#I'll give one thing to romantasy books though | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

aurorawest · 5 months

Text

The Scottish Boy by Alex de Campi - 5/5 stars

This book managed to rip my heart out at least 3 times. I loved it. Medieval enemies-to-lovers slow burn; very romantic. Kinda read like fanfiction at times but in a good way. 10/10 would read a follow-up love story about Arundel and Captain Wekena. If you like Captive Prince, give this one a try.

Reforged by Seth Haddon - 4/5 stars

Pretty good bodyguard romantasy. Ironically CS Pacat blurbed this one (another am-I-in-the-matrix moment). The world was interesting and I enjoyed the politics, though they're definitely not as complicated as other SFF politics I've gone feral over (see: Captive Prince, Winter's Orbit, A Memory Called Empire). I ordered the sequel after I finished this.

The Doctor's Date by Heidi Cullinan - 4/5 stars

A Power Unbound by Freya Marske - 5/5 stars

Where do I start? I love, love, LOVE A Marvellous Light. It's one of my favorite books ever. None of the rest of the books in the trilogy could live up to it, really, because it's so good. You'll notice I rated this one 5 stars though, because quite honestly I fell prey to a bit of The Academy Paying The Lord of the Rings Trilogy Its Due syndrome. I did love this book and thought it was better than A Restless Truth (which I still loved!) but part of that is, quite frankly, just due to the fact that I prefer m/m romance to f/f romance.

Anyway. This was such a good finale to the trilogy. I loved that the romance was a giant middle finger to purity cultists. I loved that one of the mains was Italian. I loved finally getting the story of what happened to the Alston twins. One thing I thought was really cool was how, viewed from the outside, you totally get why Edwin is such a loner. I really admire from a writing perspective how Marske pulled that off.

I feel like there's a lot to be said about what Marske was trying to SAY with this book, but I definitely need to reread it first before I can articulate any of it. The purity culture stuff is obvious, but the magic system too. I feel like Jack when he's almost able to connect everything in his mind into a bigger idea, but he can't quite get there.

I've got a special edition from Illumicrate coming, so I'll be rereading it when I have that.

Oh also, this book was the embodiment of all that one tumblr post -

The Guncle by Steven Rowley - 5/5 stars

I saw this in bookstores for years before I finally gave in and bought it. The blurb makes it sound insufferable and twee. Ignore the blurb. This was such a good book about grief and learning how to live again after terrible loss.

I Like Me Better by Robby Weber - 4/5 stars

At last I can stop getting the Lauv song stuck in my head whenever I set eyes on this book (it's stuck in my head as I type this). Pretty standard-issue YA, but it was cute and had a good message.

The Stagsblood King by Gideon E Wood - 4/5 stars

Another book about moving on from grief! This is the second book in a trilogy. When I was trying to determine if I wanted to read on beyond book 1, I scoured the internet for information about what happens in books 2 and 3. Eventually I decided, hell, I enjoyed book 1 well enough, even if what I want to happen in the rest of the trilogy doesn't happen, they're worth reading. SO, to that end, I will tell anyone looking for info that Tel gets romantically involved with a new man in this one, which, eh. I still want him to somehow end up with Vared. It was still quite good though.

In the Lives of Puppets by TJ Klune - DNF at pg 82

So funnily, we were at the bookstore the day I was about to start reading this, and my wife pointed out Ravensong (also by Klune) to me and said, "Do you have this one?" I made a face and said, "That's an older one of his books and I'm wary of his early work after that horrible Verania series. I don't think I've ever read an author as hit or miss as TJ Klune."

I wrote the above when I was 60 pages in and now I have officially DNFed this. Listen. You know how in Thor: Love and Thunder, Taika Waititi was clearly given free rein to do whatever he wanted, so all of his worst impulses made it to the final cut unchecked? Yeah. That's what this book is like.

Here's my Storygraph review: I see Klune is officially Too Big To Edit now. This book has exactly the same problem that his awful Verania series had—a joke that's funny at first but quickly grows tiresome when it's repeated five times per page. The emphasis on Victor's asexuality was also weird and read like Klune was just super proud of himself for writing an ace character.

Lion's Legacy by LC Rosen - 4.25/5 stars

Queer, YA Indiana Jones, but less #problematic. This book had some eerie similarities to my own archaeology adventure novel(s), which made me wonder half-seriously if I somehow know Lev Rosen? Anyway, I feared this would be very heavy-handed and not nuanced on archaeology's ethical dilemmas, since it's YA and also the current culture is to view said dilemmas as completely black and white with no nuance, but I was pleasantly surprised. It manages to examine that, queerness, and daddy issues, plus has time to be a genuinely fun and exciting adventure story. Highly recommend.

Too White to be Coloured, Too Coloured to be Black by Ismail Lagardien - 4/5 stars

I picked up this memoir in a bookstore at OR Tambo airport in Johannesburg as research for Six Places to Fall in Love, since Percy is coloured. A pretty brutal read, but good, and definitely good research. The author was a photographer and journalist through the most violent years of apartheid.

The Splendid and the Vile by Erik Larson - 5/5 stars

Two nonfiction books in a row?? This is the second book by Erik Larson I've read, the first being the excellent The Devil in the White City. I'm not, in general, all that interested in WWII when it comes to military history, but this book is about the day to day lives of Churchill and the people surrounding him (with brief stops to visit FDR and high-ranking Nazis sprinkled throughout). This is a very, very good book, and I recommend reading it if only as a reminder of the resilience and bravery of ordinary people under terrifying circumstances.

Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh - 5/5 stars

Holy shit. Holy shit is this book good. Imagine the love child of Lost, Person of Interest, and Battlestar Galactica, but queer and with multiverse shenanigans thrown in.

I need everyone to read this book. Now. Yesterday. Get to it.

40 notes · View notes

acourtofthought · 5 months

Note

if it weren't for one of the Valkyries being a possible love interest for Azriel we wouldn't have seen this much hate toward them istg... or maybe even worse bc they're women.

Saying that it's unrealistic to win a blood rite when you only had trained for 9 months while reading a fantasy book- wait scratch that A ROMANTASY is crazy imo. Like honey none of this is real, faes are. not. real. and on top of that the main plot is about the romance, the books are not here to give you logic!! How this is unrealistic while Feyre a 19 years old human girl killed a fkn giant wyrm with some piece of bones and mud is completely normal to you but you go around and say its unrealistic for Valkyries win the blood rite?

Or how they call the Valkyries goofing around with the house, childish and unlikeable while half centuries warriors having snowball fight is not childish or cringe?

I mean this is what happens when they only read the books for e/riel scenes while is none existence in acosf... they should enjoy them while they can cuz they're not gonna happen anymore. Watch something like this happens with CC3 bc they're only reading it for a none canon ship and when they get disappointed they blame it on writing and sjm...

(ps: I love both Bat Boys and Valkyries silliness and I believe in my high lady and the first Valkyries in centuries🫡)

I agree that there wouldn't be quite so much negativity towards certain characters if Gwyn were not set up to be an Az love interest. And you're right, there is a lot said about the Valkyrie's friendship and their accomplishments as a result.

The only thing I will say is that there's maybe a few valid points being made and I'll get to them in a second, though the problem is their agenda against Gwyn makes their arguments look more petty than coming from a place of interest in actual debate.

This is a fantasy book and wild and crazy things happen so them winning the Rite should be entirely plausible for that reason alone.

I think the problems come in when you look at the history of the Rite. Illyrian boys, at about 11 years old, are taken away from their family's for years and years to be trained all day in an extremely grueling and sometime violent manner.

I've seen some say that the girls were able to make it through the Rite because they had Cassian's training but he is the general of the Illyrian army's. If his training methods made it possible so that three adult females with absolutely no training prior (no exercise prior), can spend a few months training while still running a business (Emerie), working in the library (Gwyn and Nesta), in an encouraging environment rather than a punishing one, and become elite warriors in exactly the same way Rhys, Cassian, and Az did then why is that same kind of training not being pushed for in Devlin's camp rather than taking young boys from their homes? And if the moral of the story is that "friendship" is what got them through, then why aren't Rhys (the HL of the NC) or Cassian (the general) demanding that Devlin make changes to the training program to encourage more comradery and teamwork? Isn't it in their best interest to train the best warriors to protect their lands? Training them in what is clearly the most efficient way?

I've also seen some say Briallyn fixed it so Nesta won which is what made this Rite different from the bat boys but does that then make their win a true win if there was manipulation involved? I think the overall message is an amazing one while the execution left something to be desired as that particular storyline raised a lot of valid questions.

I don't begrudge the Valkyries their win at all, I think they are a fantastic addition to the series but I can see how it does seem a bit backwards, knowing that a few select adult females were taken under Cassian and Az's wings while allowing the children of their court to be forced at such a young age to train and placed under the care of Devlin who seems like an asshole.

With that said, maybe this will be SJM bringing about a new era and changes will be made to the Illyrian training program as a result. Maybe Devlin will be taken out and Az or Cassian will be put in charge of training the male Illyrians (which I think would make a great storyline for Az) while Nesta, Gwyn and Emerie train the females.

16 notes · View notes

no-where-new-hero · 8 months

Note

☕ - booktok and I'm cheating to add the state of YA in general 👀

Disclaimer at first that I don't have TikTok (proudly) so that my experience with social media book discourse is through Instagram (which also has a lot of TikToks transferred over, obviously) but I'm not sure if the IG algorithm shows me different things from what TikTok would. Anyway.

I'm going to start with the state of YA actually because I feel slightly more familiar with this but also I think BookTok/Bookstagram trends are absolutely contributing to its hellscape. I may have talked about this in the post about where LMM would be shelved, but I think YA is losing its own identity. It's no longer about finding your place in the world or coming to terms with identity or dealing with themes that will help provide a bridge between childhood and adulthood. Romantasy abounds as much as in adult fiction, maybe just with a little less sex (though that's debatable). Contemporary feels reducible to a Pinterest moodboard (Portrait of a Thief, which I honestly liked in a lot of ways, suffered from this in my opinion). Fantasy without romance is almost nonexistent, and SF is more and more negligible.

All of these issues are perpetuated by BookTok. In a small video, there's only so much of a story you can share. Romantic tropes, aesthetic pictures, over-the-top dramatic lines sell well on there because they're catchy and cater to a romance- and visual-centric society. But I think it has given the false impression that you can stretch a skin of plot over these bones and call it an animal, and because everyone is accepting that this is an animal, the proliferation of such simulacra continues. Especially when the plot itself is none too strong.

You mentioned the trope problem, and I'll drill down on it because I definitely see this as the fanficification of published literature and the deterioration of rigorous plotting: A, because people enjoy it. B, because a majority of new authors grew up in the fanfic heyday and cut their teeth on that style, so they no longer know how to break free of it. C, because it's easy: you have narrative assumptions baked into rivals to lovers, in there's-only-one-bed, the coffeeshop au, etc. They're in fanfic because they're easy and provide a handy template for the meat of the story, which is the characters. But translating that into original fiction runs the risk of creating a predictable story. Predictability can mean palatability, which doesn't hurt on the whole. But it again inscribes this misbelief that if that's all that's on the market, that's all that people want.

The publishing industry absolutely is perpetuating it too: to sell a book now, you need to give comparative titles, "the books yours will sit next to on a display." There's more and more pigeonholing, which the fanfic style enables.

I could also get into the moral turpitude of some of the books on there (cough anything by colleen hoover not to mention HAUNTING ADELINE cough) but that will sound unnecessarily judgy, so I won't. Suffice to say that I feel sorry for anyone trying to "become a reader" by taking their recommendations solely from an app driven by popularity, shock-value, and the cultural capital of prettiness and success.

(Okay I need a last footnote to say that I understand that ALL advertising is driven by popularity, shock-value, and cultural capital. But you remember in the old days when you could go into the library and find a dusty book that was published in like 1990 or something and it smelled like it was growing mildew and it probably had a horrible cover and the author was someone you'd never heard of and none of your friends knew what the book was but you would bring it home and it would completely change your brain chemistry and everything you thought about the world? THAT'S HOW YOU BECOME A READER FELLAS. As a librarian in training, I'm going to die on this hill.)

#i still want to reblog your other post with gogandmagog because you guys brought up other fabulous things i didn't have time to address here #blake’s last braincell #blake’s mail #blake's asks

13 notes · View notes

burningdarkfire · 4 months

Text

books i read in dec 2023

[these are all short + casual reviews - feel free to ask about individual ones if u want my full thoughts or ask for my goodreads!!]

fighting for my life this december but you know what? i ended with a great and relaxing holiday season 🎄 hope everyone also got some good reading done to close out the year!

captive prince (reread) + pet - c.s. pacat ★★★★☆ (romantasy)

i first read this series 6 years ago and can i just say that i definitely get it now. way more than i did 6 years ago. it's a fucking masterclass in the erotic. a good, slow burn romance where the tension is off the charts and the whole situation is a delicious amount of fucked up

the beak of the finch - jonathan weiner ★★★★☆ (science nonfiction)

there were some obvious gaps, and it drags in the middle chapters, but it's also beautifully written with some lovely turns of phrase

[reread] a dangerous path - erin hunter ★★★★☆ (animal fantasy)

can't believe it's 2023 and i'm still having profound feelings about fireheart and bluestar. one of my faves from the original series

overcoming unwanted intrusive thoughts - sally m. winston ★★★★☆ (psychology nonfiction)

i don't think i actually get intrusive thoughts but this was a useful read to better understand what some people close to me might have going on in their heads <3

the mystery guest - nita prose ★★★★☆ (mystery)

surprisingly really enjoyed this, the main character actually reads like a protagonist instead of a forced gimmick. the mystery itself was pretty subpar but i found the dual timeline pretty compelling

recitatif - toni morrison ★★★★☆ (historical short story)

it's more famously an exercise than it is an actual story, but the story itself is at least functionally interesting

the lottery & other stories - shirley jackson ★★★★☆ (horror short story collection)

impressively thematically coherent for a short story collection, though i think shirley jackson is one of those authors where she and i are simply concerned about different things in life

legendborn - tracy deonn ★★★☆☆ (YA contemporary fantasy)

diverse protag gives a genuinely interesting spin to an otherwise pretty standard YA that's mostly played straight

natural beauty - ling ling huang ★★★☆☆ (horror)

great concept but just didn't quite get there. definitely an interesting debut and i'll be looking for more books from this author

[reread] honeybee - trista mateer ★★★☆☆ (poetry)

reread this to see if i wanted to give it as an xmas gift (the answer was no) it is exactly the kind of middling breakup poetry i was remembering but also more gay

hallowe'en party - agatha christie ★★★☆☆ (mystery)

the actual mystery was quite good but unfortunately agatha christie obviously had uhhh some things on her mind when she wrote this one and it kept getting interrupted by what felt like essentially an unrelated political tirade

the winners - fredrik backman ★★☆☆☆ (contemporary)

the idea behind this was pretty good but unfortunately i am not convinced it needed to exist and especially not for almost 700 pages. the first book is great on its own!

our numbered days - neil hilborn ★★☆☆☆ (poetry)

some spoken word poetry simply is not meant for the page. look this guy up on youtube if you want to see his artistry. but also i think the way he wrote about his exes kind of gave me the ick

#my posts #reading wrap up #liveblogging books #books

1 note · View note