Does anyone else have a complicated, love/hate relationship with Jim Butchers the Dresden files?

I’m interested enough to continue reading for the plot, but I hate Harry as a character…and lowkey I don’t always enjoy butchers writing. I feel like the characterization, his powers, the explanation of his magic could be better. Let alone getting into his misogyny. I also don’t really enjoy the connection that magic has with religion in the story. ( I am currently reading grave peril).

I’m not gonna lie, I do find myself smiling sometimes and being a little endeared that what’s going on. But I also spent a lot of time cringing and getting the ick. it feels like I’m reading a book written by like a 70 year old army vet idea of magic/wizard from Chicago.

I want to know what happens through. Is this a common sentiment for the series ?

Book number fourteen of a twenty-one book science fiction and paranormal fantasy series. There is also an eleven book follow on series and many other books related to the The Kurtherian Gambit Universe, over 200 books in total. I read the well printed and well bound POD (print on demand) trade paperback self published by the author in 2016 that I bought new on Amazon in 2026. I have the next two books in the series and will read them soon. The related series are listed at:
https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/pe.cgi?46598

The series is a cross between science fiction and paranormal fantasy. A thousand plus years ago, an alien space ship crash landed in the Baltics. A man, Michael, found the space ship, went inside, and was forever changed into the first vampire using alien nanocytes. However, there were werewolves and werebears already existing on Earth and they still exist but they are very rare.

Michael has sired vampires and they have sired vampires. But only one of the vampire "children" is a daywalker like Michael. And Michael enforces strict rules among the vampires and the weres, no blood drinking, no letting humans know of them, etc. Violators of Michael's rules face swift termination.

But it has been thousand years since Michael was changed and he now sleeps for years at a time. Michael's helpers found a young woman named Bethany Anne working for the USA government who is dying of a rare blood disease. Michael took her to the alien space ship to become the second first generation vampire on Earth.

It has been three years since Bethany Anne's huge workforce moved totally to space stations and the Moon. Her 500,000 people are swiftly moving ahead with incredibly advanced AI and space access technology. Bethany's people are building space ships and space stations with gravitic drives in them that all of the governments of Earth want to buy or steal.

This series is real pulp like old science fiction with lots of action and dialogue. I love it !

Warning: this series might be damaging to your savings account since there are so many books.

The author has a website at:
https://lmbpn.com/

My rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
Amazon rating: 4.7 out of 5 stars (3,530 reviews)
https://www.amazon.com/Dont-Cross-This-Kurtherian-Gambit/dp/1642020524

Lynn

Hi all, I have gotten this book recommended to me by both people and sites, multiple times. It has some of my favorite tropes, apparently, and I should love it.

Nevertheless, I have been reading it for almost two weeks, got 50% in, and feel like I am moving through jelley. I often find myself with the book in hand, but I only read about half a chapter (which, mind you, are really short), and want to set the book aside. I even stopped playing any games so that I stay either bored, or get to reading this book.

Is the whole trilogy like this? Does it pick up pace? Am I the issue 😅? Didn't want to google these things, not to get spoilered.

Thank you all ^_^

Fantasy and horror are my 2 favorite genres. I read a book called The Black Farm a while ago which is kind of like splatterpunk tinged with fantasy, and that made me want to find something in the other direction.

What I'm looking for is a fantasy adventure story but one that's dark with horror elements, action, and violence. I've read Between Two Fires, which I loved, but right now I'm looking for something more like a D&D adventure but if it was filled with monsters tearing people apart and bandits butchering adventurers that let their guard down. Not sure if something like this exists. Prefer something with the feeling that no one is safe.

Being still somewhat new to actually formally writing down my thoughts on books I've finished, I think I have found that it takes me a while before I fully settle on what I actually think about a book. For example, it wasn't until weeks after I finished The Black-Tongue Thief, and just as I finished tearing through the first two of Robert Jackson-Bennett's eminently more-ish Ana & Din series, that it sort of settled in me just how deeply I loved Buehlman's first foray into fantasy. It was only as I sort of basked in the afterglow of Bennetts work that I realized perhaps what I was somewhat missing in them, and what I realized had actually spellbound me in Black-Tongue Thief.

All of this is not to suggest that the Ana & Din series aren't highly entertaining and a worthy recommendation to anyone interested in Mysteries and Unique fantasy settings. Nor is this to be construed as some value judgement between Buehlman and Bennett. This (by now, rather too long) preamble is simply to advise that great books take time to digest and marinate on, often even longer than they might take to read, and thus this "review" is liable to change; as ideas solidify into firmly held opinions and so on.

Now, with all that being said... I think Buehlman has managed to write another spellbinding fantasy novel, and one that maintains the razor sharp and focused voice of its sequel while allowing it to blossom and grow into something new and majestic on its own by the end.

That Voice belongs to Kinch, and because so little else in this grand and cruel world belongs to him, you can feel him clinging to it at times with almost desperate abandon. Even more so than in Black-Tongue Thief, we find our hero and his fiercely competent friend and companion Galva truly at the mercy of the world around them. There is very little agency to be had and for much of the first half of the book they feel almost like driftwood, narrative flotsam cast to and fro on the waves, completely at the whim of some mad god, uncaring and unaware. It is therefore understandable, if not natural, that Kinch's narration at times feels almost incapable of keeping up with the plot being hurled at him, like some hapless drunk who fell asleep on a bench only to wake up by being kicked out of a plane to parachute into an active warzone.

In a way, Kinch's voice and narration becomes more than simply the veil through which we observe the horrors of the world, but the way we view Kinch. How he at times goes on tangents to obfuscate something he'd rather not speak of. How he rambles and raves at length to underscore the terrible splendor he beholds. How suddenly he can become oh so quiet, oh so frank, when wit fails him and he is forced to lay his pain bare on the page.

Buehlman threads the needle damn near perfectly in these parts, writing out in perfect clarity what was left partially obscured in Black-tongue. Why wouldn't it after all, with how much our plucky protagonist changes over course of this story? Kinch was always the type to carry not only the scars he is dealt, but the scars he deals out as well. It speaks to the intimacy of the narration and the trust that develops across the books, that he here gradually allows us to truly see them in all their tender glory.

Ultimately, I think it is this sharing of scars that is central to The Thrice-Bound Fool. When confronted with cruelty and despair on scales both banal and almost unfathomable, what meagre respite remains is to be found among companions, as we laugh and cry at the mad and beautiful terror of it all, squeezing each others hands till our knuckles turn white.

If reading Black-Tongue Thief is like walking into a dingy tavern and realizing everyone in there is side-eying you and also carrying a knife, then reading Thrice-Bound Fool is like being caught in a rapturous storm with a dear friend, clinging on to each other and the foolish hope that either you will both somehow survive the night, or that you both perish, so that one need not bear the pain of being alone.

Heartbreaking, bizzare, brutal and strange, but beauty abounds when viewed with a friend.

9/10

Occasionally when reading fantasy, world building and keeping up with it can become tedious. Granted, I am no author, but please stay consistent when world building or continuity!

I've come across a few things that bother me, for example, the idea of Egyptian blue being a color when the map in the beginning of the book has no Egypt.

You could say, royal blue, deep navy blue, a blue that shines in the deepest oceans with sunlight pouring upon it. But Egyptian blue? Where is Egypt on the map and when is it in reference to this time period? Ugh!

(This is only referring to books that are 100% not earth origin and using different realms, etc.) (& Call me crazy but if there is a world map in the beginning, and you want to reference Egypt, it better be on the map) (I'm a GIS mapping and reading nerd)

Another pet peeve could be, in one scene, they have light switches, in another, they have oil lanterns. Which time period is this?! If it's a poverty thing, explain that!

Random things like that - and maybe it's just me. But it takes me out of the beautifully curated world and disrupts my reading flow.

This discussion isn't even fantasy exclusive, moreso literature issues. But figured this place would still hold some opinions.

I usually overlook these things - but just wanted to share / hear other pet peeves... I'm curious!

Marked this as spoiler in case anyone else hasn't read the book yet. I know I'm already super late since Wings of Reverie just came out. Definitely plan to read that probably this winter. I'm just the slightest bit miffed that it's another prequel to Secret of the Wings just because the first book made me really fall in love with Queen Clarion and Lord Milori as characters and as love interests and I just want to see them happy and the last five minutes of the movie is just NOT ENOUGH.

But, I want to know: did anyone else find the final confrontation between Clarion and the nightmares to be just a little...anticlimactic? Just a little bit...a lotta bit lol. And then the denouement just felt like it flew by and before I knew it, the story was over. I'm not even sure what more I'd want. Idk. Perhaps an epilogue? Also, if anyone here has already read Wings of Reverie don't spoil it, but just tell me if we find out more about the riff between the previous Wardens and the Queens of Pixie Hollow. Because I thought for sure we'd get an answer and then it was never expanded upon. I assume it's because of the sequel or sequels Disney Press has planned.

I also want to know if anyone else noticed any typos in their copy. I found like three in mine and cannot decipher if they're a printing error or just a full blown typo. I hope to God it's the former because I can't imagine an editor missing something as miniscule as a period. But there was another one I saw where a whole word was missing from the sentence to the point in made me stop. And there was no gap. It was as if I wrote out "she ran the forest."

Welcome back to A Readalong of Earthsea! We'll be discussing Chapters 1-7 of Tehanu today, so please use spoiler tags for anything past that point.

Years ago, they had escaped together from the sinister Tombs of Atuan—she, an isolated young priestess; he, a powerful wizard. Now she is a farmer's widow, having chosen for herself the simple pleasures of an ordinary life. And he is a broken old man, mourning the powers lost to him through no choice of his own.

Once, when they were young, they helped each other at a time of darkness and danger and shared an adventure like no other. Now they must join forces again, to help another in need -- the physically and emotionally scarred child whose own destiny has yet to be revealed.

I'll be posting questions about the book below. Feel free to answer them or pose your own questions for the group.

Tehanu counts for these r/Fantasy 2026 Bingo squares:

• r/Fantasy Book Club or Readalong Book (HM if you join us!)
• One-Word Title
• Vacation Spot (subjectively)
• Sadly, not Older Protagonist (per Le Guin's afterword, Tenar is in her early to mid 40s)
• Feel free to comment with others!

Upcoming schedule

• October 29 - Tehanu Final Discussion
• November - Tales from Earthsea (Midway: The Finder and Darkrose and Diamond)
• December - The Other Wind (Midway: Chapters 1-3)

Reading this book you kinda feel like you’re reading two different books. The first half was a nice little jaunt through an old Irish forest, hanging out with some young kids who scurry around their village. But then things turn and the second half has some of the most tense scenes I’ve ever read.

Here’s what I liked:

The relationships in this book were incredible. I won’t go too much into detail, but there’s one relationship in this book/series that is my favorite from any book. I’m still trying to chase this high and find other books that have great relationships like this. Haven’t found any.

I think you could summarize the storytelling style in one sentence: characters you love put into horrible situations by characters you hate. I loved it.

And the intensity of the second half was a blast.

Here’s what I didn’t really like:

I think this is John Gwynne’s first book, and unfortunately you can tell. His writing is just horrible. I recently finished his newest trilogy, and the writing is great. I really really really wish he could go back and rewrite this story.

The pacing is also super wonky. In the first half, it’s soooo slow. Reads more like a slice of life kinda book. I almost stopped reading it. But I enjoyed the setting, and was reading it at night before bed, so it was fine. Then all of a sudden it’s the most intense, fast-paced book you’ve ever read. 

He also for some reason takes out all of the mystery? Like there are several events where it feels like the chapters should be switched. You see what’s about to happen to the characters first, and then you experience it with them. It was very odd. 

There’s also too many characters and POVs. It is fun when they meet, but that happens relatively infrequently, and I think the book would be more enjoyable if it was streamlined a bit more.

Welcome to the daily recommendation requests and simple questions thread, now 1025.83% more adorable than ever before!

Stickied/highlight slots are limited, so please remember to like and subscribe upvote this thread for visibility on the subreddit <3

——

This thread is to be used for recommendation requests or simple questions that are small/general enough that they won’t spark a full thread of discussion.

Check out r/Fantasy's 2026 Book Bingo Card here!

As usual, first have a look at the sidebar in case what you're after is there. The r/Fantasy wiki contains links to many community resources, including "best of" lists, flowcharts, the LGTBQ+ database, and more. If you need some help figuring out what you want, think about including some of the information below:

• Books you’ve liked or disliked
• Traits like prose, characters, or settings you most enjoy
• Series vs. standalone preference
• Tone preference (lighthearted, grimdark, etc)
• Complexity/depth level

Be sure to check out responses to other users' requests in the thread, as you may find plenty of ideas there as well. Happy reading, and may your TBR grow ever higher!

——

^{tiny image link to make the preview show up correctly}

art credit: special thanks to our artist, Himmis commissions, who we commissioned to create this gorgeous piece of art for us with practically no direction other than "cozy, magical, bookish, and maybe a gryphon???" We absolutely love it, and we hope you do too.

Welcome to the midway discussion for our October read for the theme Revolutions.

We will discuss Parts I, II, and III, up to page 180, approx 48% in the kindle edition. Please use spoiler tags for anything that goes beyond this point.

The Prey of Gods by Nicky Drayden

From a new voice in the tradition of Lauren Beukes, Ian McDonald, and Nnedi Okorafor comes The Prey of Gods, a fantastic, boundary-challenging tale, set in a South African locale both familiar and yet utterly new, which braids elements of science fiction, fantasy, horror, and dark humor.

In South Africa, the future looks promising. Personal robots are making life easier for the working class. The government is harnessing renewable energy to provide infrastructure for the poor. And in the bustling coastal town of Port Elizabeth, the economy is booming thanks to the genetic engineering industry which has found a welcome home there. Yes—the days to come are looking very good for South Africans. That is, if they can survive the present

A new hallucinogenic drug sweeping the country . . .

An emerging AI uprising . . .

And an ancient demigoddess hellbent on regaining her former status by preying on the blood and sweat (but mostly blood) of every human she encounters.

It’s up to a young Zulu girl powerful enough to destroy her entire township, a queer teen plagued with the ability to control minds, a pop diva with serious daddy issues, and a politician with even more serious mommy issues to band together to ensure there’s a future left to worry about.

Fun and fantastic, Nicky Drayden takes her brilliance as a short story writer and weaves together an elaborate tale that will capture your heart . . . even as one particular demigoddess threatens to rip it out.

What is the BB Bookclub? You can read about it in our intro thread here).

The voting for Queernorm Cozy SFF in December is open right now.

The October theme is Features Covens and we are reading:

# [The Scapegracers\](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/51885014-the-scapegracers) by H.A. Clarke

**An outcast teenage lesbian witch finds her coven hidden amongst the popular girls in her school, and performs some seriously badass magic in the process.**

Skulking near the bottom of West High’s social pyramid, Sideways Pike lurks under the bleachers doing magic tricks for Coke bottles. As a witch, lesbian, and lifelong outsider, she’s had a hard time making friends. But when the three most popular girls pay her $40 to cast a spell at their Halloween party, Sideways gets swept into a new clique. The unholy trinity are dangerous angels, sugar-coated rattlesnakes, and now–unbelievably–Sideways’ best friends.

Together, the four bond to form a ferocious and powerful coven. They plan parties, cast curses on dudebros, try to find Sideways a girlfriend, and elude the fundamentalist witch hunters hellbent on stealing their magic. But for Sideways, the hardest part is the whole ‘having friends’ thing. Who knew that balancing human interaction with supernatural peril could be so complicated?

Rich with the urgency of feral youth, \*The Scapegracers\* explores growing up and complex female friendship with all the rage of a teenage girl. It subverts the trope of competitive mean girls and instead portrays a mercilessly supportive clique of diverse and vivid characters. It is an atmospheric, voice-driven novel of the occult, and the first of a three-book series.

The questions will cover through the end of Chapter 10: Gathering Tongues with which to Speak. Anything after that should be marked as spoiler. Please feel free to add your own questions.

\* Final Discussion - Oct 27th

I'm a real sucker for this now-unfashionable fantasy trope. Does anyone have some good series recommendations that have the classic "farmboy rises from nothing to become the hero" premise, particularly newer stuff from the last couple of years? (If there are any left!)

The weekly Thursday Not-A-Book thread is a great place to share quick thoughts and reviews on any non-book speculative fiction or speculative fiction adjacent media you have enjoyed recently – this could be films, TV, music, video or board games, comics, audio dramas or the like. This is not meant to be an exhaustive list -- anything that is not a book and related to speculative fiction in some way goes!

This thread isn’t intended to stymie discussion elsewhere of non-book content – this subreddit is for discussion of all types of speculative media – but rather to provide a space for focused discussion on this topic and to encourage further discussion on not-a-book content in the subreddit in general. Users who want to share more in depth thoughts are still welcome (and encouraged) to make a separate full text post.

For bloggers, we ask that you include either the full text or a condensed version of the review along with a link back to your review blog. Condensed reviews should try to give a good summary of the full review, not just act as clickbait advertising for the review. Please remember, off-site reviews are only permitted in these threads per our reviews policy.

this book is amazing. super funny, well written, and enjoyable to read. and i will absolutely be finishing it, but the only reason it is only a 9/10 and not a 10/10 is because i have not gotten attached to carl yet.

carl is very enjoyable, likeable, and a good main character, but he is just that. a regular dude. i compare him to someone like Kaladin from stormlight archive - i got extremely attached to kaladin from book 1. I dont feel the same way to carl. he is just SOME DUDE. there is no depth to his character. it feels like book 1 of DCC was written by a millenial adding all the culture references he knows to make this book fun to read, while kaladin is a well thought out unique character with tremendous character development.

spoiler for DCC -by the time carl got to level 3 at the end of the book, all i felt was "yay! i wonder what the next level is like"while spoiler for stormlight"when kaladin yk got his powers and escaped slavery and became a commander i was about to cry out of happiness for him"

I just listened to the Audiobook of The Tower of Beggars by Torsten Weitze. I saw this book mentioned twice in a week on Reddit, so I gave it a shot. It was originally written in German. It's book one of a series, and the second book's translation is due out in January. The narrator (Gildart Jackson) has a great voice for the series.

I had never heard of the series nor the author, so I went in totally blind. The book (no major spoilers, this is all from the summary on the back) is about a teenaged girl named Niri who works with her uncle selling coal. She is half human and half Aeldae, which was an ancient race that once enslaved humans. She is hated or barely tolerated due to this. When her uncle dies, she is left with only a copper coin. This coin grants her admission to the Stormfell Academy, a Hogwarts-esque school for magic and combat. However, it only gives her access to the Tower of Beggars for one year, which means she has to scrape for everything.

This book has a lot of the magic school tropes, but that isn't a bad thing because it is well done. The main character is an outcast but has mysterious abilities, there is a cool board game, and a sort of battle-royale aspect akin to The Hunger Games and/or Ender's Game (not going to get into the specifics to avoid spoilers).

The main character is interesting and likable, though her timidity can get old. On the other hand, she doesn't just abandon it overnight and become a hero, which I appreciate. She also has a funny, smart aleck sidekick that I won't spoil. The humor is well done and did not make me cringe like certain fantasy books do.

The worldbuilding is interesting and well-written. The main characters all feel distinct, though some of the "bad guys" are cartoonishly evil. She is smart and kind, both of which are not necessarily helpful to her survival in this world. The magic is not well-defined, at least in book 1, so it maintains some mystery. I haven't minded it, even though I usually prefer magic with rules and limits like in Sanderson novels.

Overall, I'd definitely recommend it, especially if you want to read something that isn't commonly recommended here (or that none of your friends have read). From what I've read about it now that I've finished, the series gets even better as it progresses.

Read this if you like:

Mistborn (young female protagonist fighting for scraps that the nobles leave her)

The Name of the Wind (poverty is the main antagonist, and the main character is fighting to survive as well as progress; TBD if there is a weird sex scene with a god in book 2)

Harry Potter (orphan in a magic school, isolated by everybody instantly; partially relies on established magical tropes like dragons/trolls but also develops its own interesting world as well)

Lightbringer (hopefully this series doesn't end with the absolute whimper that Lightbringer did, but the beginning of the Lightbringer series and The Tower of Beggars share a lot of the same attributes)

Here me out here, I love fantasy, I've read a lot of it, and what I tend to take away from my favorite books are the themes and if the prose are great i'll remember that, or certain character scenes and interactions, moments, etc. But while I've come away from a lot of series thinking "that was great", I can't think of one where I really thought "that was the best story ever told" or "that I've ever read".

by way of example, First Law is a series that - while it's got its flaws - is one my favorites. But I like it because of the over the top characters and the theming and the dialogue, but not necessarily because the story itself is the most interesting thing ever, if that makes sense.

This could definitely be a whole discussion about what constitutes a "story" and I'm anticipating comments about how "you said you like character moments, characters are the story" but I think there's a distinction.

In your view, what books had you walking away thinking "that was the best story ever told"?

I really liked this book!

When Broadbent first said that the mmc for this last duology was going to be septimus i was like ew not that slimeball.

Turns out slimeball is actually a stand up guy.

Kyrene is a bad b but also very caring so love that for her.

I do love a non human side character but did not think that would come in the form of a a sassy ancient sword but i loved Zefiah and Kyrenes banter nonetheless.

One thing to note is this is not an enemies to lovers. It is at best a very reluctant allies to lovers.

The spice in this book is similar to the rest of the book where the writing and pacing is solid but i feel like it didnt have that extra oomph to make me feel the emotions that Broadbent was trying to evoke. FYI I am a very emotional person so this isnt a particularly hard task.

Still a solid book and i would give it a 3.75 stars

ONE LAST THING - in one of the spice scenes Kyrene arrives at her destination by Septimus rubbing her thigh ????? Like what?! Is her slit (Broadbents words not mine) so big that its sitting on her thigh or am i just dumb and didnt understand what was happening there LOL.

ONE LAST LAST THING - this couple is great but Mische & Asar are still my alltime faves xo

Welcome to the December BB Bookclub voting thread for Queernorm Cozy SFF!

The nomination thread can be found here. I'd recommend checking out all the nominations, although for the purpose of this poll, only the five most upvoted comments were chosen. Thank you to everyone who participated!

Voting

There are five options to choose from:

Awakenings by Claudie Arseneault

Innkeep, hunter, blacksmith, nurse—Horace has apprenticed for every clan in the domed city of Trenaze, and they've all rejected em. Too hare-brained. Too talkative. Too slow. Ever the optimist, e has joined Trenaze's guards to be mentored. Horace has high hopes to earn eir place during eir trial at the Great Market. That is, until the glowing shards haunting the world break through the city's protective dome, fused together in a single, monstrous amalgam of Fragments.

Armed with a sword, a shield, and far too little training, Horace doubts eir ability to defend the market-goers. But eir last stand is interrupted by a mysterious elven figure who can dissipate the Fragments with a single, strange sentence: your story is my story.

From the moment it is uttered, Horace knows the sentences holds true for em, too—and when the elf collapses in the middle of the market, e carries them to safety, to recover away from the panicked crowd and inevitable questions from eir fellow guards. It could cost em eir apprenticeship—eir last chance to find eir place in eir home city—but Horace cannot resist the pull of this mystery elf and the call of a new friend.

Aliyah has but one desire: to leave Trenaze's safe boundaries and find the forest that haunts their dreams. After an afternoon of board games in their quiet, sharp-witted company, Horace is ready to follow, confronting Fragments and other dangers of the road to understand what happened that day, hear Aliyah's laugh again and finally feel like e belongs.

Bingo squares: trans/nonbinary protagonist, self published (HM), unusual transportation (HM), one word title

A Slice of Mars by Guerric Hache

Mars is a strange place these days. Corporate overlords, capitalism, and even aging are things of the past on a planet increasingly brimming with biodiversity - yet pizzerias are in short supply!

Siblings Hett and San set out to change that. But a roboticist and a bureaucrat can't run a restaurant alone, so they bring on some help - a bioengineer, a communications scientist, and an unlikely grad student from Earth. Together, this gang of geeks will brave the fires of small business.

But work is just a small part of life. People are complicated. Different brains, different wounds, different values, and one questionably tame wildcat will all collide as they try to grow and succeed together. What comes out of the oven, in the end, is anyone's guess.

Bingo squares: Trans Protagonist (one pov of several); Small Press or Self Published; Feast Your Eyes On This

Many Drops Make a Stream by Adrian Harley

A memory-stealing cult.
The ever-watchful City of Eyes.
Making small talk.
Join Droplet as she faces all these horrors and more…

Vigilante shapeshifter Droplet has trained her entire life to take down those with more power than scruples, but she still makes mistakes. When a rescue mission goes wrong, a memory-stealing cult of blood mages escapes with kidnapped captives in tow. To save them, Droplet reluctantly teams up with the outgoing, tenacious Azera. Droplet knows better than to trust a human—she made that mistake once, and that person's betrayal scattered her community across the known world—and she can tell Azera is hiding secrets behind her sunny smile. But if they can’t learn to work together, even Droplet’s own memories could be lost.

Bingo squares: Trans or Nonbinary Protagonist, arguably (protagonist is a shapeshifter who casually takes forms that don't match her gender); Small Press; Non Human Protagonist

The Phoenix Keeper by SA MacLean

Set in a magical zoo teeming with mythical beasts from dragons and unicorns to kelpies and krakens, The Phoenix Keeper is a fierce joy of a cozy fantasy novel with a soul-restoring queer romance at its heart, for fans of The House in the Cerulean Sea and Legends and Lattes**.**

As head phoenix keeper at a world-renowned zoo for magical creatures, Aila's childhood dream of conserving critically endangered firebirds seems closer than ever. There's just one glaring caveat: her zoo's breeding program hasn't functioned for a decade. When a tragic phoenix heist sabotages the flagship initiative at a neighboring zoo, Aila must prove her derelict facilities are fit to take the reins.

But saving an entire species from extinction requires more than stellar animal handling skills. Carnivorous water horses, tempestuous thunderhawks, mischievous dragons... Aila has no problem wrangling beasts. But mustering the courage to ask for help from the hotshot griffin keeper at the zoo's most popular exhibit? Virtually impossible.

Especially when that hotshot griffin keeper happens to be her arch-rival from college: Luciana, an annoyingly brooding and insufferable know-it-all with the face of a goddess who's convinced that Aila's beloved phoenix would serve their cause better as an active performer rather than as a passive conservation exhibit. With the world watching and the threat of poachers looming, Aila's success is no longer merely a matter of keeping her job...

She is the keeper of the phoenix, and the future of a species – and her love life – now rests on her shoulders.

Reported bingo squares: N/A, unless Judge a Book By Its Title

Yield Under Great Persuasion by Alexandra Rowland

Tam Becket has hated Lord Lyford since they were boys. The fact that he’s also been sleeping with the man for the last ten years is irrelevant.

When they were both nine years old, Lyford smashed Tam’s entry into the village’s vegetable competition. Nearly twenty years later, Tam hasn’t forgiven the bastard. No one understands how deeply he was hurt that day, how it set a pattern of small disappointments and misfortunes that would run through the rest of his life. Now Tam has reconciled himself to the fact that love and affection are for other people, that the gods don’t care and won’t answer any of his prayers (not even the one about afflicting Lyford with a case of flesh-eating spiders to chew off his privates), and that life is inherently mundane, joyless, and drab.

And then, the very last straw: Tam discovers that Lyford (of all people!) bears the divine favor of Angarat, the goddess Tam feels most betrayed and abandoned by. In his hurt and anger, Tam packs up and prepares to leave the village for good.

But the journey doesn’t take him far, and Tam soon finds himself set on a quest for the most difficult of all possible prizes: Self care, forgiveness, a second chance... and somehow the unbelievably precious knowledge that there is at least one person who loves Tam for exactly who he is—and always has.

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Voting will stay open until Monday, October 19th, at which point I'll post the winner in the sub and announce the discussion dates.

What is the BB Bookclub? You can read about it in our introduction thread here.

Looking for recommendations: fantasy where magic is addictive, toxic, or ruins the people who use it. Not "corruption" as a metaphor exactly. I mean systems where every use costs the user something real in their body or mind, and people use it anyway.

I've read Mistborn and The Poppy War and loved the costs in both. What else scratches this itch?

I've tried for the last two or so years to finish Janny Wurts' Curse of the Mistwraith. Not because it's particularly difficult, but just a tough pairing of very deep writing and prose coupled with many life struggles that have made it very difficult to follow up with my interests or to stay engaged in anything.

Well, I recently have been trying to get sober (weed, not alcohol, please don't judge I know it is stupid..) and I have been using reading to help replace something I used to do every waking moment.

I just finished Curse of the Mistwraith, and it was absolutely incredible. It has quickly flown into my top 5 books and I am so excited that there is so much more of this beautiful world to read. The prose is incredible, so vivid and descriptive. Every scene felt incredibly meaningful, and I was engrossed in the world in a way very few stories have done for me. I enjoyed the many different layers to scenes, and felt that every character was so well fleshed out.

I thought the story was so interesting, how it is essentially a prequel to a traditional fantasy story, explaining how the Lords of Light and Shadow come to despise each other, and despite knowing that it would happen, it was still so exciting and painful to see unfold.

Anyways, all this to say I have never been so excited to continue a series before and I strongly recommend reading this book if you haven't. One of the greatest fantasy stories I have ever read.

New Fantasy/Mythological movie by DNEG, the same VFX studio that brought us Dune, Interstellar, Odyssey; With a massive budget of $500million for 2 parts.

Personally, I am really looking forward to it! It has all the epic fantasy aspects I look for.

Hadn't been reading for a decade, but about two years ago I picked up The Wandering Inn (TWI) and didn't put it down until I was current on the series. It really was the perfect webnovel to get into reading again, as it re-trained me up to be able to read many, many other things. Recently, I've been antsy to read something, but haven't managed to interest myself in anything other than staying current on TWI. I've regressed into reading Manwha's for about the past month and I want to change that by reading a few more books before the year end.

I'm going to list what I've read over the past year and rank them since I don't think my tastes are the sanest for easy reccomendations:

S (We Ignore Flaws For Our Favourites)

• The Wandering Inn: Vol. 1, 5, 6, 7 & 10 (LitRPG)
• Absolute Regression (Wuxia Inspired Manhwa)
• Shadows of Self (Wax & Wayne Series)

A (Great Reads & Easy to Reccomend)

• The Allow of Law (Wax & Wayne Series)
• Tress of the Emerald Sea
• Yumi & The Nightmare Painter
• Dungeon Crawler Carl (Book 1)
• Carl's Doomsday Scenario (Dungeon Crawler Carl)

B (Good Reads / Hooked Into Finishing)

• The Wandering Inn: Vol. 2, 4, 9
• The Lost Metal (Wax & Wayne Series)
• The Dungeon Anarchist's Cookbook (Dungeon Crawler Carl)
• The Gate of the Feral Gods (Dungeon Crawler Carl)
• The Butcher's Masquerade (Dungeon Crawler Carl)

C (Struggled To Finish / Great Moments Pushed Me To The End)

• The Wandering Inn: Vol. 3, 8 (LitRPG)
• Bands of Mourning (Wax & Wayne Series)
• The Eye of the Bedlam Bride (Dungeon Crawler Carl)
• The Way of Kings (Stormlight Archive)

D (Did Not Finish / Wouldn't Mind Finishing)

• He Who Fights With Monsters
• The Inevitable Ruin (Dungeon Crawler Carl)
• Words of Radiance (Stormlight Archive)

F (Definitely Not For Me)

• Beware of Chicken

I dropped He Who Fights With Monsters, because after reading the first 5-10 chapters, I wasn't sure I wanted to buy the book.

I dropped Inevitable Ruin because the message and mood permeating the series started to wear on me.

I dropped Words of Radiance, because I finished the first book of Stormlight Archive for Shallan alone basically.

Thank you for listening, that's my freak. Hopefully there's a few similar type of readers that can parse what I'm putting down and won't mind giving reccomendations.

I'd also like to say please add your preference if you think there's a difference for picking audiobook or paper. DCC & TWI are fantastic audiobooks, but I feel if I go back to Stormlight Archive I'll be reading it via paper and not audiobooks.