fairygrrl97.bsky.social

1 Dec 2025

Reintro as things are still evolving here: Primarily SFF book reviews, some romance (adult content will be noted in the TW/CW). I do try to put content warnings where appropriate, but I'm one person, so do your due diligence. Occasional tea, crochet, and sewing content based on ~vibes~ 1/

12h

Historically I've not been much of a re-reader, but I've been craving the comfort of re-reads this year. You definitely get a different perspective on a re-read and see things you missed the first time around. Knowing what happens makes it sort of comforting even if it's going to make me cry.

🪐📚 If you're reading #dungeoncrawlercarl via ebook or audiobook, chase down the pineapple cabaret shorts that are in the hardcover editions. It's not important early on, but it's a bunch of information about behind the scenes stuff that becomes relevant later in the series.

These are real and make fortune cookies way less fun :( I hope they're paying the Chinese restaurants bank for this because they fucking deserve it. Ruining fortune cookies for everyone.

Jared Holt@jaredlholt.bsky.social

For fuck’s sake

Got my early in person voting out of the way. Pretty busy for a weekday, all the polling stations were occupied the whole time I was there. Gotta vote No on the ID law if you're in Ohio as it's intended to make voting harder which is bad. @mostlybree.kitrocha.com

You're already required to provide a valid proof of identity and address, the addition of more requirements is a poll tax by a different name as you'd need specific documentation to vote.

penguinrandomhouse.comEric CarterBuy books online and find book series such as Eric Carter written by Stephen Blackmoore from PenguinRandomHouse.com

📚🪐 You're probably sick of me talking about this series by now, but you could have a magical locked room mystery (suicide kings) with bodies dropping like flies and honestly horror levels of gore. NGL I'm excited to see how the series wraps on our asshole necromancer.

Stephen Blackmoore@stephenblackmoore.com

Seeing as it's the spookiest season, how about some books with ghosts? Also swearing, violence, massive body counts, and a necromancer with extreme anger management issues. The Eric Carter series www.penguinrandomhouse.com/series/EC2/e...

Just slap all the violence, gore, and torture content warnings on it for good measure. Most of it is some pretty nasty racists getting what's coming to them. Mentions of child neglect/abuse.

The answer is clearly a really stupid amount of very fancy tea... Maybe commission white2tea for special smoked stuff. And then I'm going to start a teahouse that makes 0 money for the fun of it and employ like 5 potters just to make pretty teaware for said teahouse.

Peter@notalawyer.bsky.social

question for the audience: if you were ultra rich (let’s say $25M), what completely frivolous thing are you buying?

The amount of tea will either be surprisingly large or small depending on your perspective as the really good stuff gets expensive very fast but there's also a lot of really nice tea in the world.

🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉 Weird that Libby is still pushing ai-style recommendations, but cool that you can turn off ai options for all parts of the process including translation and illustration.

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Maybe if we all yell loud enough publishers will stop using their new favorite buzzword for marketing things. But that'd be way too easy. Romantasy is to me the Sarah J Maas books and not a lot of the other stuff that's being marketed by the same name. Which is freaking confusing as a reader

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House Andrew's The Inheritance has really good content warnings at the beginning including information like the dog makes it. It's got a bit of levity to it, but it still takes the potentially upsetting issues seriously.

United Wizards of the Coast - CWA

Really wanted to like a fire upon the deep by Vernor vinge as there's a lot of cool aspects (aliens! with no short term memory or that need a set number of bodies to achieve sapience), but it's just not working out 😭 something about the style drags for me. Such cool concepts tho

fairygrrl97.bsky.social reposted

@uwotc-official.bsky.social

This morning, the D&D team and Magic's Studio X informed our leadership of our intent to unionize. We love the games we make and the work we do, and unionizing is how we protect that work. unitedwizardsofthecoast.com/news/dnd-stu...

unitedwizardsofthecoast.comDungeons & Dragons and Studio X Join United Wizards of the Coast - CWAToday, October 6, 2026, the designers, artists, writers, producers, and workers behind Dungeons & Dragons, Magic: The Gathering, Duel Masters, D&D Beyond, and countless other games are uniting in soli...

📚🪐 I'm having the best time with these. Just the deep understanding of the structure of fairy tales and how to use them to one's advantage *perfection* This starts unsettlingly, has some great danger, and ends happily (as all the best tales do) with some great comradarie and clever use of Tradition

along the way. It's an enjoyable journey with some clever characters and plenty of scheming. It understands what a fairytale needs to be and how to get there while still telling a fun, feminist tale. The romance is much lighter in this one - sweet and unexpected.

TW/CWs: emotional neglect of a child, virgin sacrifice, general danger, coercive spells including one for lust, murder, light fantasy violence, general evil scheming and manipulation, mention of slavery and associated abuses

📚🪐 I didn't love this as much as I wanted to, the style is very much what I call "man fantasy" (see authors like Anthony Ryan). There's nothing wrong with it, but I find the style difficult to read and enjoy. Which was annoying because it's got a really fun premise

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Tw/CW: all the ultraviolence, foul language and gestures, backstabbing, possession, and some pretty fucked up relationships, death of name characters, forced religious conversion

Id compare this to something like McDonald's Raven's Mark series which is similarly bleak and fighting against terrible odds, but doesn't cross into the man fantasy writing style. It has a lot more emotional weight for me than this did. Raven's Mark just worked for me in a way this largely didn't.

Basically a get the band back together, but they're all the nastiest fuckers. It felt like it should've been more fun, but was too busy being straight-laced to actually do so. I persevered, however, and the ending was exactly as fucked up as I expected with a few little twists that were worthwhile

🪐📚 There's a soft fairytale-like quality to McKinley's work that's very soothing regardless of the topic. This is an interesting one as the FMC takes on a role binding the earth to peace. It's quite slow, but wraps up nicely.

I've not read this one (yet), but the later spin off as to what the hubby's doing during all of this and it's such an interesting system and set up. I'll be picking this one up for sure. Erin's on here as well, so check out her recommendations if you enjoyed her book as she's hyping other LitRPG 📚

Chantaal@chantaal.bsky.social

Just finished up Time to Play (Apocalypse Parenting #1) by Erin Ampersand, 4⭐! A great alternative to Dungeon Crawler Carl for anyone looking for another entry point into LitRPG. 💙📚👀 📚🪐 #booksky www.goodreads.com/review/show/...

lunarflaneur.blogspot.comThe Strange Tales of Oscar Zahn 1The Strange Tales of Oscar Zahn by Tri Vuong Ten Speed Books 2024 The first volume of The Strange Tales of Oscar Zahn collects ei...

20 Sept

Totally haven't reviewed this, but it's fantastic and spooky season is coming up and what's more spooky than a dead man walking around with an octopus in his skull. Second one is in the works around the author's other IP projects.

girl with Shinigami eyes@diyanddragons.bsky.social

"The Strange Tales of Oscar Zahn" collects 8 chapters of Tri Vuong's webcomic. Oscar is a ghost who solves hauntings by lending a sympathetic ear to other ghosts. The plot and art reminded me of Hellboy. Oscar is haunted by a giant octopus that wreaks chaos when it appears. 💙📚🪐 #comics #bookreview

🪐📚 Last volume is bittersweet as it was a nice wrapup, but I'm also going to miss it. This is pure shonen. The whole we will try and strive and eventually win, but with kaiju, is immensely satisfying. The city is totally destroyed multiple times and rebuilt. Which is impressive in and of itself

We do get a sort of a deus ex machina at the end, but I enjoyed it too much to be bothered by it. TW/CW: general violence, city destruction, allusions to death of an animal, destruction of home

📚🪐 Finally finished this one, gorgeous cover and dreamy almost fairy tale vibes. It will certainly go places you don't expect in the beginning. Bonus: talking animals and an ordinary man who might just be a wizard himself.

I think it might've hit better at another time for largely anxiety related reasons, but I'm definitely going to try more mckillip books before I form an opinion. TW/CW: kidnapping, attempted assault, general violence

📚🪐 What's a mind bending or strange scifi that's stuck with you? Doesn't have to be good, just something you enjoyed. Tanya Huff's Torin Kerr books (2!! series) had such a twist in them that I'm still thinking about it. Got some really interesting alien races, too.

Jean Johnson's first salik war and theirs not to reason why series are also mind bending in just the right way. How do you write a *massive* precog without making things too easy? 2 separate and related human variants on separate worlds? Space bubble 4th dimensional fey?

17 Sept

Not much I can say about this particular Eric Carter book without hella spoilers other than it's really hit its pace and was very good. On brand for the rest of the series, plenty of magic, mayhem, and death. It wraps up the plot arc with Darius and his bottle in an unexpected manner.

High Priestess, Low Patience

17 Sept

This book also fits in multiple pockets (delightful) and is so much smaller than some of the chonkers I've been reading lately. Very satisfying departure

fairygrrl97.bsky.social reposted

@cheriepriest.com

16 Sept

ooh, I like this take - all the elements are present, so call it what it is: not liminal (which was never quite right, tbh), but gothic for a new generation of people who don’t remember why we built that shit in the first place, or what it was supposed to be *for*

Emily C. Hughes@emilyhughes.bsky.social

also a shoutout to @shirachess.bsky.social's excellent essay about Backrooms and the Institutional Gothic, which you should read!! thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/backrooms-an...

thereader.mitpress.mit.edu‘Backrooms’ and the Rise of the Institutional GothicA new spin on an old genre replaces flesh-and-blood monsters with the mundanity of modern bureaucracy.

16 Sept

🪐📚 I've not read these in a hot minute (check content warnings please, these can get dark), but I've got fond memories of reading them previously. Armstrong's stuff is a *ride.* She often toes the line with horror imho

Sean Eric Fagan@kithrup.bsky.social

#HeadsUp: Bitten (An Otherworld Novel Book 1), by Kelly Armstrong, is on US ebook sale for $2. I got some copies for random giveaway.

16 Sept

I miss really long urban fantasy series like the ones that we had when I was in highschool. We've lost something and we didn't even know it until it was gone. Armstrong's series is one of them and definitely a formative experience. I totally should've waited until like college to read them lol

14 Sept

Content warnings need to be at the front of the book aka the part of the book that ebook samples allows for to be worth jack shit. Looking at you publishers who wrote a nice little note about the content warnings for when the moon hatched and stuck them where you can't read them before buying.

14 Sept

When the moon hatched is just a particularly obvious, egregious example because it's got so much trauma rattling around that you can't go a chapter without tripping over a potential trigger or generally upsetting content.

reactormag.comFinding Your Recipe for Literary Comfort Food - ReactorWhat are the ingredients for your perfect read?

11 Sept

So a bunch of authors I like have said this, but I've tried the reading new books with tropes I usually like trend and they weren't doing it for me. I am one person, but the trope marketing thing is a hard no. Shout out to the contemp witch romance that kept me reading for the bisexual revenge

Reactor Magazine@reactorsff.bsky.social

What is the recipe for your perfect read? @mollytempleton.com discusses climbing out of a reading slump with H.G. Parry’s The Witch Below the Dreaming Wood–and how finding a new favorite book may just be a matter of ingredients:

11 Sept

Which isn't generally something I enjoy, but it was such a fun concept and executed so well that it was really enjoyable. Got past all the awkward things and everything for bisexuals teaming up for revenge and falling in love along the way.

10 Sept

Won my yarn chicken (after deciding not to finish the last row in the repeat and instead finishing it with a single crochet edge). It needs to be blocked, but I've got to decide if it should be a wall hanging or lapghan first.

ravelry.comLibellula Collection pattern by Jacek TresowaneSzydelkoPattern „Libellula” has been designed by Jacek Mrożewicz who creates under the name „Tresowane Szydelko Jacka”.

10 Sept

Carron blossom cakes - can't remember the colorway,but it's the neutral one. The linked pattern can be done in two different triangle shapes, a square, and rectangle. Really nice charted crochet pattern.

❤️📚🪐 I'm not caught up on a lot of Aguirre's more recent books as that style of romance isn't really my thing, but this is whimsical and magical enough to satisfy me. It's just so sweet and good and people becoming more themselves and finding love ❤️❤️❤️ just pure happiness even if there is a spot of

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And it's got the cutest headings for each POV with spells from Thea's father for hers and descriptions of artworks for Kerboros. That little bit of clever characterization is so brilliant ❤️❤️❤️

TW/CW: abusive monarchs, threat of banishment, manipulation, historical imprisonment and familial execution, historical treason, childhood trauma/abandonment, parental alienation, forced marriage (paper only) Actually now that I'm writing this list, I can see the ghost of Aguirre's older works

Danger. There's some good twists you might not see coming, remember the fey enjoy a good trick. For the most part, it's a bright sparkly fairy tale with most of the nastier bits left out (no one's forced to dance eternally or pluck their own eyes out). Fucking excellent sweet romance.