#ylfing

[taryo88]

[based on this post]

[ariaste]

I think your books have ruined me a little bit because at all times, a small but significant part of myself is wondering if Ylfing is doing all right today.

Also, "Six of Crows meets Our Flag Means Death" is a pitch that happens to hit all of my buttons. Consider me sufficiently hyped.

Thank you so much!!! Have you read Over All the Earth? It's got Ylfing in it. And yes, he is doing alright today! Better all the time, in fact.

Also, there is a fandom discord for my books if you'd like to come hang out: https://discord.gg/ftYnk8T42K :D

[jumpluffdrifting]

When you read a book in 2019 cause someone on tumblr said the main character had trash taste in men, and now we’re here

Super excited to read this!

[crowtits]

im literally two pages into a choir of lies and im obsessed . spoilers in tags

[andrewbelindo]

I really wanna read more books that involve a second narrator interacting with a text in some way. For example, in A Choir of Lies by Alexandra Rowland, Ylfing leaves his diary with another character, who leaves notes and destroys pages of the text.

There's so much potential in stuff like that!

Two friends sharing one copy of a book and taking turns with it each night, leaving notes for the other. Their story might run parallel or perpendicular to the story of the novel itself

A researcher in a fictional world (fantasy, steampunk, etc) reads through a text book and leaves notes on their thoughts, but there's something off about the text, and their notes slowly discover what the offness is, leading to danger, discovery, or disaster.

A teen finding/being gifted a cursed book, and at first, they make fun of the writing and draw dicks in the margins and such. But then, the teen's writing slowly starts to change as the curse takes hold.

A scientist leaves postit notes in a copy of a newly discovered text of some kind, slowly unworking the mysteries of the original.

A detective poring over a series of documents related to an important case discovers the missing piece of information by connecting the dots between their own notes scrawled in the corners of the pages.

If anyone has recommendations for books like these (or decides to use one of these examples as a writing prompt), please share! I need it...!

[plantdad-dante]

Book #99 - A Choir Of Lies by Alexandra Rowland

(I- this- hng. It happened again.) I told you. I told you before, and it still holds: witchcraft This book has bewitched me, just like its predecessor did. It is echoing in my head, swinging back and forth in my skull like the pommel of a great bell, and I'm expecting a headache, but all I hear is wondrous music. The music sings of stories, of grief, of community and ruin and healing. And it sings of names - and as I listened, something moved into place. Something that had been sitting wrong for some time. Whoops, personal note incoming, but what else is new. ... Why do I have to have a name? No, serious question now. Like, fine ("not fine", says the inner punk), the bureaucracy needs to call me something, needs a definitive name to put on the eviction notice, but why do I need a name - one singular, solitary, defining name - for other people to call me? See, I realized, as Ylfing was contemplating names and Chants early on... I don't think I have a "real" name. I don't think I even want one. A legal name, sure, I can live with that, I guess. But a "real" one, one that's a fitting label to all of me? Yeah, no, fuck that. I like the internet, or at least this corner of it, in this regard. Here I call myself Dante, and no one, including myself, expects that to be my "actual" name, whatever that means. And yet it is as valid a name for me as anything. I like that. I like that a lot. Maybe this notion is a temporary thing. Maybe, one day, another piece will slot into place and render this feeling void. Maybe one day I'll find a name that feels the way Ylfing seems to feel about his. But "one day" isn't now, and a maybe can turn into a no just as well as into a yes. "Hi, I'm a dude. I don't really have a name - call me whatever you like." ... I had not intended to derail this post like this, but this blog exists, first and foremost, to chronicle my reading experience, and if that is made up of a bunch of weird epiphanies as of late, then I guess so fucking be it. [post script: If writing truly is a copy of one's mind, I might have to have some words with my past self about the multitude of characters in all the unfinished, never-to-see-the-sun stuff I write who have pretty flimsy relationships to their own names, and often only have a name at all because their found family issued them one on family-recruitment day. I might have spent ten minutes laughing hysterically when I realized this.]

[keplercryptids]

17, for the book ask thing!

17. Did any books surprise you with how good they were?

house of leaves was a surprise in that i thought it would be a slog to get through, but it really wasn't. i enjoyed the act of reading such a weird book more than i thought i would.

a choir of lies by alexandra rowland was a surprise because it's a sequel, and usually i like the first books in a series the most, but i LOVED that book, more than a conspiracy of truths. it's just such a special book and i would die for ylfing.

[oddbookreport]

God I really was imagining Chant as like, George Clooney just to make sense of why Ylfing fell so hard for him

Somebody play The Northern Boys

[thereadingmoon]

2020 READING LIST RECAP: November

5. A Choir of Lies by Alexandra Rowland

A Choir of Lies is actually the standalone sequel of another book I actually like, but as much as I love smug jackasses narrating the story of their life, the politics and bureaucracy in A Conspiracy of Truths just didn't vibe with me. It's still a wonderful book that I will willingly throw at anyone, but that's that. And no, I don't know why the economics of this book did vibe with me. My high school business class jumped out when the law of supply and demand was played up here. I was screaming when the faux-Amsterdammers took slow, painful paragraphs flirting at the idea of scarcity without naming it due to lack of sophisticated theory.

I also screamed a lot of things from how cute the actual flirtations were and how stupid young Ylfing had gotten since leaving his teacher and how glaring the twist was. But you know. We're not here to listen to me talking about plot twists. We're here to listen to me talk about how it was a highlight on my reading list. I definitely loved how the book utilized footnotes. It wasn't the matter-of-fact Pratchett expositing and it really pointed out how unreliable our narrator was. In the first book, we had to remind ourselves to take Chant's narration with a grain of salt because he's naturally a crabby old bastard who does say he's filling in gaps of his story with third-hand information. But here, we find an in-universe reader pointing out the flaws and biases in Ylfing's story, filling in details and information we lack, and further driving in the dichotomy between new and old, fiction and truth. I just love how the in-universe reader interacts with the story we're reading, but at times it gets a bit redundant. That, or it feels like the author is hitting you on the head while pointing out the information you need to take a note of in fear you'll miss the build-up of the story. Talking about the story, this is an interesting progression from the first book. Like Ylfing, we begin to realize the weight of the actions that were done by Chant and understand the trauma that was unknowingly inflicted on someone when a main character rushes to their happily ever after. Seeing Ylfing trying to recover from being hurt and abandoned is painful and slow, just like his own path to redemption. From a cheery and optimistic apprentice, he's become a mournful and jaded traveller. Sometimes, like the reader, you want to slap him and other times you want to let him cry on your shoulder. How Ylfing continues to be exploited and ridiculed through this story also adds to the pain of it all, but it eventually has to get better. Eventually. Also, if you're into that inclusivity, this book has a wide array of sexualities and gender orientations and cultures, as did the first book. The first thing anyone would note would be how Fictional Amsterdam has six different social genders. They say that A Conspiracy of Truths was a love story to stories while A Choir of Lies was a love story for storytellers. That is most certainly true. We get to see traditional storytellers and storytellers who's lost the joy for it. We get to appreciate the tales they tell in the artful, crafted way they learned to tell them. And we get to love those who manage to claw themselves out of burnout and the abyss for the sake of their audience.

Want to see more recommendations like this? Check out my blog’s masterlist for more book recommendations, and see the full year’s recap here!

[taryo88]

POV you’re stuck in prison and your fool of an apprentice won’t shut up about his new boy toy of the week but at least he brought you some food that isn’t slop

[ariaste]

i just started a choir of lies and i’m absolutely fucking delighted by the footnotes. i love that it’s some mystery character commenting on ylfing’s writing. they comment on the story the same way i make notes in my books, so now i’m annotating the main story and also the annotations. it’s just so fun and clever and i couldn’t be more thrilled.

also, i listened to a conspiracy of truths on audiobook, and am reading this one in paperback, which is just so accidentally perfect for the two narrators. man.

Fantastic! And that's my "Author's Recommended Reading Formats" for those two, absolutely -- oral storytelling versus an explicitly written account! :) Glad you're enjoying it! Also, if you like my books, I have an official discord server -- and keep your eyes out in the next few weeks, because there will be some Exciting Big News coming~~

[bellaroles]

I just passed that point where Ylfing see joy in life again, and boy, was that like the colors just flooding back to the pages!

P.S. I just realized he was depressed (like DSM-V dx MDD) after all this time, stupid of me not to realize that because he still seem to function, not normally...no, but he functioned with a different approach in life than he was in the previous book.

[twostepsfromtemerant]

Ylfing and Mevrol de Waeyer at the auction, selling their flowers

[runawaymarbles]

@ariaste please enjoy my offering of memes I made while I was at work 

[linovadraws]

Ylfing and Orfeo from Choir of Lies by @ariaste! Ylfing has a whole thing about his name in this book and it’s g r e a t.

[is-there-gay-in-it]

Ylfing

Title: A Conspiracy of Truths

Category: Book

Author: Alexandra Rowland

Status: Main Character in Conspiracy, First Billed in sequel A Choir of Lies 

Orientation: Gay

Check the read-more to see if Ylfing is alive 

Ylfing is alive