carli
Hi I’m Carli! I’ve loved books my whole life. Right now I love fantasy & romance, but I also enjoy sci-fi, Greek myth retellings & mystery. Besides books, I love makeup,pink, rock climbing & theatre!
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My Taste
Reading...
carli started reading...
1w
The World We Make (Great Cities, #2)
N.K. Jemisin
Four-time Hugo Award-winning and New York Times bestselling author N.K. Jemisin crafts a glorious tale of identity, resistance, magic and myth. All is not well in the city that never sleeps. Even though the avatars of New York City have temporarily managed to stop the Woman in White from invading—and destroying the entire universe in the process—the mysterious capital "E" Enemy has more subtle powers at her disposal. A new candidate for mayor wielding the populist rhetoric of gentrification, xenophobia, and "law and order" may have what it takes to change the very nature of New York itself and take it down from the inside. In order to defeat him, and the Enemy who holds his purse strings, the avatars will have to join together with the other Great Cities of the world in order to bring her down for good and protect their world from complete destruction. N.K. Jemisin’s Great Cities Duology, which began with The City We Became and concludes with The World We Make, is a masterpiece of speculative fiction from one of the most important writers of her generation.
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carli started reading...
1w
Blood Over Bright Haven
M.L. Wang
Magic has made the city of Tiran an industrial utopia, but magic has a cost—and the collectors have come calling.
An orphan since the age of four, Sciona has always had more to prove than her fellow students. For twenty years, she has devoted every waking moment to the study of magic, fueled by a mad desire to achieve the impossible: to be the first woman ever admitted to the High Magistry. When she finally claws her way up the ranks to become a highmage, however, she finds that her challenges have just begun. Her new colleagues will stop at nothing to let her know she is unwelcome, beginning with giving her a janitor instead of a qualified lab assistant.
What neither Sciona nor her peers realize is that her taciturn assistant was once more than a janitor; before he mopped floors for the mages, Thomil was a nomadic hunter from beyond Tiran’s magical barrier. Ten years have passed since he survived the perilous crossing that killed his family. But working for a highmage, he sees the opportunity to finally understand the forces that decimated his tribe, drove him from his homeland, and keep the Tiranish in power.
Through their fractious relationship, mage and outsider uncover an ancient secret that could change the course of magic forever—if it doesn’t get them killed first. Sciona has defined her life by the pursuit of truth, but how much is one truth worth with the fate of civilization in the balance?
A standalone dark academia brimming with mystery, tragedy, and the damning echoes of the past. For fans of Leigh Bardugo, V. E. Schwab, and Fullmetal Alchemist.
(Content warnings for gore, sexual assault, and suicidal ideation)
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carli finished reading and wrote a review...
2w
This got a little too weird and alien to me… and awhile there was nothing technically incestual going on with Jesusua and Tomas, their relationship with Johds made me so deeply uncomfortable. overall this was by far my least fav Octavia butler book out of the six I’ve read so far, but it still definitely was interesting, thought provoking, and worth the read!
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carli started reading...
3w
Imago (Xenogenesis, #3)
Octavia E. Butler
The stunning conclusion to a postapocalyptic trilogy about an alien species merging with humans—from “one of science fiction’s finest writers” (TheNew York Times).
Human and Oankali have been mating since the aliens first came to Earth to rescue the few survivors of an annihilating nuclear war. The Oankali began a massive breeding project, guided by the ooloi, a sexless subspecies capable of manipulating DNA, in the hope of eventually creating a perfect starfaring race. Jodahs is supposed to be just another hybrid of human and Oankali, but as he begins his transformation to adulthood he finds himself becoming ooloi—the first ever born to a human mother. As his body changes, Jodahs develops the ability to shapeshift, manipulate matter, and cure or create disease at will. If this frightened young man is able to master his new identity, Jodahs could prove the savior of what’s left of mankind. Or, if he is not careful, he could become a plague that will destroy this new race once and for all.
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carli TBR'd a book
3w
Sky Full of Elephants
Cebo Campbell
In this exquisite speculative novel set in a world where white people no longer exist, college professor Charlie Brunton receives a call from his estranged daughter Sidney, setting off a chain of events as they journey across a truly “post-racial” America in search of answers.
One day, a cataclysmic event occurs: all of the white people in America walk into the nearest body of water. A year later, Charles Brunton is a Black man living in an entirely new world. Having served time in prison for a wrongful conviction, he’s now a professor of electric and solar power systems at Howard University when he receives a call from someone he wasn’t even sure existed: his daughter Sidney, a nineteen-year-old who watched her white mother and step-family drown themselves in the lake behind their house.
Traumatized by the event, and terrified of the outside world, Sidney has spent a year in isolation in Wisconsin. Desperate for help, she turns to the father she never met, a man she has always resented. Sidney and Charlie meet for the first time as they embark on a journey across America headed for Alabama, where Sidney believes she may still have some family left. But neither Sidney or Charlie is prepared for this new world and how they see themselves in it.
When they enter the Kingdom of Alabama, everything Charlie and Sidney thought they knew about themselves, and the world, will be turned upside down. Brimming with heart and humor, Cebo Campbell’s astonishing debut novel is about the power of community and connection, about healing and self-actualization, and a reckoning with what it means to be Black in America, in both their world and ours.
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carli TBR'd a book
3w
The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas
Ursula K. Le Guin
Some inhabitants of a peaceful kingdom cannot tolerate the act of cruelty that underlies its happiness.
The story 'Omelas" was first published in 'New Dimensions 3' (1973), a hard-cover science fiction anthology edited by Robert Silverberg, in October 1973, and the following year it won the prestigious Hugo Award for best short story.
The work was subsequently printed in Le Guin's short story collection 'The Wind's Twelve Quarters' (1975).
Ursula K Le Guin (1929–2018) was an American writer who published twenty-two novels, eleven volumes of short stories, four collections of essays, twelve books for children, six volumes of poetry & four of translation, and has received many awards: Hugo, Nebula, National Book Award, PEN-Malamud, and more. She was known for her treatment of gender ('The Left Hand of Darkness' (1969), 'The Matter of Seggri' (1994)), political systems ('The Telling' (2000), 'The Dispossessed' (1974)) and difference/otherness in any other form.
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carli TBR'd a book
3w
Rosewater (The Wormwood Trilogy, #1)
Tade Thompson
Tade Thompson's Rosewater is the start of an award-winning, cutting edge trilogy set in Nigeria, by one of science fiction's most engaging new voices.
Rosewater is a town on the edge. A community formed around the edges of a mysterious alien biodome, its residents comprise the hopeful, the hungry and the helpless—people eager for a glimpse inside the dome or a taste of its rumored healing powers.
Kaaro is a government agent with a criminal past. He has seen inside the biodome, and doesn't care to again—but when something begins killing off others like himself, Kaaro must defy his masters to search for an answer, facing his dark history and coming to a realization about a horrifying future.
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carli TBR'd a book
5w
The Arcane Archives
Norees Gasper
A librarian tasked with protecting the Archive of magical life books must team up with a man who has no book to find her missing brother in this dark academia fantasy, for fans of Ninth House and The Atlas Six. Every soul that has ever existed has a life book.Astra is an Archivist, tasked with keeping the life books safe in the Arcane Archives. When her twin brother Orion goes missing, Astra is desperate for clues so she does the only thing she can think she breaks her oath as an Archivist and steals his life book from the Archives. Faced with an ominous blacked-out page blocking her brother's recent memories, she catches only fragments of a clue - a vision of a green-eyed man she's never seen before and Orion's last location, the Isle of Skye. When the mysterious man, Castor, appears at her place of work the next day, with no memory of ever meeting Orion, Astra is desperate for answers and delves into the Archives for this stranger's life book. Only there isn't one. Everyone has a life book - why doesn't he?Together with her friends - a banshee, demon cat and a bartender - they set off to find her brother and discover Castor's true identity, but quickly find themselves unravelling deep conspiracies and dark secrets that change everything she thought she knew about the life books and the Archives.
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carli finished reading and wrote a review...
5w
I loved this
although this book could never hope to be as special as the first few series, it’s still great. though it is undoubtably extremely cheesy, I’m choosing to view it as heartwarming and cozy instead. also, so far nico & will’s two books are WAY better than percy’s letter of rec books.
4.5 stars, although that ranking is definitely skewed higher from nostalgia.
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carli TBR'd a book
7w
Drowned in the Name of Love (Piracy for Lovers, #1)
Rut S. Díaz
IN THE HEART OF THE NINE SEAS, LOYALTY IS A WEAPON, AND LOVE IS A RISK NONE SURVIVE UNSCATHED.
The tragic murder of her father, the famed Pirate King - and the revolutionary waves it left behind - bound Donna Balboa to a life of privilege within the oppressive walls of Tidia’s court. For years, she’s felt trapped in the place she once called home, secretly breaking a forbidden law that keeps nobles from the shore and ships from the sea. Yet each night, she risks everything to chase her only dream: to sail the seas as a pirate, just as her father once did.
But the call of the waves is undeniable, whispering of something greater beyond the horizon. And after years of praying to the heavens, an unexpected twist shatters what should have been the most important day of her life, entangling her with the crew of a notorious ship - and its infamous, wanted captain. A captain haunted by a past that even the Gods seem unwilling to forgive, and as their bond deepens, so do the nightmares and omens that threaten to expose secrets which could doom any chance at what Donna believes could be love.
Pursued by Kingdoms for embracing the pirate code, Donna Balboa must navigate treacherous waters, caught in tides of vengeance and ancient mysteries. When she discovers she holds the key to unlocking a power the Gods themselves seem to fear, Donna must decide where her true allegiance lies.
BUT THE GODS AND THE SEAS ARE FICKLE, AND LOVE, VENGEANCE, AND SURVIVAL DON’T ALWAYS SAIL THE SAME COURSE.
Pirates of the Caribbean meets Once Upon a Broken Heart in this spellbinding romantic fantasy of adventure, curses, betrayal, and forbidden love on the high seas.
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carli finished reading and left a rating...
7w
this was rly good! I had fun with it. I will say it felt a little bit too academic for my tastes occasionally. Sometimes Alice would go off on a tangent about stuff for literally half the chapter and it would feel like we would loose the plot. I liked the characters a lot though, I feel like no one can write character arcs (especially female ones) like R. F. Kuang. I liked how this changed the common perspective of most feminist books. It was frustrating to read at times because of how Alice viewed feminism, but I really think it makes the message so clear when you see a character realize why something is important after years of dismissing it. I also thought R. F. Kuangs interpretation of Hell was super cool. (though I didn’t quite understand the layout. They talked so much about the pizza anus and the maps and I really couldn’t conceptualize what they were talking about)
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carli started reading...
9w
Katabasis
R.F. Kuang
Two graduate students must set aside their rivalry and journey to Hell to save their professor’s soul, perhaps at the cost of their own.
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 same conclusion.
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carli TBR'd a book
12w
Greenteeth
Molly O'Neill
From an outstanding new voice in cozy fantasy comes Greenteeth, a tale of fae, folklore, and found family, narrated by a charismatic lake-dwelling monster with a voice unlike any other, perfect for fans of T. Kingfisher. Beneath the still surface of a lake lurks a monster with needle sharp teeth. Hungry and ready to pounce. Jenny Greenteeth has never spoken to a human before, but when a witch is thrown into her lake, something makes Jenny decide she's worth saving. Temperance doesn't know why her village has suddenly turned against her, only that it has something to do with the malevolent new pastor. Though they have nothing in common, these two must band together on a magical quest to defeat the evil that threatens Jenny's lake and Temperance's family, as well as the very soul of Britain.
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carli TBR'd a book
12w
The Scholar and the Last Faerie Door
H.G. Parry
From the author of The Magician's Daughter comes The Scholar and the Last Faerie Door, a mythic, magical tale full of secret scholarship, faerie curses, and the deadliest spells of all—the ones that friends cast on each other.
All they needed to break the world was a door, and someone to open it.
Camford, 1920. Gilded and glittering, England's secret magical academy is no place for Clover, a commoner with neither connections nor magical blood. She tells herself she has fought her way there only to find a cure for her brother Matthew, one of the few survivors of a faerie attack on the battlefields of WWI which left the doors to faerie country sealed, the study of its magic banned, and its victims cursed.
But when Clover catches the eye of golden boy Alden Lennox-Fontaine and his friends, doors that were previously closed to her are flung wide open, and she soon finds herself enmeshed in the seductive world of the country's magical aristocrats. The summer she spends in Alden’s orbit leaves a fateful mark: months of joyous friendship and mutual study come crashing down when experiments go awry, and old secrets are unearthed.
Years later, when the faerie seals break, Clover knows it’s because of what they did. And she knows that she must seek the help of people she once called friends—and now doesn’t quite know what to call—if there’s any hope of saving the world as they know it.
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carli TBR'd a book
13w
House of the Beast: A Novel
Michelle Wong
Step into the House of the Beast in this stunning dark fantasy debut from The Legend of Korra graphic novel illustrator Michelle Wong, about a young woman who strikes a deal with a mysterious and alluring god to seek revenge on her aristocratic family—featuring gorgeous black-and-white illustrations throughout by the author.
Born out of wedlock and shunned by society, Alma learned to make her peace with solitude, so long as she had her mother by her side. When her mother becomes gravely ill, Alma discovers a clue about her estranged father and writes a message begging for help. Little does she know that she is a bastard of House Avera, one of the four noble families that serve the gods and are imbued with their powers—and her father is a vessel of the Dread Beast, the most frightening god of all, a harbinger of death.
In a desperate exchange for her mother’s medicine, Alma agrees to sacrifice her left arm to the Beast in a ceremony that will bind her forever to the House and its deity. Regardless, her mother soon passes, leaving Alma trapped inside the Avera’s grand estate, despised by her relatives and nothing but a pawn in her father’s schemes.
Now vengeance is the only thing that keeps Alma going. That, and the strange connection she has with her god—a monster who is constantly by her side, an eldritch being taking the form of a beautiful prince with starlit hair that only she can see. He tells Alma that she has been chosen to bring change upon their world, and with his help, Alma plots a perilous journey to destroy the House that stole everything from her.
A gripping fantasy novel marked by divine rituals, intense combat, and twisted romance, House of the Beast is a tale of revenge, resilience, and the power of love to see us through the darkness.
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carli wrote a review...
13w
“we have six of crows at home!” six of crows at home-
seriously though I’m convinced that the worker at BAM who recommended this to me and compared this to six of crows has never read six of crows. this featured 5 absolutely insufferable characters, one okay character, and three bad cases of insta lust. I couldn’t read 3 pages without visibly grimacing from reading something about the characters being oh so in love with the characters they obviously didn’t know. you could not pay me to read another of Royo’s chapters.
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carli finished a book
13w
Five Broken Blades (The Broken Blades, #1)
Mai Corland
It’s the season
for treason…
The king of Yusan must die.
The five most dangerous liars in the land have been mysteriously summoned to work together for a single objective: to kill the God King Joon.
He has it coming. Under his merciless immortal hand, the nobles flourish, while the poor and innocent are imprisoned, ruined…or sold.
And now each of the five blades will come for him. Each has tasted bitterness―from the hired hitman seeking atonement, a lovely assassin who seeks freedom, or even the prince banished for his cruel crimes. None can resist the sweet, icy lure of vengeance.
They can agree on murder.
They can agree on treachery.
But for these five killers―each versed in deception, lies, and betrayal―it’s not enough to forge an alliance. To survive, they’ll have to find a way to trust each other…but only one can take the crown.
Let the best liar win.
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