han's bookshelf: all en-US Wed, 09 Apr 2025 12:07:09 -0700 60 han's bookshelf: all 144 41 /images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg <![CDATA[Blood Meridian, or, the Evening Redness in the West]]> 394535 Blood Meridian is an epic novel of the violence and depravity that attended America's westward expansion, brilliantly subverting the conventions of the Western novel and the mythology of the Wild West. Based on historical events that took place on the Texas-Mexico border in the 1850s, it traces the fortunes of the Kid, a fourteen-year-old Tennesseean who stumbles into a nightmarish world where Indians are being murdered and the market for their scalps is thriving.]]> 351 Cormac McCarthy han 0 currently-reading 4.18 1985 Blood Meridian, or, the Evening Redness in the West
author: Cormac McCarthy
name: han
average rating: 4.18
book published: 1985
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/09
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> Intercepts 45868683 Joe works at a facility that performs human experimentation.
His work just followed him home.

The government wanted to unlock hidden abilities in the human mind.

They put subjects in extreme sensory deprivation.

All the test subjects went violently insane.

But the research continued.

Today it has been perfected.

Almost perfected.


From the author of In My Father's Basement comes another chilling novel that's a must-read for fans of horror. "Gruesome, gripping, and terrifyingly real!"]]> 327 T.J. Payne han 2 4.11 2019 Intercepts
author: T.J. Payne
name: han
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2019
rating: 2
read at: 2024/10/12
date added: 2025/04/07
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Grace of Kings (The Dandelion Dynasty, #1)]]> 18952341 640 Ken Liu 1481424270 han 3
The main thing that frustrated me about the book was the writing style. Everything is written as an anecdote or as though it were an illustrative lesson: This person thought the battle unwinnable, then saw a hare kicking at a wolf’s face as the wolf tried to disembowel it. When the wolf’s jaws loosened, the hare ran into the bushes. The person realized that retreat and survival were also part of battle.

Some of this is cool, but it comprises the ENTIRE book. It gets to a point of extreme telling instead of showing, because every change of heart or realization anyone has is illustrated by stopping the narrative to explain exactly what they’re thinking/realizing/deciding.

On the inverse side, the book does a great job illustrating these war scenes where deception, misinformation, and planning create victory. I actually really appreciated the intense “telling� in these scenes because at times the plans were so layered I really needed someone to explain what was going on lol. I think the author did that well without talking down to the reader.

One thing that truly surprised me was how the book ultimately gave a ton of grace and agency to its villains. I really really liked this aspect and it took me by surprise over and over again. I would be rooting for someone’s execution in one scene and flip to wanting them at the MC’s side because of the political mojo they’d have together in a matter of three chapters. I spent a really long time frustrated and done with the antagonist only to be moved intensely by his final moments. Etc.

Overall, this was an imperfect book with some really compelling elements and I want to read the next one as it seems there will be a bit less distance from the characters, which was my main frustration. ]]> 3.77 2015 The Grace of Kings (The Dandelion Dynasty, #1)
author: Ken Liu
name: han
average rating: 3.77
book published: 2015
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/03
date added: 2025/04/04
shelves:
review:
This was an interesting read. I feel like my pros and cons lists are on separate continents.

The main thing that frustrated me about the book was the writing style. Everything is written as an anecdote or as though it were an illustrative lesson: This person thought the battle unwinnable, then saw a hare kicking at a wolf’s face as the wolf tried to disembowel it. When the wolf’s jaws loosened, the hare ran into the bushes. The person realized that retreat and survival were also part of battle.

Some of this is cool, but it comprises the ENTIRE book. It gets to a point of extreme telling instead of showing, because every change of heart or realization anyone has is illustrated by stopping the narrative to explain exactly what they’re thinking/realizing/deciding.

On the inverse side, the book does a great job illustrating these war scenes where deception, misinformation, and planning create victory. I actually really appreciated the intense “telling� in these scenes because at times the plans were so layered I really needed someone to explain what was going on lol. I think the author did that well without talking down to the reader.

One thing that truly surprised me was how the book ultimately gave a ton of grace and agency to its villains. I really really liked this aspect and it took me by surprise over and over again. I would be rooting for someone’s execution in one scene and flip to wanting them at the MC’s side because of the political mojo they’d have together in a matter of three chapters. I spent a really long time frustrated and done with the antagonist only to be moved intensely by his final moments. Etc.

Overall, this was an imperfect book with some really compelling elements and I want to read the next one as it seems there will be a bit less distance from the characters, which was my main frustration.
]]> <![CDATA[The Practice, the Horizon, and the Chain]]> 126918014 Celebrated author Sofia Samatar presents a mystical, revolutionary space adventure for the exhausted dreamer in this brilliant science fiction novella tackling the carceral state and violence embedded in the ivory tower while embodying the legacy of Ursula K. Le Guin.

"Can the University be a place of both training and transformation?"

The boy was raised as one of the Chained, condemned to toil in the bowels of a mining ship out amongst the stars.

His whole world changes―literally―when he is yanked "upstairs" to meet the woman he will come to call “professor.� The boy is no longer one of the Chained, she tells him, and he has been gifted an opportunity to be educated at the ship’s university alongside the elite.

The woman has spent her career striving for acceptance and validation from her colleagues in the hopes of reaching a brighter future, only to fall short at every turn.

Together, the boy and the woman will learn from each other to grasp the design of the chains designed to fetter them both, and are the key to breaking free. They will embark on a transformation―and redesign the entire world.]]> 93 Sofia Samatar han 4 3.93 2024 The Practice, the Horizon, and the Chain
author: Sofia Samatar
name: han
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/22
date added: 2025/03/22
shelves:
review:
I loved the prose and the mysterious, vague inner workings of the ship, and it clearly has some very serious commentary on classism / incarceration in our society. The ending just felt like exactly what I expected to happen? I wish it had surprised me a bit more the way the beginning of the book continually surprised me with new details.
]]> The Wings Upon Her Back 208621580 In this gripping debut novel from acclaimed Nebula, Sturgeon, and Locus Award-winning author Samantha Mills, a disgraced soldier fights to make sense of her world and the gods who abandoned it. The Wings Upon Her Back is an action-packed, devastating exploration of the brutal costs of zealous loyalty.

Zenya was a teenager when she ran away to join the mechanically-modified warrior sect. She was determined to earn mechanized wings and protect the people of Radezhda, the city she loved. Under the strict tutelage of a mercurial, charismatic leader, Vodaya, Zenya finally became Winged Zemolai.

But after twenty-six years of service, Zemolai is disillusioned with her role as an enforcer in an increasingly fascist state. After one tragic act of mercy, she is brutally cast out and loses everything she worked for. As Zemolai struggles for her life, she is must question her sect, their leader, and even the gods themselves.]]> 394 Samantha Mills han 4 3.99 2024 The Wings Upon Her Back
author: Samantha Mills
name: han
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/17
date added: 2025/03/17
shelves:
review:

]]> The Reformatory 74891190 A gripping, page-turning novel set in Jim Crow Florida that follows Robert Stephens Jr. as he’s sent to a segregated reform school that is a chamber of terrors where he sees the horrors of racism and injustice, for the living, and the dead.

Gracetown, Florida

June 1950

Twelve-year-old Robbie Stephens, Jr., is sentenced to six months at the Gracetown School for Boys, a reformatory, for kicking the son of the largest landowner in town in defense of his older sister, Gloria. So begins Robbie’s journey further into the terrors of the Jim Crow South and the very real horror of the school they call The Reformatory.

Robbie has a talent for seeing ghosts, or haints. But what was once a comfort to him after the loss of his mother has become a window to the truth of what happens at the reformatory. Boys forced to work to remediate their so-called crimes have gone missing, but the haints Robbie sees hint at worse things. Through his friends Redbone and Blue, Robbie is learning not just the rules but how to survive. Meanwhile, Gloria is rallying every family member and connection in Florida to find a way to get Robbie out before it’s too late.

The Reformatory is a haunting work of historical fiction written as only American Book Award–winning author Tananarive Due could, by piecing together the life of the relative her family never spoke of and bringing his tragedy and those of so many others at the infamous Dozier School for Boys to the light in this riveting novel.]]> 573 Tananarive Due han 5 4.50 2023 The Reformatory
author: Tananarive Due
name: han
average rating: 4.50
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2025/03/10
date added: 2025/03/10
shelves:
review:
This book is devastating and scary because it’s very clearly real and true. The actual ghosts are a reassuring presence compared to the specter of violent racism and dehumanization that looms over the cast. Reading the author’s note and understanding how personal this narrative was to her just made it all hit harder. Never cried through an author’s note before�
]]> Tentacle 40679930 144 Rita Indiana 1911508350 han 0 3.39 2015 Tentacle
author: Rita Indiana
name: han
average rating: 3.39
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at: 2025/03/03
date added: 2025/03/03
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Penric’s Demon (Penric and Desdemona, #1)]]> 25791216
Set in the fantasy world of the author's acclaimed novels THE CURSE OF CHALION, PALADIN OF SOULS and THE HALLOWED HUNT, this novella has the depth of characterization and emotional complexity that distinguishes all Bujold's work.]]> 103 Lois McMaster Bujold han 0 to-read 4.21 2015 Penric’s Demon (Penric and Desdemona, #1)
author: Lois McMaster Bujold
name: han
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Let the Right One In 20751037
It is autumn 1981 when inconceivable horror comes to Blackeberg, a suburb in Sweden. The body of a teenager is found, emptied of blood, the murder rumored to be part of a ritual killing. Twelve-year-old Oskar is personally hoping that revenge has come at long last---revenge for the bullying he endures at school, day after day.

But the murder is not the most important thing on his mind. A new girl has moved in next door---a girl who has never seen a Rubik's Cube before, but who can solve it at once. There is something wrong with her, though, something odd. And she only comes out at night. . . .Sweeping top honors at film festivals all over the globe, director Tomas Alfredsson's film of Let the Right One In has received the same kind of spectacular raves that have been lavished on the book. American and Swedish readers of vampire fiction will be thrilled!

Following the success in Sweden, this movie was remade starring Kodi Smit Mcpheem, Chloe Grace Moretz and Richard Jenkins under the new title Let Me In. The story has continued to reach new viewers in a London Musical and the book remains a vampire favorite among its readers.]]> 479 John Ajvide Lindqvist 1429924462 han 3
]]> 3.92 2004 Let the Right One In
author: John Ajvide Lindqvist
name: han
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2004
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/27
date added: 2025/02/28
shelves:
review:
I find it really bizarre that people reading this in 2024/2025 still want to compare it to Twilight. Subversion is not even on the menu my brother, the zeitgeist has moved on.


]]> How High We Go in the Dark 58161113
Among those adjusting to this new normal are an aspiring comedian, employed by a theme park designed for terminally ill children, who falls in love with a mother trying desperately to keep her son alive; a scientist who, having failed to save his own son from the plague, gets a second chance at fatherhood when one of his test subjects-a pig-develops human speech; a man who, after recovering from his own coma, plans a block party for his neighbours who have also woken up to find that they alone have survived their families; and a widowed painter and her teenaged granddaughter who must set off on cosmic quest to locate a new home planet.

From funerary skyscrapers to hotels for the dead, How High We Go in the Dark follows a cast of intricately linked characters spanning hundreds of years as humanity endeavours to restore the delicate balance of the world. This is a story of unshakable hope that crosses literary lines to give us a world rebuilding itself through an endless capacity for love, resilience and reinvention. Wonderful and disquieting, dreamlike and all too possible.]]> 290 Sequoia Nagamatsu han 3 3.93 2022 How High We Go in the Dark
author: Sequoia Nagamatsu
name: han
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/11
date added: 2025/02/27
shelves:
review:

]]> The Eyes Are the Best Part 179780170 “Violent, smart, gruesome and wildly original, this novel pulls readers into a horrific world of murder and cannibalism while also critiquing misogyny, exploring Asian fetishization and stereotypes, sharing what it’s like to navigate two cultures and telling a touching story of a family in turmoil.� �New York Times Book Review

Crying in H-Mart meets My Sister, the Serial Killer in this feminist psychological horror about the making of a female serial killer from a Korean-American perspective.

Ji-won’s life tumbles into disarray in the wake of her Appa’s extramarital affair and subsequent departure. Her mother, distraught. Her younger sister, hurt and confused. Her college freshman grades, failing. Her dreams, horrifying� yet enticing.

In them, Ji-won walks through bloody rooms full of eyes. Succulent blue eyes. Salivatingly blue eyes. Eyes the same shape and shade as George’s, who is Umma’s obnoxious new boyfriend. George has already overstayed his welcome in her family’s claustrophobic apartment. He brags about his puffed-up consulting job, ogles Asian waitresses while dining out, and acts condescending toward Ji-won and her sister as if he deserves all of Umma’s fawning adoration. No, George doesn’t deserve anything from her family. Ji-won will make sure of that.

For no matter how many victims accumulate around her campus or how many people she must deceive and manipulate, Ji-won’s hunger and her rage deserve to be sated.

A brilliantly inventive, subversive novel about a young woman unraveling, Monika Kim’s The Eyes Are the Best Part is a story of a family falling apart and trying to find their way back to each other, marking a bold new voice in horror that will leave readers mesmerized and craving more.]]> 284 Monika Kim 1645661253 han 3 3.91 2024 The Eyes Are the Best Part
author: Monika Kim
name: han
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/02/15
date added: 2025/02/27
shelves:
review:
This was solidly entertaining with some good social commentary but didn’t shock me or shake me up.
]]> <![CDATA[One Way Witch (She Who Knows #2)]]> 213045342 Set in the universe Africanfuturist luminary Nnedi Okorafor first introduced in the World Fantasy Award-winning Who Fears Death, One Way Witch is the second in the She Who Knows trilogy

The world has forgotten Onyesonwu.

As a teen, Najeeba learned to become the beast of wind, fire and the kponyungo. When that took too much from her, including the life of her father, she let it all go, and for a time, she was happy � until only a few years later, when the small, normal life she’d built was violently destroyed.

Now in her forties and years beyond the death of her second husband, Najeeba has just lost her beloved daughter. Onyesonwu saved the world. Najeeba knows this well, but the world does not. This is how the juju her daughter evoked works. One other person who remembers is Onyesonwu’s teacher Aro, a harsh and hard-headed sorcerer. Najeeba has decided to ask him to teach her the Mystic Points, the powerful heart of sorcery. There is something awful Najeeba needs to kill and the Mystic Points are the only way. Najeeba is truly her daughter’s mother.

When Aro agrees to help, Najeeba is at last ready to forge her future. But first, she must confront her past � for certain memories cannot lie in unmarked graves.]]> 159 Nnedi Okorafor 0756418984 han 0 to-read 3.67 2025 One Way Witch (She Who Knows #2)
author: Nnedi Okorafor
name: han
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Doomsday Book (Oxford Time Travel, #1)]]> 181507721
But a crisis strangely linking past and future strands Kivrin in a bygone age as her fellows try desperately to rescue her. In a time of superstition and fear, Kivrin—barely of age herself—finds she has become an unlikely angel of hope during one of history’s darkest hours.]]> 593 Connie Willis han 4
Spoiler, I was affected.

The beginning half of this story has a ton of moments of foreshadowing that feel a bit heavy handed and don’t seem to go anywhere. It’s like these points are being hammered on with no resolution. From the first pages, there is this intense description of the Christmas shoppers, crowded streets, the recorded bells ringing, and what Mary had bought for her nephew who she has to meet at 3pm. All of this is probably repeated 3x in the first few chapters. I assumed it would have payoff but was like “ok so do I need to remember all this??�

I feel like if I went back and read those first chapters I would burst into tears. Every irrelevant moment in this story is hand crafted to make the people in the world more human, and the moments that make you angry at people are 2x guaranteed to pay off in that respect. It’s literally just a book about how human life is valuable. That in every era we try to help each other. That humanity is rejecting allowing others to die in filth and solitude. That we cannot be hardened against death because we love too strongly. ]]> 4.24 1992 Doomsday Book (Oxford Time Travel, #1)
author: Connie Willis
name: han
average rating: 4.24
book published: 1992
rating: 4
read at: 2025/02/21
date added: 2025/02/21
shelves:
review:
I read this all like, I won’t be affected by a book about a deadly pandemic, I just got through one of those!

Spoiler, I was affected.

The beginning half of this story has a ton of moments of foreshadowing that feel a bit heavy handed and don’t seem to go anywhere. It’s like these points are being hammered on with no resolution. From the first pages, there is this intense description of the Christmas shoppers, crowded streets, the recorded bells ringing, and what Mary had bought for her nephew who she has to meet at 3pm. All of this is probably repeated 3x in the first few chapters. I assumed it would have payoff but was like “ok so do I need to remember all this??�

I feel like if I went back and read those first chapters I would burst into tears. Every irrelevant moment in this story is hand crafted to make the people in the world more human, and the moments that make you angry at people are 2x guaranteed to pay off in that respect. It’s literally just a book about how human life is valuable. That in every era we try to help each other. That humanity is rejecting allowing others to die in filth and solitude. That we cannot be hardened against death because we love too strongly.
]]> Station Eleven 20170404 An audacious, darkly glittering novel set in the eerie days of civilization’s collapse—the spellbinding story of a Hollywood star, his would-be savior, and a nomadic group of actors roaming the scattered outposts of the Great Lakes region, risking everything for art and humanity.

Kirsten Raymonde will never forget the night Arthur Leander, the famous Hollywood actor, had a heart attack on stage during a production of King Lear. That was the night when a devastating flu pandemic arrived in the city, and within weeks, civilization as we know it came to an end.

Twenty years later, Kirsten moves between the settlements of the altered world with a small troupe of actors and musicians. They call themselves The Traveling Symphony, and they have dedicated themselves to keeping the remnants of art and humanity alive. But when they arrive in St. Deborah by the Water, they encounter a violent prophet who will threaten the tiny band’s existence. And as the story takes off, moving back and forth in time, and vividly depicting life before and after the pandemic, the strange twist of fate that connects them all will be revealed.]]> 333 Emily St. John Mandel 0385353308 han 0 to-read 4.05 2014 Station Eleven
author: Emily St. John Mandel
name: han
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Butcher of the Forest 127281143
At the northern edge of a land ruled by a monstrous, foreign tyrant lies the wild forest known as the Elmever. The villagers know better than to let their children go near—once someone goes in, they never come back out.

No one knows the strange and terrifying traps of the Elmever better than Veris Thorn, the only person to ever rescue a child from the forest many years ago. When the Tyrant’s two young children go missing, Veris is commanded to enter the forest once more and bring them home safe. If Veris fails, the Tyrant will kill her; if she remains in the forest for longer than a day, she will be trapped forevermore.

So Veris will travel deep into the Elmever to face traps, riddles, and monsters at the behest of another monster. One misstep will cost everything.]]> 160 Premee Mohamed 1250881781 han 0 to-read 3.87 2024 The Butcher of the Forest
author: Premee Mohamed
name: han
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> War of the Foxes 21532793 49 Richard Siken 1556594771 han 0 to-read 4.15 2015 War of the Foxes
author: Richard Siken
name: han
average rating: 4.15
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Heiresses of Russ 2016: The Year's Best Lesbian Speculative Fiction]]> 33002064 ]]> 463 A.M. Dellamonica han 0 maybe-later 4.40 2016 Heiresses of Russ 2016: The Year's Best Lesbian Speculative Fiction
author: A.M. Dellamonica
name: han
average rating: 4.40
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/15
shelves: maybe-later
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Bone Shard Daughter (The Drowning Empire, #1)]]> 57764307 In an empire controlled by bone shard magic, Lin, the former heir to the emperor will fight to reclaim her magic and her place on the throne.

The emperor's reign has lasted for decades, his mastery of bone shard magic powering the animal-like constructs that maintain law and order. But now his rule is failing, and revolution is sweeping across the Empire's many islands.

Lin is the emperor's daughter and spends her days trapped in a palace of locked doors and dark secrets. When her father refuses to recognise her as heir to the throne, she vows to prove her worth by mastering the forbidden art of bone shard magic.

Yet such power carries a great cost, and when the revolution reaches the gates of the palace, Lin must decide how far she is willing to go to claim her birthright - and save her people.]]> 449 Andrea Stewart 0316541443 han 0 maybe-later 4.04 2020 The Bone Shard Daughter (The Drowning Empire, #1)
author: Andrea Stewart
name: han
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/15
shelves: maybe-later
review:

]]> Fate's Bane 222376644 Ignyte Award-winning author C. L. Clark brings fantasy to the fens with Fate's Bane, a tragic sapphic adventure.

Warring clans. Burning hearts. Deadly fate.

The clans of the fens enjoy a tenuous peace, and it is all thanks to Agnir, ward and hostage. For as long as she can remember she has lived among the enemy, learning their ways, growing strong alongside their children. When a burgeoning love for the chieftain's daughter lures them both to a hidden spring, a magic awakens in them that could bind the clans under one banner at last--or destroy any hope of peace. By working their intentions into leather, they can weave misfortune for their enemies... just like the Fate's Bane that haunts the legends of the clans.

Ambitions grow in their fathers' hearts, grudges threaten a return to violence, and greedy enemies wait outside the borders, seeking a foothold to claim the fens for themselves. And though their Makings may save their families, the legend that gave them this power always exacts its price.]]> 176 C.L. Clark 1250293146 han 0 to-read 5.00 2025 Fate's Bane
author: C.L. Clark
name: han
average rating: 5.00
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Scapegracers (Scapegracers, #1)]]> 51885014 An outcast teenage lesbian witch finds her coven hidden amongst the popular girls in her school, and performs some seriously badass magic in the process.

Skulking near the bottom of West High’s social pyramid, Sideways Pike lurks under the bleachers doing magic tricks for Coke bottles. As a witch, lesbian, and lifelong outsider, she’s had a hard time making friends. But when the three most popular girls pay her $40 to cast a spell at their Halloween party, Sideways gets swept into a new clique. The unholy trinity are dangerous angels, sugar-coated rattlesnakes, and now–unbelievably–Sideways� best friends.

Together, the four bond to form a ferocious and powerful coven. They plan parties, cast curses on dudebros, try to find Sideways a girlfriend, and elude the fundamentalist witch hunters hellbent on stealing their magic. But for Sideways, the hardest part is the whole ‘having friends� thing. Who knew that balancing human interaction with supernatural peril could be so complicated?

Rich with the urgency of feral youth, The Scapegracers explores growing up and complex female friendship with all the rage of a teenage girl. It subverts the trope of competitive mean girls and instead portrays a mercilessly supportive clique of diverse and vivid characters. It is an atmospheric, voice-driven novel of the occult, and the first of a three-book series.]]> 400 H.A. Clarke 1645660001 han 0 to-read 3.91 2020 The Scapegracers (Scapegracers, #1)
author: H.A. Clarke
name: han
average rating: 3.91
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Strange Beasts of China 57099452 From one of the most exciting voices in contemporary Chinese literature, an uncanny and playful novel that blurs the line between human and beast �

In the fictional Chinese city of Yong’an, an amateur cryptozoologist is commissioned to uncover the stories of its fabled beasts. These creatures live alongside humans in near-inconspicuousness—save their greenish skin, serrated earlobes, and strange birthmarks.

Aided by her elusive former professor and his enigmatic assistant, our narrator sets off to document each beast, and is slowly drawn deeper into a mystery that threatens her very sense of self.

Part detective story, part metaphysical enquiry, Strange Beasts of China engages existential questions of identity, humanity, love and morality with whimsy and stylistic verve.]]> 232 Yan Ge 1612199097 han 0 to-read 3.72 2006 Strange Beasts of China
author: Yan Ge
name: han
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2006
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Mordew (Cities of the Weft, #1)]]> 58407149 Alex Pheby's Mordew launches an astonishingly inventive epic fantasy trilogy.

God is dead, his corpse hidden in the catacombs beneath Mordew.

In the slums of the sea-battered city, a young boy called Nathan Treeves lives with his parents, eking out a meagre existence by picking treasures from the Living Mud and the half-formed, short-lived creatures it spawns. Until one day his desperate mother sells him to the mysterious Master of Mordew.

The Master derives his magical power from feeding on the corpse of God. But Nathan, despite his fear and lowly station, has his own strength—and it is greater than the Master has ever known. Great enough to destroy everything the Master has built. If only Nathan can discover how to use it.

So it is that the Master begins to scheme against him—and Nathan has to fight his way through the betrayals, secrets, and vendettas of the city where God was murdered, and darkness reigns.

At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.]]> 656 Alex Pheby 1250817234 han 1
The author is not a strong writer of children. The children talk and act in ways that could place them anywhere between 8-18. The quirky gang of Dickensian orphans went on for about 180 pages too long and I was not endeared to any of them. The book is overall too long and meandering with a literal 100 page glossary at the back that the author's note ambivalently discourages you from reading.

Women are treated absurdly badly by this narrative. In the beginning I was able to rationalize it as the extreme conditions the characters are living in being bad for everyone. Then we meet women who are in better, safer situations, and they bend over backwards to advance the main character's agenda and give him power (he has no idea what he's doing). They help him for no reason, forgive him for no reason, kneel naked at his feet, empower him, serve him with seemingly no agendas of their own.

The crescendo of all of this is the revelation that the MC's mother -- an unwilling prostitue by necessity who emotionally and physically abused him for his entire life -- is ACTUALLY a princess, who DECIDED to live in the slums because there was nothing important enough for her to do in the palace. Until, of course, her son is ready to inherit. Then she strolls back into the palace to hand him the keys to the kingdom. The book hammers ON and ON about how sex work is destroying her life and how miserable she is and how it's eating away at her soul. Is there TRULY nothing she could have done with all that power and influence? Literally, WHY.

One last thing that drove me up a wall.... There's a whole sequence where the main character, in a moment of rage and newfound power, kills a herd of elephants. The author makes a meal of describing the bull elephant stepping forward to protect the herd. Elephants are matriarchal, bulls are solitary. This small detail perfectly underscored this book's opinion of women, and because it seems to be a mistake rather than a purposeful choice, seemingly the beliefs of the author as well. ]]> 3.81 2020 Mordew (Cities of the Weft, #1)
author: Alex Pheby
name: han
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2020
rating: 1
read at: 2025/02/06
date added: 2025/02/06
shelves:
review:
I went into this so hopeful and really liked a lot of the ideas, like the living mud producing a baby made of writhing limbs? Strong start. Unfortunately it was all downhill from there. Spoilers ahead.

The author is not a strong writer of children. The children talk and act in ways that could place them anywhere between 8-18. The quirky gang of Dickensian orphans went on for about 180 pages too long and I was not endeared to any of them. The book is overall too long and meandering with a literal 100 page glossary at the back that the author's note ambivalently discourages you from reading.

Women are treated absurdly badly by this narrative. In the beginning I was able to rationalize it as the extreme conditions the characters are living in being bad for everyone. Then we meet women who are in better, safer situations, and they bend over backwards to advance the main character's agenda and give him power (he has no idea what he's doing). They help him for no reason, forgive him for no reason, kneel naked at his feet, empower him, serve him with seemingly no agendas of their own.

The crescendo of all of this is the revelation that the MC's mother -- an unwilling prostitue by necessity who emotionally and physically abused him for his entire life -- is ACTUALLY a princess, who DECIDED to live in the slums because there was nothing important enough for her to do in the palace. Until, of course, her son is ready to inherit. Then she strolls back into the palace to hand him the keys to the kingdom. The book hammers ON and ON about how sex work is destroying her life and how miserable she is and how it's eating away at her soul. Is there TRULY nothing she could have done with all that power and influence? Literally, WHY.

One last thing that drove me up a wall.... There's a whole sequence where the main character, in a moment of rage and newfound power, kills a herd of elephants. The author makes a meal of describing the bull elephant stepping forward to protect the herd. Elephants are matriarchal, bulls are solitary. This small detail perfectly underscored this book's opinion of women, and because it seems to be a mistake rather than a purposeful choice, seemingly the beliefs of the author as well.
]]> The Lathe of Heaven 53513520 This science fiction classic by the Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author is"a rare and powerful synthesis of poetry and science, reason and emotion" (The New York Times).

In a near-future world beset by war, climate change, and overpopulation, Portland resident George Orr discovers that his dreams have the power to alter reality. Upon waking, the world he knew has become a strange, barely recognizable place, where only George has a clear memory of how it was before. Seeking escape from these “effective dreams,� George eventually turns to behavioral psychologist Dr. William Haber for a cure. But Haber has other ideas in mind.

Seeing the profound power of George’s dreams, Haber believes it must be harnessed for the greater good—no matter the cost. Soon, George is a pawn in Haber’s dangerous game, where the fate of humanity grows more imperiled with every waking hour.

As relevant today as it was when it won the Locus Award in 1971,The Lathe of Heavenis a true classic, at once eerie and prescient, entertaining and intelligent. In short, it does “what science fiction is supposed to do" (Newsweek).]]> 194 Ursula K. Le Guin han 0 to-read 4.24 1971 The Lathe of Heaven
author: Ursula K. Le Guin
name: han
average rating: 4.24
book published: 1971
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Howl's Moving Castle (Howl's Castle Book 1)]]> 218720668 308 Diana Wynne Jones han 5 4.35 1986 Howl's Moving Castle (Howl's Castle Book 1)
author: Diana Wynne Jones
name: han
average rating: 4.35
book published: 1986
rating: 5
read at: 2024/10/09
date added: 2025/02/02
shelves:
review:

]]> The Dead Cat Tail Assassins 126918054 The Dead Cat Tail Assassins are not cats.

Nor do they have tails.

But they are most assuredly dead.

Nebula and Alex Award winner P. Djèlí Clark introduces a brand new world and a fantastical city full of gods and assassins. 2024.

Eveen the Eviscerator is skilled, discreet, professional, and here for your most pressing needs in the ancient city of Tal Abisi. Her guild is strong, her blades are sharp, and her rules are simple. Those sworn to the Matron of Assassins—resurrected, deadly, wiped of their memories—have only three unbreakable vows.

First, the contract must be just. That’s above Eveen’s pay grade.

Second, even the most powerful assassin may only kill the contracted. Eveen’s a professional. She’s never missed her mark.

The third and the simplest: once you accept a job, you must carry it out. And if you stray? A final death would be a mercy. When the Festival of the Clockwork King turns the city upside down, Eveen’s newest mission brings her face-to-face with a past she isn’t supposed to remember and a vow she can’t forget.]]> 208 P. Djèlí Clark han 3 4.03 2024 The Dead Cat Tail Assassins
author: P. Djèlí Clark
name: han
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/27
date added: 2025/01/27
shelves:
review:
I typically really love P Djeli Clarke, but some odd intrusions from the modern world (like the terms edgelord, neckbeard, and several memetic phrases) made this a weird read for me. I felt like it suffered from some over-exposition/explanation, which created pacing issues. Sometimes you can say a thing and not explain it! 90% of things that were explained, I had already understood from the text, making the reveal boring and page-skippy. My favorite part was Creole being the language of Goddesses, took me back to reading Nalo Hopkinson � really excellent part of the story that immersed and challenged me in an interesting, unique way.
]]> <![CDATA[The Truth of the Aleke (Forever Desert, #2)]]> 65213699 Moses Ose Utomi returns to his Forever Desert series with The Truth of the Aleke, continuing his epic fable about truth, falsehood, and the shackles of history.

The Aleke is cruel. The Aleke is clever. The Aleke is coming.

500 years after the events of The Lies of the Ajungo, the City of Truth stands as is the last remaining free city of the Forever Desert. A bastion of freedom and peace, the city has successfully weathered the near-constant attacks from the Cult of Tutu, who have besieged it for three centuries, attempting to destroy its warriors and subjugate its people.

17-year-old Osi is a Junior Peacekeeper in the City. When the mysterious leader of the Cult, known only as the Aleke, commits a massacre in the capitol and steals the sacred God's Eyes, Osi steps forward to valiantly defend his home. For his bravery he is tasked with a tremendous responsibility—destroy the Cult of Tutu, bring back the God's Eyes, and discover the truth of the Aleke.]]> 105 Moses Ose Utomi 1250848385 han 4 4.26 2024 The Truth of the Aleke (Forever Desert, #2)
author: Moses Ose Utomi
name: han
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/26
date added: 2025/01/27
shelves:
review:
Very much on theme with this series, I went into the story with a certain expectation and that expectation was shattered. The author’s note about experiencing hate in America post-9/11 while also being taught the fear and anger of living in America during that time period really helped to contextualize the story the novella is telling.
]]> <![CDATA[The Tainted Cup (Shadow of the Leviathan #1)]]> 150249463
In Daretana’s greatest mansion, a high imperial officer lies dead—killed, to all appearances, when a tree erupted from his body. Even here at the Empire’s borders, where contagions abound and the blood of the leviathans works strange magical changes, it’s a death both terrifying and impossible.

Assigned to investigate is Ana Dolabra, a detective whose reputation for brilliance is matched only by her eccentricities. Rumor has it that she wears a blindfold at all times, and that she can solve impossible cases without even stepping outside the walls of her home.

At her side is her new assistant, Dinios Kol, magically altered in ways that make him the perfect aide to Ana’s brilliance. Din is at turns scandalized, perplexed, and utterly infuriated by his new superior—but as the case unfolds and he watches Ana’s mind leap from one startling deduction to the next, he must admit that she is, indeed, the Empire’s greatest detective.

As the two close in on a mastermind and uncover a scheme that threatens the Empire itself, Din realizes he’s barely begun to assemble the puzzle that is Ana Dolabra—and wonders how long he’ll be able to keep his own secrets safe from her piercing intellect.

By an “endlessly inventive� (Vulture) author with a “wicked sense of humor� (NPR), The Tainted Cup mixes the charms of detective fiction with brilliant world-building to deliver a fiendishly clever mystery that’s at once instantly recognizable and thrillingly new.]]> 410 Robert Jackson Bennett 1984820729 han 4 4.40 2024 The Tainted Cup (Shadow of the Leviathan #1)
author: Robert Jackson Bennett
name: han
average rating: 4.40
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/23
date added: 2025/01/24
shelves:
review:
Super fun, I loved the world building and the characters, especially Din. There were some random continuity errors that I found a bit distracting, but the great atmosphere and satisfying mystery fully made up for it. Excited for the sequel!
]]> <![CDATA[The Lies of the Ajungo (Forever Desert #1)]]> 60784878 Moses Ose Utomi's debut novella, The Lies of the Ajungo, follows one boy’s epic quest to bring water back to his city and save his mother’s life. Prepare to enter the Forever Desert.

A Library Journal Best Book of the Month!

They say there is no water in the City of Lies. They say there are no heroes in the City of Lies. They say there are no friends beyond the City of Lies. But would you believe what they say in the City of Lies?

In the City of Lies, they cut out your tongue when you turn thirteen, to appease the terrifying Ajungo Empire and make sure it continues sending water. Tutu will be thirteen in three days, but his parched mother won’t last that long. So Tutu goes to his oba and makes a she provides water for his mother, and in exchange he will travel out into the desert and bring back water for the city. Thus begins Tutu’s quest for the salvation of his mother, his city, and himself.

The Lies of the Ajungo opens the curtains on a tremendous world, and begins the epic fable of the Forever Desert. With every word, Moses Ose Utomi weaves magic.

At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.]]> 90 Moses Ose Utomi 1250848423 han 4 4.29 2023 The Lies of the Ajungo (Forever Desert #1)
author: Moses Ose Utomi
name: han
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2025/01/20
date added: 2025/01/20
shelves:
review:

]]> Our Wives Under the Sea 59538593 Leah is changed. A marine biologist, she left for a routine expedition months earlier, only this time her submarine sank to the sea floor. When she finally surfaces and returns home, her wife, Miri, knows that something is wrong. Barely eating and lost in her thoughts, Leah rotates between rooms in their apartment, running the taps morning and night. Whatever happened in that vessel, whatever it was they were supposed to be studying before they were stranded, Leah has carried part of it with her, onto dry land and into their home. As Miri searches for answers, desperate to understand what happened below the water, she must face the possibility that the woman she loves is slipping from her grasp.]]> 223 Julia Armfield han 3 3.72 2022 Our Wives Under the Sea
author: Julia Armfield
name: han
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/16
date added: 2025/01/16
shelves:
review:
Very readable and enjoyable, the prose is conversational while also containing cool allusions and a lot of little tidbits. The themes of loss and grief, and especially losing someone being an ongoing experience rather than a single moment, were very well expressed. In some ways I wish it had gone a little harder in on any of its own ideas; it felt like it kind of kept glancing off of things, although maybe that was the narrators� own avoidance.
]]> The Employees 75615791

Longlisted for the 2022 National Book Award


Funny and doom-drenched, The Employees chronicles the fate of the Six-Thousand Ship. The human and humanoid crew members complain about their daily tasks in a series of staff reports and memos. When the ship takes on a number of strange objects from the planet New Discovery, the crew becomes strangely and deeply attached to them, even as tensions boil toward mutiny, especially among the humanoids.
Olga Ravn’s prose is chilling, crackling, exhilarating, and foreboding. The Employees probes into what makes us human, while delivering a hilariously stinging critique of life governed by the logic of productivity. It was shortlisted for the the Ursula K. Le Guin Prize.]]> 139 Olga Ravn han 0 to-read 3.46 2018 The Employees
author: Olga Ravn
name: han
average rating: 3.46
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Black Leopard, Red Wolf (The Dark Star Trilogy #1)]]> 55710853 A Brief History of Seven Killings: an African Game of Thrones.

In the stunning first novel in Marlon James's Dark Star trilogy, myth, fantasy, and history come together to explore what happens when a mercenary is hired to find a missing child.

Tracker is known far and wide for his skills as a hunter: "He has a nose," people say. Engaged to track down a mysterious boy who disappeared three years earlier, Tracker breaks his own rule of always working alone when he finds himself part of a group that comes together to search for the boy. The band is a hodgepodge, full of unusual characters with secrets of their own, including a shape-shifting man-animal known as Leopard.

As Tracker follows the boy's scent--from one ancient city to another; into dense forests and across deep rivers--he and the band are set upon by creatures intent on destroying them. As he struggles to survive, Tracker starts to wonder: Who, really, is this boy? Why has he been missing for so long? Why do so many people want to keep Tracker from finding him? And perhaps the most important questions of all: Who is telling the truth, and who is lying?

Drawing from African history and mythology and his own rich imagination, Marlon James has written a novel unlike anything that's come before it: a saga of breathtaking adventure that's also an ambitious, involving read. Defying categorization and full of unforgettable characters, Black Leopard, Red Wolf is both surprising and profound as it explores the fundamentals of truth, the limits of power, and our need to understand them both.]]> 637 Marlon James han 3 3.54 2019 Black Leopard, Red Wolf (The Dark Star Trilogy #1)
author: Marlon James
name: han
average rating: 3.54
book published: 2019
rating: 3
read at: 2025/01/13
date added: 2025/01/13
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Last Tale of the Flower Bride]]> 110863709 A sumptuous, gothic-infused story about a marriage that is unraveled by dark secrets, a friendship cursed to end in tragedy, and the danger of believing in fairy tales--the breathtaking adult debut from New York Times bestselling author Roshani Chokshi.

Once upon a time, a man who believed in fairy tales married a beautiful, mysterious woman named Indigo Maxwell-Casteñada. He was a scholar of myths. She was heiress to a fortune. They exchanged gifts and stories and believed they would live happily ever after--and in exchange for her love, Indigo extracted a promise: that her bridegroom would never pry into her past.

But when Indigo learns that her estranged aunt is dying and the couple is forced to return to her childhood home, the House of Dreams, the bridegroom will soon find himself unable to resist. For within the crumbling manor's extravagant rooms and musty halls, there lurks the shadow of another girl: Azure, Indigo's dearest childhood friend who suddenly disappeared. As the house slowly reveals his wife's secrets, the bridegroom will be forced to choose between reality and fantasy, even if doing so threatens to destroy their marriage . . . or their lives.

Combining the lush, haunting atmosphere of Mexican Gothic with the dreamy enchantment of The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, The Last Tale of the Flower Bride is a spellbinding and darkly romantic page-turner about love and lies, secrets and betrayal, and the stories we tell ourselves to survive.]]> 299 Roshani Chokshi 1399712977 han 0 to-read 3.73 2023 The Last Tale of the Flower Bride
author: Roshani Chokshi
name: han
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/13
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Sand-Catcher 214589307 A sardonic, Palestinian Citizen Kane, Sand-Catcher is a dark and thrilling fable about collective memory and the many ways it can be both saved and subverted.

Four Palestinian journalists at a Jordanian newspaper are tasked with writing a profile on one of the last living witnesses of the Nakba, the violent expulsion of native Palestinians by the nascent state of Israel in 1948. Confident that the old man will be more than willing to go on record about his experiences, the reporters are nonplussed when they are repeatedly, and obscenely, rebuffed by the man and his grandchildren. This living witness to history seems to have no desire to be interviewed, no desire for his memories to be preserved, no desire to talk. As the team's editor-in-chief puts more and more pressure on the young journalists, a battle of wills escalates to ruinous consequences that will leave no one unscathed.

Omar Khalifah's debut novel Sand-Catcher is at once a polyphonic satire and a tightly plotted tale of suspense. Walking the line between gallows humor, rage, and depthless heartbreak, it is a unique reflection of contemporary Palestinian identity in all its facets.]]> 224 Omar Khalifah 1566897335 han 0 to-read 3.67 Sand-Catcher
author: Omar Khalifah
name: han
average rating: 3.67
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Queen Demon (The Rising World, #2)]]> 217388171 From the breakout SFF superstar author of Murderbot comes the remarkable sequel to the USA Today and Sunday Times bestselling novel, Witch King. A fantasy of epic scope, Queen Demon is a story of power and friendship, of trust and betrayal, and of the families we choose.

Dahin believes he has clues to the location of the Hierarchs' Well, and the Witch King Kai, along with his companions Ziede and Tahren, knowing there's something he isn't telling them, travel with him to the rebuilt university of Ancartre, which may be dangerously close to finding the Well itself.

Can Kai stop the rise of a new Hierarch?

And can he trust his companions to do what’s right?

Follow Kai to the end of the world in this thrilling sequel to the USA Today-bestselling Witch King.]]> 400 Martha Wells 1250826918 han 0 to-read 4.00 2025 Queen Demon (The Rising World, #2)
author: Martha Wells
name: han
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Husky and His White Cat Shizun: Erha He Ta De Bai Mao Shizun (Novel) Vol. 2]]> 68005550 HIDDEN TRUTHS AND BURIED HEARTS

The longer Mo Ran spends in his life reborn, the less he understands the man he once was, to say nothing of the teacher he so hated. As emperor of the mortal realm, Mo Ran loathed Chu Wanning with all his being, but the Chu Wanning of this life has sacrificed himself for his student's sake time and again. Nevertheless, with the day of Chu Wanning's greatest betrayal on the horizon, Mo Ran clings to his hatred and his he must not let the past repeat itself. Yet strange new tragedies continue to unfold, and Mo Ran finds himself working alongside Chu Wanning to hunt down the mysterious culprit--a cruel mastermind who may know more about Mo Ran than even he remembers.]]> 534 Rou Bao Bu Chi Rou han 0 4.57 The Husky and His White Cat Shizun: Erha He Ta De Bai Mao Shizun (Novel) Vol. 2
author: Rou Bao Bu Chi Rou
name: han
average rating: 4.57
book published:
rating: 0
read at: 2025/01/10
date added: 2025/01/10
shelves:
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]]> Ambessa: Chosen of the Wolf 220609748 Set in the blockbuster and award-winning universe of League of Legends: Arcane and written by award-winning author C. L. Clark, discover a thrilling epic fantasy novel where Ambessa Medarda truly learns what it means to be a Chosen of the Wolf.

Medarda over all.

Ambessa Medarda: Warrior, general, mother. She is a woman to be feared, and the Medardas are unrivaled in their pursuit of glory. She has led conquests and armies. She has slain legendary beasts. She has made grave sacrifices in her ascent up the ranks. And for this she was rewarded: She entered the realm of death and was granted a vision of herself upon the throne of the vast Noxian empire.

But before she can lead her empire, she must become head of her own clan. Yet the title is contested by her cousin and former confidante, Ta'Fik. He knows the bloody sins of Ambessa's past. And he knows he cannot allow her to rise.

They will fight a war for the very soul of the Medardas.

But the war won't be fought on battlefields alone. Ambessa's daughter, Mel, can deftly break through the walls around anyone's heart, and she'll put her talents to use for her mother. Yet despite Mel's strength, Ambessa sees only a child who lacks her killer instincts. Mel knows she can be the leader Ambessa wants her to be, if only she gives her time.

With her family betraying her, enemies closing in on all sides, and unseen forces moving in the shadows, every day proves more dangerous than the last. But Ambessa will not bow. She will burn the world down to claim her place in it.]]> 448 C.L. Clark 0316470058 han 0 to-read 4.00 2025 Ambessa: Chosen of the Wolf
author: C.L. Clark
name: han
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Jasmine Throne (The Burning Kingdoms, #1)]]> 50523477 Empire of Sand and Realm of Ash Tasha Suri's The Jasmine Throne, beginning a new trilogy set in a world inspired by the history and epics of India, in which a captive princess and a maidservant in possession of forbidden magic become unlikely allies on a dark journey to save their empire from the princess's traitor brother.

Imprisoned by her dictator brother, Malini spends her days in isolation in the Hirana: an ancient temple that was once the source of the powerful, magical deathless waters � but is now little more than a decaying ruin.

Priya is a maidservant, one among several who make the treacherous journey to the top of the Hirana every night to clean Malini’s chambers. She is happy to be an anonymous drudge, so long as it keeps anyone from guessing the dangerous secret she hides.

But when Malini accidentally bears witness to Priya’s true nature, their destinies become irrevocably tangled. One is a vengeful princess seeking to depose her brother from his throne. The other is a priestess seeking to find her family. Together, they will change the fate of an empire.]]> 533 Tasha Suri 0356515648 han 0 to-read 4.12 2021 The Jasmine Throne (The Burning Kingdoms, #1)
author: Tasha Suri
name: han
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Don't Let the Forest In 200982373 Once upon a time, Andrew had cut out his heart and given it to this boy, and he was very sure Thomas had no idea that Andrew would do anything for him. Protect him. Lie for him.

Kill for him.

High school senior Andrew Perrault finds refuge in the twisted fairytales that he writes for the only person who can ground him to reality―Thomas Rye, the boy with perpetually ink-stained hands and hair like autumn leaves. And with his twin sister, Dove, inexplicably keeping him at a cold distance upon their return to Wickwood Academy, Andrew finds himself leaning on his friend even more.

But something strange is going on with Thomas. His abusive parents have mysteriously vanished, and he arrives at school with blood on his sleeve. Thomas won't say a word about it, and shuts down whenever Andrew tries to ask him questions. Stranger still, Thomas is haunted by something, and he seems to have lost interest in his artwork―whimsically macabre sketches of the monsters from Andrew's wicked stories.

Desperate to figure out what's wrong with his friend, Andrew follows Thomas into the off-limits forest one night and catches him fighting a nightmarish monster―Thomas's drawings have come to life and are killing anyone close to him. To make sure no one else dies, the boys battle the monsters every night. But as their obsession with each other grows stronger, so do the monsters, and Andrew begins to fear that the only way to stop the creatures might be to destroy their creator...]]> 336 C.G. Drews 1250895669 han 0 to-read 4.12 2024 Don't Let the Forest In
author: C.G. Drews
name: han
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Rakesfall 195791063 Rakesfall is a groundbreaking, standalone science fiction epic about two souls bound together from here until the ends of time, from the author of The Saint of Bright Doors

Some stories take more than one lifetime to tell. There are wrongs that echo through the ages, friendships that outpace the claws of death, loves that leave their mark on civilization, and promises that nothing can break. This is one such story.

Annelid and Leveret met after the war, but before the peace. They found each other in a torn-up nation, peering through propaganda to grasp a deeper truth. And in a demon-haunted wood, another act of violence linked them and propelled their souls on a journey throughout the ages. No world can hold them, no life can bind them, and they'll never leave each other behind. But their journey will not be easy. In every lifetime, oppressors narrow the walls of possibility, shaping reality to fit their own needs. And behind the walls of history, the witches of the red web swear that every throne will fall.

Tracing two souls through endless lifetimes, Rakesfall is a virtuosic exploration of what stories can be. As Annelid and Leveret reincarnate ever deeper into the future, they will chase the edge of human possibility, in a dark science fiction epic unlike anything you've read before.]]> 304 Vajra Chandrasekera 1250847680 han 0 to-read 3.35 2024 Rakesfall
author: Vajra Chandrasekera
name: han
average rating: 3.35
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Husky and His White Cat Shizun: Erha He Ta De Bai Mao Shizun (Novel) Vol. 1]]> 62925771 The Emperor Reborn and His Dearest Enemy

Cruel tyrant Taxian-jun killed his way to the throne and now reigns as the first ever emperor of the mortal realm. Yet somehow, he is unsatisfied. Left cold and bereft, abandoned by all he held dear, he takes his own life...only to be reborn anew.

Awakening in the body of his younger self--Mo Ran, a disciple of the cultivation sect Sisheng Peak--he discovers the chance to relive his life. This time, he vows to attain the gratification that once eluded him: all who defied him will fall, and never again will they treat him like a dog. His greatest fury is reserved for Chu Wanning, the coldly beautiful and aloofly catlike cultivation teacher who betrayed and thwarted Mo Ran time and again in their last life.

Yet as Mo Ran shamelessly pursues his own goals in this life he thought lost, he begins to wonder if there might be more to his teacher--and his own feelings--than he ever realized.]]> 538 Rou Bao Bu Chi Rou 1685799655 han 0 4.60 2022 The Husky and His White Cat Shizun: Erha He Ta De Bai Mao Shizun (Novel) Vol. 1
author: Rou Bao Bu Chi Rou
name: han
average rating: 4.60
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at: 2025/01/02
date added: 2025/01/02
shelves:
review:

]]> Metal from Heaven 206025698 For fans of�The Princess Bride aԻ Gideon the Ninth: a bloody lesbian revenge tale and political fantasy set in a glittering world transformed by industrial change � and simmering class warfare.

Ichorite is progress. More durable and malleable than steel, ichorite is the lifeblood of a dawning industrial revolution. Yann I. Chauncey owns the sole means of manufacturing this valuable metal, but his workers, who risk their health and safety daily, are on strike. They demand Chauncey research the hallucinatory illness befalling them, a condition they call “being lustertouched.� Marney Honeycutt, a lustertouched child worker, stands proud at the picket line with her best friend and family. That’s when Chauncey sends in the guns.

Only Marney survives the massacre. She vows bloody vengeance.

A decade later, Marney is the nation’s most notorious highwayman, and Chauncey’s daughter seeks an opportune marriage. Marney’s rage and the ghosts of her past will drive her to masquerade as an aristocrat, outmaneuver powerful suitors, and win the heart of his daughter, so Marney can finally corner Chauncey and satisfy her need for revenge. But war ferments in the north, and deeper grudges are surfacing. . .

H. A. Clarke’s adult fantasy debut, writing as August Clarke, Metal from Heaven is a punk-rock murder ballad tackling labor issues and radical empowerment against the relentless grind of capitalism.]]> 446 August Clarke han 4
Anti-labor butch lesbians on motorcycles crushing capitalism and fucking each other with wild abandon in a lurid, dreamlike style. When you put it that way, it has to be five stars. ]]> 4.02 2024 Metal from Heaven
author: August Clarke
name: han
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/24
date added: 2024/12/25
shelves:
review:
I’m struggling to confine how I feel to a star rating. This was horny, sexy, sweaty, dyke fantasy. I was overwhelmed by the initial avalanche of adjectives but ended up loving being drowned in the vocabulary, assonances, and alliteration. I think I understood the plot but not every nuance; I think I understood some characters, while others were off on their own journey that I wasn’t privy to. There were times I was really frustrated with the way the narrative distance kept shifting, almost deliberately shifting away when I was seeking more clarity, like trying to read a book in a dream. There were so many BANGER last chapter lines building to THE banger of the ending.

Anti-labor butch lesbians on motorcycles crushing capitalism and fucking each other with wild abandon in a lurid, dreamlike style. When you put it that way, it has to be five stars.
]]> Hammajang Luck 213847219 HAMMAJANG | adjective. Definition: In a disorderly or chaotic state; messed up. Chiefly in predicative use, esp. in all hammajang. Etymology: A borrowing from Hawaiian Pidgin. Source: Oxford English Dictionary.

Edie is done with crime. Eight years behind bars changes a person - costs them too much time with too many of the people who need them most.

And it's all Angel's fault. She sold Edie out in what should have been the greatest moment of their lives. Instead, Edie was shipped off to the icy prison planet spinning far below the soaring skybridges and neon catacombs of Kepler space station - of home - to spend the best part of a decade alone.

But then a chance for early parole appears out of nowhere and Edie steps into the pallid sunlight to find none other than Angel waiting - and she has an offer.

One last job. One last deal. One last target. The trillionaire tech god they failed to bring down last time. There's just one thing Edie needs to do - trust Angel again - which also happens to be the last thing Edie wants to do. What could possibly go all hammajang about this plan?

Ocean's 8 meets Blade Runner in this trail-blazing debut science fiction novel and swashbuckling love letter to Hawai'i about being forced to find a new home and striving to build a better one - unmissable for fans of Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir and Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo.]]> 368 Makana Yamamoto 0063430827 han 0 to-read 3.62 2024 Hammajang Luck
author: Makana Yamamoto
name: han
average rating: 3.62
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Katabasis 210223811 Two graduate students must set aside their rivalry and journey to Hell to save their professor’s soul, perhaps at the cost of their own.

Alice Law has only ever had one goal: to become one of the brightest minds in the field of Magick. She has sacrificed everything to make that a reality—her pride, her health, her love life, and most definitely her sanity. All to work with Professor Jacob Grimes at Cambridge, the greatest magician in the world—that is, until he dies in a magical accident that could possibly be her fault.

Grimes is now in Hell, and she’s going in after him. Because his recommendation could hold her very future in his now incorporeal hands, and even death is not going to stop the pursuit of her dreams. Nor will the fact that her rival, Peter Murdoch, has come to the same conclusion.]]> 400 R.F. Kuang han 0 to-read 4.12 2025 Katabasis
author: R.F. Kuang
name: han
average rating: 4.12
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/21
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[In the Garden of Echo (Genesis, #1)]]> 198725267
For centuries they’ve wandered across continents feeding from their favorite food source - humans. But the mess they’ve left in their wake starts their prey on the path of discovering that they are not what they seem.

After being forced to curb their feeding and go into hiding, a tragic incident leads Echo and Ender to learn about what they are, and the power they are truly capable of.

In The Garden Of Echo is an erotic botanical horror about two codependent monster of unknown origins born to torture the human race for their sins against the earth. Please see author's carrd for full TW's.]]> 121 H.S. Wolfe han 0 to-read 4.25 2023 In the Garden of Echo (Genesis, #1)
author: H.S. Wolfe
name: han
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/20
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Immaculate Conception 217453576 From the author of Natural Beauty, set in the fiercely competitive art world, a novel about an obsessive friendship upended by a cutting-edge technology purported to enhance empathy and connection

Enka meets Mathilde in art school. Mathilde is a dizzyingly talented yet tortured artist whose star is on the rise—and Enka, struggling to make art that feels original, is immediately drawn to her. The two strike up an intense bond that soon turns codependent. But when Mathilde’s fame reaches new heights, Enka becomes desperate to keep her best friend close—no matter the cost.

Enka quickly falls in love with and marries a billionaire whose family’s company is funding an unconventional technology purported to heighten empathy, which could allow someone else to inhabit Mathilde’s mind and absorb the trauma from her brain. Soon, the boundaries between Mathilde and Enka begin to blur even further, setting in motion a disturbing series of events that forever changes their lives.

Blisteringly smart, thought-provoking, and shocking, Immaculate Conception deftly navigates big questions of art, technology, authorship, and what makes us human. Ling Ling Huang offers us a portrait of close friendship—achingly tender and twisted—that captures the tenuous line between love and possession that will haunt you long after you turn the final page.]]> 304 Ling Ling Huang 0593850432 han 0 to-read 4.23 2025 Immaculate Conception
author: Ling Ling Huang
name: han
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Starving Saints 217896248 From the nationally bestselling author of The Luminous Dead and The Death of Jane Lawrence, a transfixing, intensely atmospheric fever dream of medieval horror.

Aymar Castle has been under siege for six months. Food is running low and there has been no sign of rescue. But just as the survivors consider deliberately thinning their number, the castle stores are replenished. The sick are healed. And the divine figures of the Constant Lady and her Saints have arrived, despite the barricaded gates, offering succor in return for adoration.

Soon, the entire castle is under the sway of their saviors, partaking in intoxicating feasts of terrible origin. The war hero Ser Voyne gives her allegiance to the Constant Lady. Phosyne, a disorganized, paranoid nun-turned-sorceress, races to unravel the mystery of these new visitors and exonerate her experiments as their source. And in the bowels of the castle, a serving girl, Treila, is torn between her thirst for a secret vengeance against Voyne and the desperate need to escape from the horrors that are unfolding within Aymar’s walls.

As the castle descends into bacchanalian madness—forgetting the massed army beyond its walls in favor of hedonistic ecstasy—these three women are the only ones to still see their situation for what it is. But they are not immune from the temptations of the castle’s new masters� or each other; and their shifting alliances and entangled pasts bring violence to the surface. To save the castle, and themselves, will take a reimagining of who they are, and a reorganization of the very world itself.]]> 352 Caitlin Starling 0063418819 han 0 to-read 4.02 2025 The Starving Saints
author: Caitlin Starling
name: han
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Model Home 205363963
The three Maxwell siblings keep their distance from the lily-white gated enclave outside Dallas where they grew up. When their family moved there, they were the only Black family in the neighborhood. The neighbors acted nice enough, but right away bad things, scary things—the strange and the unexplainable—began to happen in their house. Maybe it was some cosmic trial, a demonic rite of passage into the upper-middle class. Whatever it was, the Maxwells, steered by their formidable mother, stayed put, unwilling to abandon their home, terrors and trauma be damned.

As adults, the siblings could finally get away from the horrors of home, leaving their parents all alone in the house. But when news of their parents' death arrives, Ezri is forced to return to Texas with their sisters, Eve and Emanuelle, to reckon with their family’s past and present, and to find out what happened while they were away. It was not a “natural� death for their parents . . . but was it supernatural?

Rivers Solomon turns the haunted-house story on its head, unearthing the dark legacies of segregation and racism in the suburban American South. Unbridled, raw, and daring, Model Home is the story of secret histories uncovered, and of a queer family battling for their right to live, grieve, and heal amid the terrors of contemporary American life.]]> 304 Rivers Solomon 0374607133 han 0 to-read 3.73 2024 Model Home
author: Rivers Solomon
name: han
average rating: 3.73
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Rough Trade 127282247
Then two local men end up dead, with all signs pointing to the opium trade, and a botched effort to disappear the bodies draws lawmen to town. Alma scrambles to keep them away from her operation but is distracted by the surprise appearance of Bess Spencer—an ex-Pinkerton's agent and Alma’s first love—after years of silence. A handsome young stranger comes to town, too, and falls into an affair with one of Alma's crewmen. When he starts asking questions about opium, Alma begins to suspect she’s welcomed a spy into her inner circle, and is forced to consider how far she’ll go to protect her trade.

Katrina Carrasco plunges readers into the vivid, rough-and-tumble world of the late-1800s Pacific Northwest in this genre- and gender-blurring novel. Rough Trade follows Carrasco’s critically acclaimed debut The Best Bad Things and reimagines queer communities, the turbulent early days of modern media and medicine, and the pleasures—and price—of satisfying desire.]]> 384 Katrina Carrasco 0374272689 han 0 to-read 3.68 2024 Rough Trade
author: Katrina Carrasco
name: han
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Best Bad Things 37941735
When product goes missing at their Washington Territory outpost, Alma is tasked with tracking the thief and recovering the drugs. In disguise as the scrappy dockworker Jack Camp, this should be easy—once she muscles her way into the local organization, wins the trust of the magnetic local boss and his boys, discovers the turncoat, and keeps them all from uncovering her secrets. All this, while sending coded dispatches to the circling Pinkerton agents to keep them from closing in.

Alma’s enjoying her dangerous game of shifting identities and double crosses as she fights for a promotion and an invitation back into Delphine’s bed. But it’s getting harder and harder to keep her cover stories straight and to know whom to trust. One wrong move and she could be unmasked: as a woman, as a traitor, or as a spy.

A propulsive, sensual tour de force, The Best Bad Things introduces Katrina Carrasco, a bold new voice in crime fiction.]]> 400 Katrina Carrasco 0374123691 han 0 to-read 3.33 2018 The Best Bad Things
author: Katrina Carrasco
name: han
average rating: 3.33
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The River Has Roots 211004176 Follow the river Liss to the small town of Thistleford, on the edge of Faerie, and meet two sisters who cannot be separated, even in death.

“Oh what is stronger than a death? Two sisters singing with one breath.�

In the small town of Thistleford, on the edge of Faerie, dwells the mysterious Hawthorn family.

There, they tend and harvest the enchanted willows and honour an ancient compact to sing to them in thanks for their magic. None more devotedly than the family’s latest daughters, Esther and Ysabel, who cherish each other as much as they cherish the ancient trees.

But when Esther rejects a forceful suitor in favor of a lover from the land of Faerie, not only the sisters� bond but also their lives will be at risk…]]> 133 Amal El-Mohtar 1250341086 han 0 to-read 4.21 2025 The River Has Roots
author: Amal El-Mohtar
name: han
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Vanishing World 219300660 From the author of the bestselling literary sensations Convenience Store Woman and Earthlings comes a surprising and highly imaginative story set in a version of Japan where sex between married couples has vanished and all children are born by artificial insemination.

Sayaka Murata has proven herself to be one of the most exciting chroniclers of the strangeness of society, x-raying our contemporary world to bizarre and troubling effect. Her depictions of a happily unmarried retail worker in Convenience Store Woman and a young woman convinced she is an alien in Earthlings have endeared her to millions of readers worldwide. Vanishing World takes Murata’s universe to a bold new level, imagining an alternative Japan where attitudes to sex and procreation are wildly different to our own.

As a girl, Amane realizes with horror that her parents “copulated� in order to bring her into the world, rather than using artificial insemination, which became the norm in the mid-twentieth century. Amane strives to get away from what she considers an indoctrination in this strange “system� by her mother, but her infatuations with both anime characters and real people have a sexual force that is undeniable. As an adult in an appropriately sexless marriage—sex between married couples is now considered as taboo as incest—Amane and her husband Saku decide to go and live in a mysterious new town called Experiment City or Paradise-Eden, where all children are raised communally, and every person is considered a Mother to all children. Men are beginning to become pregnant using artificial wombs that sit outside of their bodies like balloons, and children are nameless, called only “Kodomo-chan.� Is this the new world that will purify Amane of her strangeness once and for all?]]> 240 Sayaka Murata 0802164668 han 0 to-read 3.53 2015 Vanishing World
author: Sayaka Murata
name: han
average rating: 3.53
book published: 2015
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Tomb of Dragons (The Cemeteries of Amalo, #3)]]> 211004174
While his title may be gone, his duties are not. Celehar contends with a municipal cemetery with fifty years of secrets, the damage of a revethavar he’s terrified to remember, and a group of miners who are more than willing to trade Celehar’s life for a chance at what they feel they’re owed.

Celehar does not have to face these impossible tasks alone. Joining him are his mentee Velhiro Tomasaran, still finding her footing with the investigative nature of their job; Iäna Pel-Thenhior, his beloved opera director friend and avid supporter; and the valiant guard captain Hanu Olgarezh.

Amidst the backdrop of a murder and a brewing political uprising, Celehar must seek justice for those who cannot find it themselves under a tense political system. The repercussions of his quest are never as simple they seem, and Celehar’s own life and happiness hang in the balance.]]> 352 Katherine Addison 125081619X han 0 to-read 4.36 2025 The Tomb of Dragons (The Cemeteries of Amalo, #3)
author: Katherine Addison
name: han
average rating: 4.36
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/12
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Water Outlaws 55684173 In the jianghu, you break the law to make it your own.

Lin Chong is an expert arms instructor, training the Emperor's soldiers in sword and truncheon, battle axe and spear, lance and crossbow. Unlike bolder friends who flirt with challenging the unequal hierarchies and values of Imperial society, she believes in keeping her head down and doing her job.

Until a powerful man with a vendetta rips that carefully-built life away.

Disgraced, tattooed as a criminal, and on the run from an Imperial Marshall who will stop at nothing to see her dead, Lin Chong is recruited by the Bandits of Liangshan. Mountain outlaws on the margins of society, the Liangshan Bandits proclaim a belief in justice—for women, for the downtrodden, for progressive thinkers a corrupt Empire would imprison or destroy. They’re also murderers, thieves, smugglers, and cutthroats.

Apart, they love like demons and fight like tigers. Together, they could bring down an empire.]]> 488 S.L. Huang 1250198763 han 4 4.02 2023 The Water Outlaws
author: S.L. Huang
name: han
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/12
date added: 2024/12/12
shelves:
review:
This was just simply fun to read. Competently written, endearing characters, splashy action. I think the plot and worldbuilding potentially could have been pushed a bit further � it wasn’t really twisty � but as it was, it was just a super enjoyable book. Definitely recommend.
]]> <![CDATA[The Last Unicorn (The Last Unicorn, #1)]]> 195134846
"The unicorn lived in a lilac wood, and she lived all alone. She was very old, though she did not know it, and she was no longer the careless color of sea foam, but rather the color of snow falling on a moonlit night. But her eyes were still clear and unwearied, and she still moved like a shadow on the sea..."

INCLUDES A NEW INTRODUCTION BY PATRICK ROTHFUSS

Experience one of the most enduring classics of the twentieth century and the book that The Atlantic has called “one of the best fantasy novels ever.�

The unicorn lived in a lilac wood, and she lived all alone...

...so she ventured out from the safety of the enchanted forest on a quest for others of her kind. Joined along the way by the bumbling magician Schmendrick and the indomitable Molly Grue, the unicorn learns all about the joys and sorrows of life and love before meeting her destiny in the castle of a despondent monarch—and confronting the creature that would drive her kind to extinction....

In The Last Unicorn, renowned and beloved novelist Peter S. Beagle spins a poignant tale of love, loss, and wonder that has resonated with millions of readers around the world.

“Peter S. Beagle illuminates with his own particular magic.”—Ursula K. Le Guin]]> 292 Peter S. Beagle 0451450523 han 0 to-read 4.12 1968 The Last Unicorn (The Last Unicorn, #1)
author: Peter S. Beagle
name: han
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1968
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Light From Uncommon Stars 57021245
Shizuka Satomi made a deal with the to escape damnation, she must entice seven other violin prodigies to trade their souls for success. She has already delivered six. When Katrina Nguyen, a young transgender runaway, catches Shizuka's ear with her wild talent, Shizuka can almost feel the curse lifting. She's found her final candidate. But in a donut shop off a bustling highway in the San Gabriel Valley, Shizuka meets Lan Tran, retired starship captain, interstellar refugee, and mother of four. Shizuka doesn't have time for crushes or coffee dates, what with her very soul on the line, but Lan's kind smile and eyes like stars might just redefine a soul's worth. And maybe something as small as a warm donut is powerful enough to break a curse as vast as the California coastline. As the lives of these three women become entangled by chance and fate, a story of magic, identity, curses, and hope begins, and a family worth crossing the universe for is found.
At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.]]> 384 Ryka Aoki 1250789079 han 2 4.21 2021 Light From Uncommon Stars
author: Ryka Aoki
name: han
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2021
rating: 2
read at: 2022/01/18
date added: 2024/12/02
shelves:
review:

]]> Sour Cherry 213816143 A stunning reimagining of Bluebeard—one of the most mythologized serial killers—twisted into a modern tale of toxic masculinity, a feminist sermon, and a folktale for the twenty-first century.

The tale begins with Agnes. After losing her baby, Agnes is called to the great manor house to nurse the local lord’s baby boy. But something is wrong with the child: his nails grow too fast, his skin smells of soil, and his eyes remind her of the dark forest. As he grows into a boy, then into man, a plague seems to follow him everywhere. Trees wither at the roots, fruits rot on their branches, and the town turns against him. The man takes a wife, who bears him a son. But tragedy strikes in cycles and his family is forced to consider their own malignancy—until wife after wife, death after death, plague after plague, every woman he touches becomes a ghost. The ghosts become a chorus, and they call urgently to our narrator as she tries to explain, in our very real world, exactly what has happened to her. The ghosts can all agree on one thing, an inescapable truth about this man, this powerful lord who has loved them and led them each to ruin: If you leave, you die. But if you die, you stay.

Natalia Theodoridou’s haunting and unforgettable debut novel, Sour Cherry, confronts age-old systems of gender and power, long-held excuses made for bad men, and the complicated reasons we stay captive to the monsters we love.]]> 312 Natalia Theodoridou 1963108191 han 0 to-read 3.81 2025 Sour Cherry
author: Natalia Theodoridou
name: han
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/12/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Blood Over Bright Haven 208455470 The first woman ever admitted to a prestigious order of mages unravels a secret conspiracy that could change the practice of magic forever, in this standalone dark fantasy from the author of The Sword of Kaigen.

For twenty years, Sciona has devoted every waking moment to the study of magic, fueled by a mad desire to achieve the to be the first woman ever admitted to the High Magistry at the University of Magics and Industry.

When Sciona finally passes the qualifying exam and becomes a highmage, she finds her challenges have just begun. Her new colleagues are determined to make her feel unwelcome—and, instead of a qualified lab assistant, they give her a janitor.

What neither Sciona nor her peers realize is that her taciturn assistant was not always a janitor. Ten years ago, he was a nomadic hunter who lost his family on their perilous journey from the wild plains to the city. But now he sees the opportunity to understand the forces that decimated his tribe, drove him from his homeland, and keep the privileged in power.

At first, mage and outsider have a fractious relationship. But working together, they uncover an ancient secret that could change the course of magic forever—if it doesn’t get them killed first.]]> 422 M.L. Wang 059387336X han 4 4.41 2023 Blood Over Bright Haven
author: M.L. Wang
name: han
average rating: 4.41
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/12/01
date added: 2024/12/01
shelves:
review:
Similar to Sword of Kaigen, this book has a relentless energy that makes it very easy to stay engaged with and read. The prose style itself was sometimes a bit clunky or overly simplified � repeated dialogue tags or summarizations of all the conclusions the characters just came to � but the actual character writing and plot construction were so solid that I didn’t mind. Loved the ending.
]]> <![CDATA[Someone You Can Build a Nest In]]> 182775231
Shesheshen is a shapeshifter, who happily resides as an amorphous lump at the bottom of a ruined manor. When her rest is interrupted by hunters intent on murdering her, she constructs a body from the remains of past a metal chain for a backbone, borrowed bones for limbs, and a bear trap as an extra mouth.

However, the hunters chase Shesheshen out of her home and off a cliff. Badly hurt, she’s found and nursed back to health by Homily, a warm-hearted human, who has mistaken Shesheshen as a fellow human. Homily is kind and nurturing and would make an excellent an ideal place to lay Shesheshen’s eggs so their young could devour Homily from the inside out. But as they grow close, she realizes humans don’t think about love that way.

Shesheshen hates keeping her identity secret from Homily, but just as she’s about to confess, Homily reveals why she’s in the she’s hunting a shapeshifting monster that supposedly cursed her family. Has Shesheshen seen it anywhere?

Eating her girlfriend isn’t an option. Shesheshen didn’t curse anyone, but to give herself and Homily a chance at happiness, she has to figure out why Homily’s twisted family thinks she did. As the hunt for the monster becomes increasingly dangerous—and deadly—Shesheshen must unearth the truth quickly, or soon both of their lives will be at risk.]]> 320 John Wiswell 0756418860 han 3
I have to say the repeated use of the term “enby� as opposed to “person� in a high fantasy story was really offputting to me. An enby is just a nonbinary person. So you can just say person, which is a nonbinary term. If you are trying to hard underscore that you have nonbinary people in your story while still making them such inconsequential side characters that you have to label them that way, maybe it doesn’t matter that you decided to make those side characters nonbinary. I guess this was the author trying to communicate that the person didn’t appear gendered one way or the other, but that is also not a requirement of being nonbinary! ]]> 4.07 2024 Someone You Can Build a Nest In
author: John Wiswell
name: han
average rating: 4.07
book published: 2024
rating: 3
read at: 2024/11/02
date added: 2024/11/20
shelves:
review:
Pleasant enjoyable read but not breaking any barriers for me. I liked the genuine fucked up body horror and the bizarre family dynamics. I came into it with a lot of doubts and ultimately found the story pretty cute and heartwarming while still finding space to deal with some real issues.

I have to say the repeated use of the term “enby� as opposed to “person� in a high fantasy story was really offputting to me. An enby is just a nonbinary person. So you can just say person, which is a nonbinary term. If you are trying to hard underscore that you have nonbinary people in your story while still making them such inconsequential side characters that you have to label them that way, maybe it doesn’t matter that you decided to make those side characters nonbinary. I guess this was the author trying to communicate that the person didn’t appear gendered one way or the other, but that is also not a requirement of being nonbinary!
]]> <![CDATA[How to Become the Dark Lord and Die Trying (Dark Lord Davi #1)]]> 198513543
Davi has done this all before. She’s tried to be the hero and take down the all-powerful Dark Lord. A hundred times she’s rallied humanity and made the final charge. But the time loop always gets her in the end. Sometimes she’s killed quickly. Sometimes it takes a while. But she’s been defeated every time.

This time? She’s done being the hero and done being stuck in this endless time loop. If the Dark Lord always wins, then maybe that’s who she needs to be. It’s Davi’s turn to play on the winning side.

Burningblade & Silvereye
Ashes of the Sun
Blood of the Chosen
Emperor of Ruin]]> 428 Django Wexler 0316392308 han 2 3.96 2024 How to Become the Dark Lord and Die Trying (Dark Lord Davi #1)
author: Django Wexler
name: han
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2024
rating: 2
read at: 2024/11/20
date added: 2024/11/20
shelves:
review:
Of course the author's main inspiration is the first season of Re:Zero and the spider girl isekai.... omg I really tried to enjoy this in a brain-off way but the way the main character talked in every single chapter about masturbating, having sex, thinking about sex, just felt a little gratuitous and over the top, especially since she thinks in the voice of a 16yo boy from an 80s movie, "Yowza! Nice rack!" PLEASEEEE....
]]> I Who Have Never Known Men 60457992 Deep underground, thirty-nine women live imprisoned in a cage. Watched over by guards, the women have no memory of how they got there, no notion of time, and only a vague recollection of their lives before.


As the burn of electric light merges day into night and numberless years pass, a young girl—the fortieth prisoner—sits alone and outcast in the corner. Soon she will show herself to be the key to the others' escape and survival in the strange world that awaits them above ground.


Jacqueline Harpman was born in Etterbeek, Belgium, in 1929, and fled to Casablanca with her family during WWII. Informed by her background as a psychoanalyst and her youth in exile, I Who Have Never Known Men is a haunting, heartbreaking post-apocalyptic novel of female friendship and intimacy, and the lengths people will go to maintain their humanity in the face of devastation. Back in print for the first time since 1997, Harpman’s modern classic is an important addition to the growing canon of feminist speculative literature.]]> 175 Jacqueline Harpman 1945492627 han 5 4.11 1995 I Who Have Never Known Men
author: Jacqueline Harpman
name: han
average rating: 4.11
book published: 1995
rating: 5
read at: 2024/11/15
date added: 2024/11/15
shelves:
review:

]]> Exhalation 55710304 An alternate cover edition for this book can be found here.

ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES 10 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR

A NATIONAL BESTSELLER

ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR:
THE WASHINGTON POST � TIME MAGAZINE � NPR � ESQUIRE � VOX � THE A.V. CLUB � THE GUARDIAN � FINANCIAL TIMES � THE DALLAS MORNING NEWS

"THE UNIVERSE BEGAN AS AN ENORMOUS BREATH BEING HELD."

In these nine stunningly original, provocative, and poignant stories, Ted Chiang tackles some of humanity’s oldest questions along with new quandaries only he could imagine.

In "The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate," a portal through time forces a fabric seller in ancient Baghdad to grapple with past mistakes and second chances. In "Exhalation," an alien scientist makes a shocking discovery with ramifications that are literally universal. In "Anxiety Is the Dizziness of Freedom," the ability to glimpse into alternate universes necessitates a radically new examination of the concepts of choice and free will.

Including stories being published for the first time as well as some of his rare and classic uncollected work, Exhalation is Ted Chiang at his best: profound, sympathetic—revelatory.]]> 362 Ted Chiang han 4 4.37 2019 Exhalation
author: Ted Chiang
name: han
average rating: 4.37
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2024/11/13
date added: 2024/11/13
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[On Vicious Worlds (The Kindom Trilogy #2)]]> 207573427 These Burning Stars, the explosive space opera debut that launched the dangerous cat‑and‑mouse quest for revenge that will define a people forever.

The Jeveni have finally found freedom on the distant planet Capamame, delivered from Kindom oppression through their alliance with stoic Cleric Chono, intrepid caster Jun Ironway, and Six, the wildly unpredictable manipulator who has outwitted the Nightfoot family.

But when Six and Chono return to the Treble star systems, the dream of freedom meets a dangerous test. The Secretaries of the Kindom are intent on reclaiming power in the Treble, as well as control over the Jeveni. Meanwhile, Jun Ironway and Jeveni collector Masar Hawks struggle to protect Capamame from a population brimming with resentment, not to mention a faceless saboteur spreading mayhem and murder. As the two groups struggle to outwit their enemies, divergent battles wend toward a climatic reunion that will spark a revolution. But over it all hangs the cruel legacy of Esek Nightfoot, whose rippling effects may prove impossible to survive.]]> 478 Bethany Jacobs 0316463620 han 5 4.48 On Vicious Worlds (The Kindom Trilogy #2)
author: Bethany Jacobs
name: han
average rating: 4.48
book published:
rating: 5
read at: 2024/11/10
date added: 2024/11/11
shelves:
review:
Fast paced, thrilling, violent, intriguing, so gay in every way it can cram in, holy shit I loved it
]]> <![CDATA[The Sovereign (Magic of the Lost, #3)]]> 62563726 Luca is the new queen of Balladaire. Her empire is already splintering in her hands. Her uncle wasn’t the only traitor in the court, and the Withering will decimate her people if she can’t unearth Balladaire’s magic. The only person who can help her wants the only thing Luca won’t give—the end of the monarchy.

Touraine is Luca’s general. She has everything she ever wanted. While Luca looks within Balladaire’s borders, Touraine looks outward—the alliance with Qazal is brittle and Balladaire’s neighbors are ready to pounce on its new weakness. When the army comes, led by none other than Touraine’s old lover, Touraine must face the truth about herself—and the empire she once called home.

A storm is coming. Touraine and Luca will stand against it together, or it will tear them apart once and for all.]]> C.L. Clark han 0 to-read 4.53 2025 The Sovereign (Magic of the Lost, #3)
author: C.L. Clark
name: han
average rating: 4.53
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/11/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead]]> 42946966
A deeply satisfying thriller cum fairy tale, Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead is a provocative exploration of the murky borderland between sanity and madness, justice and tradition, autonomy and fate. Whom do we deem sane? it asks. Who is worthy of a voice?]]> 275 Olga Tokarczuk 0525541357 han 5 3.94 2009 Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead
author: Olga Tokarczuk
name: han
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2009
rating: 5
read at: 2024/10/27
date added: 2024/10/27
shelves:
review:
This was so pleasant to read, I loved the main character’s voice and her compassion for animals and her interests. Lots of little reflective tidbits and sentences that made me pause and think. I always enjoy an unreliable narrator who has opinions about Capitalization.
]]> The Sword of Kaigen 41886271 A son struggling to grasp his violent future,
A father blind to the danger that threatens them all.

When the winds of war reach their peninsula, will the Matsuda family have the strength to defend their empire? Or will they tear each other apart before the true enemies even reach their shores?

High on a mountainside at the edge of the Kaigenese Empire live the most powerful warriors in the world, superhumans capable of raising the sea and wielding blades of ice. For hundreds of years, the fighters of the Kusanagi Peninsula have held the Empire’s enemies at bay, earning their frozen spit of land the name ‘The Sword of Kaigen.�

Born into Kusanagi’s legendary Matsuda family, fourteen-year-old Mamoru has always known his purpose: to master his family’s fighting techniques and defend his homeland. But when an outsider arrives and pulls back the curtain on Kaigen’s alleged age of peace, Mamoru realizes that he might not have much time to become the fighter he was bred to be. Worse, the empire he was bred to defend may stand on a foundation of lies.

Misaki told herself that she left the passions of her youth behind when she married into the Matsuda house. Determined to be a good housewife and mother, she hid away her sword, along with everything from her days as a fighter in a faraway country. But with her growing son asking questions about the outside world, the threat of an impending invasion looming across the sea, and her frigid husband grating on her nerves, Misaki finds the fighter in her clawing its way back to the surface.]]> 651 M.L. Wang han 4
The moment of Takeru creating a field of mist to track his enemies� movements, then lifting the veil with one hand to reveal an army more of enemies behind it� it was just so cinematic, I could picture the timing and tension perfectly.

I haven’t read the author’s other books and while I understood Misaki’s tension with the outsider character, it didn’t hit home for me in the same way her struggles within the village did. I think the story could have been 10% more contained with a bit less outright statement/repetition of the characters� feelings and still got its point across very well.

All that said, I was sooo excited for every long, clash by clash fight scene. The action was super well written and or the story moving quickly despite its length. I will be reading more. ]]> 4.46 2019 The Sword of Kaigen
author: M.L. Wang
name: han
average rating: 4.46
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/21
date added: 2024/10/21
shelves:
review:
Did this story introduce me to grand new concepts or ways of thinking I’ve never considered before? No. But the characters, the FIGHT SCENES, the deft implementation of the powers in a way that felt grounded, interesting, and real� WOW.

The moment of Takeru creating a field of mist to track his enemies� movements, then lifting the veil with one hand to reveal an army more of enemies behind it� it was just so cinematic, I could picture the timing and tension perfectly.

I haven’t read the author’s other books and while I understood Misaki’s tension with the outsider character, it didn’t hit home for me in the same way her struggles within the village did. I think the story could have been 10% more contained with a bit less outright statement/repetition of the characters� feelings and still got its point across very well.

All that said, I was sooo excited for every long, clash by clash fight scene. The action was super well written and or the story moving quickly despite its length. I will be reading more.
]]> <![CDATA[Record of a Spaceborn Few (Wayfarers, #3)]]> 36278177 Brimming with Chambers' signature blend of heart-warming character relationships and dazzling adventure,Record of a Spaceborn few is the third standalone installment of the Wayfarers series, setin the sprawling universe of the Galactic Commons,and followinga new motley crew on a journey to another corner corner of the cosmos—one often mentioned, but not yet explored.

Return to the sprawling universe of the Galactic Commons, as humans, artificial intelligence, aliens, and some beings yet undiscovered explore what it means to be a community in this exciting third adventure in the acclaimed and multi-award-nominated science fiction Wayfarers series, brimming with heartwarming characters and dazzling space adventure.

Hundreds of years ago, the last humans on Earth boarded the Exodus Fleet in search of a new home among the stars. After centuries spent wandering empty space, their descendants were eventually accepted by the well-established species that govern the Milky Way.

But that was long ago. Today, the Exodus Fleet is a living relic, the birthplace of many, yet a place few outsiders have ever visited. While the Exodans take great pride in their original community and traditions, their culture has been influenced by others beyond their bulkheads. As many Exodans leave for alien cities or terrestrial colonies, those who remain are left to ponder their own lives and futures: What is the purpose of a ship that has reached its destination? Why remain in space when there are habitable worlds available to live? What is the price of sustaining their carefully balanced way of life—and is it worth saving at all?

A young apprentice, a lifelong spacer with young children, a planet-raised traveler, an alien academic, a caretaker for the dead, and an Archivist whose mission is to ensure no one’s story is forgotten, wrestle with these profound universal questions. The answers may seem small on the galactic scale, but to these individuals, it could mean everything.

]]> 368 Becky Chambers han 0 to-read 4.20 2018 Record of a Spaceborn Few (Wayfarers, #3)
author: Becky Chambers
name: han
average rating: 4.20
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/10/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Castle in the Air (Howl's Moving Castle, #2)]]> 18892622
In this stunning sequel to Howl's Moving Castle, Diana Wynne Jones has again created a large-scale, fast-paced fantasy in which people and things are never quite what they seem. There are good and bad djinns, a genie in a bottle, wizards, witches, cats and dogs (but are they cats and dogs?), and a mysterious floating castle filled with kidnapped princesses, as well as two puzzling prophecies. The story speeds along with tantalizing twists and turns until the prophecies are fulfilled, true identities are revealed, and all is resolved in a totally satisfying, breathtaking, surprise-filled ending.]]> 400 Diana Wynne Jones 0062244558 han 0 4.12 1990 Castle in the Air (Howl's Moving Castle, #2)
author: Diana Wynne Jones
name: han
average rating: 4.12
book published: 1990
rating: 0
read at: 2024/10/12
date added: 2024/10/12
shelves:
review:

]]> Nettle & Bone 56590186 This isn't the kind of fairytale where the princess marries a prince.
It's the one where she kills him.

Marra never wanted to be a hero.

As the shy, convent-raised, third-born daughter, she escaped the traditional fate of princesses, to be married away for the sake of an uncaring throne. But her sister wasn’t so fortunate—and after years of silence, Marra is done watching her suffer at the hands of a powerful and abusive prince.

Seeking help for her rescue mission, Marra is offered the tools she needs, but only if she can complete three seemingly impossible tasks:
—build a dog of bones
—sew a cloak of nettles
—capture moonlight in a jar

But, as is the way in tales of princes and witches, doing the impossible is only the beginning.

Hero or not—now joined by a disgraced ex-knight, a reluctant fairy godmother, an enigmatic gravewitch and her fowl familiar—Marra might finally have the courage to save her sister, and topple a throne.]]> 259 T. Kingfisher han 4 4.26 2022 Nettle & Bone
author: T. Kingfisher
name: han
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2024/09/23
date added: 2024/10/07
shelves:
review:
Super fun and enjoyable story that had some interesting standalone ideas and actually quite a bit to say about the value of/devaluing of “women’s work�.
]]> <![CDATA[These Burning Stars (The Kindom Trilogy, #1)]]> 136361472
Jun Ironway—hacker, con artist, and occasional thief—has gotten her hands on a piece of contraband that could set her up for proof that implicates the powerful Nightfoot family in a planet-wide genocide seventy-five years ago. The Nightfoots control the precious sevite that fuels interplanetary travel through three star systems. And someone is sure to pay handsomely for anything that could break their hold.

Of course, anything valuable is also dangerous. The Kindom, the ruling power of the star systems, is inextricably tied up in the Nightfoots� monopoly—and they can’t afford to let Jun expose the truth. They task two of their most brutal clerics with hunting her preternaturally stoic Chono, and brilliant hothead Esek, who also happens to be the heir to the Nightfoot empire.

But Chono and Esek are haunted in turn by a figure from their shared past, known only as Six. What Six truly wants is anyone’s guess. And the closer they get to finding Jun, the surer Chono is that Six is manipulating them all.

​It's a game that could destroy their lives and devastate the stars. And they have no choice but to see it through to the end.]]> 465 Bethany Jacobs 0316463426 han 4
I got a bit lost in the sauce with some of the time skips which I fully admit was my fault for not reading the dates on the first few chapter headings. Occasionally I was confused about whether I was supposed to know a piece of information or it was deliberately being withheld (it was always the second one). I think this would be a really fun reread.

I just happened to read this only to reach the end and discover the sequel comes out next week! Cannot believe my luck! I can’t imagine where the story will go next and what other surprises Jacobs will pull out. A great debut novel IMO. ]]> 4.30 2023 These Burning Stars (The Kindom Trilogy, #1)
author: Bethany Jacobs
name: han
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2024/10/03
date added: 2024/10/04
shelves:
review:
This was fantastic. I loved the characters and the ending got me � I think what I enjoyed most about it was looking back and feeling all the things I had questions about slide slowly into place. I also really enjoyed the Chono/Esek dynamic vs the Liis/Jun dynamic. Trust and deception and power� Stellar!

I got a bit lost in the sauce with some of the time skips which I fully admit was my fault for not reading the dates on the first few chapter headings. Occasionally I was confused about whether I was supposed to know a piece of information or it was deliberately being withheld (it was always the second one). I think this would be a really fun reread.

I just happened to read this only to reach the end and discover the sequel comes out next week! Cannot believe my luck! I can’t imagine where the story will go next and what other surprises Jacobs will pull out. A great debut novel IMO.
]]> Notes of a Crocodile 31395589 Notes of a Crocodile depicts the coming-of-age of a group of queer misfits discovering love, friendship, and artistic affinity while hardly studying at Taiwan's most prestigious university. Told through the eyes of an anonymous lesbian narrator nicknamed Lazi, Qiu Miaojin's cult classic novel is a postmodern pastiche of diaries, vignettes, mash notes, aphorisms, exegesis, and satire by an incisive prose stylist and countercultural icon.

Afflicted by her fatalistic attraction to Shui Ling, an older woman, Lazi turns for support to a circle of friends that includes a rich kid turned criminal and his troubled, self-destructive gay lover, as well as a bored, mischievous overachiever and her alluring slacker artist girlfriend.

Illustrating a process of liberation from the strictures of gender through radical self-inquiry, Notes of a Crocodile is a poignant masterpiece of social defiance by a singular voice in contemporary Chinese literature.]]> 242 Qiu Miaojin 168137076X han 0 to-read 3.84 1994 Notes of a Crocodile
author: Qiu Miaojin
name: han
average rating: 3.84
book published: 1994
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Titus Groan (Gormenghast, #1) 43604975 378 Mervyn Peake han 4 3.78 1946 Titus Groan (Gormenghast, #1)
author: Mervyn Peake
name: han
average rating: 3.78
book published: 1946
rating: 4
read at: 2024/09/19
date added: 2024/09/19
shelves:
review:
Wow. This felt like a huge undertaking. There are so many unique, ornate turns of phrase. The style of writing kept me reading, but also was my biggest challenge. At one point it took me two full paragraphs to understand that what the author was describing was a thunderstorm. I really liked the cast of weird little freaks doing their freak things. There is essentially no plot, just interpersonal dynamics being played out. I do think I will read at least the sequel but probably need a break before I dive back in.
]]> <![CDATA[Too Like the Lightning (Terra Ignota, #1)]]> 36260390
The world into which Mycroft and Carlyle have been born is as strange to our 21st-century eyes as ours would be to a native of the 1500s. It is a hard-won utopia built on technologically-generated abundance, and also on complex and mandatory systems of labelling all public writing and speech. What seem to us normal gender distinctions are now distinctly taboo in most social situations. And most of the world's population is affiliated with globe-girdling clans of the like-minded, whose endless economic and cultural competition is carefully managed by central planners of inestimable subtlety. To us it seems like a mad combination of heaven and hell. To them, it seems like normal life.

And in this world, Mycroft and Carlyle have stumbled on the wild card that may destablize the system: the boy Bridger, who can effortlessly make his wishes come true. Who can, it would seem, bring inanimate objects to life...]]> 533 Ada Palmer 1786699508 han 0 to-read 3.92 2016 Too Like the Lightning (Terra Ignota, #1)
author: Ada Palmer
name: han
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Lions of Al-Rassan 104101
Meanwhile, in the north, the conquered Jaddites' most celebrated � and feared � military leader, Rodrigo Belmonte, driven into exile, leads his mercenary company south.

In the dangerous lands of Al-Rassan, these two men from different worlds meet and serve � for a time � the same master. Sharing their interwoven fate � and increasingly torn by her feelings � is Jehane, the accomplished court physician, whose own skills play an increasing role as Al-Rassan is swept to the brink of holy war, and beyond.

Hauntingly evocative of medieval Spain, The Lions of Al-Rassan is both a brilliant adventure and a deeply compelling story of love, divided loyalties, and what happens to men and women when hardening beliefs begin to remake � or destroy � a world.]]> 528 Guy Gavriel Kay 0060733497 han 0 to-read 4.29 1995 The Lions of Al-Rassan
author: Guy Gavriel Kay
name: han
average rating: 4.29
book published: 1995
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Sign of the Dragon 53256045 *** 2021 Elgin Award winner! ***Drawing on Chinese and Mongolian elements, award-winning poet Mary Soon Lee has penned an epic tale of politics, intrigue, and dragons perfect for fans of Game of Thrones and Beowulf.As the fourth-born prince of Meqing, Xau was never supposed to be king. But when his three older brothers are all deemed unfit to rule and eaten by a dragon, as is the custom, Xau suddenly finds himself on the Meqinese throne. The early years of his reign are marred by brutal earthquakes and floods, and the long-simmering tension with the neighboring country of Innis finally erupts into war. Worst of all, demons rise out of legend to walk the realm again, leaving death and destruction in their wake. In a desperate gamble, Xau must broker an uneasy peace with his former enemies and hope their combined strength is enough to vanquish the demons before it's too late.THE SIGN OF THE DRAGON is comprised of over 300 individual poems, including the Rhysling-winning "Interregnum." The first 60 poems appeared in the 2015 Dark Renaissance Books publication Crowned, which won the 2016 Elgin Award, and many individual poems have appeared in award-winning literary magazines such as Fantasy & Science Fiction, Spillway, and Strange Horizons. Collected together in its entirety for the very first time, with over 200 never-before-published poems, readers can finally enjoy King Xau's story of sacrifice and war and dragons from beginning to end.Mary Soon Lee is a poet and storyteller who has won the Elgin and the Rhysling awards. Her work has appeared in Analog, Asimov's, Daily Science Fiction, F&SF, Fireside, Science, and American Scholar. She is also the author of Elemental Poems to honor the periodic table three lines at a time. Born and raised in London, she now lives in Pennsylvania with her family.]]> 362 Mary Soon Lee han 5
Merged review:

This book is incredible. It subverted my expectations in so many ways � I figured a book of poems would be a quick read and it took me six months. I assumed an epic about kingdoms would be zoomed out, but the story it tells is very intimate and I fell in love with so many characters. I worried the poetry was a gimmick or just a wacky formatting choice, only for it to be varied and deliberate, with different styles of poem providing pace and structure to the story. The story is intriguing and full of twists and turns, but the message of kindness is simple and beautifully persistent. One of my top reads of the year so far, I would definitely compare it to Spear Cuts Through Water.]]> 4.62 2020 The Sign of the Dragon
author: Mary Soon Lee
name: han
average rating: 4.62
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at: 2024/06/17
date added: 2024/09/11
shelves:
review:
This book is incredible. It subverted my expectations in so many ways � I figured a book of poems would be a quick read and it took me six months. I assumed an epic about kingdoms would be zoomed out, but the story it tells is very intimate and I fell in love with so many characters. I worried the poetry was a gimmick or just a wacky formatting choice, only for it to be varied and deliberate, with different styles of poem providing pace and structure to the story. The story is intriguing and full of twists and turns, but the message of kindness is simple and beautifully persistent. One of my top reads of the year so far, I would definitely compare it to Spear Cuts Through Water.

Merged review:

This book is incredible. It subverted my expectations in so many ways � I figured a book of poems would be a quick read and it took me six months. I assumed an epic about kingdoms would be zoomed out, but the story it tells is very intimate and I fell in love with so many characters. I worried the poetry was a gimmick or just a wacky formatting choice, only for it to be varied and deliberate, with different styles of poem providing pace and structure to the story. The story is intriguing and full of twists and turns, but the message of kindness is simple and beautifully persistent. One of my top reads of the year so far, I would definitely compare it to Spear Cuts Through Water.
]]> <![CDATA[The Sisters of Saint Nicola of The Almost Perpetual Motion vs the Lurch]]> 61484969 A new short story from Garth Nix, best-selling author of the Old Kingdom series.

In this raucous, steampunk tale a sacred order of scientist nuns battle against vicious Invaders from Mars and their murderous machines in an ongoing conflict that has lasted centuries.

At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.]]> 34 Garth Nix 1250867533 han 4 3.92 2022 The Sisters of Saint Nicola of The Almost Perpetual Motion vs the Lurch
author: Garth Nix
name: han
average rating: 3.92
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2022/11/29
date added: 2024/09/10
shelves:
review:

]]> Jaws 36324393
When Peter Benchley wrote Jaws in the early 1970s, he meticulously researched all available data about shark behavior. Over the ensuing decades, Benchley was actively engaged with scientists and filmmakers on expeditions around the world as they expanded their knowledge of sharks. Also during this time, there was an unprecedented upswing in the number of sharks killed to make shark-fin soup, and Benchley worked with governments and nonprofits to sound the alarm for shark conservation. He encouraged each new generation of Jaws fans to enjoy his riveting tale and to channel their excitement into support and protection of these magnificent, prehistoric apex predators.

This edition of Jaws contains bonus content from Peter Benchley’s archives, including the original typed title page, a brainstorming list of possible titles, a letter from Benchley to producer David Brown with honest feedback on the movie adaptation, and excerpts from Benchley’s book Shark Trouble highlighting his firsthand account of writing Jaws, selling it to Universal Studios, and working with Steven Spielberg.]]> 340 Peter Benchley han 2 3.98 1974 Jaws
author: Peter Benchley
name: han
average rating: 3.98
book published: 1974
rating: 2
read at: 2024/09/03
date added: 2024/09/09
shelves:
review:
I just found this kind of “eh�, not a very scary horror book or a very insightful character study. The shark parts which detailed the biomechanical reactions of the shark to sensing prey were really cool, idk how realistic those were. The wife wanting a better life for herself and being punished by the narrative sat really poorly with me.
]]> Blindness 40495148 From Nobel Prize–winning author José Saramago, a magnificent, mesmerizing parable of loss

A city is hit by an epidemic of "white blindness" that spares no one. Authorities confine the blind to an empty mental hospital, but there the criminal element holds everyone captive, stealing food rations, and assaulting women. There is one eyewitness to this nightmare who guides her charges—among them a boy with no mother, a girl with dark glasses, a dog of tears—through the barren streets, and their procession becomes as uncanny as the surroundings are harrowing. As Blindness reclaims the age-old story of a plague, it evokes the vivid and trembling horrors of the twentieth century, leaving readers with a powerful vision of the human spirit that's bound both by weakness and exhilarating strength.]]> 349 José Saramago han 4 4.17 1995 Blindness
author: José Saramago
name: han
average rating: 4.17
book published: 1995
rating: 4
read at: 2024/09/08
date added: 2024/09/09
shelves:
review:
The writing style and translation were beautiful and I had quite a few emotional moments lingering over a scene or sentence. The doctor’s wife may as well be the second coming of Christ, but rather than see her as overly perfect, I found myself ready to worship her grace, compassion, and decisive action in the face of unimaginable odds.
]]> <![CDATA[Long Live Evil (Time of Iron #1)]]> 201626991
She wakes in a castle on the edge of a hellish chasm, in a kingdom on the brink of war. Home to dangerous monsters, scheming courtiers and her favourite fictional character: the Once and Forever Emperor. He’s impossibly alluring, as only fiction can be. And in this fantasy world, she discovers she's not the heroine, but the villainess in the Emperor's tale.

So be it. The wicked are better dressed, with better one-liners, even if they're doomed to bad ends. She assembles the wildly disparate villains of the story under her evil leadership, plotting to change their fate. But as the body count rises and the Emperor's fury increases, it seems Rae and her allies may not survive to see the final page.

This adult epic fantasy debut from Sarah Rees Brennan puts the reader in the villain's shoes, for an adventure that is both 'brilliant' (Holly Black) and 'supremely satisfying' (Leigh Bardugo). Expect a rogue's gallery of villains including an axe wielding maid, a shining knight with dark moods, a homicidal bodyguard, and a playboy spymaster with a golden heart and a filthy reputation.]]> 435 Sarah Rees Brennan 0316568716 han 0 to-read 3.87 2024 Long Live Evil (Time of Iron #1)
author: Sarah Rees Brennan
name: han
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/08
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Compound Fracture 203166772 Bestselling and award-winning author Andrew Joseph White returns with a queer Appalachian thriller, that pulls no punches, for teens who see the failures in our world and are pushing for radical change.

A gut-wrenching story following a trans autistic teen who survives an attempted murder, only to be drawn into the generational struggle between the rural poor and those who exploit them.

On the night Miles Abernathy—sixteen-year-old socialist and proud West Virginian—comes out as trans to his parents, he sneaks off to a party, carrying evidence that may finally turn the tide of the blood feud plaguing Twist Creek: Photos that prove the county’s Sheriff Davies was responsible for the so-called “accident� that injured his dad, killed others, and crushed their grassroots efforts to unseat him.

The feud began a hundred years ago when Miles’s great-great-grandfather, Saint Abernathy, incited a miners� rebellion that ended with a public execution at the hands of law enforcement. Now, Miles becomes the feud’s latest victim as the sheriff’s son and his friends sniff out the evidence, follow him through the woods, and beat him nearly to death.

In the hospital, the ghost of a soot-covered man hovers over Miles’s bedside while Sheriff Davies threatens Miles into silence. But when Miles accidentally kills one of the boys who hurt him, he learns of other folks in Twist Creek who want out from under the sheriff’s heel. To free their families from this cycle of cruelty, they’re willing to put everything on the line—is Miles?

A visceral, unabashedly political page-turner that won’t let you go until you’ve reached the end, Compound Fracture is not for the faint of heart, but it is for every reader who is ready to fight for a better world.]]> 370 Andrew Joseph White 1682636127 han 0 to-read 4.45 2024 Compound Fracture
author: Andrew Joseph White
name: han
average rating: 4.45
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/09/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City (The Siege, #1)]]> 38347801
Their only chance rests with a colonel of engineers - a despised outsider, a genius, a master of military and political strategy with the wrong color skin. He is the City's only hope.

But nobody, rich or poor, wants to take orders from a jumped-up Milkface. Saving the City from itself might be more difficult than surviving the coming siege.]]> 335 K.J. Parker 0316270806 han 3
I am all for stories about complex relationships with empire and imperialism, but was pretty grossed out by the way this made white people the victims of that empire and the ensuing racism. It really sucked a lot of enjoyment out of the story for me and took this from something I would enjoy analyzing and sharing with other people to something I am unlikely to recommend.

The main character was also so indifferent towards women and so frequently admiring the physiques of the men around him that I truly thought he was going to be gay T_T Hetero jumpscare...

It was quite funny to imagine him running around the city slapping people like that Airplane bit. I think he slaps like 6 people over the course of the book. ]]> 4.22 2019 Sixteen Ways to Defend a Walled City (The Siege, #1)
author: K.J. Parker
name: han
average rating: 4.22
book published: 2019
rating: 3
read at: 2024/08/30
date added: 2024/08/30
shelves:
review:
This was a funny read, and I liked the wittiness and inventiveness of the main character, as well as his unreliable-narrator shtick where he pretends like he doesn't want to save everyone he can.

I am all for stories about complex relationships with empire and imperialism, but was pretty grossed out by the way this made white people the victims of that empire and the ensuing racism. It really sucked a lot of enjoyment out of the story for me and took this from something I would enjoy analyzing and sharing with other people to something I am unlikely to recommend.

The main character was also so indifferent towards women and so frequently admiring the physiques of the men around him that I truly thought he was going to be gay T_T Hetero jumpscare...

It was quite funny to imagine him running around the city slapping people like that Airplane bit. I think he slaps like 6 people over the course of the book.
]]> <![CDATA[The Blade Itself (The First Law, #1)]]> 944073
Nobleman Captain Jezal dan Luthar, dashing officer, and paragon of selfishness, has nothing more dangerous in mind than fleecing his friends at cards and dreaming of glory in the fencing circle. But war is brewing, and on the battlefields of the frozen North they fight by altogether bloodier rules.

Inquisitor Glokta, cripple turned torturer, would like nothing better than to see Jezal come home in a box. But then Glokta hates everyone: cutting treason out of the Union one confession at a time leaves little room for friendship. His latest trail of corpses may lead him right to the rotten heart of government, if he can stay alive long enough to follow it.

Enter the wizard, Bayaz. A bald old man with a terrible temper and a pathetic assistant, he could be the First of the Magi, he could be a spectacular fraud, but whatever he is, he's about to make the lives of Logen, Jezal, and Glokta a whole lot more difficult.

Murderous conspiracies rise to the surface, old scores are ready to be settled, and the line between hero and villain is sharp enough to draw blood.

]]> 515 Joe Abercrombie 0575079797 han 0 dnf 4.21 2006 The Blade Itself (The First Law, #1)
author: Joe Abercrombie
name: han
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2006
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/25
shelves: dnf
review:

]]> The Spirit Bares Its Teeth 89144437 Mors vincit omnia. Death conquers all.

London, 1883. The Veil between the living and dead has thinned. Violet-eyed mediums commune with spirits under the watchful eye of the Royal Speaker Society, and sixteen-year-old Silas Bell would rather rip out his violet eyes than become an obedient Speaker wife. According to Mother, he’ll be married by the end of the year. It doesn’t matter that he’s needed a decade of tutors to hide his autism; that he practices surgery on slaughtered pigs; that he is a boy, not the girl the world insists on seeing.

After a failed attempt to escape an arranged marriage, Silas is diagnosed with Veil sickness—a mysterious disease sending violet-eyed women into madness—and shipped away to Braxton’s Sanitorium and Finishing School. The facility is cold, the instructors merciless, and the students either bloom into eligible wives or disappear. So when the ghosts of missing students start begging Silas for help, he decides to reach into Braxton’s innards and expose its rotten guts to the world—as long as the school doesn’t break him first.]]> 399 Andrew Joseph White 1682636186 han 3
I really loved the T4T relationship, it was very sweetly expressed and felt very genuine. It was very quick to read and once I got to the final hundred pages I was flying along.]]> 4.48 2023 The Spirit Bares Its Teeth
author: Andrew Joseph White
name: han
average rating: 4.48
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2024/08/25
date added: 2024/08/25
shelves:
review:
This revisited some of the most interesting themes from Hell Followed With Us, with sharper writing, gorier horror, and way better dialogue, which was one of my biggest gripes with HFWU. However I felt like some of the pitfalls of HFWU were still there, especially the viewpoint character explaining things to the audience over and over. The time that was spent on re-stating simple observations (the world is cruel, this character is a coward, here’s how I express my anxiety so when I act this way it means I’m anxious�) could have been better spent on a bit more building the magic system and developing the full cast a little more. I really liked Isabella and Mary and wish I could have had a bit more insight into their histories.

I really loved the T4T relationship, it was very sweetly expressed and felt very genuine. It was very quick to read and once I got to the final hundred pages I was flying along.
]]> Slow River 270259
Then out of the rain walked Spanner, predator and thief, who took her in, cared for her wound, and taught her how to reinvent herself again and again. No one could find Lore now: not the police, not her family, and not the kidnappers who had left her in that alley to die. She had escaped…but the cost of her newfound freedom was crime and deception, and she paid it over and over again, until she had become someone she loathed.

Lore had a choice: She could stay in the shadows, stay with Spanner…and risk losing herself forever. Or she could leave Spanner and find herself again by becoming someone else: stealing the identity implant of a dead woman, taking over her life, and creating a new future.

But to start again, Lore required Spanner’s talents–Spanner, who needed her and hated her, and who always had a price. And even as Lore agreed to play Spanner’s game one final time, she found that there was still the price of being a Van Oesterling to be paid. Only by confronting her family, her past, and her own demons could Lore meld together who she had once been, who she had become, and the person she intended to be…]]> 352 Nicola Griffith 0345395379 han 2
I found the deepfake porn element of the story pretty scummy and creepy, and for a story so prescient about tablets, deepfakes, and 24h news, I thought it was strange to have zero concept of idols, pop culture, sex symbols etc in a story that has a lot of focus on fame, notoriety, and sexual desire. Like teenage Lore making deepfakes of her parents having sex just seems UNREALISTIC if she had access to streaming services and, like, Hazbin Hotel or whatever.

In the same vein, Lore being so easily forgiven by her friends and having all her bad behavior blamed on Spanner felt very weightless, like it was all about her beating herself up and moving on rather than the fact that she is part of the corrupt, seedy system she condemns all throughout the book. In the end everything is pinned neatly on one person who was “ruined� by her abuser and Lore gets to Be Herself with her girlfriend who magnanimously doesn’t mind that she’s actually secretly a rich genius. ]]> 3.84 1995 Slow River
author: Nicola Griffith
name: han
average rating: 3.84
book published: 1995
rating: 2
read at: 2024/08/15
date added: 2024/08/15
shelves:
review:
I liked the multiple timelines and the river as a metaphor for all these different aspects of Lore’s life coming together to make “her�. The sewage management thing was unique and an interesting metaphor for self-examination? I got bored with some of the more technical stuff, but the gritty cyberpunk atmosphere was overall cool.

I found the deepfake porn element of the story pretty scummy and creepy, and for a story so prescient about tablets, deepfakes, and 24h news, I thought it was strange to have zero concept of idols, pop culture, sex symbols etc in a story that has a lot of focus on fame, notoriety, and sexual desire. Like teenage Lore making deepfakes of her parents having sex just seems UNREALISTIC if she had access to streaming services and, like, Hazbin Hotel or whatever.

In the same vein, Lore being so easily forgiven by her friends and having all her bad behavior blamed on Spanner felt very weightless, like it was all about her beating herself up and moving on rather than the fact that she is part of the corrupt, seedy system she condemns all throughout the book. In the end everything is pinned neatly on one person who was “ruined� by her abuser and Lore gets to Be Herself with her girlfriend who magnanimously doesn’t mind that she’s actually secretly a rich genius.
]]> Lud-in-the-Mist 61206801
Hope Mirrlees penned Lud-in-the-Mist--a classic fantasy, and her only fantasy novel--in 1926. When the town of Lud severs its ties to a Faerie land, an illegal trade in fairy fruit develops. But eating the fruit has horrible and wondrous effects.

"Helen Hope Mirrlees was born in England in 1887. Mirrlees was a close friend of such literary lights as Walter de la Mare, T.S. Eliot, André Gide, Katharine Mansfield, Lady Ottoline Morrell, Bertrand Russell, Gertrude Stein, Virginia Woolf, and William Butler Yeats. Under her own name, she published three novels: Madeleine� One of Life's Jansenists (1921); The Counterplot (1924); and her 1926 classic fantasy Lud-in-the-Mist, which has acknowledged inspiration to the likes of Neil Gaiman, Mary Gentle, Elizabeth Hand, Johanna Russ, and Tim Powers."--SF Site

"Hope Mirrlees' writing, usually underrated, moves between gently crazy humour, poetic snatches, real menace, and real poignancy."—The Encyclopedia of Fantasy]]> 303 Hope Mirrlees 1667639919 han 3 3.95 1926 Lud-in-the-Mist
author: Hope Mirrlees
name: han
average rating: 3.95
book published: 1926
rating: 3
read at: 2024/07/08
date added: 2024/08/10
shelves:
review:

]]> The Wasp Factory 19406914 Two years after I killed Blyth I murdered my young brother Paul, for quite different and more fundamental reasons than I'd disposed of Blyth, and then a year after that I did for my young cousin Esmerelda, more or less on a whim.
That's my score to date. Three. I haven't killed anybody for years, and don't intend to ever again.
It was just a stage I was going through.]]> 194 Iain Banks 1476750246 han 2 3.44 1984 The Wasp Factory
author: Iain Banks
name: han
average rating: 3.44
book published: 1984
rating: 2
read at: 2024/06/10
date added: 2024/08/10
shelves:
review:

]]> The Haar 60840449
Muriel McAuley has lived in the Scottish fishing village of Witchaven all her life. She was born there, and she intends to die there.

But when an overseas property developer threatens to evict the residents from their homes and raze Witchaven to the ground in the name of progress, all seems lost� until the day a mysterious fog bank creeps inland.

The Haar.

To some it brings redemption� to others, it brings only madness and death. What macabre secrets lie within� The Haar.

Romantic and deranged, The Haar is a gore-soaked folk horror fairy tale from David Sodergren, author of The Forgotten Island and Maggie’s Grave.]]> 206 David Sodergren han 3 4.09 2022 The Haar
author: David Sodergren
name: han
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2024/05/25
date added: 2024/08/10
shelves:
review:

]]> Siren Queen 54102727 "Lyrical, mesmerizing, and otherworldly. . . stunning proof that Nghi Vo is one of the most original writers we have today. A beautiful, brutal, monstrous Hollywood fantasy.”—Taylor Jenkins Reid, New York Times bestselling author of The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

Immortality is just a casting call away.

Locus Award Finalist
Ignyte Award Finalist
An Amazon Best Book of 2022
One of NPR’s Best Books of 2022
Vulture’s #1 Fantasy Novel of 2022

Best of Year Selections at Apple Books | B&N Booksellers | LibraryReads | TIME Magazine | Oprah Daily | The Philadelphia Inquirer | Publishers Weekly | Buzzfeed | Chicago Review of Books | LitHub | Book Riot | Paste Magazine | Geek Girl Authority | Bookish | The Mary Sue | New York Public Library | Vulture | Locus Recommended Reading List | Kobo | The Quill to Live | L. A. Public Library | Audible | Amazon | NPR

An Indie Next and LibraryReads Pick
A Brooklyn Library Prize Finalist

It was magic. In every world, it was a kind of magic.

“No maids, no funny talking, no fainting flowers.� Luli Wei is beautiful, talented, and desperate to be a star. Coming of age in pre-Code Hollywood, she knows how dangerous the movie business is and how limited the roles are for a Chinese American girl from Hungarian Hill—but she doesn't care. She’d rather play a monster than a maid.

But in Luli's world, the worst monsters in Hollywood are not the ones on screen. The studios want to own everything from her face to her name to the women she loves, and they run on a system of bargains made in blood and ancient magic, powered by the endless sacrifice of unlucky starlets like her. For those who do survive to earn their fame, success comes with a steep price. Luli is willing to do whatever it takes—even if that means becoming the monster herself.

Siren Queen offers up an enthralling exploration of an outsider achieving stardom on her own terms, in a fantastical Hollywood where the monsters are real and the magic of the silver screen illuminates every page.

At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.]]> 281 Nghi Vo 1250788854 han 2 3.68 2022 Siren Queen
author: Nghi Vo
name: han
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2022
rating: 2
read at: 2023/01/15
date added: 2024/08/10
shelves:
review:

]]> Ninth House (Alex Stern, #1) 43301737 The mesmerizing adult debut from #1 New York Times bestselling author Leigh Bardugo

Galaxy “Alex� Stern is the most unlikely member of Yale’s freshman class. Raised in the Los Angeles hinterlands by a hippie mom, Alex dropped out of school early and into a world of shady drug dealer boyfriends, dead-end jobs, and much, much worse. By age twenty, in fact, she is the sole survivor of a horrific, unsolved multiple homicide. Some might say she’s thrown her life away. But at her hospital bed, Alex is offered a second chance to attend one of the world’s most elite universities on a full ride. What’s the catch, and why her?

Still searching for answers to this herself, Alex arrives in New Haven tasked by her mysterious benefactors with monitoring the activities of Yale’s secret societies. These eight windowless “tombs� are well-known to be haunts of the future rich and powerful, from high-ranking politicos to Wall Street and Hollywood’s biggest players. But their occult activities are revealed to be more sinister and more extraordinary than any paranoid imagination might conceive.]]> 476 Leigh Bardugo 1250313082 han 2 4.13 2019 Ninth House (Alex Stern, #1)
author: Leigh Bardugo
name: han
average rating: 4.13
book published: 2019
rating: 2
read at: 2023/07/05
date added: 2024/08/10
shelves:
review:

]]> The Honeys 58874675 From Ryan La Sala, the wildly popular author of Reverie, comes a twisted and tantalizing horror novel set amidst the bucolic splendor of a secluded summer retreat.

Mars has always been the lesser twin, the shadow to his sister Caroline's radiance. But when Caroline dies under horrific circumstances, Mars is propelled to learn all he can about his once-inseparable sister who'd grown tragically distant.

Mars's genderfluidity means he's often excluded from the traditions -- and expectations -- of his politically-connected family. This includes attendance at the prestigious Aspen Conservancy Summer Academy where his sister poured so much of her time. But with his grief still fresh, he insists on attending in her place.

What Mars finds is a bucolic fairytale not meant for him. Folksy charm and sun-drenched festivities camouflage old-fashioned gender roles and a toxic preparatory rigor. Mars seeks out his sister's old friends: a group of girls dubbed the Honeys, named for the beehives they maintain behind their cabin. They are beautiful and terrifying -- and Mars is certain they're connected to Caroline's death.

But the longer he stays at Aspen, the more the sweet mountain breezes give way to hints of decay. Mars’s memories begin to falter, bleached beneath the relentless summer sun. Something is hunting him in broad daylight, toying with his mind. If Mars can't find it soon, it will eat him alive.]]> 344 Ryan La Sala 133874531X han 0 to-read 3.79 2022 The Honeys
author: Ryan La Sala
name: han
average rating: 3.79
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Daughters' War (Blacktongue, #0)]]> 198112184
The goblins have killed all of our horses and most of our men. They have enslaved our cities, burned our fields, and inflicted a waking nightmare on the known world. Yet humanity persists, fighting back with all we have against the their bottomless hunger for human lands and human flesh.

Now it's up to the daughters of Manreach to save what's left of the human kingdoms. They'll fight every weapon at hand, with fearsome gods at their backs and brutal monsters at their sides.

Galva - Galvicha to her three brothers, also under arms against the foe - has defied her family's wishes and joined the army's untested new unit, the Raven Knights, to serve at the side of women who, like her, have chosen the battlefield over the marriage bed. She and her sisters in arms march toward a once-beautiful city now overrun by the goblin horde, accompanied by scores of giant war corvids. Made with the darkest magics, these fearsome black birds may hold the key to stopping the goblins in their war to make cattle of mankind.

The road to victory is bloody and the stakes are high; the goblins are clever and merciless in their prosecution of this third war against us. The Raven Knights can take nothing for granted - not the bonds of family, nor the wisdom of their leaders, nor their own safety against the dangerous war birds at their side.

But some hopes are worth any risk.]]> 403 Christopher Buehlman 1250887682 han 4 4.40 2024 The Daughters' War (Blacktongue, #0)
author: Christopher Buehlman
name: han
average rating: 4.40
book published: 2024
rating: 4
read at: 2024/08/08
date added: 2024/08/08
shelves:
review:
Honestly I enjoyed this more than Blacktongue Thief. It’s lacking the sleazy, fun charm and all you’re left with is the real stripped-down of Galva as she represents herself. There are no shortcuts to the sorrow and violence of war. Everything feels earned. At times this is very frustrating because you want the heroes to win! But all they can do is accept death in all her glory. The parts that feel the best are when she finally lets her strict moral code slip a bit because holy shit if anyone deserves it� Absolutely loved this so much more than I expected, 4.5 stars.
]]> Vespertine 56980403 Artemisia se está preparando para unirse a las hermanas grises, encargadas de purificar a los fallecidos para que sus almas sigan adelante; de ​​lo contrario, sus espíritus despiertan con un hambre voraz por los vivos. Ella prefiere tratar con los muertos, que a diferencia de los vivos nunca hacen comentarios sobre su turbio pasado.
Cuando su convento sufre un ataque, Artemisia lo defiende despertando a un antiguo espíritu vinculado a una reliquia. Es un renacido, un ser malévolo que amenaza con poseerla en cuanto baje la guardia. La muerte ha llegado a Loraille, y solo una vespertina (una sacerdotisa entrenada para controlar una gran reliquia) puede aspirar a detenerla. Pero los conocimientos de las vespertinas hace mucho que se perdieron, por lo que a Artemisia no le queda más opción que recurrir al único que puede saber algo: el mismísimo renacido.
Mientras su vínculo con el renacido se fortalece entre secretos y magia, un mal oculto comienza a surgir. Y enfrentarse a él puede requerir que traicione todo en lo que cree... si es que el renacido no la traiciona primero.]]> 400 Margaret Rogerson 153447711X han 0 to-read 4.09 2021 Vespertine
author: Margaret Rogerson
name: han
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/08/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[There Is No Antimemetics Division]]> 54870256 Antimemes are real. Think of any piece of information which you wouldn't share with anybody, like passwords, taboos and dirty secrets. Or any piece of information which would be difficult to share even if you complex equations, very boring passages of text, large blocks of random numbers, and dreams... But anomalous antimemes are another matter entirely. How do you contain something you can't record or remember? How do you fight a war against an enemy with effortless, perfect camouflage, when you can never even know that you're at war? Welcome to the Antimemetics Division. No, this is not your first day.This ebook is an official release by me, qntm from the SCP Foundation wiki! PM me if you require confirmation. This ebook collects all of my Antimemetics Division SCP-055, SCP-2256 and the complete serials There Is No Antimemetics Division and Five Five Five Five Five.]]> 220 qntm han 3 4.23 2020 There Is No Antimemetics Division
author: qntm
name: han
average rating: 4.23
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at: 2024/08/01
date added: 2024/08/03
shelves:
review:
This was interesting to read in the context of having just finished The Buried Giant because they’re both about memory, especially memories shared between a couple vs the memory of society as a whole. Obviously this was much more fast paced and action-oriented. I find good SCP texts really crushable and this was definitely an easy palate cleanser that I just rocked through, but it had some really great standalone ideas and scenes that stuck out to me. The husband and wife repeatedly finding and helping each other despite everything was unexpectedly sweet and I thought they were both treated with a good level of complexity.
]]> <![CDATA[Beneath the Trees Where Nobody Sees]]> 202104245 Live, laugh, shed blood. Dexter meets Richard Scarry’s Busy, Busy Town in this twisted debut graphic novel.

Don’t murder the locals—this is small-town serial killer, upstanding citizen, and adorable brown bear Samantha Strong’s cardinal rule. A sea of potential victims is in the city just beyond the forest, but when you’ve worked as hard as Sam to build a cozy life and a thriving business in a community surrounded by friendly fellow animal folk, warm decor, and the aroma of cedar trees and freshly baked apple pie, the last thing you want is to disturb the peace. So imagine Sam's indignation when one of Woodbrook’s own meets a grisly, mysterious demise. You wouldn’t blame her for doing anything it takes to hunt down her rival before the town self-destructs and Sheriff Patterson starts barking up the wrong tree.]]> 152 Patrick Horvath han 0 to-read 4.19 2024 Beneath the Trees Where Nobody Sees
author: Patrick Horvath
name: han
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/29
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Hike 27833803 From the author of The Postmortal, a fantasy saga unlike any you’ve read before, weaving elements of folk tale and video game into a riveting, unforgettable adventure of what a man will endure to return to his family

When Ben, a suburban family man, takes a business trip to rural Pennsylvania, he decides to spend the afternoon before his dinner meeting on a short hike. Once he sets out into the woods behind his hotel, he quickly comes to realize that the path he has chosen cannot be given up easily. With no choice but to move forward, Ben finds himself falling deeper and deeper into a world of man-eating giants, bizarre demons, and colossal insects.

On a quest of epic, life-or-death proportions, Ben finds help comes in some of the most unexpected forms, including a profane crustacean and a variety of magical objects, tools, and potions. Desperate to return to his family, Ben is determined to track down the “Producer,� the creator of the world in which he is being held hostage and the only one who can free him from the path.

At once bitingly funny and emotionally absorbing, Magary’s novel is a remarkably unique addition to the contemporary fantasy genre, one that draws as easily from the world of classic folk tales as it does from video games. In The Hike, Magary takes readers on a daring odyssey away from our day-to-day grind and transports them into an enthralling world propelled by heart, imagination, and survival.]]> 278 Drew Magary 0399563857 han 0 dnf 3.96 2016 The Hike
author: Drew Magary
name: han
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/28
shelves: dnf
review:
I just found this kind of immature, shallowly engaging with the tropes it chooses to use, the main character is constantly screaming and swearing and pushing himself to his physical limit only to be able to find new reserves of energy within the next ten minutes. Also why is Chuck Palahniuk catching strays in the pull quote
]]> The Buried Giant 22522805
The Buried Giant begins as a couple set off across a troubled land of mist and rain in the hope of finding a son they have not seen in years.

Sometimes savage, often intensely moving, Kazuo Ishiguro's first novel in nearly a decade is about lost memories, love, revenge, and war.

Included on TIME Magazine's "THE 100 BEST FANTASY BOOKS OF ALL TIME"]]> 317 Kazuo Ishiguro 030727103X han 3
Definitely a really well constructed book but just didn't click for me. I liked the slowly emerging details, and the theme of the role of forgetting tragedy to create peace was very carefully crafted. I didn't understand the reasoning behind the dialogue and kind of anticipated some type of reveal based around the way the two main characters are constantly addressing each other. It got kind of tedious for me and I couldn't stop wondering why it was done that way, so I was frustrated not finding any resolution on that front. I did enjoy the ending, it was poignant and felt very emotionally real.

]]> 3.56 2015 The Buried Giant
author: Kazuo Ishiguro
name: han
average rating: 3.56
book published: 2015
rating: 3
read at: 2024/07/26
date added: 2024/07/27
shelves:
review:
After I finished this, ŷ recommended a study guide to the book for my "read next" which kind of says it all I guess.

Definitely a really well constructed book but just didn't click for me. I liked the slowly emerging details, and the theme of the role of forgetting tragedy to create peace was very carefully crafted. I didn't understand the reasoning behind the dialogue and kind of anticipated some type of reveal based around the way the two main characters are constantly addressing each other. It got kind of tedious for me and I couldn't stop wondering why it was done that way, so I was frustrated not finding any resolution on that front. I did enjoy the ending, it was poignant and felt very emotionally real.


]]> The Tiger Flu 39070352
Kirilow is a doctor apprentice whose lover Peristrophe is a "starfish," a woman who can regenerate her own limbs and organs, which she uses to help her clone sisters whose organs are failing. When a denizen from Salt Water City suffering from a mysterious flu comes into their midst, Peristrophe becomes infected and dies, prompting Kirilow to travel to Salt Water City, where the flu is now a pandemic, to find a new starfish who will help save her sisters. There, Kirilow meets Kora, a girl-woman desperate to save her family from the epidemic. Kora has everything Kirilow is looking for, except the will to abandon her own family. But before Kirilow can convince her, both are kidnapped by a group of powerful men to serve as test subjects for a new technology that can cure the mind of the body.

Bold, beautiful, and wildly imaginative, The Tiger Flu is at once a female hero's saga, a cyberpunk thriller, and a convention-breaking cautionary tale--a striking metaphor for our complicated times.]]> 330 Larissa Lai 1551527316 han 0 to-read 3.51 2018 The Tiger Flu
author: Larissa Lai
name: han
average rating: 3.51
book published: 2018
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/24
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> An Unkindness of Ghosts 34550711 Aster has little to offer folks in the way of rebuttal when they call her ogre and freak. She’s used to the names; she only wishes there was more truth to them. If she were truly a monster, she’d be powerful enough to tear down the walls around her until nothing remains of her world.


Aster lives in the lowdeck slums of the HSSMatilda, a space vessel organized much like the antebellum South. For generations,Matildahas ferried the last of humanity to a mythical Promised Land. On its way, the ship’s leaders have imposed harsh moral restrictions and deep indignities on dark-skinned sharecroppers like Aster. Embroiled in a grudge with a brutal overseer, Aster learns there may be a way to improve her lot—if she’s willing to sow the seeds of civil war.]]> 360 Rivers Solomon han 3 3.98 2017 An Unkindness of Ghosts
author: Rivers Solomon
name: han
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2017
rating: 3
read at: 2024/07/18
date added: 2024/07/18
shelves:
review:

]]> Sorrowland 48915089
But even in the forest, Vern is a hunted woman. Forced to fight back against the community that refuses to let her go, she unleashes incredible brutality far beyond what a person should be capable of, her body wracked by inexplicable and uncanny changes.

To understand her metamorphosis and to protect her small family, Vern has to face the past, and more troublingly, the future - outside the woods. Finding the truth will mean uncovering the secrets of the compound she fled but also the violent history in America that produced it.]]> 355 Rivers Solomon 0374266778 han 0 to-read 3.82 2021 Sorrowland
author: Rivers Solomon
name: han
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2021
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2024/07/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Heaven Official's Blessing: Tian Guan Ci Fu (Novel) Vol. 8]]> 60044962 In this final book (Volume 8), read the conclusion to this epic historical fantasy about a prince and the mysterious man by his side, in English for the very first time. Also includes bonus stories!

White No-Face's mask is off, and the final conflict has begun. Deep in the ancient caverns and lava flows of Mount Tonglu, Xie Lian must face the one whose hatred has plagued him for centuries—but this time, he won't have to do it alone. His beloved, Hua Cheng, has spent his long existence amassing the power to protect him, and now with their feelings for each other out in the open, they have all the more reason to fight for survival.

In this thrilling conclusion to Heaven Official's Blessing, can Xie Lian and Hua Cheng triumph against an all-powerful foe?

Also included in this final volume are five bonus tales of romance, celebration, and adventure.]]> 404 Mò Xiāng Tóng Xiù 1638585539 han 0 4.81 2017 Heaven Official's Blessing: Tian Guan Ci Fu (Novel) Vol. 8
author: Mò Xiāng Tóng Xiù
name: han
average rating: 4.81
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at: 2024/07/14
date added: 2024/07/16
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]]> <![CDATA[Heaven Official's Blessing: Tian Guan Ci Fu (Novel) Vol. 7]]> 60044950 LIFETIMES OF CRUELTY, CENTURIES OF DEVOTION

The Kiln is open, and White No-Face is back to his full power. The past eight hundred years have not blunted his hatred nor his obsession with Xie Lian—he aims to break Xie Lian down to nothing, even if all of humanity and the heavens themselves are collateral damage.

This time, however, Xie Lian will not face him alone. Together with Hua Cheng—powerful ghost king, stalwart protector, and devoted love—can Xie Lian finally reveal the face behind the mask and put an end to the nightmare forever?]]> 404 Mò Xiāng Tóng Xiù 1685791115 han 0 4.74 2017 Heaven Official's Blessing: Tian Guan Ci Fu (Novel) Vol. 7
author: Mò Xiāng Tóng Xiù
name: han
average rating: 4.74
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at: 2024/07/13
date added: 2024/07/16
shelves:
review:

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