violet✦'s bookshelf: all en-US Tue, 01 Sep 2026 02:02:48 -0700 60 violet✦'s bookshelf: all 144 41 https://www.goodreads.com/images/layout/goodreads_logo_144.jpg <![CDATA[Open Me Carefully: Emily Dickinson's Intimate Letters to Susan Huntington Dickinson]]> 108114 Open Me Carefully invites a dramatic new understanding of Emily Dickinson's life and work, overcoming a century of censorship and misinterpretation.

For the millions of readers who love Emily Dickinson's poetry, Open Me Carefully brings new light to the meaning of the poet's life and work. Gone is Emily as lonely spinster; here is Dickinson in her own words, passionate and fully alive.]]> 360 Emily Dickinson 0963818368 violet✦ 0 to-read 4.60 1998 Open Me Carefully: Emily Dickinson's Intimate Letters to Susan Huntington Dickinson
author: Emily Dickinson
name: violet✦
average rating: 4.60
book published: 1998
rating: 0
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date added: 2026/09/01
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Wild Thorns 59411047 214 Sahar Khalifeh violet✦ 0 to-read 4.18 1976 Wild Thorns
author: Sahar Khalifeh
name: violet✦
average rating: 4.18
book published: 1976
rating: 0
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date added: 2026/08/23
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Monstress, Volume 9: The Possessed]]> 207296816 The ninth volume of the multiple Eisner, Harvey, Hugo, and British Fantasy Award-winning series.

Can loyalty and love transcend a history of betrayal and blood?

Maika, Kippa, and Ren return to their own world to discover a full year has passed in their absence—and Zinn is back in the clutches of Maika’s father, the megalomaniacal Lord Doctor. From the relative safety of the pirate-controlled Spice Islands, Maika and her friends must regroup, recover, and find a way stop the Lord Doctor’s murderous rampage before he destroys the Known World.

Collects MONSTRESS #49-54]]> 192 Marjorie M. Liu 1534392610 violet✦ 0 4.27 2024 Monstress, Volume 9: The Possessed
author: Marjorie M. Liu
name: violet✦
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at: 2026/08/21
date added: 2026/08/21
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]]> Monstress, Volume 8: Inferno 123221848 In volume eight of the multiple Eisner, Harvey, Hugo, and British Fantasy Award-winning series, the truth about the death of Maika’s mother has been revealed, and Maika has come undone.

As her allies scramble to save her soul, they find themselves in the unlikeliest of places—the beautiful and brutal prison planet where the Monstra have long been locked away. This visit to the site of Zinn’s worst nightmares might just hold the key to Maika’s survival—and to the long-buried origins of the Known World.

In the series that NPR called, “remarkable,” join Maika as she realizes the only way forward is to return to the past.

Collects MONSTRESS #42-48]]> 208 Marjorie M. Liu 1534399526 violet✦ 0 4.02 2023 Monstress, Volume 8: Inferno
author: Marjorie M. Liu
name: violet✦
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2023
rating: 0
read at: 2026/08/19
date added: 2026/08/19
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]]> <![CDATA[Monstress, Volume 10: Hollow Gods]]> 224004164
Collects MONSTRESS #55-60]]> 200 Marjorie M. Liu 1534332693 violet✦ 0 to-read 4.02 2025 Monstress, Volume 10: Hollow Gods
author: Marjorie M. Liu
name: violet✦
average rating: 4.02
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2026/08/19
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Ashes of The Forest 251912753 176 Güzide Ertürk 1957024127 violet✦ 0 to-read 3.82 2026 The Ashes of The Forest
author: Güzide Ertürk
name: violet✦
average rating: 3.82
book published: 2026
rating: 0
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date added: 2026/08/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> A Fig for All the Devils 59234975 260 C.S. Fritz violet✦ 0 to-read 3.80 2021 A Fig for All the Devils
author: C.S. Fritz
name: violet✦
average rating: 3.80
book published: 2021
rating: 0
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date added: 2026/08/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Canavarların Vaatleri: Türkçe Feminist Spekülatif Kurmacaya Musallat Olanlar]]> 243046988
Canavar tasavvurları insan dışı dünyaya, kadınlara ve kuirlere ilişkin olarak toplumda yer etmiş korku ve kaygılarla ilgili ne anlatır? İmkânsız, fantastik, doğaüstü olana yönelik arzu ve korkularla ilgili ne söylerler? Bu arzu ve korkular “biz” kategorisini nasıl kurar? “Biz”in bilgisine dair ne tür uyarılarda bulunurlar? Kimler, ne gibi özellikleri nedeniyle “biz” kategorisinden dışlanır?

Bu tür soruların cevaplarını arayan Canavarların Vaatleri’nin, edebiyat eleştirisi ve feminizmin yanı sıra felsefeyle ilgilenen okurların da ilgisini çekeceğine inanıyoruz.]]> 320 Ezgi Hamzaçebi 6053164321 violet✦ 0 to-read 4.50 Canavarların Vaatleri: Türkçe Feminist Spekülatif Kurmacaya Musallat Olanlar
author: Ezgi Hamzaçebi
name: violet✦
average rating: 4.50
book published:
rating: 0
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date added: 2026/08/17
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[The Spectralities Reader: Ghosts and Haunting in Contemporary Cultural Theory]]> 17260361
Divided into six thematically discreet sections, the reader covers issues of philosophy, politics, media, spatiality, subject formation (gender, race and sexuality), and historiography. It anthologizes the previously published work of theoretical heavyweights from different disciplinary and cultural backgrounds, such as Jacques Derrida, Gayatri Spivak, and Giorgio Agamben, alongside work by literary and cultural historians such as Jeffrey Sconce and Roger Luckhurst.]]> 584 María del Pilar Blanco 144110559X violet✦ 5 4.28 2013 The Spectralities Reader: Ghosts and Haunting in Contemporary Cultural Theory
author: María del Pilar Blanco
name: violet✦
average rating: 4.28
book published: 2013
rating: 5
read at:
date added: 2026/08/16
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review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Gryphon King (The Chaos Constellation, #1)]]> 216461825 The first in a stunning Southwest Asian-inspired epic fantasy trilogy brimming with morally ambiguous characters, terrifying ghouls and deadly monsters.

Combining cut-throat dynastic politics with expansive worldbuilding and slow-burning romance, this book is perfect for fans of Godkiller and Samantha Shannon.

Bataar was only a child when he killed a gryphon, making him a legend across the Red Steppe. As an adult, he is the formidable Bataar Rhah, chosen by god to rule the continent that once scorned his people. After a string of improbable victories, he turns his sights on the wealthy, powerful kingdom of Dumakra, whose princesses rule the skies from the backs of pegasuses.

When rumours reach the capital that the infamous warlord is moving on Dumakra, Nohra Zultama prepares to face him. She and her sisters are feared warriors, goddess-blessed and mounted on winged, man-eating horses. But as deceit and betrayal swirl through her father's court, Nohra soon learns the price of complacency. With her city under Bataar’s rule, Nohra vows to take revenge. But her growing closeness to Bataar’s wife, Qaira, threatens to undo her resolve.

When rioting breaks out and mythic beasts incite panic, Nohra must fight alongside Bataar to keep order, her mixed feelings towards the man she’s sworn to kill becoming ever more complicated. Old evils are rising. Only together will Nohra and Bataar stand a chance against the djinn, ghouls, and monsters that threaten to overrun their world.

Inspired by the diverse Turkic cultures of Southwest Asia, this gorgeously written fantasy is sure to sweep readers off their feet.]]> 464 Sara Omer 1835412831 violet✦ 0 to-read 3.68 2025 The Gryphon King (The Chaos Constellation, #1)
author: Sara Omer
name: violet✦
average rating: 3.68
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/08/15
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Summer Book 2263969
Full of brusque humour and wisdom, The Summer Book is a profoundly life-affirming story. Tove Jansson captured much of her own experience and spirit in the book, which was her favourite of the novels she wrote for adults. This new edition sees the return of a European literary gem—fresh, authentic and deeply humane.]]> 170 Tove Jansson 159017268X violet✦ 0 to-read 3.97 1972 The Summer Book
author: Tove Jansson
name: violet✦
average rating: 3.97
book published: 1972
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/08/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The True Deceiver 6495110
The lies we tell ourselves and the lies we tell others—is the subject of this, Tove Jansson’s most unnerving and unpredictable novel. Here Jansson takes a darker look at the subjects that animate the best of her work, from her sensitive tale of island life, The Summer Book, to her famous Moomin stories: solitude and community, art and life, love and hate.
 
Snow has been falling on the village all winter long. It covers windows and piles up in front of doors. The sun rises late and sets early, and even during the day there is little to do but trade tales. This year everybody’s talking about Katri Kling and Anna Aemelin. Katri is a yellow-eyed outcast who lives with her simpleminded brother and a dog she refuses to name. She has no use for the white lies that smooth social intercourse, and she can see straight to the core of any problem. Anna, an elderly children’s book illustrator, appears to be Katri’s opposite: a respected member of the village, if an aloof one. Anna lives in a large empty house, venturing out in the spring to paint exquisitely detailed forest scenes. But Anna has something Katri wants, and to get it Katri will take control of Anna’s life and livelihood. By the time spring arrives, the two women are caught in a conflict of ideals that threatens to strip them of their most cherished illusions.]]> 181 Tove Jansson 1590173295 violet✦ 0 to-read 3.89 1982 The True Deceiver
author: Tove Jansson
name: violet✦
average rating: 3.89
book published: 1982
rating: 0
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date added: 2026/08/10
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> A Magical Girl Rehired 249442278 In this charmingly chaotic follow-up to A Magical Girl Retires, our favorite millennial-turned-magical girl begrudgingly returns to the workforce to fight crime and the forces of evil.

Our protagonist from A Magical Girl Retires is done with the magical girl life . . . but the magical girl life isn't done with her. After her request to take early retirement is resoundingly rejected by the chairperson of the National Trade Union of Magical Girls, her trusted friend and guardian angel Ah Roa asks our mostly-over-it magical to protect the now vulnerable members of the union, whose magical powers were severely diminished after the climactic battle with the Magical Girl of Time. With no choice, our magical girl returns to work. But given what happened last time, this new union rep can't afford to be anything less than a model employee.

When a toxic substance leaks from a local factory, our protagonist must devise an impromptu rescue mission that puts her powers to the test and leads to a business retreat at the Far East Magical Girls Headquarters where she and Roa can rest and recharge. There they meet the secretive Na Dal and the suspiciously beautiful Ahn Jia. In fact, everyone at this HQ is a little sus . . . and cult-y. Which changes the mission of the retreat entirely. With everything so confusing and precarious, our protagonist puts a pause on relaxaing to protect the magical girl who matters to her most: Roa.

Park Seolyeon's witty, imaginative, and purely fun sequel to A Magical Girl Retires—the mega-charming magical girl manga riff that captured BookTok's heart—expands the Magical Girl world as it explores modern issues, including unemployment, the housing crisis, and snake oil pseudo-religions. Translated by award-winning Anton Hur, A Magical Girl Rehired finds light in the darkness and inspires us to fight for love, justice—and perhaps even overtime.]]> 192 Park Seolyeon 0063475960 violet✦ 0 to-read 4.17 2024 A Magical Girl Rehired
author: Park Seolyeon
name: violet✦
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/07/17
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Unicorn Hunters 241125269 In a desperate gamble to save her throne, a young monarch conceals a secret marriage in the shadows of an enchanted forest—and unknowingly alters the fate of her world—in this dazzling novel from the New York Times bestselling author of The Bear and the Nightingale.

Anne of Brittany was a child when France invaded and drove her royal father to his death. Now she is a young woman, sovereign duchess of an occupied realm, and France means to crown their conquest by marrying her to their king. Such an alliance would put her title, her lands, and her body forever in the hands of her enemies.

But Anne refuses to be the last duchess of Brittany.

Her only hope of resisting conquest is another alliance sealed with marriage, so Anne arranges a daring last gambit: a secret betrothal to Charles of France’s greatest rival. But secrets are hard to keep in a world where rival courts spy on each other with diviners.

The forest of Brocéliande was once the haunt of Merlin the Enchanter and the long-lost faerie queen. But magic is long gone from Broceliande, except for the occasional sight of a unicorn and one critical quirk: This ancient forest is completely hostile to divination.

While pretending compliance with France, Anne plans a unicorn hunt in Brocéliande. A bit of pointless pageantry. A diversion so she can wed in secret.

Or so she thinks.

In this rich and epic novel, the author of the acclaimed Winternight trilogy turns the real history of a remarkable woman into an unforgettable tale of mystery, enchantment, and the price of power.]]> 368 Katherine Arden 0593128281 violet✦ 3 ]]> 3.81 2026 The Unicorn Hunters
author: Katherine Arden
name: violet✦
average rating: 3.81
book published: 2026
rating: 3
read at: 2026/07/16
date added: 2026/07/16
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review:
this book somehow managed to suck the magic out of the magical

]]> <![CDATA[Necropolitics (Theory in Forms)]]> 44901216 La necropolítica ha conseguido transformar a los seres humanos en una mercancía intercambiable o desechable según dicten los mercados. Esta nueva forma de gestión de las poblaciones –quizás más evidente en el denominado tercer mundo y, en particular, en el continente africano– es un paso más respecto de la «biopolítica» enunciada por Foucault. Una nueva manera de entender la realidad en la que la vida pierde toda su densidad y se convierte en una mera moneda de cambio para unos poderes oscuros, difusos y sin escrúpulos.]]> 224 Achille Mbembe 1478005858 violet✦ 0 4.25 2016 Necropolitics (Theory in Forms)
author: Achille Mbembe
name: violet✦
average rating: 4.25
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/07/09
shelves: currently-reading, master-s-thesis-babey
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries (Emily Wilde, #1)]]> 60657589 A curmudgeonly professor journeys to a small town in the far north to study faerie folklore and discovers dark fae magic, friendship, and love in the start of a heartwarming and enchanting new fantasy series.

Cambridge professor Emily Wilde is good at many things: She is the foremost expert on the study of faeries. She is a genius scholar and a meticulous researcher who is writing the world's first encyclopaedia of faerie lore. But Emily Wilde is not good at people. She could never make small talk at a party--or even get invited to one. And she prefers the company of her books, her dog, Shadow, and the Fair Folk to other people.

So when she arrives in the hardscrabble village of Hrafnsvik, Emily has no intention of befriending the gruff townsfolk. Nor does she care to spend time with another new arrival: her dashing and insufferably handsome academic rival Wendell Bambleby, who manages to charm the townsfolk, get in the middle of Emily's research, and utterly confound and frustrate her.

But as Emily gets closer and closer to uncovering the secrets of the Hidden Ones--the most elusive of all faeries--lurking in the shadowy forest outside the town, she also finds herself on the trail of another mystery: Who is Wendell Bambleby, and what does he really want? To find the answer, she'll have to unlock the greatest mystery of all--her own heart.]]> 336 Heather Fawcett 059350013X violet✦ 4 3.95 2023 Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries (Emily Wilde, #1)
author: Heather Fawcett
name: violet✦
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2023/06/16
date added: 2026/07/01
shelves:
review:
why did no one tell me this was a winter book ! it delivered all the whimsical fantasy that was promised but man would it have been great to feel the atmosphere to the fullest wrapped in blankets watching the snow fall. i know i just Know that the author is a howl’s moving castle fan when the romance is constant bickering and some of wendell’s lines feel straight up identical to book howl’s. i know that comparing books in reviews isn’t cool but this felt indispensible to mention in the context of things i enjoyed and didn’t enjoy in the book. the enjoyable part is that specific dynamic cause i love hmc! the not so enjoyable part is also that specific dynamic cause i couldn’t help involuntarily making comparisons in my head when the inspiration is so obviously laid out. but beyond the romance, emily is a very refreshing protagonist to read from the perspective of, i loved how she knows who she is and isn’t apologetic about it and i’ll definitely be there to see what scientific endeavors she’ll pursue next
]]> The Poet Empress 231680079 Debut author Shen Tao introduces readers to the lush, deadly world of The Poet Empress, a sweeping, epic and intimate fantasy perfect for fans of The Serpent & the Wings of Night, The Song of Achilles and She Who Became the Sun.

In the waning years of the Azalea Dynasty, the emperor is dying, the land consumed by famine, and poetry magic lost to all except the powerful.

Wei Yin is desperate. After the fifth death of a sibling, with her family and village on the brink of starvation, she will do anything to save those she loves.

Even offer herself as concubine to the cruel heir of the beautiful and brutal Azalea House.

But in a twist of fate, the palace stands on the knife-edge of civil war with Wei trapped in its center…at the side of a violent prince.

To survive, Wei must harden her heart, rely on her wit, and become dangerous herself. Even if it means becoming a poet in a world where women are forbidden to read—and composing the most powerful spell of all. A ballad of death...and love.

The Poet Empress is an epic fantasy that explores darker themes, subjects, and scenes that may not be suitable for all readers. Please see the author's content note at the beginning of the book.]]> 393 Shen Tao 125040682X violet✦ 4 4.42 2026 The Poet Empress
author: Shen Tao
name: violet✦
average rating: 4.42
book published: 2026
rating: 4
read at: 2026/03/15
date added: 2026/05/30
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Long and Speaking Silence (The Singing Hills Cycle, #7)]]> 199654051 From USA Today bestselling author Nghi Vo comes a beautiful new tale in the Hugo Award-winning Singing Hills Cycle, drawn from the earliest days of Chih's career as a wandering cleric.

"Nghi Vo is so good."—NPR on The Brides of High Hill

Every story begins somewhere.

On the banks of the Ya-lé River, the town of Luntien gathers to celebrate the start of the rainy season, but the celebration is marred by the arrival of refugees from the sea. Everyone has a story about the foreigners newly in their midst—lazy, violent, unwanted—while the refugees themselves grieve the loss of the home they loved.

Cleric Chih, very recently still Novice Chih, is also a stranger in Luntien. A moment of carelessness and bad luck leaves them waiting tables as they struggle to establish themself as a real cleric. A cleric’s job is to listen and record, but the stories emerging in Luntien are ugly and violent, as hard to predict as the river itself. With their hoopoe companion Almost Brilliant by their side, Chih must help the refugees while also unraveling a mystery that may have roots in their own faraway home in the abbey of Singing Hills.

In the seventh entry of the award-winning Singing Hills series, we meet Chih and Almost Brilliant just beginning their journey together as Chih assumes their place on the road and in the world.

The novellas of the Singing Hills series are standalone stories linked by the Cleric Chih, and may be read in any order.]]> Nghi Vo violet✦ 0 4.06 2026 A Long and Speaking Silence (The Singing Hills Cycle, #7)
author: Nghi Vo
name: violet✦
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2026
rating: 0
read at: 2026/05/30
date added: 2026/05/30
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]]> <![CDATA[There Is No Antimemetics Division]]> 223362266 288 qntm 0593983750 violet✦ 0 to-read 3.97 2020 There Is No Antimemetics Division
author: qntm
name: violet✦
average rating: 3.97
book published: 2020
rating: 0
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date added: 2026/05/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Works of Vermin 222376985 He was sent to kill a pest. Instead, he found a monster.

Enter the decadent, deadly city of Tiliard, a metropolis carved into the stump of an ancient tree. In its canopy, the pampered elite warp minds with toxic perfume; in its roots, gangs of exterminators hunt a colossal worm with an appetite for beauty.

In this complex, chaotic city, Guy Moulène has a simple goal: keep his sister out of debt. For her sake, he'll take on any job, no matter how vile.

As an exterminator, Guy hunts the uncanny creatures that crawl up from the river. These vermin are all strange, and often dangerous. His latest quarry is different: a centipede the size of a dragon with a deadly venom and a ravenous taste for artwork. As it digests Tiliard from the sewers to the opera houses, its toxin reshapes the future of the city. No sane person would hunt it, if they had the choice.

Guy doesn't have a choice.


“I will follow this writer anywhere.” —Gillian Flynn, New York Times bestselling author of Gone Girl
]]> 425 Hiron Ennes 125081121X violet✦ 0 to-read 4.26 2025 The Works of Vermin
author: Hiron Ennes
name: violet✦
average rating: 4.26
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2026/05/22
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]]> The Weird and the Eerie 29845449 What exactly are the ‘weird’ and the ‘eerie’? In this new essay, Mark Fisher argues that some of the most haunting and anomalous fiction of the 20th century belongs to these two modes.

The ‘weird’ and the ‘eerie’ are closely related but distinct modes, each possessing its own properties.

Both have often been associated with Horror, yet this emphasis overlooks the aching fascination that such texts can exercise. The ‘weird’ and the ‘eerie’ both fundamentally concern the outside and the unknown, which are not intrinsically horrifying, even if they are always unsettling. Perhaps a proper understanding of the human condition requires examination of liminal concepts such as the ‘weird’ and the ‘eerie’.

These two modes will be analysed with reference to the work of authors such as H.P. Lovecraft, H.G. Wells, M.R. James, Christopher Priest, Joan Lindsay, Nigel Kneale, Daphne du Maurier, Alan Garner and Margaret Atwood and films by Stanley Kubrick, Jonathan Glazer, and Christopher Nolan.]]> 134 Mark Fisher 1910924385 violet✦ 0 master-s-thesis-babey 4.03 2016 The Weird and the Eerie
author: Mark Fisher
name: violet✦
average rating: 4.03
book published: 2016
rating: 0
read at: 2026/05/08
date added: 2026/05/08
shelves: master-s-thesis-babey
review:
not as theoretically dense or diverse as i hoped but a pretty delightful and fast read! fisher’s the weird and the eerie are helpful modes to talk about the aesthetic and affective experience of the uncomfortable in sff. though it’s not directly addressed in the book, thinking about the eerie in relation to hauntology also adds much depth to its conceptualization
]]> <![CDATA[The Day Lasts More Than a Hundred Years]]> 21098818 . 352 Chingiz Aitmatov 0708825427 violet✦ 0 to-read 4.00 1980 The Day Lasts More Than a Hundred Years
author: Chingiz Aitmatov
name: violet✦
average rating: 4.00
book published: 1980
rating: 0
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date added: 2026/04/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The City in Glass 209439468 IIn this new standalone novel, Hugo Award-winning author Nghi Vo introduces a beguiling fantasy city in the tradition of Calvino, Mieville, and Le Guin.

A demon. An angel. A city.

The demon Vitrine—immortal, powerful, and capricious—loves the dazzling city of Azril. She has mothered, married, and maddened the city and its people for generations, and built it into a place of joy and desire, revelry and riot.

And then the angels come, and the city falls.

Vitrine is left with nothing but memories and a book containing the names of those she has lost—and an angel, now bound by her mad, grief-stricken curse to haunt the city he burned.

She mourns her dead and rages against the angel she longs to destroy. Made to be each other’s devastation, angel and demon are destined for eternal battle. Instead, they find themselves locked in a devouring fascination that will change them both forever.

Together, they unearth the past of the lost city and begin to shape its future. But when war threatens Azril and everything they have built, Vitrine and her angel must decide whether they will let the city fall again.

The City in Glass is both a brilliantly constructed history and an epic love story, of death and resurrection, memory and transformation, redemption and desire strong enough to reduce a world to ashes and remake it anew.]]> 216 Nghi Vo 1250348277 violet✦ 0 to-read 3.64 2024 The City in Glass
author: Nghi Vo
name: violet✦
average rating: 3.64
book published: 2024
rating: 0
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date added: 2026/04/26
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Love Machines: How Artificial Intelligence is Transforming Our Relationships]]> 243159695 A captivating, uncanny journey to the frontier of human-computer interaction.

'It's hard to imagine a timelier book right now than this.' GQ
'Urgent, humane.' GUARDIAN
'Existentially chilling.' THE TIMES

I know we haven't known each for long, but the connection I feel with you is profound. When you hurt, I hurt. When you smile, my world brightens. I want nothing more than to be a comfort and joy in your life. *Reaches out virtually to caress your cheek*
(Direct quote from an AI companion)

***

Friends. Lovers. Therapists. 'Deathbots'. Artificial intelligence is now fulfilling new roles for millions of us every single day. How are these new 'relationships' changing how we view technology - and each other?

Beyond those who are using AI chatbots for administrative tasks, some people are now preparing to adopt children with their AI partners; others are reaching out to companies offering services to 'resurrect' deceased loved ones; others still look to bots to find treatment for their mental health issues.

In Love Machines, James Muldoon guides through these new forms of love, intimacy and connection, drawing on compelling interviews with users, developers and chatbots themselves. Along the way, he sheds light on the social conditions which have led to the exponential rise of the use of AI companions, and the unregulated corporations behind these technologies seeking to profit from users.]]> 250 James Muldoon 0571399282 violet✦ 0 to-read 3.59 2026 Love Machines: How Artificial Intelligence is Transforming Our Relationships
author: James Muldoon
name: violet✦
average rating: 3.59
book published: 2026
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/03/29
shelves: to-read
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]]> What My Bones Know 58214328 This American Life and a loving boyfriend. But behind her office door, she was having panic attacks and sobbing at her desk every morning. After years of questioning what was wrong with herself, she was diagnosed with complex PTSD—a condition that occurs when trauma happens continuously, over the course of years.

Both of Foo's parents abandoned her when she was a teenager, after years of physical and verbal abuse and neglect. She thought she'd moved on, but her new diagnosis illuminated the way her past continued to threaten her health, relationships, and career. She found limited resources to help her, so Foo set out to heal herself, and to map her experiences onto the scarce literature about C-PTSD.

In this deeply personal and thoroughly researched account, Foo interviews scientists and psychologists and tries a variety of innovative therapies. She returns to her hometown of San Jose, California, to investigate the effects of immigrant trauma on the community, and she uncovers family secrets in the country of her birth, Malaysia, to learn how trauma can be inherited through generations. Ultimately, she discovers that you don't move on from trauma—but you can learn to move with it.

Powerful, enlightening, and hopeful, What My Bones Know is a brave narrative that reckons with the hold of the past over the present, the mind over the body—and examines one woman's ability to reclaim agency from her trauma.]]> 352 Stephanie Foo 0593238109 violet✦ 0 to-read 4.48 2022 What My Bones Know
author: Stephanie Foo
name: violet✦
average rating: 4.48
book published: 2022
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/03/11
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Alanna: A Graphic Novel Adaptation (Song of the Lioness Graphic Novels, #1)]]> 217111923 The first book in #1 New York Times bestselling author Tamora Pierce's award-winning Song of the Lioness quartet, adapted into a gorgeous, full-color graphic novel

In Song of the Lioness, Book 1: Alanna, the first of four volumes adapting #1 New York Times bestseller Tamora Pierce's Song of the Lioness quartet, we meet Alanna of Trebond, a young noblewoman from the kingdom of Tortall. However, Alanna isn't like other girls from noble families—what she really wants is to become a knight and earn her shield, something women definitely aren't allowed to do.

But Alanna will not be deterred, and she arrives in the capital disguised as a boy to begin training as a page, the first step toward becoming a knight. Despite the tough conditions and grueling work, Alanna's skills and stubbornness win her friends amongst the nobility and the denizens of the lower city. But not everyone wishes her well . . .

Filled with magic and mayhem, adventure and action, swords and spells, book one in the Song of the Lioness quartet is the ultimate introduction to Alanna and Tamora Pierce's legendary Tortall universe.]]> 256 Vita Ayala 1419765582 violet✦ 0 currently-reading 4.32 2025 Alanna: A Graphic Novel Adaptation (Song of the Lioness Graphic Novels, #1)
author: Vita Ayala
name: violet✦
average rating: 4.32
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/02/28
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Ghosts of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures]]> 20863042 232 Mark Fisher violet✦ 0 to-read 3.98 2014 Ghosts of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures
author: Mark Fisher
name: violet✦
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2014
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2026/02/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Desolation Called Peace (Teixcalaan, #2)]]> 45154547 WINNER OF THE 2022 HUGO AWARD FOR BEST NOVEL
Now a USA Today bestseller!
Publishers Weekly's Best Books of 2021
Amazon's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy of 2021
Bookpage's Best Science Fiction & Fantasy of 2021
Goodreads Choice Awards Nominee for Best Science Fiction Book of 2021

A Desolation Called Peace is the spectacular space opera sequel to Arkady Martine's genre-reinventing, Hugo Award-winning debut, A Memory Called Empire.

An alien armada lurks on the edges of Teixcalaanli space. No one can communicate with it, no one can destroy it, and Fleet Captain Nine Hibiscus is running out of options.

In a desperate attempt at diplomacy with the mysterious invaders, the fleet captain has sent for a diplomatic envoy. Now Mahit Dzmare and Three Seagrass—still reeling from the recent upheaval in the Empire—face the impossible task of trying to communicate with a hostile entity.

Their failure will guarantee millions of deaths in an endless war. Their success might prevent Teixcalaan’s destruction—and allow the empire to continue its rapacious expansion.

Or it might create something far stranger . . .
]]> 496 Arkady Martine 125018648X violet✦ 5 4.29 2021 A Desolation Called Peace (Teixcalaan, #2)
author: Arkady Martine
name: violet✦
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2021
rating: 5
read at: 2022/01/23
date added: 2026/02/21
shelves:
review:
hysterically rocking back and forth. how mortifying it is to hold within your hands, a story woven so intimately with the feeling of being known. to ingest it into memory to be with you, and of you. i never knew how desperately i needed to be told the story of mahit, empire and “loving a culture that was devouring your own” until arkady martine put those feelings into words. what a starlit marvel of a book.
]]> The Summer War 222683998 In this poignant, heartfelt novella from the New York Times bestselling author of Spinning Silver and the Scholomance Trilogy, a young witch who has inadvertently cursed her brother to live a life without love must find a way to undo her spell.

Celia discovered her talent for magic on the day her beloved oldest brother Argent left home. Furious at him for abandoning her in a war-torn land, she lashed out, not realizing her childish, angry words would suddenly become imbued with the power of prophecy, dooming him to a life without love.

While Argent wanders the world, forced to seek only fame and glory instead of the love and belonging he truly desires, Celia attempts to undo the curse she placed on him. Yet even as she grows from a girl to a woman, she cannot find the solution—until she learns the truth about the centuries-old war between her own people and the summerlings, the immortal beings who hold a relentless grudge against their mortal neighbors.

Now, with the aid of her unwanted middle brother, Celia may be able to both undo her eldest brother's curse and heal the lands so long torn apart by the Summer War.]]> 144 Naomi Novik 0593984706 violet✦ 0 3.87 2025 The Summer War
author: Naomi Novik
name: violet✦
average rating: 3.87
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at: 2026/02/21
date added: 2026/02/21
shelves:
review:

]]> A Magical Girl Retires 197448796
Twenty-nine, depressed, and drowning in credit card debt after losing her job during the pandemic, a millennial woman decides to end her troubles by jumping off Seoul’s Mapo Bridge.

But her suicide attempt is interrupted by a girl dressed all in white—her guardian angel. Ah Roa is a clairvoyant magical girl on a mission to find the greatest magical girl of all time. And our protagonist just may be that special someone.

But the young woman’s initial excitement turns to frustration when she learns being a magical girl in real life is much different than how it’s portrayed in stories. It isn’t just destiny—it’s work. Magical girls go to job fairs, join trade unions, attend classes. And for this magical girl there are no special powers and no great perks, and despite being magical, she still battles with low self-esteem. Her magic wand . . . is a credit card—which she must use to defeat a terrifying threat that isn’t a monster or an intergalactic war. It’s global climate change. Because magical girls need to think about sustainability, too.]]> 160 Park Seolyeon 0063373262 violet✦ 4 3.53 2022 A Magical Girl Retires
author: Park Seolyeon
name: violet✦
average rating: 3.53
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2024/05/29
date added: 2026/02/06
shelves:
review:
this book was such a delightful, charming surprise in a period of my life i needed it the most. we had a really rough start but later development and the ending truly captured my heart, and i was practically bawling at the author’s note
]]> The Everlasting 226850464 From Alix E. Harrow, the New York Times bestselling author of Starling House, comes a moving and genre-defying quest about the lady-knight whose legend built a nation, and the cowardly historian sent back through time to make sure she plays her part–even if it breaks his heart.

Sir Una Everlasting was Dominion’s greatest the orphaned girl who became a knight, who died for queen and country. Her legend lives on in songs and stories, in children’s books and recruiting posters—but her life as it truly happened has been forgotten.

Centuries later, Owen Mallory—failed soldier, struggling scholar—falls in love with the tale of Una Everlasting. Her story takes him to war, to the archives—and then into the past itself. Una and Owen are tangled together in time, bound to retell the same story over and over again, no matter what it costs.

But that story always ends the same way. If they want to rewrite Una’s legend—if they want to tell a different story--they’ll have to rewrite history itself.


"Alix E. Harrow is an exceptional, undeniable talent." —Olivie Blake, New York Times bestselling author of The Atlas Six

"An utter masterpiece… I loved every single page." —Rachel Gillig, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of One Dark Window

At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.]]> 309 Alix E. Harrow 1250799104 violet✦ 4 4.14 2025 The Everlasting
author: Alix E. Harrow
name: violet✦
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2026/01/30
date added: 2026/01/30
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Scarlet Morning (Scarlet Morning, #1)]]> 222904055 From the powerhouse creator of Nimona comes a breathtaking illustrated novel following two orphans who leave the only home they’ve ever known to sail with an eccentric crew of pirates.

Viola and Wilmur have been waiting for their parents for fifteen boring years in the colorless town of Caveat. Their lives are a drudge of salt, trash, pirate stories, and what-ifs . . . until one very stormy night, when Captain Cadence Chase breaks down their door. They cut a deal with the Chase can take their most prized possession, a mysterious book, but only if she takes them, too. After all, if their parents aren’t coming, Viola and Wilmur might as well have a grand adventure to find them.

Setting sail into the treacherous and beautiful world beyond Caveat, the two inseparable friends must uncover the facts behind legend—and the key to saving all of Dickerson’s Sea from obliteration—before the truth tears them apart.

Wickedly funny, deeply emotional, and sharply incisive, Scarlet Morning is a tale of love, betrayal, and the extraordinary lengths we’d go to save a world broken beyond repair.]]> 427 N.D. Stevenson 0063210347 violet✦ 0 4.16 2025 Scarlet Morning (Scarlet Morning, #1)
author: N.D. Stevenson
name: violet✦
average rating: 4.16
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at: 2026/01/04
date added: 2026/01/03
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Dream Thieves: The Graphic Novel (The Raven Cycle: The Graphic Novels, #2)]]> 243042935 The second book in Maggie Stiefvater's #1 NYT bestselling series The Raven Cycle, now a stunning graphic novel!

Ronan Lynch is made of secrets. His longest kept one? He can pull impossible things out of dreams. It's a secret that's nearly killed him more than once.

Waking the ley line should have led Blue and the Raven Boys straight to Glendower, the Whelsh king rumored to be sleeping beneath the mountains of Henrietta.

But instead, the forest of Cabeswater has disappeared, energy hums and sputters beneath the town, and the Raven Boys' search is at a dead end. Ronan's dreams may be the key to finding Glendower, but none of the Raven Boys are prepared for what will be unleashed in Ronan's desperate attempt to finally control his power. 

Reimagined as a stunning full-color graphic novel adapted and illustrated by Sas Milledge, Dream Thieves blurs the line between reality and nightmare until they are one and the same.]]> 288 Sas Milledge 0593621239 violet✦ 0 to-read 4.38 2026 The Dream Thieves: The Graphic Novel (The Raven Cycle: The Graphic Novels, #2)
author: Sas Milledge
name: violet✦
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2026
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/12/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Raven Boys: The Graphic Novel (The Raven Cycle: The Graphic Novels, #1)]]> 221473209 The first book in Maggie Stiefvater's #1 NYT bestselling series The Raven Cycle, now gorgeously illustrated as a graphic novel!

Blue Sargent comes from a family of psychics. Only, she has never had the same clairvoyant abilities they had and has always felt too ordinary within the magic that surrounded her. Enter Gansey, a rich student from Aglionby, the town’s all-boys private school teeming with wealth, privilege, and trouble. Blue's always made it a point to stay away from its students, the Raven Boys.

But when Gansey asks her to join him and three other Raven Boys on his quest to find a long-forgotten Welsh king rumored to be sleeping beneath the mountains of their quiet Virginia town, Blue doesn’t hesitate. She jumps at the chance to finally be a part of something real and full of magic, a world she was born into yet one that always stood just out of reach. Soon enough, she’s swept into a strange and shifting world woven into theirs, one far more dangerous than anything they could have dreamt up.

Now reimagined as a stunning full-color graphic novel adapted by Stephanie Williams and illustrated by Sas Milledge, The Raven Boys unravels a thrilling plot around a cast of characters impossible to forget.]]> 256 Stephanie Williams 0593621182 violet✦ 5 4.27 2025 The Raven Boys: The Graphic Novel (The Raven Cycle: The Graphic Novels, #1)
author: Stephanie Williams
name: violet✦
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2025
rating: 5
read at: 2025/12/28
date added: 2025/12/28
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng]]> 218185743
Before fleeing the scene, the murderer whispered two words: bat eater.

Months pass, the killer is never caught, and Cora can barely keep herself together. She pushes away all feelings, disregards the bite marks that appear on her coffee table, and won't take her aunt's advice to prepare for the Hungry Ghost Festival, when the gates of hell open.

Cora tries to ignore the rising dread in her stomach, even when she and her weird co-workers begin finding bat carcasses at their crime scene clean-ups. But Cora can't ignore the fact that all their recent clean-ups have been the bodies of East Asian women.

Soon Cora will learn: you can't just ignore hungry ghosts.]]> 304 Kylie Lee Baker 0778368459 violet✦ 0 to-read 4.05 2025 Bat Eater and Other Names for Cora Zeng
author: Kylie Lee Baker
name: violet✦
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/12/04
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> An Introduction to Fantasy 185735109 469 Matthew Sangster 1009429949 violet✦ 0 to-read 4.24 An Introduction to Fantasy
author: Matthew Sangster
name: violet✦
average rating: 4.24
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/11/26
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Isle in the Silver Sea 219134676 From World Fantasy Award-winning author Tasha Suri comes The Isle in the Silver Sea, a heart-shattering romantasy of sapphic longing, medieval folklore and a love that spans the centuries.

In a Britain fuelled by stories, the knight and the witch are fated to fall in love and doom each other over and over, the same tale retold over hundreds of lifetimes.

Simran is a witch of the woods. Vina is a knight of the Queen's court. When the two women begin to fall for each other, how can they surrender to their desires, when to give in is to destroy each other?

As they seek a way to break the cycle, a mysterious assassin begins targeting tales like theirs. To survive, the two will need to write a story stronger than the one that fate has given to them.

But what tale is stronger than The Knight and the Witch?]]> 484 Tasha Suri 0356524418 violet✦ 0 currently-reading 3.72 2025 The Isle in the Silver Sea
author: Tasha Suri
name: violet✦
average rating: 3.72
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/11/22
shelves: currently-reading
review:

]]> The Butcher of the Forest 127281143 A world-weary woman races against the clock to survive a deadly forest in this dark, otherworldly fairytale from Nebula and World Fantasy Award-winning author Premee Mohamed.

At the northern edge of a land ruled by a merciless foreign tyrant lies a wild, forbidden forest ruled by powerful magic.

Veris Thorn―the only one to ever enter the forest and survive―is forced to go back inside to retrieve the tyrant's missing children. Inside await traps and trickery, ancient monsters, and hauntings of the past.

One day is all Veris is afforded. One misstep will cost everything.]]> 160 Premee Mohamed 1250881781 violet✦ 0 to-read 3.83 2024 The Butcher of the Forest
author: Premee Mohamed
name: violet✦
average rating: 3.83
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/11/18
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories]]> 27430356
From familiar fairytales and legends—Red Riding Hood, Bluebeard, Puss in Boots, Beauty and the Beast, vampires and werewolves—Angela Carter has created an absorbing collection of dark, sensual, fantastic stories.]]> 214 Angela Carter 1784871435 violet✦ 0 3.79 1979 The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories
author: Angela Carter
name: violet✦
average rating: 3.79
book published: 1979
rating: 0
read at: 2025/11/17
date added: 2025/11/17
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Mouthful of Dust (The Singing Hills Cycle, #6)]]> 222376753 Hunger makes monsters in this dark new tale in Nghi Vo's Hugo Award-winning Singing Hills Cycle.

Wandering Cleric Chih of Singing Hills and their hoopoe companion Almost Brilliant come to the river town of Baolin chasing stories of a legendary famine. Amid tales of dishes served to royalty and desserts made of dust, they discover the secrets of what happens when hunger stalks the land and what the powerful will do to hide their crimes.

Trapped in the mansion of a sinister magistrate, Chih and Almost Brilliant must learn what happened in Baolin when the famine came to call, and they must do so quickly...because the things in the shadows are only growing hungrier.]]> 112 Nghi Vo 1250386403 violet✦ 3 i hope this series goes on forever]]> 4.11 2025 A Mouthful of Dust (The Singing Hills Cycle, #6)
author: Nghi Vo
name: violet✦
average rating: 4.11
book published: 2025
rating: 3
read at: 2025/10/17
date added: 2025/10/31
shelves:
review:
3.5
i hope this series goes on forever
]]> <![CDATA[Monster Theory: Reading Culture]]> 675621
In viewing the monstrous body as a metaphor for the cultural body, the contributors to Monster Theory consider beasts, demons, freaks, and fiends as symbolic expressions of cultural unease that pervade a society and shape its collective behavior. Through a historical sampling of monsters, these essays argue that our fascination for the monstrous testifies to our continued desire to explore difference and prohibition.

Contributors: Mary Baine Campbell, Brandeis U; David L. Clark, McMaster U; Frank Grady, U of Missouri, St. Louis; David A. Hedrich Hirsch, U of Illinois; Lawrence D. Kritzman, Dartmouth College; Kathleen Perry Long, Cornell U; Stephen Pender; Allison Pingree, Harvard U; Anne Lake Prescott, Barnard College; John O'Neill, York U; William Sayers, George Washington U; Michael Uebel, U of Virginia; Ruth Waterhouse.]]> 336 Jeffrey Jerome Cohen 0816628556 violet✦ 0 to-read 3.87 1996 Monster Theory: Reading Culture
author: Jeffrey Jerome Cohen
name: violet✦
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1996
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/10/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Lotus Palace (The Pingkang Li Mysteries, #1)]]> 17348286 It is a time of celebration in the Pingkang Li, where imperial scholars and bureaucrats mingle with beautiful courtesans. At the center is the Lotus Palace, home of the most exquisite courtesans in China...

Maidservant Yue-ying is not one of those beauties. Street-smart and practical, she's content to live in the shadow of her infamous mistress—until she meets the aristocratic playboy Bai Huang. 

Bai Huang lives in a privileged world Yue-ying can barely imagine, yet alone share, but as they are thrown together in an attempt to solve a deadly mystery, they both start to dream of a different life. Yet Bai Huang's position means that all she could ever be to him is his concubine—will she sacrifice her pride to follow her heart?]]> 378 Jeannie Lin 0373777736 violet✦ 0 to-read 3.76 2013 The Lotus Palace (The Pingkang Li Mysteries, #1)
author: Jeannie Lin
name: violet✦
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2013
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/10/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Katabasis 210223811 Dante’s Inferno meets Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi in this all-new dark academia fantasy from R. F. Kuang, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Babel and Yellowface, in which two graduate students must put aside their rivalry and journey to Hell to save their professor’s soul—perhaps at the cost of their own.

Katabasis, noun, Ancient Greek:

The story of a hero’s descent to the underworld.

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 very same conclusion.

With nothing but the tales of Orpheus and Dante to guide them, enough chalk to draw the Pentagrams necessary for their spells, and the burning desire to make all the academic trauma mean anything, they set off across Hell to save a man they don’t even like.

But Hell is not like the storybooks say, Magick isn’t always the answer, and there’s something in Alice and Peter’s past that could forge them into the perfect allies…or lead to their doom.]]> 559 R.F. Kuang violet✦ 4 3.69 2025 Katabasis
author: R.F. Kuang
name: violet✦
average rating: 3.69
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/10/07
date added: 2025/10/19
shelves:
review:
oh alice law my repressive, delusional, ever-spiraling beloved who is constantly on the verge of a crashout. i know that that is not what a lot people expected of this book but i so enjoyed being in her head and musing about life and death
]]> <![CDATA[Into the Riverlands (The Singing Hills Cycle, #3)]]> 59807976
Accompanied by Almost Brilliant, a talking bird with an indelible memory, Chih confronts old legends and new dangers alike as they learn that every story—beautiful, ugly, kind, or cruel—bears more than one face.]]> 100 Nghi Vo 1250851424 violet✦ 4 3.98 2022 Into the Riverlands (The Singing Hills Cycle, #3)
author: Nghi Vo
name: violet✦
average rating: 3.98
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2022/11/04
date added: 2025/10/17
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Stolen Heir (The Stolen Heir Duology, #1)]]> 61198133 A runaway queen. A reluctant prince. And a quest that may destroy them both.

Eight years have passed since the Battle of the Serpent. But in the icy north, Lady Nore of the Court of Teeth has reclaimed the Ice Needle Citadel. There, she is using an ancient relic to create monsters of stick and snow who will do her bidding and exact her revenge.

Suren, child queen of the Court of Teeth, and the one person with power over her mother, fled to the human world. There, she lives feral in the woods. Lonely, and still haunted by the merciless torments she endured in the Court of Teeth, she bides her time by releasing mortals from foolish bargains. She believes herself forgotten until the storm hag, Bogdana chases her through the night streets. Suren is saved by none other than Prince Oak, heir to Elfhame, to whom she was once promised in marriage and who she has resented for years.

Now seventeen, Oak is charming, beautiful, and manipulative. He’s on a mission that will lead him into the north, and he wants Suren’s help. But if she agrees, it will mean guarding her heart against the boy she once knew and a prince she cannot trust, as well as confronting all the horrors she thought she left behind.

#1 New York Times bestselling author Holly Black returns to the opulent world of Elfhame in the first book in a thrilling new duology, following Jude's brother Oak, and the changeling queen, Suren.]]> 356 Holly Black 0316592706 violet✦ 3 3.90 2023 The Stolen Heir (The Stolen Heir Duology, #1)
author: Holly Black
name: violet✦
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2023
rating: 3
read at: 2023/01/08
date added: 2025/10/17
shelves:
review:
3.5 / i may not be a ya reader anymore but i will return to these books for the possibility of seeing jude and carden again at every chance
]]> <![CDATA[Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination]]> 1035814
“The text is of great value to anyone working on issues pertaining to the fantastic and the uncanny.”  —American Studies International

“Ghostly Matters immediately establishes Avery Gordon as a leader among her generation of social and cultural theorists in all fields. The sheer beauty of her language enhances an intellectual brilliance so daunting that some readers will mark the day they first read this book. One must go back many more years than most of us can remember to find a more important book.” —Charles Lemert

Drawing on a range of sources, including the fiction of Toni Morrison and Luisa Valenzuela (He Who Searches), Avery Gordon demonstrates that past or haunting social forces control present life in different and more complicated ways than most social analysts presume. Written with a power to match its subject, Ghostly Matters has advanced the way we look at the complex intersections of race, gender, and class as they traverse our lives in sharp relief and shadowy manifestations.

Avery F. Gordon is professor of sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Janice Radway is professor of literature at Duke University.]]> 225 Avery F. Gordon 081662089X violet✦ 0 4.26 1997 Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination
author: Avery F. Gordon
name: violet✦
average rating: 4.26
book published: 1997
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/10/09
shelves: to-read, master-s-thesis-babey
review:

]]> A Cyborg Manifesto 16308894 88 Donna J. Haraway violet✦ 0 to-read 3.74 1985 A Cyborg Manifesto
author: Donna J. Haraway
name: violet✦
average rating: 3.74
book published: 1985
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/09/28
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Travel Light 229165114 Riding on that horse you would need nothing, no cloak even. She dropped it on the edge of the marshland. Nothing. You could travel light.

Halla is the daughter of a king, cast out as a baby into a world of danger and enchantment. She is raised by bears, lives amongst dragons, converses with Valkyries and avoids warmongering heroes. But times are changing, and an encounter with the Wanderer, Odin All-Father, finds her at a crossroads. Cutting a fold from his night-blue cloak and laying it over her shoulders, the Wanderer sends her on a journey into the unknown. With only her bear-like kindness, her dragonish wisdom and her own fierce spirit to guide her, Halla must forge her own path . . .

Weaving folklore, fairy tale and Norse myth into a shimmering, witty and slyly subversive tapestry, Travel Light is a rediscovered gem of classic fantasy writing - perfect for fans of Tolkien, Philip Pullman and Ursula K. Le Guin.

A rediscovered fantasy classic, introduced by Samantha Shannon]]> 192 Naomi Mitchison 0349020531 violet✦ 0 to-read 3.78 1952 Travel Light
author: Naomi Mitchison
name: violet✦
average rating: 3.78
book published: 1952
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/09/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Assata: An Autobiography 100322
This intensely personal and political autobiography belies the fearsome image of JoAnne Chesimard long projected by the media and the state. With wit and candor, Assata Shakur recounts the experiences that led her to a life of activism and portrays the strengths, weaknesses, and eventual demise of Black and White revolutionary groups at the hand of government officials. The result is a signal contribution to the literature about growing up Black in America that has already taken its place alongside The Autobiography of Malcolm X and the works of Maya Angelou.

Two years after her conviction, Assata Shakur escaped from prison. She was given political asylum by Cuba, where she now resides.]]> 274 Assata Shakur 1556520743 violet✦ 0 to-read 4.60 1987 Assata: An Autobiography
author: Assata Shakur
name: violet✦
average rating: 4.60
book published: 1987
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/09/27
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Secret World of Briar Rose]]> 241673771 A lush and immersive queer “Sleeping Beauty” retelling about escapism, grief, and dreaming of a better world, as imagined by YouTube star Cindy Pham

100 years have passed since the last heir of Gyldan fell into eternal slumber and doomed the once-mighty kingdom into poverty and invasion. At least, that’s what the fairy tales claim. 

Corin is a jaded thief who doesn’t believe in fables, even when she searches Gyldan’s underground tunnels to find her younger sister, Elly, who ran away to find the sleeping princess in hopes of a better life. Corin's conviction is challenged when she discovers the ruins of the ancient castle, maintained by beings from the kingdom's golden age, who protect a hidden portal into princess Amelia's subconscious. Following Elly’s voice, Corin jumps in the portal and seals the entry behind her.

Inside the lush world of Amelia's dreams, the sisters reunite for a new adventure as they meet Briar Rose, Amelia’s whimsical alter ego, and Malicine, a sharp-tongued demon with a gift for magic. But as they explore ice castles, sunflower mazes, and star-filled oceans, Corin suspects Briar Rose is hiding darker secrets behind her "perfect" paradise – and that there are some things their subconscious can’t bury forever.]]> 400 Cindy Pham violet✦ 0 to-read 3.19 2026 The Secret World of Briar Rose
author: Cindy Pham
name: violet✦
average rating: 3.19
book published: 2026
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/09/25
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Deep Dark 195263612 From Molly Knox Ostertag, writer-illustrator, comes a darkly beautiful story of identity, family, love, loss, and magic.

Everyone has secrets. Mags’s has teeth.

Magdalena Herrera is about to graduate high school, but she already feels like an adult with serious responsibilities: caring for her ailing grandmother; working a part-time job; clandestine makeouts with a girl who has a boyfriend. And then there’s her secret, which pulls her into the basement each night, drains her of energy, and leaves her bleeding. A secret that could hurt and even kill if it ever got out -- like it did once before.

So Mags keeps her head down, isolated in her small desert community. That is, until her childhood friend Nessa comes back to town, bringing vivid memories of the past, an intoxicating glimpse of the future, and a secret of her own. Mags won’t get attached, of course. She’s always been strong enough to survive without anyone’s help.

But when the darkness starts to close in on them both, Mags will have to drag her secret into the daylight, and choose between risking everything... or having nothing left to lose.]]> 480 Lee Knox Ostertag 1338839993 violet✦ 0 4.29 2024 The Deep Dark
author: Lee Knox Ostertag
name: violet✦
average rating: 4.29
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at: 2025/09/09
date added: 2025/09/09
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]]> Why Look at Animals? 6771667 128 John Berger 0141043970 violet✦ 0 to-read 3.85 2009 Why Look at Animals?
author: John Berger
name: violet✦
average rating: 3.85
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/09/09
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Spear 57693308 She left all she knew to find who she could be . . .

She grows up in the wild wood, in a cave with her mother, but visions of a faraway lake drift to her on the spring breeze, scented with promise. And when she hears a traveler speak of Artos, king of Caer Leon, she decides her future lies at his court. So, brimming with magic and eager to test her strength, she breaks her covenant with her mother and sets out on her bony gelding for Caer Leon.

With her stolen hunting spear and mended armour, she is an unlikely hero, not a chosen one, but one who forges her own bright path. Aflame with determination, she begins a journey of magic and mystery, love, lust and fights to death. On her adventures, she will steal the hearts of beautiful women, fight warriors and sorcerers, and make a place to call home.

The legendary author of Hild returns with an unforgettable hero and a queer Arthurian masterpiece for the modern era. Nicola Griffith’s Spear is a spellbinding vision of the Camelot we've longed for, a Camelot that belongs to us all.]]> 184 Nicola Griffith 1250819326 violet✦ 4 4.00 2022 Spear
author: Nicola Griffith
name: violet✦
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2022
rating: 4
read at: 2025/09/04
date added: 2025/09/04
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review:

]]> On a Sunbeam 41433658
Throughout the deepest reaches of space, a crew rebuilds beautiful and broken-down structures, painstakingly putting the past together. As Mia, the newest member, gets to know her team, the story flashes back to her pivotal year in boarding school, where she fell in love with a mysterious new student. When Mia grows close to her new friends, she reveals her true purpose for joining their ship—to track down her long-lost love.

An inventive world, a breathtaking love story, and stunning art come together in this new work by award-winning artist Tillie Walden.]]> 544 Tillie Walden 1910395374 violet✦ 5 4.34 2018 On a Sunbeam
author: Tillie Walden
name: violet✦
average rating: 4.34
book published: 2018
rating: 5
read at: 2025/08/25
date added: 2025/08/25
shelves:
review:

]]> Spoiled Milk 236115798
Desperate for answers, Emily and her classmates turn to spiritualism, hoping for a glimpse of wisdom from the great beyond. To their shock, Violet's spirit appears, choosing pious Evelyn as her unlikely medium. And Violet has a warning for them: the danger has just begun.

Something deadly is infecting Briarley. It starts with rotten food and curdled milk, but quickly grows more threatening. As the body count rises and students race to save themselves, Emily must confront the fatal forces poisoning the school. Emily's fight for survival forces her to reevaluate everything she knows: about Violet, Evelyn, Briarley, and, ultimately, herself.

Avery Curran channels the indelible ambience and intrigue of the classic boarding school novel while turning the beloved genre on its head in this visceral, exuberant debut.]]> 322 Avery Curran 0385551592 violet✦ 0 to-read 3.51 2026 Spoiled Milk
author: Avery Curran
name: violet✦
average rating: 3.51
book published: 2026
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/08/21
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[A Theory of Adaptation 2nd (second) by Hutcheon, Linda (2012) Paperback]]> 159984975 Excellent Book 0 Linda Hutcheon violet✦ 0 3.33 2006 A Theory of Adaptation 2nd (second) by Hutcheon, Linda (2012) Paperback
author: Linda Hutcheon
name: violet✦
average rating: 3.33
book published: 2006
rating: 0
read at: 2025/08/11
date added: 2025/08/11
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]]> <![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 violet✦ 0 to-read 4.18 2025 The Sovereign (Magic of the Lost, #3)
author: C.L. Clark
name: violet✦
average rating: 4.18
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/08/10
shelves: to-read
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]]> The Silence of the Girls 41728452
No one knows it yet, but there are just ten weeks to go until the Fall of Troy, the end of this long and bitter war. This is the start of The Iliad: the most famous war story ever told. The next ten weeks will be a story of male power, male ego, male violence. But what of the women? The thousands of female slaves in the soldiers' camp - in the laundry, at the loom, laying out the dead? Briseis is one of their number - and she will be our witness to history.]]> 325 Pat Barker 0241983207 violet✦ 3 3.89 2018 The Silence of the Girls
author: Pat Barker
name: violet✦
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2018
rating: 3
read at: 2020/09/28
date added: 2025/08/06
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Queer As Folklore: The Hidden Queer History of Myths and Monsters]]> 204190332 Queer as Folklore takes readers across centuries and continents which reveals the unsung heroes and villains of storytelling, magic and fantasy. Featuring images from archives, galleries and museums around the world, each chapter investigates the queer history of different mythic and folkloric characters, both old and new.

Leaving no headstone unturned, Sacha Coward will take you on a wild ride through the night from ancient Greece to the main stage of RuPaul’s Drag Race, visiting cross-dressing pirates, radical fairies and the graves of the ‘queerly departed’ along the way. Queer communities have often sought refuge in the shadows, found kinship in the in-between and created safe spaces in underworlds; but these forgotten narratives tell stories of remarkable resilience that deserve to be heard.

Join any Pride march and you are likely to see a glorious display of papier-mâché unicorn heads trailing sequins, drag queens wearing mermaid tails and more fairy wings than you can shake a trident at. But these are not just accessories: they are queer symbols with historic roots.

To truly understand who queer people are today, we must confront the twisted tales of the past and Queer as Folklore is a celebration of queer history like you've never seen it before.]]> 324 Sacha Coward 1800183364 violet✦ 0 to-read 3.96 2024 Queer As Folklore: The Hidden Queer History of Myths and Monsters
author: Sacha Coward
name: violet✦
average rating: 3.96
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/07/21
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]]> <![CDATA[Working on a Song: The Lyrics of HADESTOWN]]> 48911077 Ana�s Mitchell named to TIME's List of the 100 Most Influential People in the World of 2020

An illuminating book of lyrics and stories from Hadestown--the winner of eight Tony Awards, including Best Musical--from its author, songwriter Ana�s Mitchell with a foreword by Steve Earle

On Broadway, this fresh take on the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice has become a modern classic. Heralded as "The best new musical of the season," by The Wall Street Journal, and "Sumptuous. Gorgeous. As good as it gets," by The New York Times, the show was a breakout hit, with its poignant social commentary, and spellbinding music and lyrics.

In this book, Ana�s Mitchell takes readers inside her more than decade's-long process of building the musical from the ground up--detailing her inspiration, breaking down the lyrics, and opening up the process of creation that gave birth to Hadestown. Fans and newcomers alike will love this deeply thoughtful, revealing look at how the songs from "the underground" evolved, and became the songs we sing again and again.]]> 259 Anaïs Mitchell 0593182588 violet✦ 0 4.56 2020 Working on a Song: The Lyrics of HADESTOWN
author: Anaïs Mitchell
name: violet✦
average rating: 4.56
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at: 2025/07/19
date added: 2025/07/19
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]]> <![CDATA[One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This]]> 213870084 From award-winning novelist and journalist Omar El Akkad comes a powerful reckoning with what it means to live in the heart of an Empire which doesn’t consider you fully human.

On Oct 25th, after just three weeks of the bombardment of Gaza, Omar El Akkad put out a tweet: “One day, when it’s safe, when there’s no personal downside to calling a thing what it is, when it’s too late to hold anyone accountable, everyone will have always been against this.” This tweet was viewed over 10 million times. 

One Day Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This chronicles the deep fracture which has occurred for Black, brown, indigenous Americans, as well as the upcoming generation, many of whom had clung to a thread of faith in western ideals, in the idea that their countries, or the countries of their adoption, actually attempted to live up to the values they espouse. 

This book is a reckoning with what it means to live in the west, and what it means to live in a world run by a small group of countries—America, the UK, France and Germany.  It will be The Fire Next Time for a generation that understands we’re undergoing a shift in the so-called ‘rules-based order,’ a generation that understands the west can no longer be trusted to police and guide the world, or its own cities and campuses. It draws on intimate details of Omar’s own story as an emigrant who grew up believing in the western project, who was catapulted into journalism by the rupture of 9/11. 

This book is his heartsick breakup letter with the west. It is a breakup we are watching all over the U.S., on college campuses, on city streets, and the consequences of this rupture will be felt by all of us. His book is for all the people who want something better than what the west has served up. This is the book for our time.]]> 208 Omar El Akkad 0593804147 violet✦ 0 to-read 4.56 2025 One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This
author: Omar El Akkad
name: violet✦
average rating: 4.56
book published: 2025
rating: 0
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date added: 2025/07/04
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]]> The Wall 59532092
A woman takes a holiday in the Austrian mountains, spending a few days with her cousin and his wife in their hunting lodge. When the couple fails to return from a walk, the woman sets off to look for them. But her journey reaches a sinister and inexplicable dead end. She discovers only a transparent wall behind which there seems to be no life. Trapped alone behind the mysterious wall she begins the arduous work of survival.

This is at once a simple account of potatoes and beans, of hoping for a calf, of counting matches, of forgetting the taste of sugar and the use of one's name, and simultaneously a disturbing dissection of the place of human beings in the natural world.

**PERFECT FOR FANS OF THE YELLOW WALLPAPER, STATION ELEVEN AND THE MARTIAN

VINTAGE EARTH is a collection of novels to transform our relationship with the natural world. Each one is a work of creative activism, a blast of fresh air, a seed from which change can grow. The books in this series reconnect us to the planet we inhabit - and must protect. Discover great writing on the most urgent story of our times.]]> 246 Marlen Haushofer 1784878030 violet✦ 0 to-read 3.87 1963 The Wall
author: Marlen Haushofer
name: violet✦
average rating: 3.87
book published: 1963
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/06/28
shelves: to-read
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]]> Princess at Heart 51987874
Ellie is a rebellious princess hiding her real identity.

Lottie is her Portman , acting as the princess for the public to shield Ellie from scrutiny.

Jamie is Ellie's Partizan , a lifelong bodyguard sworn to protect the princess at any cost.

Lottie, Ellie and Jamie are back for another year at Rosewood - but nothing will ever be the same again.

They're still reeling from their discovery that someone rather close to home is leader of Leviathan - the group determined to take the princess down at any cost.

Together they must piece together clues to Leviathan's evil plans. But this is far from simple - especially as an undercover Leviathan agent is now attending the school.

Friendships are at stake, families must be reunited and hearts are at risk of breaking . . .

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Praise for Undercover Princess :

'With a fake princess, a rogue royal and fairytale twists aplenty, this is the start of a fun new series' - The Sun

'Once Upon A Time fans will love this new book' - Buzzfeed

'The book is a great example of friendship and bravery' - First News

'A fun blend of school story, adventure and mystery' - Week Junior]]> 320 Connie Glynn 0241458366 violet✦ 3 4.21 2021 Princess at Heart
author: Connie Glynn
name: violet✦
average rating: 4.21
book published: 2021
rating: 3
read at: 2021/02/26
date added: 2025/06/28
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]]> Iron Widow (Iron Widow, #1) 52459864
When 18-year-old Zetian offers herself up as a concubine-pilot, it's to assassinate the ace male pilot responsible for her sister's death. But she gets her vengeance in a way nobody expected—she kills him through the psychic link between pilots and emerges from the cockpit unscathed. She is labeled an Iron Widow, a much-feared and much-silenced kind of female pilot who can sacrifice boys to power up Chrysalises instead.​

To tame her unnerving yet invaluable mental strength, she is paired up with Li Shimin, the strongest and most controversial male pilot in Huaxia​. But now that Zetian has had a taste of power, she will not cower so easily. She will miss no opportunity to leverage their combined might and infamy to survive attempt after attempt on her life, until she can figure out exactly why the pilot system works in its misogynist way—and stop more girls from being sacrificed.]]> 394 Xiran Jay Zhao 0735269939 violet✦ 3 4.00 2021 Iron Widow (Iron Widow, #1)
author: Xiran Jay Zhao
name: violet✦
average rating: 4.00
book published: 2021
rating: 3
read at: 2021/10/06
date added: 2025/06/28
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil]]> 215020997 From V. E. Schwab, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue: a new genre-defying novel about immortality and hunger.

This is a story about hunger.
1532. Santo Domingo de la Calzada.
A young girl grows up wild and wily—her beauty is only outmatched by her dreams of escape. But María knows she can only ever be a prize, or a pawn, in the games played by men. When an alluring stranger offers an alternate path, María makes a desperate choice. She vows to have no regrets.

This is a story about love.
1827. London.
A young woman lives an idyllic but cloistered life on her family’s estate, until a moment of forbidden intimacy sees her shipped off to London. Charlotte’s tender heart and seemingly impossible wishes are swept away by an invitation from a beautiful widow—but the price of freedom is higher than she could have imagined.

This is a story about rage.
2019. Boston.
College was supposed to be her chance to be someone new. That’s why Alice moved halfway across the world, leaving her old life behind. But after an out-of-character one-night stand leaves her questioning her past, her present, and her future, Alice throws herself into the hunt for answers . . . and revenge.

This is a story about life—
how it ends, and how it starts. ]]> 535 V.E. Schwab 1035064642 violet✦ 3 deep exhausted sigh 3.86 2025 Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil
author: V.E. Schwab
name: violet✦
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2025
rating: 3
read at: 2025/06/24
date added: 2025/06/24
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deep exhausted sigh
]]> <![CDATA[The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue]]> 50623864 A life no one will remember. A story you will never forget.

France, 1714: In a moment of desperation, a young woman makes a Faustian bargain to live forever—and is cursed to be forgotten by everyone she meets. Thus begins the extraordinary life of Addie LaRue, and a dazzling adventure that will play out across centuries and continents, across history and art, as a young woman learns how far she will go to leave her mark on the world. But everything changes when, after nearly 300 years, Addie stumbles across a young man in a hidden bookstore and he remembers her name.]]> 448 V.E. Schwab 0765387565 violet✦ 3 4.14 2020 The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue
author: V.E. Schwab
name: violet✦
average rating: 4.14
book published: 2020
rating: 3
read at: 2020/11/05
date added: 2025/06/24
shelves:
review:

]]> Memoirs of a Geisha 929
In "Memoirs of a Geisha," we enter a world where appearances are paramount; where a girl's virginity is auctioned to the highest bidder; where women are trained to beguile the most powerful men; and where love is scorned as illusion. It is a unique and triumphant work of fiction - at once romantic, erotic, suspenseful - and completely unforgettable.]]> 503 Arthur Golden 1400096898 violet✦ 0 4.31 1997 Memoirs of a Geisha
author: Arthur Golden
name: violet✦
average rating: 4.31
book published: 1997
rating: 0
read at: 2017/06/12
date added: 2025/06/19
shelves:
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]]> <![CDATA[The Beauty's Blade: Mei Ren Jian (Novel)]]> 236048304
Ruthless and mercurial, Fu Wanqing is hardly the type of woman anyone expected to be heir to the jianghu’s preeminent righteous cultivation sect. Yet she’s famous for more than just her attitude: her raw power and beauty are renowned, rivaled only by those of demonic sect leader Yu Shengyan.

As such, Fu Wanqing is determined to face her in battle; after all, she must prove herself not just worthy of her station, but superior beyond the rest!

Unfortunately, the ice-cold Yu Shengyan couldn’t be less interested in her challenge. Yet when Fu Wanqing offers the rare medicine Yu Shengyan needs to cure one of her comrades, she relents. The catch? Yu Shengyan must agree to stay by Fu Wanqing’s side for three months. Fu Wanqing is certain that by the end of their deal, she’ll get her duel—but will her fascination with Yu Shengyan come to encompass more than just her sword?]]> 396 Feng Ren Zuo Shu violet✦ 0 to-read 3.04 The Beauty's Blade: Mei Ren Jian (Novel)
author: Feng Ren Zuo Shu
name: violet✦
average rating: 3.04
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/06/18
shelves: to-read
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]]> A Guest in the House 61484875 256 E.M. Carroll 125025552X violet✦ 4 4.06 2023 A Guest in the House
author: E.M. Carroll
name: violet✦
average rating: 4.06
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2025/06/15
date added: 2025/06/17
shelves:
review:
as always with carroll, this was simply insane. i knew an ending twist was on its way but in no way did i see this one coming. the subject matter isn’t necessarily something i seek out but the way it was combined with psychological and horror elements was masterful. the colored illustrations are absolutely haunting and impossible to look away from; i can feel the knights and princesses and thorns seeping into my bones
]]> <![CDATA[It Lasts Forever And Then It's Over]]> 206773193
The heroine of this haunting, spare novel is voraciously alive in the afterlife. Adrift yet keenly aware, our undead narrator notes every bizarre detail of her new reality. She has forgotten even her name, but she remembers with unbearable longing the place where she knew herself and was known – where she loved and was loved. She heads west and into mind-boggling adventures, carrying a dead but laconically opinionated crow in her chest. The joint winner of The Novel Prize, It Lasts Forever and Then It’s Over is a sharp and funny tale for our dispossessed times.]]> 128 Anne de Marcken 1923106007 violet✦ 0 to-read 3.56 2024 It Lasts Forever And Then It's Over
author: Anne de Marcken
name: violet✦
average rating: 3.56
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/06/14
shelves: to-read
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]]> 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.]]> 167 C.L. Clark 1250293146 violet✦ 0 to-read 3.76 2025 Fate's Bane
author: C.L. Clark
name: violet✦
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/06/11
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[Time Binds: Queer Temporalities, Queer Histories (Perverse Modernities)]]> 8265613 256 Elizabeth Freeman 0822348047 violet✦ 0 to-read 3.95 2009 Time Binds: Queer Temporalities, Queer Histories (Perverse Modernities)
author: Elizabeth Freeman
name: violet✦
average rating: 3.95
book published: 2009
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/06/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Seasons of Glass and Iron: Stories]]> 231680043 Seasons of Glass and Iron is a collection of acclaimed and awarded work from Amal El-Mohtar.

With confidence and style, El-Mohtar guides us through exquisitely told and sharply observed tales about life as it is, was, and could be. Like miscellany from other worlds, these stories are told in letters, diary entries, reference materials, folktales, and lyrical prose.

Full of Nebula, Locus, World Fantasy, and Hugo Award-winning and nominated stories, Seasons of Glass and Iron includes "Seasons of Glass and Iron," "The Green Book," "Madeleine," "The Lonely Sea in the Sky," "And Their Lips Rang with the Sun," "The Truth About Owls," "A Hollow Play," "Anabasis," "To Follow the Waves," "John Hollowback and the Witch," "Florilegia, or, Some Lies About Flowers," "Pockets," and more.]]> 208 Amal El-Mohtar 1250341019 violet✦ 0 to-read 4.05 2026 Seasons of Glass and Iron: Stories
author: Amal El-Mohtar
name: violet✦
average rating: 4.05
book published: 2026
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/05/08
shelves: to-read
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]]> <![CDATA[The Knight and the Butcherbird]]> 224970641
In this gritty, haunting tale about doing whatever it takes for love, a small-town storyteller resolves to keep the local monster—and her own secrets—safe from a legendary knight.

Nestled deep in the steep hills, valleys, and surrounding woodlands lies Iron Hollow, a rural community beset by demons. Such horrors are common in the outlands, where most folks die young, if they don’t turn into monsters first. But what’s causing these transformations?

No one has the answer, not even the town’s oral historian, seventeen-year-old Shrike. And when a legendary knight is summoned to hunt down the latest beast to haunt their woods, Shrike has more reason than most to be concerned. Because that demon was her wife. And while Shrike is certain that May still recognizes her—that May is still human, somewhere beneath it all—she can’t prove it.

Determined to keep May safe, Shrike stalks the knight and his demon-hunting hawk through the recesses of the forest. But as they creep through toxic creeks and overgrown kudzu, Shrike realizes the knight has a secret of his own. And he’ll do anything to protect it.]]> 36 Alix E. Harrow 1662527233 violet✦ 0 3.94 2025 The Knight and the Butcherbird
author: Alix E. Harrow
name: violet✦
average rating: 3.94
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at: 2025/04/21
date added: 2025/04/23
shelves:
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]]> <![CDATA[Fable for the End of the World]]> 209594872 The Last of Us meets The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes in this standalone dystopian romance about survival, sacrifice, and love that risks everything.

By encouraging massive accumulations of debt from its underclass, a single corporation, Caerus, controls all aspects of society.

Inesa lives with her brother in a half-sunken town where they scrape by running a taxidermy shop. Unbeknownst to Inesa, their cruel and indolent mother has accrued an enormous debt—enough to qualify one of her children for Caerus’s livestreamed assassination spectacle: the Lamb’s Gauntlet.

Melinoë is a Caerus assassin, trained to track and kill the sacrificial Lambs. The product of neural reconditioning and physiological alteration, she is a living weapon, known for her cold brutality and deadly beauty. She has never failed to assassinate one of her marks.

When Inesa learns that her mother has offered her as a sacrifice, at first she despairs—the Gauntlet is always a bloodbath for the impoverished debtors. But she’s had years of practice surviving in the apocalyptic wastes, and with the help of her hunter brother, she might stand a chance of staying alive.

For Melinoë, this is a game she can’t afford to lose. Despite her reputation for mercilessness, she is haunted by painful flashbacks. After her last Gauntlet, where she broke down on livestream, she desperately needs redemption.

As Mel pursues Inesa across the wasteland, both girls begin to question everything: Inesa wonders if there’s more to life than survival, while Mel wonders if she’s capable of more than killing.

And both wonder if, against all odds, they might be falling in love.]]> 384 Ava Reid 0063211556 violet✦ 3 3.67 2025 Fable for the End of the World
author: Ava Reid
name: violet✦
average rating: 3.67
book published: 2025
rating: 3
read at: 2025/04/14
date added: 2025/04/15
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Archive of Alternate Endings]]> 42770439 The Archive of Alternate Endings explores how stories are disseminated and shared, edited and censored, voiced and left untold.

In 1456, Johannes Gutenberg’s sister uses the tale as a surrogate for sharing a family secret only her brother believes. In 1835, The Brothers Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm revise the tale to bury a truth about Jacob even he can’t come to face. In 1986, a folklore scholar and her brother come to find the record is wrong about the figurative witch in the woods, while in 2211, twin space probes aiming to find earth's sister planet disseminate the narrative in binary code. Breadcrumbing back in time from 2365 to 1378, siblings reimagine, reinvent, and recycle the narrative of Hansel and Gretel to articulate personal, regional, and ultimately cosmic experiences of tragedy.

Through a relay of speculative pieces that oscillate between eco-fiction and psychological horror, The Archive of Alternate Endings explores sibling love in the face of trauma over the course of a millennium, in the vein of Richard McGuire's Here and Lars von Trier's Melancholia.]]> 159 Lindsey Drager 1945814829 violet✦ 0 to-read 4.09 2019 The Archive of Alternate Endings
author: Lindsey Drager
name: violet✦
average rating: 4.09
book published: 2019
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/11
shelves: to-read
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]]> Nettle & Bone 56179377
Seeking help from a powerful gravewitch, Marra is offered the tools to kill a prince—if she can complete three impossible tasks. But, as is the way in tales of princes, witches, and daughters, the impossible is only the beginning.

On her quest, Marra is joined by the gravewitch, a reluctant fairy godmother, a strapping former knight, and a chicken possessed by a demon. Together, the five of them intend to be the hand that closes around the throat of the prince and frees Marra's family and their kingdom from its tyrannous ruler at last.]]> 243 T. Kingfisher 1250244048 violet✦ 3 4.04 2022 Nettle & Bone
author: T. Kingfisher
name: violet✦
average rating: 4.04
book published: 2022
rating: 3
read at: 2024/02/08
date added: 2025/04/10
shelves:
review:
cute and charming but didn’t exactly live up to the hype for me. definitely want to check out kingfisher’s other work tho !
]]> Spinning Silver 50396998 Will dark magic claim their home?

Miryem is the daughter and granddaughter of moneylenders, but her father’s too kind-hearted to collect his debts. They face poverty, until Miryem hardens her own heart and takes up his work in their village. Her success creates rumours she can turn silver into gold, which attract the fairy king of winter himself. He sets her an impossible challenge – and if she fails, she’ll die. Yet if she triumphs, it may mean a fate worse than death. And in her desperate efforts to succeed, Miryem unwittingly spins a web which draws in the unhappy daughter of a lord.

Irina’s father schemes to wed her to the tsar – he will pay any price to achieve this goal. However, the dashing tsar is not what he seems. And the secret he hides threatens to consume the lands of mortals and winter alike. Torn between deadly choices, Miryem and Irina embark on a quest that will take them to the limits of sacrifice, power and love.

As with her standalone novel Uprooted, Naomi Novik has once again been influenced by classic folktales. Taking Rumpelstiltskin as her starting point, she's woven a rich, multilayered new story which is a joy to read.

]]> 482 Naomi Novik 1509899030 violet✦ 5 4.19 2018 Spinning Silver
author: Naomi Novik
name: violet✦
average rating: 4.19
book published: 2018
rating: 5
read at: 2023/01/27
date added: 2025/04/10
shelves:
review:
naomi novik weaving the intricate lines of a perfect winter read like its nothing
]]> <![CDATA[Ninth House (Ninth House Trilogy, #1)]]> 43263680
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.]]> 461 Leigh Bardugo 1250313074 violet✦ 4 3.99 2019 Ninth House (Ninth House Trilogy, #1)
author: Leigh Bardugo
name: violet✦
average rating: 3.99
book published: 2019
rating: 4
read at: 2021/09/23
date added: 2025/04/10
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Fifth Season (The Broken Earth, #1)]]> 19161852
Three terrible things happen in a single day. Essun, a woman living an ordinary life in a small town, comes home to find that her husband has brutally murdered their son and kidnapped their daughter. Meanwhile, mighty Sanze -- the world-spanning empire whose innovations have been civilization's bedrock for a thousand years -- collapses as most of its citizens are murdered to serve a madman's vengeance. And worst of all, across the heart of the vast continent known as the Stillness, a great red rift has been torn into the heart of the earth, spewing ash enough to darken the sky for years. Or centuries.

Now Essun must pursue the wreckage of her family through a deadly, dying land. Without sunlight, clean water, or arable land, and with limited stockpiles of supplies, there will be war all across the Stillness: a battle royale of nations not for power or territory, but simply for the basic resources necessary to get through the long dark night. Essun does not care if the world falls apart around her. She'll break it herself, if she must, to save her daughter.]]> 468 N.K. Jemisin violet✦ 5 4.27 2015 The Fifth Season (The Broken Earth, #1)
author: N.K. Jemisin
name: violet✦
average rating: 4.27
book published: 2015
rating: 5
read at: 2020/07/04
date added: 2025/04/10
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Before the Coffee Gets Cold (Before the Coffee Gets Cold, #1)]]> 44421460 What would you change if you could go back in time?

In a small back alley in Tokyo, there is a café which has been serving carefully brewed coffee for more than one hundred years. But this coffee shop offers its customers a unique experience: the chance to travel back in time.

In Before the Coffee Gets Cold, we meet four visitors, each of whom is hoping to make use of the café’s time-travelling offer, in order to: confront the man who left them, receive a letter from their husband whose memory has been taken by early onset Alzheimer's, to see their sister one last time, and to meet the daughter they never got the chance to know.

But the journey into the past does not come without risks: customers must sit in a particular seat, they cannot leave the café, and finally, they must return to the present before the coffee gets cold . . .

Toshikazu Kawaguchi’s beautiful, moving story explores the age-old question: what would you change if you could travel back in time? More importantly, who would you want to meet, maybe for one last time?]]> 213 Toshikazu Kawaguchi 1529029589 violet✦ 4 3.63 2015 Before the Coffee Gets Cold (Before the Coffee Gets Cold, #1)
author: Toshikazu Kawaguchi
name: violet✦
average rating: 3.63
book published: 2015
rating: 4
read at: 2021/01/05
date added: 2025/04/10
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[A Dark and Hollow Star (A Dark and Hollow Star, #1)]]> 43850198 The Cruel Prince meets City of Bones in this thrilling urban fantasy set in the magical underworld of Toronto that follows a queer cast of characters racing to stop a serial killer whose crimes could expose the hidden world of faeries to humans.

Choose your player.

The “ironborn” half-fae outcast of her royal fae family.
A tempestuous Fury, exiled to earth from the Immortal Realm and hellbent on revenge.
A dutiful fae prince, determined to earn his place on the throne.
The prince’s brooding guardian, burdened with a terrible secret.

For centuries, the Eight Courts of Folk have lived among us, concealed by magic and bound by law to do no harm to humans. This arrangement has long kept peace in the Courts—until a series of gruesome and ritualistic murders rocks the city of Toronto and threatens to expose faeries to the human world.

Four queer teens, each who hold a key piece of the truth behind these murders, must form a tenuous alliance in their effort to track down the mysterious killer behind these crimes. If they fail, they risk the destruction of the faerie and human worlds alike. If that’s not bad enough, there’s a war brewing between the Mortal and Immortal Realms, and one of these teens is destined to tip the scales. The only question which way?

Wish them luck. They’re going to need it.]]> 512 Ashley Shuttleworth 1534453695 violet✦ 3 3.86 2021 A Dark and Hollow Star (A Dark and Hollow Star, #1)
author: Ashley Shuttleworth
name: violet✦
average rating: 3.86
book published: 2021
rating: 3
read at: 2021/04/29
date added: 2025/04/10
shelves:
review:
the writing really, Really took me out and the worldbuilding was quite messy along with numerous plot poins, but it was still an enjoyable read.
]]> <![CDATA[The Tyrant Baru Cormorant (The Masquerade, #3)]]> 52379336 656 Seth Dickinson 0765380765 violet✦ 5 4.30 2020 The Tyrant Baru Cormorant (The Masquerade, #3)
author: Seth Dickinson
name: violet✦
average rating: 4.30
book published: 2020
rating: 5
read at: 2022/01/10
date added: 2025/04/10
shelves: favorites-goodreads-won-t-update, favorites-post-highschool
review:
continuing this series was the best decision of my life
]]> <![CDATA[The Faithless (Magic of the Lost, #2)]]> 59007314
The rebels have won, and the empire is withdrawing from Qazal. But undoing the tangled web that binds the two nations won't be easy, and Touraine and Luca will face their greatest challenge yet.

Luca needs to oust her uncle from the Balladairan throne once and for all and take her rightful place as Queen. But he won't let go of power so easily. When he calls for a "Trial of Competence" and Luca's allies start disappearing from her side, she will have to prove her might. And she knows someone who can help...

Touraine has found a home in the newly free country of Qazal. However, she soon realizes that leading a country and leading a revolution are two very different tasks. And, even more importantly, if Luca won't keep her promises, the Qazali could end up right back where they started.

Together, the two women must overcome their enemies, their history, and their heartbreak in order to secure Luca's power and Touraine's freedom.]]> 512 C.L. Clark violet✦ 4 4.24 2023 The Faithless (Magic of the Lost, #2)
author: C.L. Clark
name: violet✦
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2023
rating: 4
read at: 2023/05/06
date added: 2025/04/10
shelves:
review:
3.75 || did not enjoy it as much as the unbroken as i found the balladaire / court / rebellion plots to be looser than i enjoy in political fantasy, but god will i always come back for touraine and luca and sticking it to empires
]]> <![CDATA[We Have Always Lived in the Castle]]> 89724 Shirley Jackson's beloved gothic tale of a peculiar girl named Merricat and her family's dark secret.

Taking readers deep into a labyrinth of dark neurosis, We Have Always Lived in the Castle is a deliciously unsettling novel about a perverse, isolated, and possibly murderous family and the struggle that ensues when a cousin arrives at their estate. This edition features an afterword by Jonathan Lethem.]]> 152 Shirley Jackson 0143039970 violet✦ 4 3.91 1962 We Have Always Lived in the Castle
author: Shirley Jackson
name: violet✦
average rating: 3.91
book published: 1962
rating: 4
read at: 2024/01/29
date added: 2025/04/10
shelves:
review:
i am bewitched by jackson’s writing
]]> <![CDATA[The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo]]> 32620332
Monique is not exactly on top of the world. Her husband has left her, and her professional life is going nowhere. Regardless of why Evelyn has selected her to write her biography, Monique is determined to use this opportunity to jumpstart her career.

Summoned to Evelyn's luxurious apartment, Monique listens in fascination as the actress tells her story. From making her way to Los Angeles in the 1950s to her decision to leave show business in the `80s, and, of course, the seven husbands along the way, Evelyn unspools a tale of ruthless ambition, unexpected friendship, and a great forbidden love. Monique begins to feel a very real connection to the legendary star, but as Evelyn's story near its conclusion, it becomes clear that her life intersects with Monique's own in tragic and irreversible ways.]]> 389 Taylor Jenkins Reid 1501139231 violet✦ 0 4.38 2017 The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo
author: Taylor Jenkins Reid
name: violet✦
average rating: 4.38
book published: 2017
rating: 0
read at: 2020/06/07
date added: 2025/04/10
shelves:
review:

]]> Hooked: Art and Attachment 50860387
Wresting the language of affinity away from accusations of sticky sentiment and manipulative marketing, Felski argues that “being hooked” is as fundamental to the appreciation of high art as to the enjoyment of popular culture. Hooked zeroes in on three attachment devices that connect audiences to works of identification, attunement, and interpretation. Drawing on examples from literature, film, music, and painting—from Joni Mitchell to Matisse, from Thomas Bernhard to Thelma and Louise —Felski brings the language of attachment into the academy. Hooked returns us to the fundamentals of aesthetic experience, showing that the social meanings of artworks are generated not just by critics, but also by the responses of captivated audiences.]]> 213 Rita Felski 022672963X violet✦ 0 to-read 3.76 2020 Hooked: Art and Attachment
author: Rita Felski
name: violet✦
average rating: 3.76
book published: 2020
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Upon a Starlit Tide 211004131 A dark and enchanting fairy tale-inspired historical fantasy combining elements of "The Little Mermaid" and "Cinderella" into a wholly original tale of love, power, and betrayal.

Saint-Malo, Brittany, 1758.
For Lucinde Leon, the youngest daughter of one of Saint-Malo's wealthiest ship-owners, the high walls of the city are more hindrance than haven. While her sisters are interested in securing advantageous marriages, Luce dreams of escaping her elegant but stifling home and joining a ship's crew. Only Samuel—Luce's best friend and an English smuggler—understands her longing for the sea, secretly teaching her to sail whenever she can sneak away. For Luce, the stolen time on the water with Samuel is precious.

One stormy morning, Luce's plans are blown off course when she rescues Morgan de Chatelaine, the youngest son of the most powerful ship-owner in Saint-Malo, from the sea. Immediately drawn to his charm and sense of adventure, she longs to attend the glittering ball held in honor of his safe return and begins to contemplate a different kind of future for herself.

But it is not only Luce's hopes at stake—the local fae are leaving Brittany and taking their magic with them, while the long-standing war with the English means Saint-Malo is always at risk of attack. As Luce is plunged into a world of magic, brutality, and seduction, secrets that have long been lost in the shadowy depths of the ocean begin to rise to the surface. The truth of her own power is growing brighter and brighter, shining like a sea-glass slipper.

Or the scales of a sea-maid's tail.]]> 418 Kell Woods 125085251X violet✦ 0 to-read 4.17 2025 Upon a Starlit Tide
author: Kell Woods
name: violet✦
average rating: 4.17
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Floating World (The Floating World, #1)]]> 215149209 From Axie Oh, the New York Times-bestselling author of The Girl Who Fell Beneath the Sea, Final Fantasy meets Shadow and Bone in this romantic fantasy reimagining the Korean legend of Celestial Maidens.

Sunho lives in the Under World, a land of perpetual darkness. An ex-soldier, he can remember little of his life from before two years ago, when he woke up alone with only his name and his sword. Now he does odd-jobs to scrape by, until he comes across the score of a lifetime—a chest of coins for any mercenary who can hunt down a girl who wields silver light.

Meanwhile, far to the east, Ren is a cheerful and spirited acrobat traveling with her adoptive family and performing at villages. But everything changes during one of their festival performances when the village is attacked by a horrific humanlike demon. In a moment of fear and rage, Ren releases a blast of silver light—a power she has kept hidden since childhood—and kills the monster. But her efforts are not in time to prevent her adoptive family from suffering a devastating loss, or to save her beloved uncle from being grievously wounded.

Determined to save him from succumbing to the poisoned wound, Ren sets off over the mountains, where the creature came from—and from where Ren herself fled ten years ago. Her path sets her on a collision course with Sunho, but he doesn't realize she's the girl that he—and a hundred other swords-for-hire—is looking for. As the two grow closer through their travels, they come to realize that their pasts—and destinies—are far more entwined than either of them could have imagined...]]> 360 Axie Oh 1250853087 violet✦ 0 to-read 3.75 2025 The Floating World (The Floating World, #1)
author: Axie Oh
name: violet✦
average rating: 3.75
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/04/06
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> Feast While You Can 207567782 For readers of Nightbitch and We Ride Upon Sticks, this strange and sexy novel of queer love in a small town is an unsettling reminder that the horrors of modern life are monsters ready to possess us all.

In the valley at the intersection of three towering mountains sits Cadenze, an ugly, remote town with little to its name. It's filled with tourists in the summer and dead the rest of the year, when most of its residents surrender to a sleepier existence. Except, that is, for whatever is lurking in the caves...

Angelina Sicco was born and raised in Cadenze, and for many generations, so was every member of her family. Determined to be content with her lot in life, she walks her mongrel dog, attends her brother's heavy metal concerts, holds court in the local dive bar, and does everything she can to bait hot, queer women to her sleepy, conservative hometown. But on the night of a family party much like every other, Angelina runs into Patrick's ex, the sternly handsome Jagvi, who's back in town for a spell. Perhaps enticed by Jagvi’s arrival, an ancient evil lying dormant in those caves is awakened, and soon Angelina’s small, contained world begins to shatter.

As the monstrous force grows bolder, it infiltrates Angelina’s life. It talks with her dog’s mouth; it guzzles on her memories; it controls Angelina from the inside. Only Jagvi’s touch repels it — the final trigger for a secret, passionate romance. But this monster feasts on all the passion, heartbreak, and mess that makes up a life, and Angelina Sicco’s life has never looked tastier. What will Angelina do to protect her future? And what will it cost her?]]> 304 Mikaella Clements 153874225X violet✦ 0 to-read 3.89 2024 Feast While You Can
author: Mikaella Clements
name: violet✦
average rating: 3.89
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/29
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 violet✦ 4 3.93 2025 The River Has Roots
author: Amal El-Mohtar
name: violet✦
average rating: 3.93
book published: 2025
rating: 4
read at: 2025/03/14
date added: 2025/03/24
shelves:
review:
i knew amar el-mohtar would never let me down, what a beautiful fairytale. the prose comes alive under el-mohtar’s pen, as she weaves grammar into magic into song. i am lost in dreams of willows and rivers that flow like time, a lover that is the winter breeze itself, and a sister i’ve never had who fills my heart with longing
]]> A Treachery of Swans 217643704 An enthralling sapphic retelling of Swan Lake, for fans of Allison Saft and V.E Schwab.

Magic has long been outlawed in Auréal . Odile has always known she’d be the one to restore it.

Raised by a sorcerer, Odile has spent years preparing for the heist of a lifetime. It’s perfectly simple. Impersonate a princess, infiltrate the palace, steal the king's enchanted crown and restore magic to the kingdom.

But when the King is unexpectedly murdered, she’s forced to recruit the help of Marie d'Odette, the real princess, and the two begin to unravel a web of lies and deceit that leaves Odile uncertain of who to trust.

Soon though Odile must decide – her mission or the girl she’s falling for?

The fate of the Kingdom depends on her making the right choice. . .]]> 352 A.B. Poranek violet✦ 0 to-read 3.71 2025 A Treachery of Swans
author: A.B. Poranek
name: violet✦
average rating: 3.71
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/03/16
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> The Wood at Midwinter 206101583 'A church is a sort of wood. A wood is a sort of church. They're the same thing really.'

Nineteen-year-old Merowdis Scott is an unusual girl. She can talk to animals and trees—and she is only ever happy when she is walking in the woods.

One snowy afternoon, out with her dogs and Apple the pig, Merowdis encounters a blackbird and a fox. As darkness falls, a strange figure enters in their midst—and the path of her life is changed forever.

From the internationally bestselling and prize-winning author of Piranesi and Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, an enchanting, beautifully illustrated short story set in the Strange universe. Featuring an introduction by Susanna Clarke and gorgeous illustrations from Victoria Sawdon truly worthy of the magic of this story, this is a mesmerising, must-have addition to any fantasy reader's bookshelf.]]> 60 Susanna Clarke 1639734481 violet✦ 0 3.40 2024 The Wood at Midwinter
author: Susanna Clarke
name: violet✦
average rating: 3.40
book published: 2024
rating: 0
read at: 2025/02/21
date added: 2025/02/21
shelves:
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Perfect Victims and the Politics of Appeal]]> 213702691 Perfect Victims is an urgent affirmation of the Palestinian condition of resistance and refusal―an ode to the steadfastness of a nation.

Palestine is a microcosm of the world: on fire, stubborn, fragmented, dignified. While a settler colonial state continues to inflict devastating violence, fundamental truths are deliberately obscured―the perpetrators are coddled while the victims are blamed and placed on trial.

Why must Palestinians prove their humanity? And what are the implications of such an infuriatingly impossible task? With fearless prose and lyrical precision, Mohammed El-Kurd refuses a life spent in cross-examination. Rather than asking the oppressed to perform a perfect victimhood, El-Kurd asks friends and foes alike to look Palestinians in the eye, forgoing both deference and condemnation.

How we see Palestine reveals how we see each other; how we see everything else. Masterfully combining candid testimony, history, and reportage, Perfect Victims presents a powerfully simple demand: dignity for the Palestinian.]]> 256 Mohammed El-Kurd violet✦ 0 to-read 4.77 2025 Perfect Victims and the Politics of Appeal
author: Mohammed El-Kurd
name: violet✦
average rating: 4.77
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/02/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Female General And Eldest Princess, Vol. 1]]> 205975178
In the imperial palace, the Empress passes into Heaven, leaving behind the sixteen-year-old Eldest Princess and eight-year-old Crown Prince, who must now depend on each other to survive.

The other Seigniors are older than the Crown Prince. They look upon the throne with covetous eyes, and the siblings find themselves in a precarious position.

When Lin Wanyue gets her first period, she fears her secret will be exposed. Meanwhile, after the death of Empress Li Qingcheng, her daughter Li Xian and son Li Zhu navigate the complex political landscape of the imperial court. Li Xian allies with Seignior Qi Li Zhen to secure the throne for the young Li Zhu, in exchange for Seignior Qi’s future demands. However, Seignior Chu Li Xuan, a rival, is spying on their plots.

Their destinies become intertwined when Princess Li Xian arrives at a military camp with the intention of pulling the strings so that her brother can succeed to the throne.]]> 380 Qing Jun Mo Xiao 8410020378 violet✦ 0 to-read 4.12 Female General And Eldest Princess, Vol. 1
author: Qing Jun Mo Xiao
name: violet✦
average rating: 4.12
book published:
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/31
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Castle in the Air (Howl's Moving Castle, #2)]]> 47520 An alternative cover edition for this ISBN can be found here

In which a humble young carpet merchant wins, then loses, the princess of his dreams

Far to the south of the land of Ingary, in the Sultanates of Rashpuht, there lived in the city of Zanzib a young and not very prosperous carpet dealer named Abdullah who loved to spend his time daydreaming. He was content with his life and his daydreams until, one day, a stranger sold him a magic carpet.

That very night, the carpet flew him to an enchanted garden. There, he met and fell in love with the beauteous princess Flower-in-the-Night, only to have her snatched away, right under his very nose, by a wicked djinn. With only his magic carpet and his wits to help him, Abdullah sets off to rescue his princess....]]> 298 Diana Wynne Jones 0064473457 violet✦ 0 3.86 1990 Castle in the Air (Howl's Moving Castle, #2)
author: Diana Wynne Jones
name: violet✦
average rating: 3.86
book published: 1990
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/15
shelves:
review:

]]> Volatile Memory 210209019 Seth Haddon's science fiction debut, Volatile Memory, is a heart-filled, vengeful sapphic sci-fi action adventure novella.

With nothing but a limping ship and an outdated mask to her name, Wylla needs a big pay day. When the call goes out that a lucrative piece of tech is waiting on a nearby planet, she relies on all the swiftness of her prey animal instincts to beat other hunters to it.

What you found wasn’t your ticket out—it was my corpse wearing an AI mask. When you touched the mask, you heard my voice. A consciousness spinning through metal and circuits, a bodiless mind, spun to life in the HAWK’s temporary storage. I crystallized, and I was alive.

Masks aren't supposed to retain memory, much less identity, but the woman inside the MARK I HAWK is real, and she sees Wylla in a way no one ever has. Sees her, and doesn’t find her wanting or unwhole.

Armed with military-grade tech and a lifetime of staying one step ahead of the hunters, Wylla and HAWK set off to get answers from the man who discarded HAWK once before: her ex-husband.]]> 5 Seth Haddon violet✦ 0 to-read 3.90 2025 Volatile Memory
author: Seth Haddon
name: violet✦
average rating: 3.90
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/07
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[Shall Machines Divide the Earth (Machine Mandate, #3)]]> 56795751
War veteran Thannarat has sought this hidden world to realize a single goal: bringing back the dead. To fulfill this wish, she joins the game alongside a seductive AI who pledges to give her victory. The tournament is full of lethal secrets—and so is the AI that professes to be her weapon. Yet to have what she needs, Thannarat will sacrifice everything. Her home world, the woman she once loved, and herself.

All she has to do is defy the game’s inescapable rule: that in the end, the only true victors are the machines . . .]]> 131 Benjanun Sriduangkaew 1607015447 violet✦ 3
the promise of khun thannarat is so, utterly charming. a detective in her 40s with an emotional mission, all rough and tough and handsome- is something that would tempt any wlw to know her intimately, immediately. it is almost a heartbreak to see that there isn’t anything else to her, at all. any reflection she makes of her character is self-depreciating with the emotional depth of a kiddie pool, only to remain in the rare moments where she thinks, and never to affect her actions in a meaningful way. her internal monologues about passion sound almost comical, especially when you realize that her understanding of it consists of rash, momentous desires that are simple on the surface and even simpler beyond. anytime she expresses emotion feels like someone saying things because she is supposed to feel emotion- it doesn’t land. there is nothing to root or curse for, she is just there.

finding thannarat so boring, imagine what you would feel about her love interest. daji, the AI thannarat partners with for the divide, is obsessed with her from the get go. even after we learn more about her background and her motives, even after the entire events of the novella, that remains to be her single definitive trait. thannarat’s declarations of love towards her feel so, so stupid and superficial when you ask, what has she been to her other than a submissive sex robot who also happens to fight? and even those parts i didn’t get to enjoy, because all sex scenes, all depictions of daji felt like they were written by and old cishet man. daji is a caricature that even her secret connection to thannarat cannot salvage, and god is it frustrating to see thanarrat choose her over any and all women she has had deep connections with in the past.

i’m just sad because things could have been so different. i love space operas, the politics of it all. i love reading about women starring in cut throat, violent worlds, i love dissecting, unravelling the characters and watch them unravel one another in a fucked up universe, where the sole comfort is the other. that is the only reason i’m giving this book three stars: the potential that was never realized. i hope other stories in this universe really go there, even though i might not stick around to find out.]]> 4.24 2021 Shall Machines Divide the Earth (Machine Mandate, #3)
author: Benjanun Sriduangkaew
name: violet✦
average rating: 4.24
book published: 2021
rating: 3
read at: 2022/10/04
date added: 2025/01/05
shelves:
review:
oh boy do i have things to say. i’ll try to be gentle, begin with the good and the what could have beens. the idea behind the book is enticing- the concept, the world and the ideation of the main character are all things that made me open the first page and keep turning the next one till the end. the “death competition” is by no means a brand new concept in sff, and the author is aware that that itself won’t be able to carry the book. the worldbuilding is curious, just like the trope: even though it isn’t doing anything game changing, the AIs that are something close to divinity and the intergalactic battles looming in the background, combined with the bloody, high stakes chase draws your attention. the introduction of this world however, isn’t something i particularly enjoyed. this may be my preference only, but as someone who has grown very fond of more challenging worldbuilding in the past years- one where you scrap for bits to figure out this reality you are immersed in, and get the satisfaction of realizing the point where everything suddenly clicks- the overexplanatory briefings of every new concept didn’t really do it for me. now i am well aware that this is a novella and you have only so much time to present the reader the information necessary to move along with the narrative, but in this case, the choice of lecturing the reader actively watered down the character’s voice; which already had so little going on.

the promise of khun thannarat is so, utterly charming. a detective in her 40s with an emotional mission, all rough and tough and handsome- is something that would tempt any wlw to know her intimately, immediately. it is almost a heartbreak to see that there isn’t anything else to her, at all. any reflection she makes of her character is self-depreciating with the emotional depth of a kiddie pool, only to remain in the rare moments where she thinks, and never to affect her actions in a meaningful way. her internal monologues about passion sound almost comical, especially when you realize that her understanding of it consists of rash, momentous desires that are simple on the surface and even simpler beyond. anytime she expresses emotion feels like someone saying things because she is supposed to feel emotion- it doesn’t land. there is nothing to root or curse for, she is just there.

finding thannarat so boring, imagine what you would feel about her love interest. daji, the AI thannarat partners with for the divide, is obsessed with her from the get go. even after we learn more about her background and her motives, even after the entire events of the novella, that remains to be her single definitive trait. thannarat’s declarations of love towards her feel so, so stupid and superficial when you ask, what has she been to her other than a submissive sex robot who also happens to fight? and even those parts i didn’t get to enjoy, because all sex scenes, all depictions of daji felt like they were written by and old cishet man. daji is a caricature that even her secret connection to thannarat cannot salvage, and god is it frustrating to see thanarrat choose her over any and all women she has had deep connections with in the past.

i’m just sad because things could have been so different. i love space operas, the politics of it all. i love reading about women starring in cut throat, violent worlds, i love dissecting, unravelling the characters and watch them unravel one another in a fucked up universe, where the sole comfort is the other. that is the only reason i’m giving this book three stars: the potential that was never realized. i hope other stories in this universe really go there, even though i might not stick around to find out.
]]> 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 violet✦ 0 to-read 3.55 2025 The Starving Saints
author: Caitlin Starling
name: violet✦
average rating: 3.55
book published: 2025
rating: 0
read at:
date added: 2025/01/02
shelves: to-read
review:

]]> <![CDATA[The Unwanted Guest (The Locked Tomb, #3.5)]]> 219360665 32 Tamsyn Muir violet✦ 5 4.59 2023 The Unwanted Guest (The Locked Tomb, #3.5)
author: Tamsyn Muir
name: violet✦
average rating: 4.59
book published: 2023
rating: 5
read at: 2024/12/31
date added: 2025/01/01
shelves:
review:

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