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On Monday I finished The Once and Future Witches by Alix Harrow, about a trio of sisters in the American city of "New Salem" in Massachusetts in 1893 who take it upon themselves to revive witches' magic.
 
The Once and Future Witches dovetails historically with the movement for women's suffrage, creating some parallels between seeking the right to the vote and seeking the right to practice magic. I would have liked to have seen this carried more through the latter half of the novel, but I suppose I can see why it wasn't, particularly given it would be another nearly thirty years before the passage of the 19th Amendment granting women the right to vote. The suffragettes played a long game. 
 
The core focus of the novel is sisterhood, both blood and otherwise. Harrow presents a beautifully wounded and layered portrait of siblinghood in the relationship between the three protagonists: Bella, the oldest; Agnes, the middle child; and Juniper, the youngest. Raised without a mother (she passed birthing Juniper) under the thumb of their abusive and alcoholic father in rural poverty, all three girls learned early on what they would do to ensure their own survival. And while there is great love between them, there is also great hurt, and by the start of the book, the three are not on speaking terms. Harrow did a great job with the complexity here, and watching their relationships develop and begin to heal was very enjoyable. 
 
 

Future Events: Feedback

Jul. 15th, 2025 04:51 pm
torino10154: Sirius Black lifting a glass to toast (Cheers Sirius)
[personal profile] torino10154 posting in [community profile] firewhiskeyfic
Hello, lovely friends! If you're anything like me, you could use a drink. ;)

I've been thinking for a while that perhaps it's time for a change in how we do these events. It's a little too complex for a poll though.

Some of my thoughts--definitely less focus on HP but as I have no other fandoms, I don't know what kind of prompts and themes we should have. Also, do we want to keep it a "competition" and anonymous? Or post the submitted entries not anon? Or not even submit entries?

Please feel free to leave detailed thoughts about what you think works well, what could be improved, what you want to see, etc. We're all friends here and I'd love to be able to have some kind of ~gathering every few months, even if it looks different than it's been in the past.

Frieren: Beyond Journey's End, Vol. 2

Jul. 14th, 2025 06:39 pm
marycatelli: (Golden Hair)
[personal profile] marycatelli posting in [community profile] books
Frieren: Beyond Journey's End, Vol. 2 by Kanehito Yamada

Spoilers ahead for the first volume.

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Frieren: Beyond Journey's End, Vol. 1

Jul. 13th, 2025 01:26 pm
marycatelli: (Golden Hair)
[personal profile] marycatelli posting in [community profile] books
Frieren: Beyond Journey's End, Vol. 1 by Kanehito Yamada

Prologue: the hero and his companions -- one the elf Frieren -- are honored for the defeat and death of the Demon King. They watch a meteor shower and Frieren speaks of seeing it in a better place to view, in 50 years.

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The New School Reader: Fourth Book

Jul. 12th, 2025 04:10 pm
marycatelli: (Golden Hair)
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The New School Reader: Fourth Book by Charles Walton Sanders

A 1856 book on elocution. Opens with discussions of how to say things, and then offers many samples of eloquent prose and poetry to praise on -- and to have your character formed by, since, as he writes, they were chosen toward that important end.

The Words of the Night

Jul. 11th, 2025 02:55 pm
marycatelli: (Golden Hair)
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The Words of the Night by C. Chancy

A historian is on a plane to Korea when it is attacked by a dragon.

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rocky41_7: (Default)
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Today I finished the latest book in the Baru Cormorant series (fourth book remains to-be-released), The Tyrant Baru Cormorant. Y'all, Baru is so back.

! Spoilers for books 1 & 2 below !
 
If you've looked at other reviews for the series, you may have seen book 2, The Monster Baru Cormorant, referred to as the series' "sophomore slump." I disagree, but I understand where the feeling comes from. The Monster feels like a prelude, a setting of the board, for The Tyrant. The Monster puts all the pieces in place for the cascade of schemes and plays that come in The Tyrant. They almost feel like one book split into two (which is fair—taken together, they represent about a thousand pages and would make for one mammoth novel).
 
If you felt like Baru was too passive in The Monster and that there wasn't enough scheming going on, I can happily report those things are wholly rectified in The Tyrant. Having located the infamous and quasi-mythological Cancrioth at the end of The Monster, Baru wastes no time in whipping into full savant plotting mode.
 

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You know that feeling where you're enjoying inhabiting a book so much you don't want to reach the end? This week I finished The Witness for the Dead by Katherine Addison, and that's how I felt.
 
Witness is a companion novel to Addison's breakout novel, The Goblin Emperor (TGE), which I read for the first time last year and never got around to reviewing. You don't need to have read TGE to enjoy this one at all; Witness focuses on a minor character from TGE and his adventures after the events of that novel. Thara Celehar is a prelate of the god Ulis, and his role in elven society is something like a cross between a priest and a private detective. He has the ability to commune, in a limited fashion, with the dead, and he is employed by the city to provide this service to the people. This may involve reporting a deceased's last thoughts to a mourner, asking a deceased to clarify a point on their will, or seeking answers from a murder victim to bring their killer to justice.

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