ThatBookish_deviant > Recent Status Updates

“She was pleased the monastery would continue. Una wasn’t interested in God, or the worlds beyond this one, but she did like singing and she liked men not killing people.”

“The sand of his mind beach was rich in words, the mead of Odin flowed in his breast. Grimur could forge tongue swords to cut open the skin of the world.”
I’ll take ‘mind-beach’ over ‘thought-cage’ for a change! IYKYK 😂

“ Beyond, the night was lingering. How curious it was, she thought, that some nights - for no reason you could put your finger on- something about the darkness made your hackles rise. Broomstick nights, her granny used to call them.”

“He wondered how much kinder all humanity would be if any day the rich and powerful might find themselves the lowest of the low, and those they used to trample suddenly in charge.”

“Hammershy squats on the far chair like a rookery gargoyle, thighs wide and hands clasped, the reek of the forges rolling off him, burnt hair and salver’s grease.” With prose so evocative, one can practically smell the characters; whether you want to or not!

“Catherine had briefly wondered, as all women do their first time alone with a man, if he was going to murder her. The thought passed.”

“She recognized in herself a natural distaste for people which was both intellectual and physical.”

“Above the looped entrails of her port, the Free City of Hesper squats like a vulture on a fresh kill. The talons of her grey towers spear into the twitching body of the city, their massive flanks writhing with rope and men.” 💜

“The sort of woman who wears ladylike pantyliners every day of the month, as if there’s nothing her body secrets that she doesn’t think vile enough to be captured in cotton wool, wrapped in paper bags and thrust far, far down at the bottom of the waste paper basket. I’ve been in the staff toilet after her and I know.”
This made me laugh so hard! We all know that person.

Some audiobook narrators have such off putting voices, I’ll pass on the audio if I see them listed as readers. I’m looking at you, Xe Sands! I find her cadence and delivery just really bizarre.

Chapter 3-Interlude 5. THIS is why I enjoy reading books I know nothing about! I assumed this was a cozy little book about nature. Certainly wasn’t expecting what unfolds in Alice and Mary’s story. I’m absolutely smitten, this is so good!!!💗

This is the second trilogy I’ve read by RJ Barker in which the lead male character is bisexual, something that’s not often done in high fantasy that’s written by men who are married to women. More of this, please!

Rereading because it’s fucking fabulous and once is simply not enough.

“I descend to the dining room for breakfast with the masters, observing from my end of the table as they exchange small cruelties. At eight thirty sharp breakfast is removed, as is my will to live.” 😂

Rereading because the audiobook hindered my enjoyment and appreciation the first time around. Barker’s Tide Child/Bone Ship trilogy was one of my favorite reads of 2025, this deserves another shot.

“This is insane,” Volga protests with wide eyes. “He hid in a leviathan, Darrow—“

“Is apparently a werewolf who eats warlords and shits nightmares. But he likes me. He trusts me. I should be nothing to him. A rat. But he saw my worth. Ephraim, Ragnar, Fa. Don’t pin it on all the daddies. You face the stains you put on your hands. This is it. Who are you, Volga?” -Lyria

Wish so badly that I could see the Marie Antoinette Style exhibiton in person. Since that’s not happening, this book’s the next best thing! The Victoria & Albert Museum have done a phenomenal job and this book is absolutely stunning.😍

“You have the cameras for his wife? Prime. Castrate him. Fuck him bloody in the ravine. Before you slit his throat, feed him his cock.” The Fear Knight sits in the sand to watch them rape me as Heliopolis falls. The slaveknights toss me to the ground and shove my face in the sand as the rest watch.
-This is what happens when Darrow brings an Iron Rain without Sevro?! He needs to be rescued by The Goblin, stat!

“Pandora was a fiction, written by men, to blame the miseries of the world on women.”

I am the walking dead. Woe to those who cross my shadow. -Darrow

Sevro has Mickey ‘The Carver’ replace his eyes with Darrow’s old red eyes to “bring them closer together” & it’s the most weirdly endearing, homoerotic act in the Red Rising saga. Ephraim & Trigg’s marriage ain’t got nothing on The Goblin & Reaper’s Howler bromance!
“I told him it was odd,” Ragnar says.
“Do you want the eyes back?” Sevro asks, suddenly worried. “I can give them back.”

“A savage’s miscellany of psychopaths and hooligans, my pack is a scatter mash of rejects.” -Darrow

“They are all at it, constantly, gluey with fucking; dripping with fucking. This is a Paradise of Penises; a Cockaigne of Cunts. Marriage is a political arrangement, quite separate from love, and not to enter into extramarital affairs a little gauche.” -On the court of Louis XIV at Versailles.

First time reading Hill and I kept musing over how similar his writing style is to Stephen King. Halfway through the book I Google pics of him and I’m like, wow he really looks like a young Stephen King. Days later I browse his Goodreads reviews and clearly I’m slow at putting two and two together! 😂

Reread! Because when you’re sick, grumpy, and new books aren’t hitting right, you go back to your favorites for inspiration.

“There was nothing so pitiful, so utterly helpless as old women—if they were ugly enough or poor enough; nobody in such need of succour.”

“When women laugh and donkeys bray, that there’s the devil having his say. When the devil wanted to learn, to women he will turn.”

“We never talked about the nights, because he was ashamed of the nights. I learned to seek out the tickles. I learned to position myself in such a way that his coming and going rubbed me where it set me aflame. I could scarcely manage to abide the pleasure in silence. To grind my teeth together hard when the wolf-fart puffball exploded inside me.” A Catalan to English translation issue? Doubtful. Sola is bizarre.

“It done emptied me out like a dunderhead, all that heeheeheehee and hahahaha, and my noggin went clong-clong.” 😂 Say what?

“She conceived me. I took shape like an infant, not in her body, but in her heart, growing from her imagination until I was bold enough to climb out of the page and into your mind. Now Mary is the ghost whose bones have turned to dust and it is I who live on.”

“Her terror was transformed into a burning itch of malevolence.”
Ohh, this one’s fun. There’s plague, vampires, demons AND phosphorescent magical mushrooms!🧛🏻‍♀️