Can I ask what book it was so I can avoid it with all my being?
Orpheum, by D.S. Murphy. It’s kind of a shame, honestly, the magic had the potential to be really cool, I was all buckled up for some good brain candy nonsense but nooooo fucking ‘gypsy fortune tellers’ fucking spare me.
That feeling where you start reading a book with the expectation that it will be fun YA garbage with cool weird magic and bastardized Greek mythology, and halfway through you hit a twenty page chunk of UNRELENTING racist bullshit about “gypsies”.
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.
Welcome to Andover… where superpowers are common, but internships are complicated. Just ask high school nobody, Jessica Tran. Despite her heroic lineage, Jess is resigned to a life without superpowers and is merely looking to beef-up her college applications when she stumbles upon the perfect (paid!) internship—only it turns out to be for the town’s most heinous supervillain. On the upside, she gets to work with her longtime secret crush, Abby, who Jess thinks may have a secret of her own. Then there’s the budding attraction to her fellow intern, the mysterious “M,” who never seems to be in the same place as Abby. But what starts as a fun way to spite her superhero parents takes a sudden and dangerous turn when she uncovers a plot larger than heroes and villains altogether.
From the author of Seven Tears at High Tide, C.B. Lee,the super hero saga takes flight in September, from Duet Books.
Oh gosh I’ve been going through the tags and reblogs and can I just say I’m just so excited that you all are excited?!? I can’t wait to share this all with you.
This is the book announcement! Pre-order information will be coming soon– stay tuned and look out for a post from either me or @duetbooks or @interludepress!
Jess’ t-shirt says Master Mischief was right about the cheese. Who is Master Mischief? What’s the cheese about? I’ll be dropping a few more teasers as we get closer to the release date.
Yes, yes she is.
(ﾉ´ヮ´)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧ I’m on tumblrand twitter if you want updates!
The only reason I’m against this is that artists work REALLY hard to make the covers of these books, and they should be appreciated.
I’ve seen some version of this thought get attached to this photo on several reblogs now, and I admit I find it more baffling each time. It has now baffled me to the point of irritation.
First of all, when I say a book has a terrible cover, I’m not necessarily talking about the art. Lots of excellent art makes a shitty book cover. What makes the covers on these particular books terrible is occasionally the art, but is just as likely to be a title that’s hard to read, an absence of color, an image that doesn’t reflect the story, or total lack of appeal to the target audience. This is a display in our children’s library, and the books on it are all excellent books that our children’s librarians know our young patrons will adore, and all have covers that you could not bribe a child to pay attention to.
(Yes, I have gathered from reblogs that we all LOVED Dealing with Dragons as young readers, and rightfully so, because me too, but if you think that is a cover that appeals to the modern child, you are wrong.)
Second, have you ever looked through a publisher’s catalog? Pick any catalog, from any publisher, for any season. I will mail you one at my own expense, if you want. It will put paid to this idea that all book covers should be revered because HOORAY ART. There are lots of gorgeous book covers in the world created by immensely talented people. There are just as many that are lazy, sloppy, and generally terrible. Or, as in the case of most of the covers above, they are covers that might have been effective a few decades ago, but are now dated and unappealing. I feel no obligation to appreciate book covers if they fail at conveying the contents of a book to a potential reader. And as a librarian, I feel fine about calling them out if it helps connect readers with books they’ll love. Which it does.
A+
sometimes a book cover does a book a disservice. Packaging matters.
Anonymous asked: So I'm kind of low-key constantly on the look out for a new decent book to read (gay is a 10000% bonus) and you seem pretty enthusiastic about the Captive Prince (and all I know about it is that there's a gay couple)...d'you have a pitch for it? (Coherency not required)
okay, so you know how you read a book and you’re like ‘this is great, but imagine if x’ or ‘this would be ten times more intense if they x’ or even ‘I can’t wait to hit up Ao3 later because if anything is gonna have an AU where one of them is an exiled prince sold to the other as a slave it’s this’? THE ANSWER TO ALL OF THESE QUESTIONS IS CAPTIVE PRINCE. THEY’RE NOT EVEN QUESTIONS, BUT CAPTIVE PRINCE IS THE ANSWER.
it’s all the things you look for in a fic: an intense slowburn between The Hero and The Ruler with the most toe-curling concept packed full of A+ romance tropes, literally breathtaking teases and epic twists and it’s written by that one fic writer who nails characterisation even when she’s writing an off-the-wall royalty AU and manages to turn what the plot summary said would be a ‘master/slave erotica’ into an intelligent, gripping, intensely romantic and not at all problematic thrill ride about secret identities, politics and courtly intrigue – EXCEPT IT’S NOT A FIC! IT’S A BOOK! YOU CAN BUY IT AND HOLD IN YOUR ACTUAL HUMAN HANDS!!!
but honestly. princes! sword fights! incredible world-building! power dynamics! secrets and lies! a not insubstantial amount of background exhibitionism! incredible build-up of the main relationship, the eventual consummation of which literally brought me to overwhelmed tears! read! captive! prince!
(other things of note: 1. not a gay couple! one is bisexual and the other, for my money, is grey-asexual. which just makes it even BETTER. LIKE IT WASN’T ALREADY THE MOST APPEALING THING ON THIS GOOD EARTH. 2. it neatly sidesteps all the 50 Shades-esque pitfalls you’re imagining it falling into. trust.*)
I don’t know how I feel about authors who write constant unhappiness for their characters.
It doesn’t have to be happiness and rainbows all the time, because obviously there will be no conflict if constant happiness. But, Jesus, there needs to be some hope.
I hope you don’t mind if I
jump in and say: I can’t stand it.
The problem, in my opinion,
is that these kind of stories – the ones where the heroes never seem to catch a
break –now fall under the blanket term of “gritty realism”.
In the past couple of years “gritty realism” has become a really
popular theme, not just in books, but across all media. At first it was great
and refreshing, especially when it was done well. But now, it’s so overdone
that it’s become its own cliché. It has somehow evolved from stories that reflected
the true dark side of humanity and how sometimes there are no happy endings, to
stories that literally put characters through hell only to put them in even
worse hell after they climb out of it, with absolutely no hope, no future,
nothing going for them. That is not the same thing and the fact that we are
sold these super depressing stories sold under the terms of “gritty realism” is
kind of bullshit.
It’s one thing when things look bleak and it seems like there’s
no way out, that is fantastic in terms of suspense and heart-string pulling.
But if that’s all the book is then what the hell are they fighting for? What is
the point of all their pain? I know that life isn’t all sunshine and
butterflies, but let’s be honest it’s not all hell-fire and pain either. I as a
reader want to know that there’s hope for these characters however little. I
want a fucking payoff for their pain. Even if they don’t get their happy
ending, I want their pain to mean something. I don’t want to ride a
roller-coaster that only goes down. I have quit books, movies, and shows
because as a very empathetic person the situations and the hopelessness of
their lives have made me feel depressed.
So I’d
like these creators selling their sadomasochism as “gritty realism” to fucking
stop.
IF YOU LIKE THOSE TWO, THEN YOU ARE IN FUCKING LUCK. WHY? BECAUSE WE’VE WRITTEN A MOTHERFUCKING BOOK CRAMMED FULL OF BOTH OF THOSE.
MYTHS ARE F***ING GREAT CONTAINS 188 PAGES OF OUR FINEST MYTHS, COVERING A WIDE RANGE OF WORLD MYTHOLOGIES AND AN EVEN WIDER RANGE OF CREATIVE BULLSHIT EXPLETIVES. IT’S ALSO GOT MORE THAN YOU COULD EVER HAVE WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT THE AUTHOR, AND A SMALL NUMBER OF EXCLUSIVE BONUS MYTHS THAT WE’VE NEVER PUT ON THE BLOG. YOU’LL FUCKING LOVE IT.
BUY ONE. BUY LOTS. BUY IT FOR YOURSELF. BUY IT FOR YOUR FRAGILE AND EASILY WORRIED GRANDMA (WE WANT TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENS). BUY IT FOR YOUR CAT. DON’T HAVE A CAT THAT CAN READ? YOU POOR SAD FUCKER. BUY IT FOR SOMEONE ELSE’S CAT AS WELL.
IT’S NOW AVAILABLE FROM A NUMBER OF CLASSY-AS-FUCK ESTABLISHMENTS.
