Foxes and Fairy Tales is hosting another very cool reading challenge in July 2021: TrekAThon Round 1. Each book you read will power the Transporter and let you rescue one crew-member (and once you finish the Scotty prompt, you can combine prompts!). All book choices are your own. The sign-up post is here, and here’s a rundown of the books I hope to read.
//Who drew the patterns of the stars, if not a god? Who designed the marvellous cycle of cloud and rain and river, if not a god? Who made you— and you— and you too— if not some god whose name we have forgotten?//
The Alleluia Files by Sharon Shinn is the third book in her Samaria series. It can be read as a standalone, as long as you have some background information of the past centuries on Samaria (which I am happy to provide below).
We find ourselves on a different planet, where the Samarians, Edori and Jacobites co-exist. Samarians worship the God known as Jovah. When they ‘sing’ to Jovah, Jovah instantly (and I do mean instantly) sends help within the hour, in the form of rain, medicines and grain.
The Edori are nomads and sailors who believe that somewhere out there is a supreme universal being, but they’re not sure whether that being is Jovah or not. And then there are the Jacobites, bitter agnostics, who claim that Jovah is not a God — instead, Jovah is a machine!
It’s time for The Wednesday Weekly Blogging Challenge, hosted by Long and Short Reviews. The topic for June 23 is Saddest Book(s) I’ve Ever Read. So here we are, talking about a few tearjerkers.
Look, don’t judge me. Crying can have an emotionally cathartic effect. I mean, all those tragedies were created for a reason!
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise;
If you can dream – and not make dreams your master;
If you can think – and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build ’em up with wornout tools;
… Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it …
Read the full piece by Kipling at Poetry Dot Com.
My Lady Jane! A better title would have been Teens Messing with Henry VIII’s Succession Plans. Lady Jane Grey is a rather tragic figure in English history: ruled England for only 9 days before she was beheaded by her cousin Mary Tudor in the Tower of London. (And then Mary was overthrown by her half-sister Queen Elizabeth.)
The authors decided to give this an alternative history spin, with magic and humor. This is how the succession feud should have gone on. The split between the Roman Catholic Church and Church of England became the split between Eðians (people with shapeshifter abilities) and the non-Eðians.
Oh, what an absolute gem of a book. Quiet and unassuming on the surface, yet so utterly charming and thought-provoking.
Bon Agornin dies one day, leaving behind two sons and three daughters. His sons, Penn and Avan, are in the clergy and government respectively, and his eldest daughter, Berend, is the matron in a wealthy family. The youngest daughters, Haner and Selendra, are unmarried, and are forced apart when their patriarch dies. Much of the story is about Haner and Selendra being uprooted from their old home and settling down in their new environment: Haner with Berend and her husband, and Selendra with her parson brother Penn.
They are all dragons. And dragons have a singular custom — that of eating dragon flesh of the deceased, because that is the only way they can increase in power and sustenance. Walton gives them other dragon-like characteristics and rituals too, but at the heart of the story is the grim truth that dragon eats dragon to flourish. It is to Walton’s credit that she makes dragon customs like these feel real but empathetic.
Top Ten Tuesday is a meme hosted by Jana over at That Artsy Reader Girl. Every Tuesday, you pick ten books on that week’s topic. This week, a very interesting theme: Books I Loved that Made Me Want More Books Like Them. So here we are, talking about some kitsune lore.
Once upon a time, I used to be obsessed with this trope — all thanks to the gorgeous Japanese anime show Kamisama Hajimemashita (lit: I Became a God), based on a manga of the same name. Unfortunately, while werewolves and dragons are all too common, the sly Fox doesn’t get much mention.
I’m cheating here because I am taking these from an older post, but it’s such a fun topic!
May 2021 was a slow reading month for me. I blogged much more than I read, which was unusual, but all thanks to the wonderful Wyrd And Wonder challenge. The link has all the posts for that challenge, most of these being SFF rec lists, but one standout read was Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi.
Aside from that, here’s a wrap-up for the month.
A very short book, with poems of varying length. These are all love/ heartbreak poems, but I think we can view them from a non-romantic lens too. I’m sure we’ve all had friends and loved ones with whom we had a parting, Lang’s poetry would ring true for those relationships as well. Rating: B–
Top Ten Tuesday is a meme hosted by Jana over at That Artsy Reader Girl. Every Tuesday, you pick ten books on that week’s topic. This week, we have a freebie. And I’m choosing to go with book villains!
What are some traits of the book villains we all love to hate? Here’s my count-down of some of the worst villains from reading life, and what makes them tick.
It’s time to wrap-up the wonderful Wyrd and Wonder challenge. The rule for this last prompt is to describe your five-star reads in five (or near five) words each. Well, I do keep a running list of all my favorite SFF reads HERE, but trying to describe them each in a phrase or less was a completely new exercise!
