Heroines of Margaret Rogerson's books fanart!
Read these books if you enjoy a beautifully crafted writing style, worldbuilding, and characters! They are all such unique gems that have interesting distinct worlds, and I need more people to talk about them. 😂
Artemisia from Vespertine, Isobel from An Enchantment of Ravens, and Elizabeth from A Sorcery of Thorns.
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Silas redux.
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A scene from Sorcery of Thorns that I've been wanting to do for the longest time. Silas' summoning scene was the capstone of this book for me. It was terrifying, sorrowful, and bittersweet for the trio to go through. Silas is my favorite character of the three, as a non-human character learning or questioning human feels is one of my favorite tropes, and this scene tested that with a ferocity.
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I am obsessed with the MoTM Silas epilogue. Like. What Was That. He happily thinks about how he created problems on purpose (the main plot of this book!!) to get the two teenagers he takes care of to progress their relationship. Literally a kid making his dolls kiss. He thinks about planning their wedding in the same breath with reminiscing about how he kidnapped tortured and murdered a man!! And then he summons the fucking void garbage disposal to shred a a dress he thinks is ugly. The garbage disposal tells him all the other demons want to kill him and his response is "lol". The most character ever
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Okay, it's been a while so here's an additional list of fantasy and sci-fi books with little to no romance in them that I've read recently and really loved.
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First post with books not heavy on the romantic subplots HERE.
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Once There Was ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ by Kiyash Monsef.
An Iranian American girl discovers that her recently dead father was a veterinary for magical animals and that she - like him - has inherited the ability to help these animals because of a family line reaching back for hundreds of generations.
The story deals with grief, rage, neglect and how it all intersects.
But it's also an incredibly magical story that wakes up all the wonder and love for animals that most children have and some never lose.
Interspersed through the book are also short fables and legends that Marjan's father used to tell her when she was young and are now gaining new meaning as she understands that they were more than stories.
(totally also recommend the audiobook version for those who enjoy good narration. Nikki Massoud does a freaking excellent job)
(Marjan does develop subtly budding feelings for someone in the story but it's kept very, very background. On a scale from 0 to 10 the romance reaches barely a 2).
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Vespertine ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ by Margaret Rogerson.
A story about a girl named Artemisia who is training to become a Gray Sister. A nun who cleanses the bodies of the dead so that their souls would not return as ravenous spirits that would then threaten the lives of the living.
But then her convent gets attacked by possessed soldiers and she's forced to pick up a sword holding the spirit of a very powerful revenant - a malevolent spirit of mass destruction that could possess her and kill everyone around her indiscriminately - despite not having the training of a Vespertine. So the only one who can teach her what she needs to know is the Revenant itself.
(The main character is autistic, antisocial and extremely introverted. And as for the romance, there is someone who develops feelings for her and we as the reader kinda notice it, but Artemisia the character notices nothing (also, the someone in question is not the Revenant, just thought I should clarify that). Amounts of romance in the book, like 1/10)
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A House With Good Bones ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ by T. Kingfisher.
A Southern Gothic light horror with a bit of humor thrown in.
Sam Montgomery is worried about her mother so when her Paleoentomology dig falls through after she's already sublet her apartment for the next few months, she temporarily moves back in with her mother.
The mother who seems to be very stressed out while saying she's fine, and also seems to have acquired a sudden personality transplant. More specifically, she seems to have changed the house from the bright and colorful place it's been for decades, into the cookie cutter, bland (and slightly racist) fifties commercial kinda place it once was under the iron thumb of Sam's dead grandmother.
Is this some kind of weird delayed grief? Early onset alzheimers?
And why isn't there a single bug or insect in the entirety of the back yard's rose garden? Or why does she wake up to thousand's of ladybugs crawling all over each other - and Sam - one night in her childhood bedroom? And what's up with all these vultures staring at their house 24/7?
(Sam's POV is hilarious, her relationship with her mother one of the most genuinely emotional aspects of the book, and the story creepy enough to be exciting without reaching the point that would have made me throw the book down a hole for my own peace of mind. The romance... eh, there's a very nice dude Sam wouldn't mind going out with but it's not all that relevant to anything so amounts of romance don't reach past 2 out of 10).
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And finally some special shout outs to some other recently read books that I also enjoyed and that don't really have a lot of focus on the romance but that I don't feel like getting into rn.
Thornhedge ⭐⭐⭐⭐ by T. Kingfisher, Emily Wilde's Encyclopedia of Faeries ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ by Heather Fawcett (okay this one's a bit heavier on the amount of romance but it gets points for not being annoying and still doesn't reach past 4 out of 10 in its amount, would recommend this book for people who enjoyed The Memoirs of Lady Trent), Translation Slate ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐by Ann Leckie, The Strange Case of the Alchemist's Daughter ⭐⭐⭐⭐ by Theodora Goss (the daughters of classical book scientists like Frankenstein, Dr. Jekill and Mr. Hyde, Moreau and others come together to solve some White Chapel murders and maybe uncover a society that has been doing human experiments on women. 0.5 out of 10 on amounts of romance).
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