glass by Melissa Basherdoust). Girls made of snow and glass by Melissa Bashardoust. This book is an honorable mention because I'm pretty sure I read it in 2022, but I really loved it. This book was special to me because it involves a positive relationship between a stepmother and stepdaughter and nice sapphic representation (NOT between stepdaughter and stepmother you guttersnipes). 5/5 stars for me :D

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