Stress Reader > Recent Status Updates

"What was this world? Where a child, like [redacted], would die and have to be saved from being dumped into a mass grave, with children like her? What was this world, where people spat at my feet for asking to find a place for her to rest, because people I had never known, ancestors I had never met had killed their ancestors?"

This book 😭💜

Ok, this is a fun time. Their banter is solid.

"If it makes you feel any better,” he adds, “I think half of adulthood is pretending to have your shit together when you clearly don’t.” 🍻

“Power is the only way that someone can implement their ideals and make a change in the world.”

"What ideals are those?”

“A world which is fairer, safer, that protects those who cannot protect themselves. That would see an end to poverty, to disease, that would allow the poor to learn, to grow and thrive. That would spread wealth with equity..."

Oh how I'd love to live in a world like that.

Romance fans, GO READ THIS. Especially if you loved The Hating Game, you'll love this.

This book is f*cking amazing - I've cackled and snorted multiple times already. How have I not read anything by this author before? I need my kids to not need to be fed anymore today so I can just read the evening away.

"Must this generation suffer because of the backward beliefs of dead kings?”

I started this book early today and haven't been able to put it down.

*"Posing like the Calvin Klein model of unicorns. He even gave me several “looks” without any prompting."

🦄 "I look absolutely as magnificent as I have been told. This is most pleasing. Do another one. I will make light with my horn."

Prism (Imogen's battle unicorn) is cracking me up.

Battle unicorns!!! 🦄 So far this one has a lot more action than A Dagger of Lightning (which makes sense), having a great time reading it so far.

"You are worthy. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise."

I need to read To Ride A Rising Storm asap. Such a great book. Frtc


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"I took a breath and tried to convince myself that I wasn’t afraid."

-

“All I’ve ever tried to do is the right thing,” I said. “If that’s so very different from how things have been done before, then what’s been done before was wrong."

"... the Anglish have robbed us in so many ways, I can’t condone giving up who we are to become more like them.”

-

"Why is it all right to ride a train, but not for me to study how trains are crafted?"

-

"I don’t want to be more like them; I want them to take us seriously as a modern people with modern ideas.”

-

"The world is changing, Father. We’re going to have to change with it.”

“What, by sweet Fyra’s milky tits, did you think you were doing?”

-

"There are lots of girls like me—”
“There are no girls like you, Anequs,”

-

"I was going to make sure that the Anglish understood that we had never gone anywhere. That despite their best efforts, we were still living here among them on the lands where we’d always lived. I was going to show them just how many of us there were."

"I can’t be sad about a life I never had.”

“You have a right to be, if you want to,”

I'm 100% aware that part of my emotional reaction is due to my own trauma. But damn, this section made me ugly cry and now my head hurts more than it did.

-

"Someday not far in the future, I was going to be able to fly on Kasaqua, and I wasn’t planning to ask anyone’s permission to go looking for answers to questions like that."

“No one has ever given half a damn about the natural rights of nackies.”

"Then someone ought to make them give a damn,” I said.

“Those are the kinds of words that will get you arrested and hanged,” Theod snapped.

“Let them try,” I said. “I’m not friendless, and I’ve made no special effort to stay below anyone’s notice..."

"We may be of the same species of mankind, Miss Anequs, but our circumstances are not especially similar.”

-

“Oh—thank you for telling me. I’d hate to have brought up something painful out of ignorance,”

-

“If you want to be the darling of jarls and kings, you’ll have to be a lady and a scholar, and marry a gentleman of good breeding, and comport yourself prettily.”

“Like Halya I will,” I said with a snort.

“I suppose I see your point; that which is lost to the depths of time can only be a matter of faith, I suppose.”

-

"Daughter of my daughter, you’re going to teach us all how to dance with dragons again.”

-

"I had become like Crow, venturing to dangerous and unknown lands to bring fire back to my people. I wondered, as we sat together in one another’s company, what we were going to burn with it."

"No one is ever going to judge you by your school records, not when you’re a filthy savage nackie. You could get a whole string of superlative marks, and they wouldn’t matter to anyone.”

--

“And the Anglish have the nerve to call my people savage and wild and all that nonsense, when they can’t think of any better way to solve a fight than to kill one another over it?'

"I’m here to help my people, Frau Kuiper. I’m not here to make them more like yours.”

-

"You need to know the rules of engagement before you can formulate an effective battle strategy.”

-

"They don’t feel as inclined to show me my place if they see me where they think I ought to be."

-

“Do you have any idea how people will talk?”

"They’ll talk regardless, Theod. Let’s give them something to say.”

“Well,” I said, bending down to pick up Kasaqua because she’d started pawing at the hem of my skirt, “it’s not too late to start being fairer.”

This book has already made me incredibly angry for so many injustices that have occurred & continue to occur. Things I knew but reading them in this manner hits differently, I guess. The refusal to even use Anequs's name as she requested particularly bothers me. Names matter

"There were so many infuriating little presuppositions that everyone made—things that they all knew and expected without it being expressly stated—and no one bothered to explain them to me, who had no way of knowing them."

-

“…have you ever met any other nackies before?”

“I have been privileged to live among an enlightened people for all of my life. I’ve been further privileged to be allowed to come and study..."

"It seemed that the only reason to speak, in polite Anglish society, was to please and praise others."

---

“It’s so wonderful of you and Karina to take in these savage children and see to their proper education, Elsie..."

---

“Did you intend to imply that I’m incapable of reading?”

"Well, it is to be presumed. Your people had no knowledge of written language before it was introduced to them by scholars..."

“Well… If you asked me personally to assist you w/something, that wouldn’t be remiss. If you had emergency mending that needed doing or something like that..."

“Well then, if that’s the case…I may have a sudden emergency tomorrow..."

This book is going to break me, isn't it? But I am so here for it. Loving the world. The dragons!!

If you're a fan of romance that legit makes you laugh, check this one out. I've snorted, laughed, even cackled and I'm only 1/4 of the way through. There's also a murder mystery situation.

SO many amazing dialogue lines that are awkwardly hilarious. 'Meep meep!'

If you think sex lines (or SW in general) are amoral, this may not be the book for you.

Ok it's super early but I'm loving this book. The murder investigation part reminds me vaguely of the M*ndfuck series, even though it's not the same at all.

The banter 😂

“Hi. This is Detective Dominic Dunn with the Metro Nashville PD... this number is involved in an active police investigation.”

“Oh nooo,” she says slowly, flattening her voice into a weird whisper. “Have I been a bad girl, Detective?”

“Memories that bind you may be the ones that break you,”

“A true man shows his feelings. He doesn’t push them down, bottle them away. He lets himself feel, and feel everything. Crying certainly doesn’t make you any less of a man, all right?..."

I'm so here for this way of thinking

"If you show someone your strength and they choose to be threatened by it, the weakness is theirs alone.”

I think I'm in for a world of visceral heartbreak, hopefully with healing afterwards.

“I know I am no fighter. I know I have no skill on horseback or with a blade.” He raised his tortured pale eyes to mine and gave me his saddest smile yet. “And yet I would have competed, if I were allowed to, for even the smallest chance of winning you as my bride.”

"I resented my Fate beyond anything I had yet known. But without it, without the man who would validate me in the eyes of all good society, there was no hope for me... Maybe there would be some good I could do with the powers it granted me, even as it took away my choices."

"The lesser of two evils is still evil."

Ok, so if you take the show Lost and combine it with something like the Hunger Games, that's kinda what this book is like so far. There was a more apt than book/show I thought of than Hunger Games but I can't remember what it was now. 😆