Blood Over Bright Haven || M.L. Wang ★★★★★ Started: 01.02.2025 Finished: 08.02.2025 An Orphan
Blood Over Bright Haven || M.L. Wang ★★★★★ Started: 01.02.2025 Finished: 08.02.2025 An orphan since the age of four, Sciona has always had more to prove than her fellow students. For twenty years, she has devoted every waking moment to the study of magic, fueled by a mad desire to achieve the impossible: to be the first woman ever admitted to the High Magistry. When she finally claws her way up the ranks to become a highmage, however, she finds that her challenges have just begun. Her new colleagues will stop at nothing to let her know she is unwelcome, beginning with giving her a janitor instead of a qualified lab assistant. What neither Sciona nor her peers realize is that her taciturn assistant was once more than a janitor; before he mopped floors for the mages, Thomil was a nomadic hunter from beyond Tiran’s magical barrier. Ten years have passed since he survived the perilous crossing that killed his family. But working for a highmage, he sees the opportunity to finally understand the forces that decimated his tribe, drove him from his homeland, and keep the Tiranish in power. Through their fractious relationship, mage and outsider uncover an ancient secret that could change the course of magic forever—if it doesn’t get them killed first. Sciona has defined her life by the pursuit of truth, but how much is one truth worth with the fate of civilization in the balance? Reading this line in the book description: “Magic has made the city of Tiran an industrial utopia, but magic has a cost—and the collectors have come calling.”, I thought the Bright Haven would come under an external threat that would have to be alleviated. What really happens is much more insidious, much more sinister, and much harder to combat, let alone overcome. The result is an exceptional standalone fantasy novel in the vein of R.F. Kuang's Babel.
More Posts from Embracing-the-shortness and Others
Weight || Jeanette Winterson ★★★★★ Started: 13.11.2023 Finished: 14.11.2023 The story of Atlas and Heracles Atlas knows how it feels to carry the weight of the world; but why, he asks himself, does it have to be carried at all? In Weight — visionary and inventive, yet completely believable and relevant to the questions we ask ourselves every day — Winterson’s skill in turning the familiar on its head to show us a different truth is put to stunning effect. When it comes to recent retellings of Greek Myths, my approach can best be described as kissing paper frogs, hoping one of them would turn out to be a masterpiece. Most understandably didn't. With "Weight", however, my perseverance was rewarded in spectacular fashion. This is no mere recounting of events, it's a careful, considerate and thoughtful conversation with an age-old story. It's building upon the solid fundament of universal truth within the myth and intertwining it with the experiences of contemporary readers. An absolute pleasure to experience, and certainly a book to return to time and time again.
compilation of all the beautiful illustrations by Howard Lyon in Tress of the Emerald Sea. for the audiobook girlies
When We Were Orphans || Kazuo Ishiguro ★★★★★ Started: 24.05.2025 Finished: 30.05.2025
𝔱𝔯𝔦𝔠𝔨 𝔬𝔯 𝔱𝔯𝔢𝔞𝔱! 🎃 happy halloween my friends!
Shoutout to Charlie single handedly ruing the 'all arranged marriages work out in Brandon Sanderson works' statistic
Arranged marriage ruiner Georg
How High We Go in the Dark || Sequoia Nagamatsu ★★★★☆ Started: 31.05.2025 Finished: 07.06.2025
Dr. Cliff Miyashiro arrives in the Arctic Circle to continue his recently deceased daughter's research, only to discover a virus, newly unearthed from melting permafrost. The plague unleashed reshapes life on earth for generations. Yet even while struggling to counter this destructive force, humanity stubbornly persists in myriad moving and ever inventive ways. 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.
Working 9 to 5, reading 5 to 9. I do occasionally post in Bulgarian.
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