Tag: Reading

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The Bookish Owl – Lord of the Clans by Christie Golden

Lord of the Clans by Christie Golden

Given the amount of World of Warcraft I’ve been playing over the past couple of months, I think it’s fitting that the last Bookish Owl post of the year will be Lord of the Clans by Christie Golden.

I’m not even joking. All this social distancing has resulted in me developing a WoW addiction more severe than back in 2008, where I simply hated people.

However, the tie-in novels are quite good. And despite Lord of the Clans being one of the first Warcraft novels ever to be released, this was my first time reading it. It’s possible I delayed because it’s about Thrall, who was never one of my favorite characters. But that doesn’t mean his backstory doesn’t make for a good book.

But it was Thrall’s mother, Draka, who stole my heart when her husband, Durotan, ‘forbade’ her from following him on a dangerous trip… causing her to scratch up his face and then spit in it.

Draka is my kind of gal. I’m glad she gets the recognition she deserves in the latest World of Warcraft expansion.

Oh, and Blackmoore is the biggest arse on Azeroth.

Lord of the Clans
by Christie Golden

Slave. Gladiator. Shaman. Warchief. The enigmatic Orc known as Thrall has been all of these. Raised from infancy by cruel human masters who sought to mold him into their perfect pawn, Thrall was driven by both the savagery in his heart and the cunning of his upbringing to pursue a destiny he was only beginning to understand — to break his bondage and rediscover the ancient traditions of his people. Now the tumultuous tale of his life’s journey — a saga of honor, hatred, and hope — can at last be told….

Lord of the Clans by Christie Golden

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The Bookish Owl – House of Salt and Sorrow by Erin A. Craig

House of Salt and Sorrow

Tonight we’re going with a horror fairy tale: House of Salt and Sorrow by Erin A. Craig.

This book was a great mix of fantasy and horror, and that’s a genre we need more of!

(That’s a barely disguised request for fantasy horror suggestions in the comments. Just in case you missed it.)

It reads like a dark fairy tale, which I think is my new favorite kind of story.

I would suggest reading this while it’s stormy outside and you’re all alone in the house. That’s the kind of atmosphere this book needs.

House of Salt and Sorrow
by Erin A. Craig

Annaleigh lives a sheltered life at Highmoor, a manor by the sea, with her sisters, their father, and stepmother. Once they were twelve, but loneliness fills the grand halls now that four of the girls’ lives have been cut short. Each death was more tragic than the last—the plague, a plummeting fall, a drowning, a slippery plunge—and there are whispers throughout the surrounding villages that the family is cursed by the gods.

Disturbed by a series of ghostly visions, Annaleigh becomes increasingly suspicious that the deaths were no accidents. Her sisters have been sneaking out every night to attend glittering balls, dancing until dawn in silk gowns and shimmering slippers, and Annaleigh isn’t sure whether to try to stop them or to join their forbidden trysts. Because who—or what—are they really dancing with?

When Annaleigh’s involvement with a mysterious stranger who has secrets of his own intensifies, it’s a race to unravel the darkness that has fallen over her family—before it claims her next.

House of Salt and Sorrow

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The Bookish Owl – The Last Continent by Terry Pratchett

The Last Continent by Terry Pratchett

We’re going Down Under – to Foureks, obviously – in The Last Continent by Terry Pratchett.

No worries.

Any Discworld novel featuring Rincewind and the wizards of Unseen University is bound to be weird. Throw in time travel and a couple of kangaroos, and it gets even weirder. Which is why I can’t tell you what this book is actually about. Of course, a book about these wizards doesn’t actually need a plot – they’re entertaining enough all by themselves – but it does make it a little difficult to write a post about it.

Though the Discworld obviously doesn’t have an Australia, this book contains so many Australian-related jokes and references that it makes you want to kick a kangaroo. We also get to see the Luggage in drag – it’s never explained where they found hundreds of high-heels – and the Librarian as a beach chair.

No, it doesn’t make any more sense in context.

The Last Continent
by Terry Pratchett

‘Anything you do in the past changes the future. The tiniest little actions have huge consequences. You might tread on an ant now and it might entirely prevent someone from being born in the future.’

The Discworld‘s most inept wizard has found himself on the Discworld’s last continent, a completely separate creation.
It’s hot. It’s dry . . . very dry. There was this thing once called The Wet, which no one believes in. Practically everything that’s not poisonous is venomous. But it’s the best bloody place in the world, all right?

And in a few days, it will be except . . . Who is this hero striding across the red desert? Champion sheep shearer, horse rider, road warrior, beer drinker, bush ranger, and someone who’ll even eat a Meat Pie Floater when he’s sober? A man in a hat whose luggage follows him on little legs, who’s about to change history by preventing a swagman stealing a jumbuck by a billabong?

Yes . . . all this place has between itself and wind-blown doom is Rincewind, the inept wizard who can’t even spell wizard. Still . . . no worries, eh?

The Last Continent by Terry Pratchett

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The Bookish Owl – The Watchmaker of Filigree Street by Natasha Pulley

The Watchmaker of Filigree Street

The book we’re covering in this post is The Watchmaker of Filigree Street by Natasha Pulley!

First off: I am not sure what I expected going into this book, but I can safely say that it wasn’t that I got. This book is weird, in a way that shouldn’t work, but somehow does.

The start of the book is a little rough to get through, as the protagonist we follow is painfully ordinary and boring, but once things start blowing up (literally) it gets so much better. There’s a lot of things that will have you scratching your head, especially as the genre seems to be a mash-up of historical, steampunk and science fiction. But the main characters, Thaniel and Mori, are adorable – and utterly dysfunctional – and it makes you want to see what happens even when you’re confused.

I can honestly say I didn’t see the ending coming.

Oh, and the octopus on the cover now makes sense to me. I half-feared C’thulu would make an appearance when I started reading…

The Watchmaker of Filigree Street
by Natasha Pulley

1883. Thaniel Steepleton returns home to his tiny London apartment to find a gold pocket watch on his pillow. Six months later, the mysterious timepiece saves his life, drawing him away from a blast that destroys Scotland Yard. At last, he goes in search of its maker, Keita Mori, a kind, lonely immigrant from Japan. Although Mori seems harmless, a chain of unexplainable events soon suggests he must be hiding something. When Grace Carrow, an Oxford physicist, unwittingly interferes, Thaniel is torn between opposing loyalties.

The Watchmaker of Filigree Street is a sweeping, atmospheric narrative that takes the reader on an unexpected journey through Victorian London, Japan as its civil war crumbles long-standing traditions, and beyond. Blending historical events with dazzling flights of fancy, it opens doors to a strange and magical past.

The Watchmaker of Filigree Street

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The Bookish Owl – The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden

The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden

It seems fitting that we’re arriving at a winter fairy tale today with The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden.

This was a beautifully written and engaging story that read like a Russian fairy tale. There are character you will adore and characters you will hate passionately, as well as a host of spirits and creatures taken from Russian folklore. It was a slow-moving plot, but it worked very well with the style, so I don’t see it as a bad thing.

I would say this is the perfect book for dark winter evenings while the snow is falling outside.

The Bear and the Nightingale
by Katherine Arden

At the edge of the Russian wilderness, winter lasts most of the year and the snowdrifts grow taller than houses. But Vasilisa doesn’t mind—she spends the winter nights huddled around the embers of a fire with her beloved siblings, listening to her nurse’s fairy tales. Above all, she loves the chilling story of Frost, the blue-eyed winter demon, who appears in the frigid night to claim unwary souls. Wise Russians fear him, her nurse says, and honor the spirits of house and yard and forest that protect their homes from evil.

After Vasilisa’s mother dies, her father goes to Moscow and brings home a new wife. Fiercely devout, city-bred, Vasilisa’s new stepmother forbids her family from honoring the household spirits. The family acquiesces, but Vasilisa is frightened, sensing that more hinges upon their rituals than anyone knows.

And indeed, crops begin to fail, evil creatures of the forest creep nearer, and misfortune stalks the village. All the while, Vasilisa’s stepmother grows ever harsher in her determination to groom her rebellious stepdaughter for either marriage or confinement in a convent.

As danger circles, Vasilisa must defy even the people she loves and call on dangerous gifts she has long concealed—this, in order to protect her family from a threat that seems to have stepped from her nurse’s most frightening tales.

The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden