Suggestions for books about mages?
Edited 277d ago
fantasy
finished reading The Trouble with Peace 🌕🌕🌕🌕🌑
A cynical take on the deep power of finance & capitalism in an age of rapid industrialisation. Numerous players (pawns) strive for 'power' with varying degrees of cunning & strategy. Provides his usual hefty dose of backstabbing and dry wit, and a touch less graphic violence.
Edited 311d ago
finished reading Foundryside 🌕🌕🌕🌕🌑
Crafts a novel world from steampunkish magic controlled by an oligarchy of aristocratic families. Pleasing allegory for capitalism and AI.
Edited 1y ago
Looking for high fantasy book suggestions that aren't about preventing the world from ending
Edited 272d ago
finished reading Legends & Lattes 🌕🌕🌕🌕🌑
A lovely little story about an ex-adventurer who turns her orcish hand to opening a coffee shop. Everyone is nice except for the odd dickhead who provides narrative tension. Imagine the Discworld with hygge instead of satire.
Edited 286d ago
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finished reading The Broken Kingdoms 🌕🌕🌕🌗🌑
A woman gets caught up in the manoeuvring of gods, godlings and grasping humans. Most notable for the protagonist's blindness, except for her ability to see magic.
Edited 261d ago
finished reading Enemy of God 🌕🌕🌕🌗🌑
by Bernard Cornwell.
The Saxons threaten to overrun Briton; a search for a legendary artifact to bring back the Old Gods; a little blissful romance; Lancelot is a backstabbing, cowardly bastard; oaths, what are they good for? A touch more magic than in the first book, but just as hard, dirty & cynical.
#BookReview #Books #Bookstodon #HistoricalFiction #Fantasy
@WildWoila @wildwoila@wyrms.de
finished reading Howl’s Moving Castle 🌕🌕🌕🌑🌑
A young woman gets caught up in magical machinations and is turned old & fabulously crotchety. Great characters and vibe but I lost track of the plot a bit (disclaimer: listened to this as a sleep story), and wasn't really into the romantic ending.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8eOjQ3JrXk&list=PLp6dwtXsi8Pu6G7MT4ajMGB1YrumzQRZ9
#BookReview #Books #Bookstodon #Fantasy #SFF #AudioBook #SleepStory
@WildWoila @wildwoila@wyrms.de
Edited 225d ago
finished reading Akarnae 🌕🌕🌗🌑🌑
by Lynette Noni.
Fairly derivative YA fantasy: teenage girl crosses into a parallel world, where she becomes a fish-out-of-water at a school for talented students, and discovers she's the only one who can prevent the obliteration of humanity. Some ingrained patriarchy - why do female heroes always have to be hot? Totally needless. Nice enough but nothing special.
#BookReview #Books #Bookstodon #YoungAdult #Fantasy #SFF
@WildWoila @wildwoila@wyrms.de
finished reading The Tainted Cup 🌕🌕🌕🌕🌑
by Robert Jackson Bennett.
A murder mystery fantasy novel - why is this a first for me?! Fairly standard whodunnit which escalates to political intrigue, made distinctive by very cool world-building: an empire built to defend against leviathans attacking from the sea, whose bodily fluids enable a raft of fantastical bio-enhancements. Interesting characters and the potential for more fleshing out give the series much promise.
#BookReview #Books #Bookstodon #MurderMystery #CrimeFiction #Fantasy #SFF
@WildWoila @wildwoila@wyrms.de
Edited 207d ago
finished reading The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches 🌕🌕🌕🌑🌑
by Sangu Mandanna.
A lonely witch finds family & love when she is sought out to tutor three young witchy girls. A cosy romantic fantasy. Some enlivening characters and fun use of magic. Very 'House by the Cerulean Sea'.
#BookReview #Books #Bookstodon #Romantasy #Romance #Fantasy #Witches
@WildWoila @wildwoila@wyrms.de
I couldn't resist doing some analysis of ABC Radio National's Top 100 Books of the 21st Century.
How much more likely were people to vote for books because they had read them in recent memory (recency bias)? You would expect that good books are spread out evenly across the years, but it's hard to remember books that you read many years ago! Turns out there was an even spread of books across 2000-2019. But there were 40% more books than expected from 2020-2024. (See first graph.)
Were newer books more likely to be lower down the list? I thought this might be lkely because votes for recently read books might spread out more. But that wasn't completely true. The bottom 40 of the list did lean new, but so did the top 20. (See second graph.)
How diverse were the authors on the list? Not very! Only 22 of the books were by authors with diverse backgrounds, by which I mean non-white or not hetero-normative. The top 20 were the least diverse, but it was pretty even across the range. Probably not surprising - people might connect most strongly with books that speak to their own experience. Would be fascinating to see more demographic info on the voters.
Most books were by authors from Australia (35), the USA (31), the UK (17) and Ireland (7). Ireland seemed to punch above its weight. New Zealand only had one author! (Heather Morris, The Tattooist of Auschwitz).
There were very few non-fiction books, especially if you exclude memoirs and true crime. I count 4: Dark Emu, Stasiland, Sapiens and A Short History of Nearly Everything. And yet non-fiction accounts for something like 40% of book sales. I wonder if that is because a non-fiction book tends to focus on a particular subject, which would have less widespread appeal. It could also be that the type of people who vote in this sort of poll are book nerds, and book nerds mostly read fiction.
As a keen #fantasy & #scifi reader, I was disappointed. Project Hail Mary is the only full-blown scifi, but I wouldn't say it is a good representation of the genre. There is Hunger Games and Harry Potter, but both are young adult. The others (Cloud Atlas, Station Eleven, Piranesi, Never Let Me Go) feel borderline (I've not read the last two).
How did the list compare with my own ratings? I've read 57 of the 100 books, and I did rate higher books better, but the relationship was very weak. (See third graph.)
Highest ranked book that I didn't really like: #12. Where The Crawdads Sing. (Runner up The Dry.)
Lowest ranked book that I really liked: #86. Cloud Atlas
Highest ranked book I'd never heard of: #9. A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara
I've got 43 books to catch up on in the next few years, plus the favourites as voted by my friends. Never short a good book!
Edited 21d ago
"Der Verbannte auf dem Eisernhof" (alias #Meni ) ist im Buchhandel angekommen. Der fehlende Klappentext ist inzwischen aufgetaucht, ich lasse ihn trotzdem angehängt. Ich bedanke mich bei den freundlichen Menschen, die hier die #PhantastikPrompts mit Leben füllen, für viele Anregungen und fürs Bei-der-Stange-halten.
Edited 40d ago
finished reading A Court of Thorns and Roses 🌕🌕🌗🌑🌑
by Sarah Maas.
My first foray into #romantasy. The plot is so-so (humans vs faeries, love & intrigue) but finishes strongly. The romance is weak - it's never clear why she loves the faerie lord, except for his sexy man-beastiness. Hopefully this is not the best the genre has to offer.
#BookReview #Books #Bookstodon #Fantasy #Romance
@WildWoila @wildwoila@wyrms.de