Fantasy Books - Blog Posts

The City of Brass by S.A. Chakraborty

I don’t know how I lived without these characters before

Fantasy LGBTQ books besides six of crows (these descriptions are bare minimal, go check out the actual summaries)

The Smoke Thieves

Demons exist and are killed for their highly-prized smoke. Political turmoil with plots for thrones and for war, all with demon smoke somewhere woven in.

Wicked as you Wish

An alternate reality where magic is an important part of life, with the tales of King Arthur at the center.

Timekeeper

When time is dependent on clock towers, it is up to mechanics to keep them up and running.

The Watchmaker of Filigree Street

Set in the 19th century, this story is about a supposedly ordinary man and a clairvoyant.

I NEED this interaction in an actual fantasy book

It would make my day

I don't think fantasy writers play enough with the concept of the different fantasy races having distinct ethnicities. Like imagine a group of mixed peoples, where the dwarves are all roasting each other like dwarves do, and one of them remarks that when he first saw one of the other dwarves in the group, he mistook her for a man. The other dwarves in the group blink in surprise - the closest that dwarves will go to an audible gasp of shock - and she pulls out a knife and tries to stab him.

Once the dwarves have been separated from each other and the situation has calmed, one of the humans asks another dwarf what that incident was about. Naturally a human woman would have been insulted too, but dwarves are so jovial about insulting each other, why was this matter different?

And the dwarf who was asked explains that there are things you can brutally insult another dwarf about, and there are things you simply do not touch. The dwarf-woman in question is from a completely different region of The Great Underground as the others, and her people have different norms about what kind of patterns men and women braid into their beards. The dwarf insulting her wasn't only insulting her appearance, he was being racist.

The human is surprised to learn that dwarves have different peoples, and the dwarf looks at them like at an idiot. Of course they do, they even look completely different from each other. And the human listens as the dwarf lists off various distinguishing clothing details too nuanced for a human to notice, and then how dwarves coming from different corners of the world have different physical traits, according to what kind of conditions their local stone types dictate.

The human spots a connection and goes oh! We have that too, though ours are not about rock types and tunnel air, but the weather aboveground. Humans' facial features vary by how hot, cold, arid or windy their ancestors' homelands were, and our skin tone varies by how much the sun shines in their native region.

The dwarf frowns at the last part, going "I thought you people just paint your skin and dye your hair for fun", and the human admits that yeah, we do that too, but not all the time, and not the whole skin. The dwarf asks, what of that tall woman the colour of dravite, her palms and the soles of her feet were lighter than the rest of her. Does that mean she paints herself dark to be more beautiful?

The human says no, that just happens naturally. Maybe it's because one's palms and feet aren't exposed to the sun as much, so they are paler.

The dwarf nods, still unsure whether this is actually legit or just the human habit of lying for fun, and proceeds to ask about the wild northman of their party. He is as pale as an olm, but the palms of his hands and the soles of his feet are dark. Are they painted, or naturally that way?

No, the human answers. That guy just doesn't bathe.

yeah i’m fine (sometimes fictional characters are the only people i feel loved by)

It’s fun being in a fandom that literally doesn’t exist

If there is anybody out there that enjoys the book series Upside Down Magic by Sarah Mlynowski, Lauren Myracle, and Emily Jenkins, please please make yourself known because I have been alone for too long

Dritten! 💜

okay it got better for sureeee!!

its a bit of a slow start for me personally, but i thoroughly enjoyed the 2/3 and then the 3/3 even more!

im not sure if i will get the sequel or not, ill read a few more books and see if im still thinking about emily wilde after that.

spoilers below

wendell and emily’s dynamic is hilarious after the proposal. they are so direct with each other normally, but when it comes to romance they just avoid actually speaking of it as such.

i really enjoyed how the town accepted emily’s way of being, that she is not good with attention or small talk or pleasantries. they didnt demand any kind of thanks from her, they knew she was thankful without it.

3.5/5 ⭐️

im reading emily wilde’s encyclopaedia of faeries right now and im not sure how i feel about it.

like i like it dont get me wrong. i eat anything up that has fairies of any kind.

but im a very.. emotional person, and so the format of the book being emily’s diary, and her being quite a.. professional and almost stoic? person, doesnt quite engage me as much.

maybe she taps into her emotions later in the story (i’m about a 1/3 of the way through) so idk!! thats just my thoughts so far

im reading emily wilde’s encyclopaedia of faeries right now and im not sure how i feel about it.

like i like it dont get me wrong. i eat anything up that has fairies of any kind.

but im a very.. emotional person, and so the format of the book being emily’s diary, and her being quite a.. professional and almost stoic? person, doesnt quite engage me as much.

maybe she taps into her emotions later in the story (i’m about a 1/3 of the way through) so idk!! thats just my thoughts so far