Tag: Fantasy

fantasy · reading

Breaking of a mouse’s heart

Sonia LalLeave a comment

I’ve started reading The Light Fantastic and this is my second Terry Pratchett book.

There was the faintest of pure sounds, high and sharp, like the breaking of a mouse’s heart.

The Light Fantastic by Terry Pratchett

This quote is utterly fantastic. I cannot quite picture what this sound is like – the death cries of a mouse? But it’s sticking in my head.

And I’m only in the beginning of this book. And the beginning of Terry Pratchett novels.

General · reading · Teaser Tuesdays

Teaser Tuesday: Spymaster

Sonia Lal5 Comments

Welcome to Teaser Tuesday, the weekly Meme that wants you to add books to your TBR, or just share what you are currently reading. It is very easy to play along:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers! Everyone loves Teaser Tuesday.

My teasers:9781466877955

Merchant ships from all over the world passed through one of the Aligoes’ two major  channels. Although the channels provided the fastest means of travel, they were unfortunately subject to an odd natural phenomenon known as “tides,” because the magic of the Breath ebbed and flowed much like tides in an inland ocean. During ebb tide, the magic decreased to the point where a ship could be in danger of sinking. During high tide, the magic increased, touching off wizard storms that – ironically – could also sink a ship.

–Spymaster: Book One of the Dragon Corsairs by Margaret Weis and Robert Krammes

fantasy · reading

Teaser Tuesday: Dancer’s Lament

Sonia Lal16 Comments

Teaser Tuesday is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Books And A Beat.

 

Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers! 

They began their dance. Each spun like a top, gathering speed. The blades began to flex, arcing round the women like whips indeed. Even as they spun, the dancers curled round each other, seeking openings. Now and then, utterly without hint or warning, their blades lashed out, snapping and whistling.

– Dancer’s Lament by Ian C. Esslemont

 

Really enjoying this so far!!!

General · reading

Lines You Don’t Forget: The Traitor Baru Cormorant

Sonia LalLeave a comment

traitor-baruSometimes books have lines you don’t ever forgot, even if you never finish the book.

I haven’t finished The Traitor Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson. But I read this line days and days ago and I find myself thinking of it at odd moments.

“You. None of these men have husbands. They hate husbands.” She lowered her forehead to his. “He’s gone, Solit. I looked—I looked so long—”

When this happened, it was because of the class on Scientific Society and Incrasticism that Baru could only think to ask: “Was Salm my real father? Or was he only a sodomite?”

It shows just deeply she has absorbed the culture and values of the colonizers, and just how easy that is to do, all without her parents realizing. Or hold her back in anyway.

It is just really astonishing.

The first chapter is here: http://www.tor.com/2015/05/26/excerpt-the-traitor-baru-cormorant-seth-dickinson/

The line is here in this excerpt above. Do you have the same reaction to it that I do?

reading · Teaser Tuesdays

Teaser Tuesday: Of Noble Family

Sonia Lal12 Comments

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of A Daily Rhythm. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers! 

My Teaser:

In short order, the assembled ladies worked through the ordinary pleasantries, establishing that it was uncommonly hot for this time of year, that they were thankful that they had coldmongers on staff who could use glamour to make the air cooler, and then moving on to admiration of the newly arrived chest of tea. Nothing was so cooling, was the general consensus, as a cup of strong tea on a hot day.

– Of Noble Family by Mary Robinette Kowal

General · reading · Teaser Tuesdays

Teaser Tuesday: The Curse of Chalion

Sonia Lal16 Comments

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of A Daily Rhythm. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

My teaser:

“I, ah,” Cazaril pointed back up the track. “I’d stepped off the road a moment, to take shelter in that mill up there”—no need to go into details of what he’d been sheltering from—”and I found a dead man.”

– The Curse of Chalion by Lois McMaster Bujold

fantasy · reading · Teaser Tuesdays

Teaser Tuesday: Ink and Bone

Sonia LalQuote28 Comments

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of A Daily Rhythm. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

I just started Ink and Bone and so far it sounds pretty good!

His divine wisdom can kiss my common arse. We blind and hobble half of the world through such ignorance, and I will not have it. Women shall study at the Serapeum as they might be inclined. Let him execute me if he wishes, but I have seen enough of minds wasted in this world. I have a daughter.

My daughter will learn.

– Ink and Bone by Rachel Caine

General

Teaser Tuesday: Stories of the Raksura, Volume 2

Sonia Lal32 Comments

Teaser Tuesday is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of A Daily Rhythm. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers! 

My Teasers:

“I helped you.” He was surprised, and bitterly angry at himself for it. This is how it always happened, this was what he got for helping groundlings.

– Stories of the Raskura, Volume 2, by Martha Wells.

fantasy · reading

A Reason Not to Read the End First

Sonia Lal11 Comments

Me, I read the end of a book all the time. I do it randomly, sometimes to find out if a character I like will survive, things like that.

So last week I was reading the second Sharing Knife book, Legacy by  Lois McMaster Bujold. I read the end and then I read bits and pieces of the middle.

And you know what? It sucks. I really like the main characters. And the author destroys their lives.

I am not going to say it was unexpected. Despite not actually reading most of the book, this was an outcome that the author hinted at in the last book. She did more than hint in the first few pages of Legacy. So it wasn’t surprising.

But really! She rained wholesale destruction on their lives.

I have read – I don’t remember where – but I have read Lois McMaster Bujold say she likes to take the thing that their society likes least and do that to the characters. (I think that’s a really great way to murder your darlings.)

She does it in spades. By the end, they got almost nothing left for people to destroy. There is still hope, but yeah.

I am still shocked by what happens to them and I don’t know how or even if I will actually read the book.

I would probably have finished Legacy by now if I hadn’t read the end first. So, yeah, this is a reason not to read the end first.

reading · Teaser Tuesdays

Teaser Tuesday: Stories of the Raksura, Vol 1

Sonia Lal25 Comments

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of A Daily Rhythm. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

I am rereading this week!

My Teasers:

Argent broke off her dive and circled uncertainly above Indigo. Cerise saw her look down at her claws, checking for blood. Below her, Indigo dropped her spines submissively and shouted again, “I yield!”

– Stories of the Raksura, Vol 1, by Martha Wells