honestly the high fantasy genre is suffering because authors can’t stop ripping off tolkien and basing their worlds off the same few shitty medieval european countries complete with Historically Accurate Misogyny™, HF has so much untapped potential for creating beautiful and diverse and interesting worlds and authors just squander it by rehashing middle earth over and over
And like! I like Middle Earth! I love LotR! I do! But G U Y S. Pull yourselves out of your hobbit hole and revel in the potential for new and cool shit in your high fantasy worlds. I read this book where the main character’s literal job in life was to blow up ghosts with enchanted gauntlets, and her main love interest was a pirate king who spontaneously turned into a giant bloodthirsty monster around ghosts and let me tell you a thing, watching them take down corrupt governments was a goddamn delight.
Um, excuse you?
How dare you describe this book and not tell us what the fuck it’s called and who wrote it so I can find it and go FUCKING READ IT RIGHT NOW???
It’s called Geist by Philippa Ballantine and I am scheming to acquire the second one almost as we speak. I 100% recommend it. Cool magic! Cool ghosts! Schemes and shenanigans! Airships! Ship-ships with pirates! The main character Sorcha is a complicated, individual woman who is never spat on for being a woman! (I might be wrong about that, but I can say with absolute confidence that anyone who does learns their lesson really really fast and also is a bad guy, because sexist dicks are bad guys, mmmmkay?) She is also really, crazy powerful and badass and I am a tiny (very small) bit in love with her.
Her runaway-king-slash-pirate-slash-part-time-monster friend/eventual love interest Raed is cool too, I guess, but SORCHA MOTHERFUCKERS.