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The Book Guild Entrance Hall

All Book Guild specific banners created by me, animated banners created by @cafekitsune—check out her blog for more and read her pinned post on requesting rules.

The Book Guild is the book club sideblog of @thecrimsonacademic. I won't be posting any reblogs; all material will be my own. Decade Challenge began 2021 in response to COVID-19 lockdowns.

Categories = Book organization Schedule = When things post Decade Challenge Themes = Masterlist to prevent repeats Reading Challenge = Goals, changes annually This Year's Reads = Monthly targeted reads, changes annually Book Guild Reviews = Masterlist of Guild Book Reviews Book Guild Polls = Masterlist of Guild Polls Book Guild Shelves = Masterlist of Guild Library Shelves Book Guild Meetings = Masterlist of Guild Meetings

Tagging System

#the book guild #book guild reviews #bgr #book guild polls #bgp #book guild shelves #bgs #book guild meetings #bgm

Antiquated = Books whose publication dates or whose authors lived/wrote pre-1000 AD/CE.

Decade Challenge = Books that align with the current year's theme.

Faith = Books relating to my faith. These could be straight from the Bible, topical, or arguments leveled against Christianity.

Fan Fiction = All works will be linked and authors tagged whenever possible. We don't steal in this Guild.

Mandatory = Books assigned for school. Some were assigned back in secondary education but most are from Harvard.

Non-Fiction/Prose = Books that are neither fiction nor poems nor plays.

Visual = Graphic novels, manga, illustrated editions, and comic books.

World = Books whose authors lived or wrote outside of the United States of America.

4:00pm Monday = Book Guild Reviews 4:30pm Tuesday = Book Guild Polls Wednesday has no scheduled postings 3:30pm Thursday = Book Guild Shelves 3:00pm Friday = Book Guild Meetings Saturday-Sunday have no scheduled postings

First Decade

2021 = Epics 2022 = Horror 2023 = Science Fiction 2024 = Fantasy 2025 = Non-Fiction 2026 = Literary Fiction 2027 = Series (5+ books) 2028 = Reference 2029 = Children's 2030 = Poetry & Plays 2031 = Theology

Second Decade—TBD

I commit myself to four reading challenges every year: Power of One, Goodreads, The StoryGraph, & Monthly Picks.

Power of One commits me to reading one specific book for the year. This way, if I fail all the other reading goals I still have a sense of accomplishment for reading one book that is often very difficult or long in the first place.

Goodreads commits me to reading a set amount of books for the year. Not every book I read can be found on Goodreads thus sometimes my success rate doesn't line up with the website.

Goodreads Goals

10 books = Completed 2015 12 books = TBD 24 books = Completed 2021, read 27 35 books = TBD 42 books = Ongoing 50 books = TBD 65 books = TBD 75 books = TBD 87 books = TBD 100 books = TBD

The StoryGraph commits me to reading one page a day for the entire month of January as part of their annual #January Pages Challenge. I started in 2024 and managed to read 6 books in one month.

Monthly Picks can be found immediately beneath this as This Year's Reads. I commit a book to each month, sometimes I get them done and sometimes I really don't. Depends on the year and how I'm holding up.

January = The Gilded Ones—Complete February = The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea—Complete March = Daughter of the Moon Goddess April = Warbreaker May = Inkheart June = Priory of the Orange Tree July = Lirael August = The Firekeeper's Daughter September = Skin of the Sea October = The Girl with Ghost Eyes November = Zachary Ying and the Dragon Emperor December = Elatsoe

The Book Guild Reviews will post at 4:00pm on Mondays as they are completed. This means there will be plenty of Mondays that don't have any reviews posted. Book Guild Reviews are only for books that have been read in the current year. Each entry in this section links to its corresponding masterlist.

Reviews 2024

The Book Guild Polls will post at 4:30pm on Tuesdays as they are queued. There will be plenty of Tuesdays that don't have polls posted, I sometimes forget to queue them up or life gets in the way. Book Guild Polls will only cover books I either personally own or have actually read/am currently reading. Each entry in this section links to its corresponding masterlist.

I will not be linking to 2024's previous Book Guild Polls (bgp 1-25) unless I reread them in following years. They were an experiment during the early stages of creating this blog. They can be found under Polls on my main blog.

Polls 2024

The Book Guild Shelves will post at 3:30pm on Thursdays as they are completed. This means there will be plenty of Thursdays that don't have any shelves posted. Book Guild Shelves are just like the reviews except they cover all of the books I've read within my lifetime (whereas reviews only cover the current year).

Unlike reviews or polls, shelves 2020 (for example) doesn't mean books read in 2020 it just means those are the shelves I posted to the blog in 2020. Each entry in this section links to its corresponding masterlist.

Shelves 2024

The Book Guild Meetings will post at 3:00pm on Fridays as they are queued. There will be plenty of Fridays that don't have meetings posted, I sometimes forget to queue them up or life gets in the way. Book Guild Meetings are essentially why this blog even exists, these are my book club meetings.

The beauty of a Book Guild Meeting is that it's not live! Meetings are numbered and tagged and the corresponding book & author is also always tagged. Just filter the meetings you're looking for if you join late.

A meeting will consist of key identifying information regarding the book and the meeting's date. There'll be question(s) section and then a keep reading break. The only thing after the line break is my own discussion based on a quote or excerpt.

All Book Guild Meeting books will be pulled from my categories identified further up. Here's a very basic example of the moving parts for a meeting:

Book ~ Author Section read for meeting Meeting date Questions for discussion Quote or excerpt Book Guildmaster wishes to discuss further

And that's it!

Meetings 2024

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Meetings 2024 (Masterlist)

Coming soon

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Shelves 2024 (Masterlist)

Coming soon

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Polls 2024 (Masterlist)

Coming soon

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Reviews 2024 (Masterlist)

The Gilded Ones

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Book Guild Polls 25

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Book Guild Polls 24

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Book Guild Polls 22

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Book Guild Polls 21

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Book Guild Polls 20

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Book Guild Polls 19

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Book Guild Reviews #1—The Gilded Ones

Book Stats: Author: Namina Forna Publisher: Delacorte Press (imprint of Random House) Page Count: 418 Genre: Fiction—Fantasy Star Rating: 5

Diversity Portfolio: BIPOC Author: Yes—African American (literally, Sierra Leonean-American) Female Author: Yes Non-Binary Author: No LGBTQIA+ Author: No (as far as I know) LGBTQIA+ Content: Yes, but it’s subtle and understated; it’s not a focal point of the plot Original Publication Language: English Author Under the Age of 25: No Disabled or Other-Abled Author: No (as far as I know)

Reader Stats: Why I Acquired the Book: The social media hype around it piqued my interest plus I liked the look of the cover. Dates Read: 01 Jan 2024 to 05 Jan 2024 Experiences While Reading: I self-commentated throughout the entire read and nearly every theory I came up with was spot on. That was a lot of fun for me and did not detract from the  novel experience in the least.

Recommend? Yes, to all young women regardless of race or color.

Notes & Opinions:

This book speaks quite clearly and effectively about female empowerment, the heroes of the story are all women. This isn’t to say all men in the novel are the villains, quite the opposite, but the point is picking women up out of the dirt and putting them side-by-side with men as equals in all possible ways. Equally strong, equally brave, equally wise, equally intelligent, equally wicked, equally weak-willed, equally confused, equally scared, equally vulnerable, equally abused, etc.

It speaks to strengthening women while also allowing men to break free of toxic masculinity. The book features strong black leads and showcases the different natural and protective hair styles of black women. It also has a diverse cast that never draws attention away from the leads or giving a voice to black women while at the same time it also doesn’t push the diversity of the other characters down. Each race, each color, each culture has a chance to shine on its own and stand on its own two feet. The good and bad are diverse together, no one color/race is drawn out to be inherently good or inherently bad.

It does feature the enemies-to-lovers trope which progresses naturally to the point of being genuinely believable. It also strongly features the trope of found family, championing Supernatural’s catchphrase “family don’t end in blood.” In fact, by blood isn’t what makes you family it simply makes you related. Deeper ties that cannot be quantified make family.

The book covers quite a range of topics but the ones that stood out to me were religion, oppression, government, & inner turmoil.

The book neither espouses nor eschews religion. What it does is point out the dangers of fervent, mindless, fanatical worship. It shows how deeply entrenched the fanatics are in their own lies and their twisting of scriptural/sacred writings, rewriting of histories, and hypocrisy in their hierarchies.

The biggest oppression highlighted is that of women. The female deities were rewritten to be demons who had to be overthrown. Daughters must go through a blood ceremony to make sure they are “clean” enough to be allowed to live with their families, villages, and pure enough to be married off. Marriage for women purely means a life of servitude to husband and children, the marriages can be strategic for powerful or wealthy families. Women must hide their faces behind masks, the masks also show off their wealth or lack thereof thus creating a caste system based on economic status.

If a girl’s blood is differently colored, she is ostracized at best and executed at worst. Religious elders will lie to the villagers and lead them to believe the “cursed ones” have been executed but often they’re being held elsewhere to be bled dry. Gold is currency after all, even if it is the life in your veins. Families will literally turn on their daughters if they bleed gold instead of red. It shows how quickly bonds can be broken if you truly believe lies and believe you are doing right and just things in the name of those lies.

The laws of the land are pulled from the laws of the religious texts, there is no true separation of religion and state. The laws allow for the murder, rape, and constant physical and verbal abuse of girls and women. The blood ceremony is just one more way to control the female species, the masks are another, the permission to outright kill your own daughter if she bleeds gold. All of these are ways to oppress women. It gives the woman’s right to live into the hands of men.

This isn’t to say all fathers and mothers sought to destroy their own daughters, some tried very hard to hide their daughters or quietly send them away to live in safety. But those were few and far between.

Government was highlighted but not really how it worked so much as the complete and utter blind acceptance of the authority of government. The lies of the rulers were as accepted as the lies of the twisted faith. Since the leader of the country was appointed by gods, you can see how there was no separation of the two and how the two work in concerted effort to destroy women who are literally half the population. It’s not that government is bad because anarchy can be just as bad, but it was the complete acceptance of everything without question.

No one stopped to ask if a law was moral or just. No one stopped to ask any questions, to ponder the ethics and morality of what they were doing or saying. If something was decreed to be so, then everyone just went along with it. It was staggering to see how this blind loyalty with no regard to thought or contemplation led families, who supposedly loved their children would instantly revile them as soon as they were shown to be a bit different.

Inner turmoil was granted to our protagonist who struggled left and right with reconciling her faith with her reality, accepting her lost familial bonds for her new found family, admitting her worth as a woman against her fear of her own power, and relishing in love versus running from it. She had to learn to trust herself, her “sisters”, the female powers that be, truth, and a few decent men. She had to unlearn her faith, unfollow her government, let go of family ties that did not bind after all, and understand that men currently ruled the world but they weren’t all to blame.

She also had to experience the horror that is war. She not only shed her own blood time and time again, but had to spill the blood of others. The world was at war and she had to become a warrior. It’s a miracle the girl didn’t get whiplash from all the ways she was pulled. Beloved daughter to scorn of her village, being bled out for cash to being enrolled into the military, from demon to hero, from lowly girl to independent woman.

Her inner struggles were believable and she showed how hard it is for women who have been embroiled in abuse for years struggle to break free. It’s not enough to be presented with truth. You have to weigh truth against the lies and be willing to not only learn but to see it fully and accept it. Once you accept you can finally begin to heal and grow and move onward and upward.

Honestly, the book is extraordinarily powerful and uplifting. I look forward to reading the remaining two works of this trilogy.

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Book Guild Polls 17

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Book Guild Polls 15