
radueriel is interested in reading...
1h

When There Are Wolves Again
E.J. Swift
Decades from now, two women sit around a fire on Beltane, May Eve, and reflect on their life stories. Activist Lucy's earliest memories are of living with her grandparents during the 2020 pandemic, and discovering her grandmother's love of birds. Filmmaker Hester, born on the day of the Chornobyl explosion, visits the plant in 2021 to film its feral dog population, and encounters the wilded Exclusion Zone - and a wolf-dog. Over half a century, their journeys take them from London to Balmoral to Somerset, through protests, family rifts, and personal tragedy. Lucy's path leads to the fight to restore Britain's depleted natural habitats and bring back the species who once shared the island, whilst Hester strives to give a voice to those who cannot speak for themselves. Both dream of a time when there are wolves again. A novel of life and of hope, WHEN THERE ARE WOLVES AGAIN is perfect for fans of Clade by James Bradley, The Wolf Border by Sarah Hall, and The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson.

radueriel is interested in reading...
3d

Crooked Kingdom
Leigh Bardugo
When you canât beat the odds, change the game. Kaz Brekker and his crew have just pulled off a heist so daring even they didnât think theyâd survive. But instead of divvying up a fat reward, theyâre right back to fighting for their lives. Double-crossed and badly weakened, the crew is low on resources, allies, and hope. As powerful forces from around the world descend on Ketterdam to root out the secrets of the dangerous drug known as jurda parem, old rivals and new enemies emerge to challenge Kazâs cunning and test the teamâs fragile loyalties. A war will be waged on the cityâs dark and twisting streetsâa battle for revenge and redemption that will decide the fate of the world as they know it.

radueriel TBR'd a book
4d

Between Two Fires
Christopher Buehlman
The year is 1348. Thomas, a disgraced knight, has found a young girl alone in a dead Norman village. An orphan of the Black Death, and an almost unnerving picture of innocence, she tells Thomas that plague is only part of a larger cataclysmâthat the fallen angels under Lucifer are rising in a second war on heaven, and that the world of men has fallen behind the lines of conflict. Is it delirium or is it faith? She believes she has seen the angels of God. She believes the righteous dead speak to her in dreams. And now she has convinced the faithless Thomas to shepherd her across a depraved landscape to Avignon. There, she tells Thomas, she will fulfill her mission to confront the evil that has devastated the earth, and to restore to this betrayed, murderous knight the nobility and hope of salvation he long abandoned. As hell unleashes its wrath, and as the true nature of the girl is revealed, Thomas will find himself on a macabre battleground of angels and demons, saints, and the risen dead, and in the midst of a desperate struggle for nothing less than the soul of man.

radueriel is interested in reading...
4d

The Incandescent
Emily Tesh
Naomi Novik's Scholomance series meets Plain Bad Heroines in this sapphic dark academia fantasy by instant national and international bestselling author Emily Tesh, winner of the Hugo and World Fantasy Awards. "Look at you, eating magic like you're one of us." Doctor Walden is the Director of Magic at Chetwood Academy and one of the most powerful magicians in England. Her days consist of meetings, teaching A-Level Invocation to four talented, chaotic sixth formers, more meetings, and securing the school's boundaries from demonic incursions. Walden is good at her jobâno, Walden is great at her job. But demons are masters of manipulation. Itâs her responsibility to keep her school with its six hundred students and centuries-old legacy safe. And itâs possible the entity Walden most needs to keep her school safe fromâis herself.

radueriel is interested in reading...
4d

Death of the Author
Nnedi Okorafor
The future of storytelling is here. Life has thrown Zelu some curveballs over the years, but when she's suddenly dropped from her university job and her latest novel is rejected, all in the middle of her sister's wedding, her life is upended. Disabled, unemployed and from a nosy, high-achieving, judgmental family, she's not sure what comes next. In her hotel room that night, she takes the risk that will define her life - she decides to write a book VERY unlike her others. A science fiction drama about androids and AI after the extinction of humanity. And everything changes. What follows is a tale of love and loss, fame and infamy, of extraordinary events in one world, and another. And as Zelu's life evolves, the lines between fiction and reality begin to blur. Because sometimes a story really does have the power to reshape the world.

radueriel is interested in reading...
4d

How to Be Eaten
Maria Adelmann
This darkly funny and provocative novel reimagines classic fairy tale characters as modern women in a support group for trauma. In present-day New York City, five women meet in a basement support group to process their traumas. Bernice grapples with the fallout of dating a psychopathic, blue-bearded billionaire. Ruby, once devoured by a wolf, now wears him as a coat. Gretel questions her memory of being held captive in a house made of candy. Ashlee, the winner of a Bachelor-esque dating show, wonders if she really got her promised fairy tale ending. And Raina's love story will shock them all. Though the women start out wary of one another, judging each otherâs stories, gradually they begin to realize that they may have more in common than they supposed . . . What really brought them here? What secrets will they reveal? And is it too late for them to rescue each other? Dark, edgy, and wickedly funny, this debut for readers of Carmen Maria Machado, Kristen Arnett, and Kelly Link takes our coziest, most beloved childhood stories, exposes them as anti-feminist nightmares, and transforms them into a new kind of myth for grown-up women.


katieamarsh TBR'd a book
4d

Carmilla
J. Sheridan Le Fanu
In an isolated castle deep in the Austrian forest, Laura leads a solitary life with only her ailing father for company. Until one moonlit night, a horse-drawn carriage crashes into view, carrying an unexpected guest â the beautiful Carmilla. So begins a feverish friendship between Laura and her mysterious, entrancing companion. But as Carmilla becomes increasingly strange and volatile, prone to eerie nocturnal wanderings, Laura finds herself tormented by nightmares and growing weaker by the day⌠Pre-dating Dracula by twenty-six years, Carmilla is the original vampire story, steeped in sexual tension and gothic romance.

radueriel is re-reading...
5d

The Two Towers
J.R.R. Tolkien
Begin your journey into Middle-earth. The inspiration for the upcoming original series on Prime Video, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. The Two Towers is the second part of J.R.R. Tolkienâs epic adventure The Lord of the Rings. One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them. Frodo and his Companions of the Ring have been beset by danger during their quest to prevent the Ruling Ring from falling into the hands of the Dark Lord by destroying it in the Cracks of Doom. They have lost the wizard, Gandalf, in a battle in the Mines of Moria. And Boromir, seduced by the power of the Ring, tried to seize it by force. While Frodo and Sam made their escape, the rest of the company was attacked by Orcs. Now they continue the journey alone down the great River Anduinâalone, that is, save for the mysterious creeping figure that follows wherever they go.

radueriel joined a quest
6d
A Quest For The Future: Climate Fiction
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Main Quest đ // 1046 joined

The climate is intrinsic to life on Earth. What happens when it changes? These books examine our reality and imagined futures, both dystopian and utopian, to offer us words of warning, but also hope.


I've let this one marinate for a few weeks and have given up any hope of saying something intelligent, let alone original. It goes without saying that Ursula was a genius, a gifted weaver of stories. You certainly have to be a master of your craft to build such a textured, engrossing setting in such a compact novel.
Strangely, however, I think this is only the cherry on top, the set dressing for a profound work of political imagination. The book feels investigatory as Le Guin uses fiction to explore capitalism, anarchism, and communism. As a thought experiment, she pushes the tenets and facets of these ideologies to their extreme logical conclusions. I could sense Le Guin's thought process in a marvelous way, watching her process the Cold War in real time. She's incisive and fairly balanced in where she turns her authorial microscope, constructing nuanced ethical dilemmas that demonstrate the benefits and drawbacks of anarchism and capitalism, individualism and collectivism.
Especially in these dark times, it feels comforting and powerful to have access to stories like this one. How refreshing, to imagine a world that organizes itself around different values. The book asks what we are willing to compromise or sacrifice to achieve this, and changed some of my assumptions about how to answer that question.