#opal yong-ae

[pistachio-pierrot]

Heartstrikers and DFZ series as text posts

[fuckyeahheartstrikers]

Heartstriker/DFZ Fic Recs! (No Spoilers)

Heartstriker and DFZ fic recs that are spoiler free! (as in major plot points, but some have character backstory spoilers)

HEARTSTRIKER SERIES

Battle on the Wing— Sheliak_(Sheliak)

AO3: Teen, Graphic Descriptions of Violence, Amelia/Svena, Pre-Canon, Complete, 756 words.

An Impulsive Act of Baby Theft— Sheliak_(Sheliak)

AO3: General Audiences, No Archive Warnings Apply, Amelia & Brohomir, Pre-Canon, Complete, 901 words.

Enemy Territory— Sheliak_(Sheliak)

AO3: General Audiences, No Archive Warnings Apply, Amelia/Svena, Pre-Canon, Complete, 809 words.

A Future Enemy— vanishresponse

AO3: General Audiences, No Archive Warnings Apply, Amelia/Svena (pre-relationship), Pre-Canon, Complete, 2183 words.

All Our Hues— LemonsBitter

AO3: General Audiences, No Archive Warnings Apply, Amelia & Brohomir, Pre-Canon, Complete, 1939 words.

DFZ SERIES

50/50— mimiwrites

AO3: General Audiences, No Archive Warnings Apply, Nikola Kos/Opal Yong-ae, Post- Minimum Wage Magic, Complete, 766 words.

then i might miss you— mimiwrites

AO3: General Audiences, No Archive Warnings Apply, Nikola Kos/Opal Yong-ae, Post- Minimum Wage Magic, Complete, 1599 words.

Dinner and a Show— Atomicpom

AO3: Teen, No Archive Warnings Apply, Nikola Kos/Opal Yong-ae, Miniumum Wage Magic, Complete, 1430 words.

[anotherramblingfangirl]

The Dresden Files fans book rec:

I don't have too much to base this recommendation on yet, but as a Dresden Files fan reading about this - I couldn't help but be very interested and it feels like something other fans of the series here may well be interested in reading too! Even in itself the character Opal sounds like it would be really fun for her to meet/interact with Dresden in a crossover.

The cover and summary below, in case anyone else might want to give it a go;

"Making a living is hard. Making a living in a lawless city where gods are real, dragons are traffic hazards, and buildings move on their own can feel downright impossible.

Good thing freelance mage Opal Yong-ae has never let little things like impossibility stop her. She’s found a way to put her overpriced magical art history degree to use as a Cleaner: a contract municipal employee who empties out abandoned apartments and resells the unusual treasures she finds inside for a profit. It’s not a pretty job, or a safe one--there’s a reason she wears bite-proof gloves--but when you’re neck-deep in debt to a very magical, very nasty individual, you can’t be picky about where the money comes from.

But even Opal’s low standards are put to the test when the only thing of value in her latest apartment is the body of the previous tenant. Dealing with the dead isn’t technically part of her job, but this mage died hiding a secret that could be worth a lot of money, and Opal’s the only one who knows. With debts she can’t pay due at the end of the week, this could be the big break she’s been waiting for, but in a city of runaway magic where getting in over your head generally means losing it, the cost of chasing this opportunity might be more than Opal can survive."

[alarajrogers]

When the Angels Left the Old Country by Sacha Lamb. An angel and a demon spend their time in a very tiny Jewish village studying Torah together, but when the daughter of one of the villagers fails to write home after emigating to America, the two of them decide to go to America and find her. There is some violence in this, but no war.

Minimum Wage Magic by Rachel Aaron. Opal Yong-ae is a salvager in the Detroit Free Zone, a city that became sapient when magic returned to the world, who needs to scrape together enough money to pay off a loan to her terrifying dad (it is kind of a spoiler why he is really scary, but it's not any kind of sexual or physical abuse; he's overbearing, controlling and really really powerful is all. There's more to it but that's the spoiler.) She ends up teaming up with her rival on what seems like a straightforward recovery (cleaning out the apartments of the dead and disappeared on behalf of the city, and keeping any cool shit they find), but then plot happens.

Under the Whispering Door by TJ Klune. This writer's whole thing is cozy gay romance. In this one, an asshole CEO dies and ends up at a wayhouse for souls, where he falls in love with the (living) proprietor and learns to not be an asshole anymore.

I could find more, but I need more detail on what counts as a war. Does a conflict between mobsters count? A conflict between factions in a city? Any kind of violent conflict?

someone recommend me some good fantasy books that aren’t centred on a war, please, my crops are dying

[terapsina]

Then worst thing about being in the mood to read something involving a very specific trope is "Yeah, good luck finding that".

So. Tumblr book community. Anyone have any recommendations for...

Books involving powerful villainous or criminal or just like 'very alien' characters who truly love their children even if they don't always immediately know the best ways to show it?

I don't really care if the book follows the parent or their child. I just want the complicated, very torn and tense relationship with that kind of premise. Where there's emotional misunderstandings, and having done the wrong thing for the... maybe not the right reasons but for compelling reasons?

Something along the lines of Opal Yong-ae and her father from the DFZ trilogy (Minimum Wage Magic, Part-Time Gods, Night Shift Dragons).

And because I know of more live action TV examples than book ones, there's Kai Jin and his father Uncle Six from Wu Assassins, Regina and Henry Mills from OUAT, Michael and alternate universe Philippa Georgiou from Star Trek: Discovery, Dutch and her sister/mother/clone Aneela (post return of memories) from Killjoys.

So basically the kind of stories where the parents might be bad at expressing their love for their kids and do it in all the worst ways initially, and the kids ('kid' here being defined by their role in the relationship not their age, I don't care how old the kid is) feel like they "shouldn't" love their parents but do, and maybe also think that their parents don't really care about them at all (but they're wrong, it's important here that they're wrong).

So anyone know anything along those lines?

[words-writ-in-starlight]

what's DFZ?

DFZ! DFZ! DFZ!

Okay, so, the DFZ series(es?) is kind of a catchall name for a couple of series by Rachel Aaron that take place in the same urban fantasy universe, the DFZ books and the Heartstriker books.  Urban cyberfantasy?  You could throw a lot of adjectives into that descriptor if you wanted to.

The general premise is that once upon a time Earth had magic.  A lot of magic.  Absolutely god-creating levels of magic.  And then, mysteriously, it all drained away some thousand years ago, leaving humanity to forget all about it while the creatures who needed it to live either withered away completely (spirits, gods, etc) or went into hiding and hibernation (also some spirits, dragons, etc).  And then, like a switch being flipped, it all came back at once in 2035, and suddenly humanity had a lot of magic to throw around and no idea what was going on.  That was a few decades ago at the start of the Heartstriker books, which are a couple decades before the DFZ books.

(Incidentally, I really like that choice.  It would have been very easy to write a novel about humanity getting magic back and running around like chickens with our heads cut off, and don’t get me wrong I would have read and adored that book, but setting things a little later means that magic is just Part Of The Deal and it’s so much goddamn cooler.)

Which brings us to the DFZ proper, also known as the Detroit Free Zone.  When magic came back, a lot of shit woke up really fast, chief among them A, dragons, and, B, Spirits of the Land.  Like the Lady of the Great Lakes, Algonquin, who was really, really not having it with every city in a hundred mile radius dumping pollutants into her water by the metric ton.  So she wiped most of the Great Lakes states off the map, and took over the ruins of Detroit to make the Detroit Free Zone, where the only laws worth mentioning are:

No murder

No dragons

No polluting the water

Anything else is pretty much free game.  So you can imagine that the DFZ gets to be a pretty interesting place pretty goddamn fast--the most magical city in the world, where anyone can do anything without fear of the law coming down on them, under the iron hand of a goddess who doesn’t much care for humans.

Anyway, if that sounds cool and you like any of the following, you should actually just trust me and go read these books without bothering with the rest of this post:

Immaculately well-constructed magical worldbuilding--the entire second book of the DFZ trilogy is basically “how to out-litigate a curse and the consequences of doing just that”

Humans Are Special trope, but in the “if you could all just slow down on the innovation we’d all be a lot safer” kind of way, which is a personal favorite

Dragons!  Lots and lots of dragons from all over the world!  This is an absolutely spectacular series for dragons, despite Algonquin’s best efforts!

Sentient cities!  The DFZ takes a while to get moving (magic takes time and big magic takes big time) but once she does, oh boy do I ever love her so goddamn much, get wrekt Algonquin

Magic Is Normal tropes coming out your goddamn ears, mixed with a healthy dose of Technology Is Magic (AIs can project stuff straight into your brain by hooking into your natural magical field and y’all...I’d kill for it...that’s so cool)

Really genuinely likable characters--Julius, Marci, Opal, and Nik are all completely fantastic and I would get drinks with any of them, and also the main romances actually enjoy each others’ company in non-romantic contexts, which is remarkably refreshing

Seers, and the finicky game of making the future jump the way you want it to jump while someone else who can also see the future is trying to make it jump the other way

Doesn’t that sound rad?  Yes, it does, I’m telling you that these books are amazing, the first DFZ book is called Minimum Wage Magic, and the first Heartstriker is called Nice Dragons Finish Last, go forth and read.  Either series is a great starting point, I actually liked reading the Heartstriker books after the DFZ books because I loved seeing Opal meet Julius, Main Character Boy for the Heartstrikers, as a competent and universally respected adult, and then getting insight into his brain which is just that one gif from Community with the pizza and the fire, all the time.

As per usual, more details under the cut.

So, magic comes back and Algonquin wreaks destruction and the DFZ happens.  Smash cut sixty years into the future for the Heartstriker books, starring Julius Heartstriker, the youngest and most regrettably tenderhearted dragon in the massive Heartstriker clan.  Julius’ primary problem in life is that he does not enjoy lying, scheming, manipulating, threatening, murdering, or power tripping, which means that his entire family pretty much takes carte blanche to kick him around like a soccer ball.  This comes to a head when his mother, Bethesda Heartstriker, puts a curse on him so that he can’t access his draconic form and dumps him unceremoniously into the DFZ, where dragons are executed on sight, with strict orders to find something to impress her, or else die quietly out of the way.

Julius, to his credit, throws himself into trying to become a Real Dragon as best he can, but he’s just so goddamn nice, he goes out and saves lives and makes bargains and enforced democracy instead of unilateral dynastic rule and falls in love with a human (hi Marci) and makes a name for himself as “the dragon you go to when all your other options would kill you or laugh in your face.”  It’s absolutely delightful to watch.  He’s doing such a good job.

Basically, the Heartstriker books go like this: Julius doesn’t like the way his world works!  And fuck you for telling him that he needs to be less kind in order to work in the world!  He’s not changing himself, he’s going to change the world instead, and because he’s very, very nice, he’ll even let you live there once he’s done!

Next up, the DFZ books, twenty years later, star Opal Yong-ae, who moved to the DFZ from Korea for reasons that become apparent later but mostly boil down to “freedom.”  Since Julius’ first arrival in the DFZ, a lot’s changed--Algonquin is gone, the Spirit of the DFZ is a sovereign entity who has her own motives and desires, and what was once a no-dragon zone is now a neutral territory governed by the Peacemaker, who you might remember as a twenty-four-year-old baby desperately out of his depth and is now a straight up force to be reckoned with, feared and respected around the world.  (I’m so proud of my son.)

Opal’s problems are that she’s a mage who hits like a tank when she’s desperate but can’t handle even the most basic tasks, and she’s scrambling to pay off a massive debt to her father in order to prove that she should be allowed to remain in the DFZ.  These are both old news.  The dead body she finds in an abandoned apartment that she’s been hired to clean out and get ready for renting, on the other hand, that’s a new, kicky, fresh kind of problem, especially once someone starts shooting at her about it.  

She joins up with another Cleaner named Nikola Kos, who she mostly knows as “that scary guy in black” and is an absolute tank who is also secretly very soft.  Their dynamic is so much fun, very intensely “Small Chaotic Drags Big Exhausted Into Drama” with the added bonus that Nik is a very cool cyborg fighter type.  Opal is so determined that it verges on being completely unhinged and I would read 15 books about her.  Also, the third book is out, so that brutal cliffhanger at the end of Half Price Gods is a problem for Eight Months Ago Me, rather than Present Day You.

[lavender-faery]

As a sequel to Minimum Wage Magic, Part-Time Gods by Rachel Aaron brings back Opal Yong-ae for another magical adventure through the DFZ. Having paid off one more installation of her debt and bought herself more time, Opal is still on the quest to earn enough to fulfill the rest of her debt to her father, who she discovers at the end of the previous book has placed on her a dragon’s curse responsible for her bad financial luck for the past several months. Full review here: http://witchycat.weebly.com/reviews-b...

[nikihawkes]

Title: Minimum Wage Magic

Author: Rachel Aaron

Series: DFZ #1

Genre: Fantasy

Rating: 4.5/5 stars

The Overview: The DFZ, the metropolis formerly known as Detroit, is the world’s most magical city with a population of nine million and zero public safety laws. That’s a lot of mages, cybernetically enhanced chrome heads, and mythical beasties who die, get into debt, and otherwise fail to pay their rent. When they can’t pay their bills, their stuff gets sold to the highest bidder to cover the tab. That’s when they call me. My name is Opal Yong-ae, and I’m a Cleaner: a freelance mage with an art history degree who’s employed by the DFZ to sort through the mountains of magical junk people leave behind. It’s not a pretty job, or a safe one—there’s a reason I wear bite-proof gloves—but when you’re deep in debt in a lawless city where gods are real, dragons are traffic hazards, and buildings move around on their own, you don’t get to be picky about where your money comes from. You just have to make it work, even when the only thing of value in your latest repossessed apartment is the dead body of the mage who used to live there. -Goodreads

The Review:

Minimum Wage Magic was such a delightful read!

Even though it’s a spin-off of Aaron’s Heartstrikers series, it felt completely fresh, going a long way towards reinvigorating my love of this author (the last two books of HS were a bit too repetitive and drawn out for my tastes). I loved the premise – “cleaners” in the DFZ (magically altered Detroit) buy abandoned/reclaimed living units and turn a profit from what’s left inside. If any of you have spent entire days binge-watching Storage Wars (guilty), you’ll understand why this concept is incredible appealing to me lol.

I really liked Opal as the main character. She had a lot of YA fun infused into her personality, but remained “sophisticated” enough to pull off the lead in an urban fantasy. I especially loved her backstory and how pieces of it came together throughout the book. Discovering the many surprises was the highlight of the experience, and I can’t wait to see what’s in store next.

Although this can definitely be read as a stand-alone, you’d be missing out on the cool magics behind the DFZ (a living entity in its own right), and a lot of the significance surrounding the dragons and how they affect the world around them. Heartstrikers gives MWM a lot more depth and robustness. However, without it, it’s still a fun, slightly lighter read.

Series status: I waited an extra few months for the audio release (worth it), so I’m hoping this time next year I’ll have another installment to dive into. I loved it enough that I will be continuing as soon as it comes out.

Recommendations: within this world, Rachel Aaron has created a fun fusion of genres – fantasy elements (dragons, magic), urban fantasy plot and settings, all told with an exuberant YA feel (without any unfortunate YA tropes or issues). If you’re sick of the same old stuff, let this author give you a breath of fresh air. 🙂

Other books you might like:

Nice Dragons Finish Last by Rachel Aaron

Legend by Marie Lu

Rithmatist by Brandon Sanderson

Blood Engines by Tim Pratt

Twelve Kings of Sharakhai by Bradley P. Beaulieu

by Niki Hawkes

Book Review: Minimum Wage Magic by Rachel Aaron Title: Minimum Wage Magic Author: Rachel Aaron Series: DFZ #1 Genre: Fantasy Rating: 4.5/5 stars The Overview: …

[darklingichor]

Minimum Wage Magic by Rachel Aaron

I'm calling this my last book of the year.

Dispite the fact that I have many new books from Powell's and many new books from Audible (Christmas gift) I have returned to my favorites to round out my year. I just might do an entry on each of my favorites in 2021 along with new ones. I need to figure out a goal for the year. This challenge actually did me a lot of good in this Trauma Tornado of a trip around the sun.

Anyway, this book is awesome!

It kept showing up as a recommendation from Audible and the thumbnail of the cover was super cool, but I was never in the mood when I had credits. Later, I was trying to build a wishlist for my Powell's run and I remembered the cool cover art and the witty title, on the list it went. When I was sick, but getting better, I decided that I needed a fun fantasy. This delivered!

We follow Opal Yong-ae, sometime in the future. It's hard to pin down how far in the future. The original Indiana Jones Trilogy is well known, but has been followed up by a franchise of twenty-five awful additions. People can become cyborgs in the same way one might go in for tattoos, or piercings, but the phrase "Talk to the hand" can illicit eye rolls. Anyway. At some point magic came back to the world. Gods, Goddesses, Dragons, spirits all came awake and magical energy is in the air. A portion of the population are able to manipulate this magic. Opal is a mage, but not a particularly good one. She works as a Cleaner in the DFZ. A Cleaner buys property that has been seized for non-payment. For their investment, they go through the house, apartment, storage unit, etc. and sell what they can. They clean the place to get it ready for the next occupant. The DFZ is The Detroit Free Zone. Detroit has become a Goddess, literally a living city shaped by Her will. Almost everything is legal and people flock there to see this wild west place.

Opal has a knack for finding treasures where other cleaners don't, but she also has a past, a debt and, lately, a stretch of bad luck.

Not going to go into it to avoid spoilers, but I enjoyed this book so much!

Opal is smart, funny, and a history and anth nerd which makes her so much fun for me to read. I love how determined and stubborn she is. Honestly, this book would be a blast if we were just following her and her AI Sybil from site to site, Cleaning. However, the plot that develops is great! Complex enough not to be dwarfed by all the elements of the DFZ, but straightforward enough to keep the action moving.

All in all, a great book to end the year on!

[draghons]

Book Review : Night Shift Dragons

Book Review : Night Shift Dragons

Night Shift Dragons was a much more enjoyable return to the DFZ than its predecessor Part-Time Gods. Unlike the last book, Night Shift Dragons did not want to make me strangle the heroine the entire time. In this novel, Opal Yong-ae, daughter of the Dragon of Korea, the Great Yong, is finally putting aside her pettiness and inner-spoiled-rich-kid and making amends, at last, with her father. The…

[pistachio-pierrot]

CRINGETOBER DAY 13– Rule 63 (genderbend)

Don’t really know why I decided on this idea in particular, but hey! DFZ series fanart!

[sexyapply232-blog]

Minimum Wage Magic by Rachel Aaron – Audiobooks , MP3

                                Minimum Wage Magic by Rachel Aaron

Review    Minimum Wage Magic About Author   Rachel Aaron

+ Author : Rachel Aaron (Author), Emily Woo Zeller (Narrator) + Format : MP3 ( without DRM – You can listen on many Other Devices ) + You will get link download from Dropbox when Completed Purchase ! + Listening Length : 9 hours and 45 minutes + Language : English

The DFZ, the metropolis formerly known as Detroit, is the world’s most magical city with a population of nine million and zero public safety laws. That’s a lot of mages, cybernetically enhanced chrome heads, and mythical beasties who die, get into debt, and otherwise fail to pay their rent. When they can’t pay their bills, their stuff gets sold to the highest bidder to cover the tab.

That’s when they call me. My name is Opal Yong-ae, and I’m a Cleaner: a freelance mage with an art history degree who’s employed by the DFZ to sort through the mountains of magical junk people leave behind. It’s not a pretty job, or a safe one – there’s a reason I wear bite-proof gloves – but when you’re deep in debt in a lawless city where gods are real, dragons are traffic hazards, and buildings move around on their own, you don’t get to be picky about where your money comes from. You just have to make it work, even when the only thing of value in your latest repossessed apartment is the dead body of the mage who used to live there.

Author’s note: This is the first in a new series set in the same universe as my Heartstrikers books, but you don’t need to have heard those stories to enjoy this one. Minimum Wage Magic was written to stand by itself, so if you haven’t listened to the others, don’t worry! I wrote this book with you in mind. Thank you so much for listening!

[words-writ-in-starlight]

There are many (many many MANY) things I love about the DFZ books, but Opal's conversation with her dad is the ultimate power fantasy of "what if I talked to this person who has done me great harm but deep down cares about me a lot and they ACTUALLY FUCKING LISTENED" and I'm absolutely thriving on it

[words-writ-in-starlight]

OPAL

[words-writ-in-starlight]

[Text: “Look,” Nik went on. “You said Peter was the one who picked up the body, right? Just tell him you need to see it again. He’ll let you do it.”]

[I gaped at him. “He’s a priest of the Empty Wind! Why would he let me see a body he’s already committed to his god?”]

[“Because you’re a pretty girl who doesn’t treat him like garbage,” Nik replied without missing a beat. “He’d probably let you waltz out with a whole bag full of corpses if you asked nicely enough.” /end text]

This is basically Nikola "Extremely Used To Being Treated Like Garbage" Kos admitting that he's doing all of this because he has a crush on Opal, right?

[words-writ-in-starlight]

I have come up with two COMPLETELY distinct Librarians AUs of the DFZ in the past hour, so hear me out:

ONE

Head Librarian Opal Yong-ae, Guardian Nikola Kos, immortal knight Chelsie, Librarianettes Julius, Fredrick, and Marci, also guest starring Qilin Xian as His Own Damn Self, Chelsie’s long-lost love interest.  Did I come up with Librarian!Opal/Guardian!Nik purely because I like the idea of Nik trying to ride herd on the Chaos Crew?  Yes.  Also because I love their canonical Genius Glass Canon/Determinator Bodyguard dynamic.

This one runs a little more like Parent Trap than anything else.  The gang finds out about Xian during the Apple of Discord episode and Chelsie spends a significant amount of time trying to put them off while they ferret out who she is (she’s hiding in the Library because her geas doesn’t quite work, although it doesn’t quite not work, under its aegis), with very minimal success.  The second they have evidence of Chelsie/Xian (Fredrick is even a descendant!), the entire gang immediately makes it top priority and contrives a lot of reasons to request the presence of the Golden Emperor’s emissary in hopes of finding another excuse to get Xian in a room with Chelsie again.

TWO

Cut the middle man and go straight for Head Librarian Xian, Guardian Chelsie, immortal weirdo Bob, and Librarianettes Julius, Opal, and Marci.  In which Chelsie was Xian’s Guardian some time ago, but after Certain Events (ft the Empress Mother as caretaker Charlene but shitty), she left, and the Library couldn’t call a new Guardian when there was already one knocking around the world resisting the pull.  But when things started to go wrong, and Xian’s safety starts to degrade, Bob picked up on it and arranged to help the Library get around the caretaker in order to get Chelsie back, by any means necessary.  

The real issue is, Algonquin is murdering her way through Librarian candidates, and they end up with the three surviving top candidates.  Julius, who ran away from the Heartstriker family and barely remembers Chelsie except as his fearsome much-older sister, has been hiding his Librarian-level intellect under fake names and a self-effacing smile.  Opal, whose dazzling array of knowledge is complicated by a brain tumor that causes extensive synesthesia and headaches (hello, backlash equivalent!).  And Marci, who is extremely brilliant and also an outstandingly good thief.

This is still kind of a parent trap, as Xian comes back now and then and the Librarianettes try to strong-arm him and Chelsie into working together, but there’s also more focus on Algonquin--and also Algonquin’s pet magically bound warrior, Nikola Kos.  Opal and Marci’s magical talents are dramatically different, but it’s Opal who manages to smash through the geas on Nik and badger Chelsie into letting her bring him into the Library crew.