effingunicorns
Effing, she/her, US, old enough to remember internet privacy. I primarily read assorted fantasy and supernatural horror. What I lack in speed, I make up for in ability to know if I'll like the book.
1208 points
effingunicorns TBR'd a book
1d
When the Earth Was Green: Plants, Animals, and Evolution's Greatest Romance
Riley Black
Winner, A Friend of Darwin Award, 2024 A gorgeously composed narrative nonfiction book about the longstanding relationship between prehistoric plants and life on Earth. Immaculately framed by ancient stone, the leaves look as if they were pressed between the gray pages of a great geological diary. If we were to see the plant alive, we would simply pass it by, but the fossil is a whisper from a time more than 55 million years ago, when alligators dwelled within the Arctic Circle and gigantic dragonflies buzzed through the air. This little plant is an entry-point into this lost world. Past, present, and future, this ancient specimen has roots in all of them. We often retell the history of life on Earth as a series of great moments in which fascinating animal life springs forth, all the while forgetting the plants that made these moments possible. But we can’t understand our own history without them. Or, our future. Dinosaurs, saber-toothed cats, and all mammals would be nothing without the efforts of their leafy counterparts. Even humans would likely not exist had plants not taken root to sow the land for our amphibious ancestors. Using the same scientifically-informed narrative technique that readers loved in the award-winning The Last Days of the Dinosaurs, in When the Earth Was Green, Riley Black brings readers back in time to prehistoric seas, swamps, forests, and savannas where critical moments in plant evolution unfolded. Each chapter stars plants and animals alike, underscoring how the interactions between species have helped shape the world we call home. As the chapters move upwards in time, Black guides readers along the burgeoning trunk of the Tree of Life, stopping to appreciate branches of an evolutionary story that links the world we know with one we can only just perceive now through the silent stone, from ancient roots to the present.
effingunicorns TBR'd a book
1d
The Old Kingdom Collection: Sabriel, Lirael, Abhorsen, Clariel (Abhorsen 1-4)
Garth Nix
Game of Thrones fans will love the New York Times bestselling Abhorsen series. Sabriel, the first installment in the series, launched critically acclaimed author Garth Nix onto the fantasy scene as a rising star. This collection gathers all four titles in the popular series, including the long-awaited prequel, Clariel.Sabriel: Since childhood, Sabriel has lived outside the walls of the Old Kingdom, away from the power of Free Magic, and away from the Dead who refuse to stay dead. But now her father, the Abhorsen, is missing, and Sabriel must cross into that world to find him. There she confronts an evil that threatens much more than her life and comes face-to-face with her own hidden destiny. . . .Lirael: Lirael has never felt like a true daughter of the Clayr. She doesn't even have the Sight—the ability to see into possible futures—that is the very birthright of the Clayr. Nevertheless she must undertake a desperate mission under the growing shadow of an ancient evil—one that threatens to break the very boundary between Life and Death itself. With only her faithful companion, the Disreputable Dog, to help her, Lirael must find the courage to seek her own hidden destiny.Abhorsen: The Abhorsen Sabriel and King Touchstone are missing, leaving only Lirael—newly come into her inheritance as the Abhorsen-in-Waiting—to stop the Destroyer. With only a vision from the Clayr to guide her, Lirael must search in both Life and Death for some means to defeat the evil destructor—before it is too late. . . .Clariel: Clariel is the daughter of one of the most notable families in the Old Kingdom, with blood relations to the Abhorsen and, most important, to the King. She dreams of living a simple life but discovers this is hard to achieve when a dangerous creature is loose in the city and there is a plot brewing against the King. When Clariel is drawn into the efforts to find and capture the creature, she finds hidden sorcery within herself, yet it is magic that carries great dangers.
effingunicorns is interested in reading...
2d
How to Kill a Guy in Ten Dates
Shailee Thompson
Shailee Thompson’s HOW TO KILL A GUY IN TEN DATES, a horror romance in which a woman gets caught in the middle of a killing spree at a speed dating event and must find a way to use her encyclopedic knowledge of the horror genre to make it as a real-life final girl.
I'll be honest, a part of me still feels like Gokuraku was added to the cast by editorial mandate, but I enjoy his backstory here and the whole situation with Bakugami. I think this is technically the longest arc up to this point, and in light of more recent chapters at the time of this review, there's a scene in here where Ichi is definitely working off of a script to some degree.
(The lack of a tapir emoji is a hate crime against me personally.)
effingunicorns finished a book
2d
Ichi the Witch, Vol. 4
Osamu Nishi
Magic is alive and well in the world, inside beings known as Majiks. By completing a Majik’s trial, a Witch can gain its power. However, only women can become Witches or use magical items. All that changes one day when a young man named Ichi turns the world on its head by defeating an infamous Majik and gaining its magical powers!
effingunicorns started reading...
2d
Ichi the Witch, Vol. 4
Osamu Nishi
Magic is alive and well in the world, inside beings known as Majiks. By completing a Majik’s trial, a Witch can gain its power. However, only women can become Witches or use magical items. All that changes one day when a young man named Ichi turns the world on its head by defeating an infamous Majik and gaining its magical powers!
effingunicorns TBR'd a book
3d
A Divided Duty (October Daye, #20)
Seanan McGuire
Seanan McGuire’s New York Times bestselling and Hugo Award-nominated October Daye series finds Toby Daye torn between caring for her newborn daughter and keeping the world of Faerie―and her found family―safe. October “Toby” Daye is settling into life with a baby, remembering the ins and outs of motherhood, and trying to find ways to balance her work with her desire to keep her baby safe at home and away from all the terrors Faerie has to offer. Her whole household is pitching in, from May all the way down to Raysel, the estranged daughter of Toby’s liege lord who is currently serving out a term of offense in Toby’s home. Naturally, as everything is beginning to find a balance, it’s time for Raysel’s term of offense to end, and Luna Torquill very much wants her daughter back. But Toby has been helping Raysel get the help she desperately needs, from giving her a safe place to hide all the way to finding her a licensed therapist who works with the fae, and Raysel isn’t ready to leave. Luna isn’t taking no for an answer, and before anyone can realize what she’s planning, she steals her own child away to Blind Michael’s lands. Not even Luna knows all the terrible secrets her father and his works hid from the world, and not even she can protect her daughter from the monsters in their lineage. All too quickly, Toby must race the clock to save Raysel―before it’s too late for her to ever come home. It’s been years, but now the question will be asked again: can she get there and back by the light of a candle?
effingunicorns TBR'd a book
3d
A DARK AND NARROW HOUSE
Usman T. Malik
When a mysterious and deadly plague sweeps through the world, a group of friends retreats to a luxurious countryside mansion at the Pakistani-Indian border, unaware that they’ve locked themselves in with an ancient secret and primordial power that will slowly tear them apart. As each member of the group fractures under the strain of the haveli’s maddening spell, they must decide whether to face the truth of their own demons or be lost within in the glittering labyrinth forever. In his lush, epic debut novel, award-winning writer Usman T. Malik invites readers to explore the rich, spellbinding tapestry that is Middle Eastern folklore. A DARK AND NARROW HOUSE is a terrifying exploration of memory, trauma, and the power of stories to save or destroy us.
effingunicorns TBR'd a book
3d
The Last Final Girl
Stephen Graham Jones
Life in a slasher film is easy. You just have to know when to die.Aerial View: A suburban town in Texas. Everyone's got an automatic garage door opener. All the kids jump off a perilous cliff into a shallow river as a rite of passage. The sheriff is a local celebrity. You know this town. You're from this town.Zoom In: Homecoming princess, Lindsay. She's just barely escaped death at the hands of a brutal, sadistic murderer in a Michael Jackson mask. Up on the cliff, she was rescued by a horse and bravely defeated the killer, alone, bra-less. Her story is already a legend. She's this town's heroic final girl, their virgin angel.Monster Vision: Halloween masks floating down that same river the kids jump into. But just as one slaughter is not enough for Billie Jean, our masked killer, one victory is not enough for Lindsay. Her high school is full of final girls, and she's not the only one who knows the rules of the game.When Lindsay chooses a host of virgins, misfits, and former final girls to replace the slaughtered members of her original homecoming court, it's not just a fight for survival-it's a fight to become The Last Final Girl.
The prologue cut through my uncertainty about whether Rae's little monologues in the previous book were meant to read as slightly less cool than she thought they were. The rest of the book immediately started testing me all over again by hitting me with endless communication issues that I can't even say were out of character. In fact, as much as I hate miscommunication plots, I'm pretty sure I could point to the exact character trait or thought process driving each. It's infuriating as a hater, but as a reader and writer I can admit I'm a little dazzled.
Seasoned isekai readers (and Spider-Verse fans) will probably already be familiar with the broader conflict of struggling to survive in a world where the plot is like a force of nature--these characters must go to this place, these things must happen, this many deaths must occur. The fun is always in how the struggle unfolds, which characters defy or lean into their roles and how, and the relationships that develop between those characters. The fun here feels rife with self-indulgent ass-pulls, but when you step back enough to process, you can pretty much always find an earlier indication that it was on the table, which is way more satisfying.
Ship progression was great, even if it uniformly left me gnashing my teeth in thwarted anticipation. It felt like every couple was on their own path, even if the core issues were the same, and certain dumbass moves made an infuriating kind of sense as I mentioned before. There were also some fun unrequited loves, and one almost-relationship that took me the fuck out but has clear potential as a plot-supporting device in the next book. And there's a lot of plot to support, because there came a point here where it hit a per-chapter density equivalent to a CW drama. Things honestly get pretty grim in a lot of ways! I have no idea how things are going to work out in the next book, and while I'm clinging to rooting for the powers of love and honesty, I'm bracing myself for more carnage before we get there.
