Tag: mythology

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Best of List Books Memes Recommendations

If you like… Mythological Fantasy

This week we have a genre freebie for Top 10 Tuesday, and I am going with Top 10 Mythological Fantasy Books. I really do like a plot where the gods get interested in mortal affairs, leading to much chaos — and great world-building.

1 / The Chalion Series / World of the Five Gods series by Lois McMaster Bujold

2 / Inheritance Trilogy by N. K. Jemisin

3 / Paternus Trilogy by Dyrk Ashton

4 / Malazan Book of the Fallen Series by Steven Erikson

5 / Edda of Burdens trilogy by Elizabeth Bear

6 / The Queen’s Thief Series by Megan Whalen Turner

7 / Tales of the Magatama Series by Noriko Ogiwara

8 / Indulgence Series by Erin Kellison

9 / The Wicked + The Divine saga by Kieron Gillen and Jamie McKelvie

10 / The Library at Mount Char by Scott Hawkins

Have you read or are you interested any of these mythological fantasy books? Please feel free to leave as many recs as possible too!

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Books Recommendations Watchlist

January 2022 Wrap-Up / Mini-Reviews

January saw work at the office pile up, but I still managed to get in a lot more escape reading and watching. Here are some of the books and shows that I like particularly and I hope you’ll give these a shot as well.

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Books

Review: Winter of Ice and Iron by Rachel Neumeier

Winter of Ice and Iron by Rachel Neumeier
Standalone Epic Fantasy
Published: 2017
Tropes: Land Magic/ Wild Magic, Mythological Fantasy, Bi-Protagonist, Court Intrigue, Dark Fantasy.

Winter of Ice and Iron was my pick for the “winter” theme for January, in Bookish Valhalla’s TBR SFF 2022 challenge. I’ve read and liked Neumeier’s work before and I think she deserves more press — so I picked this one up with interest.

Each kingdom’s land has a wild force which must be mastered by its ruler (else it will destroy the ruler and the people). Trouble starts when one particular mad king plans to usurp the wildforces of all neighboring kingdoms.

“Wolf Month was the starving month, the bitter month, the month when winter stores grew lean and the new growth had not yet come, the month when the long haunting cries of the wolves drifted almost nightly from the high mountains. It was a hard month. The cold lingered.”

This book reminded me of Game of Thrones but with land magic involved. (There are a lot of kings and queens asking each other to “bend the knee” which is a GOT reference if ever I saw one.) Ahem:

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Books

Lavinia by Ursula K. Le Guin

Lavinia by Ursula K. Le Guin
Published: 2008
Awards: Locus Award (2009)
Book Tropes: Roman mythology retelling/ Trojan War

Lavinia was the last bride of the Trojan hero, Aeneas. Aeneas was immortalized in Virgil’s ancient epic (29-19 B.C.), but Lavinia barely got any mention other than as the shy, blushing princess of Latinium. Lavinia is angry with Virgil for that. Virgil and Lavinia end up having a conversation across Time about this oversight.

The end result is that Virgil realizes his poem didn’t do her justice. He focused on women like Camilla and Dido and Creusa, but left out Lavinia! After all, when the Trojans (led by the notorious Paris of Troy) were completely battered by Melenaus’s Spartan army, it was Lavinia who gave them shelter in her homeland.

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Books Memes

If You Like: Kitsune Lore

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.

Kamisama Tomoe

I’m cheating here because I am taking these from an older post, but it’s such a fun topic!

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Books Starred Recommendations

The Paladin of Souls by Lois McMaster Bujold

The Bulfinch Encyclopedia of Mythology states that the twelve most illustrious knights of Emperor Charlemagne of the Holy Roman Empire were called Paladins. Lois McMaster Bujold took this term and applied it to the hero of her 2003 book, The Paladin of Souls, for which she got her fourth Hugo Award. 

Paladin of Souls is a fantasy work set in Chalion, a land where religious practice is split among the Five Gods: Father of Winter, Mother of Summer, Son of Autumn, Daughter of Spring, and the Bastard (God of Death). The Five Gods put a curse on Chalion a long time back, and people still suffer from the after-effects. The mythological world-building in this book is absolutely gripping.

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Art & Illustration Books Memes Recommendations Watchlist

Japanese Mythology Recs: Ogiwara, Mononoke & Moribito

Dragon Sword Wind Child

Lately, I’ve been consuming speculative fiction centered around Japanese mythology / Shinto creation mythology. Putting up a few reviews here as part of the Japanese Literature Reading Challenge 2021.

Dragon Sword and Wind Child by Noriko Ogiwara

This book is part of the Tales of Matagama series but you can also read it as a standalone. Saya lives in the village, with no memory of the past. She finds comfort in her worship of the God of Light and his children. But the God of Light has been at eternal war with the Goddess of Darkness, and only the Water Maiden can wield the Dragon Sword and bring that war to an end. Saya’s world comes crashing down when she discovers that she is that Water Maiden.

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Books Memes

Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny: #VintageSciFiMonth

What if the Gods were alien invaders on another planet? What if they jealously guarded treasures of the advanced technological variety from the non-Gods? And, what if one day, someone decided to open up those treasure vaults to the rest of the world? That’s the theme of Lord of Light by Roger Zelazny.

Lord of Light is a 1967 science fiction book and is my first book for the Vintage Science Fiction Month (not a reading challenge) of January 2021.

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Long Posts

Vulpes Vulpes. The Fox as Motif in Folklore, Literature, Culture. [Long Post]

The Sly Red Fox
"Cold, delicately as the dark snow,
A fox’s nose touches twig, leaf;
Two eyes serve a movement, that now
And again now, and now, and now
Sets neat prints into the snow … "
~ "The Thought Fox" by Ted Hughes

Is there a creature more cunning than the sly Fox? If we go by Slavic folklore, the Fox would have hoodwinked you many times over before you even got to say, “Wait a minute … ” Swift-footed and stealthy, the Fox never claimed it had a heart of gold to match its fur.

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