ThatBookish_deviant > Recent Status Updates

“Its purpose is beyond my simple brain.”—Princess Cymoril

Cymoril’s been kidnapped, stripped, drugged, branded, groped, and it’s implied raped— by her brother and his Captain. While waiting around for Elric to come rescue her, she espouses the belief quoted above. Oh, and she’s the only woman in the story thus far. Reading classic fantasy is new to me and yikes, what a boys club it is.

“My family knows that their patriarch has wisdom beyond their own.”

“This is what I love about you Hazel, always so obedient and cheerful.”

“The gods care little for the follies of men. But I care, for without exposing such folly, superstition and prejudice make a mockery of justice. Let the gods judge me all they will; let me be the judge of other mortals.” p138

“Men of mean spirit and weak mind are easily swayed by the Riftborn. The Riftborn scratch at the veil between the worlds always. Poking and prodding, looking for ingress. And when the veil thins, they corrupt everything. Men are oftentimes too weak to resist the influence of the Rift.”

“Lasagne is a hot sarcophagus of deliciousness.”

“He dreamt of ripping people’s heads apart and bathing in an enormous vat of their blood. He dreamt of burning, immolating his physical form with whale oil and pleasuring himself in the flames.” Join the club 😂
Listening to the audiobook this time around. Nathaniel Priestley’s performance is phenomenal while Zoe Mills is borderline insufferable. 😣

“Your city is a madness.” p51

“Fola had never been a particularly linear thinker - she blamed a great deal of her repeated failures with the research board on her inability to explicitly connect the dots of her ideas. Her thought process was more holistic, like a spell.”

This novel is essentially an inverted version of Kirsten King’s book cover for ‘A Good Person.’ It appears that Howarth’s version was published first but how does this even happen? The publisher art departments are getting lazy.

“You must understand, my lady, that I am completely insane, and I have made it my goal to murder or convert every last Nemanist in the city.”- von Oldenburg
“Apologies, my lord; I didn’t catch that.”
😆

“Gods’ blood and fuck, think on it,”
Oh, how I missed Count Lamprecht von Oldenburg’s eloquent way with words. 🤭

“History was a great churn….in which kings, queens, countries, and castles were in continuous chaotic motion, swelling their borders, swallowing their neighbors, dying of indigestion.”

“All of them were broken in some way or other. If they hadn’t been when they arrived, after three years they were more fracture than flesh. That seemed to be the Academy’s recipe: grind them down and build something new from the pieces.”

“Choose me as your weapon at your own peril. I cut both ways. I cut always.”

I never got around to reading Mia Ballard’s ‘Shy Girl’ but kinda wish I had. It’s crazy that a top 5 publisher like Hachette “unknowingly” published an AI-written novel. Like, there weren’t any red flags for these experienced agents and editors? To any Goodreads friends who read it, would love to see your input.

“Her hair looks like it’s about to self-immolate, a bundle of twigs that huddles together the second before the fire is lit.”

Reread in advance of my most anticipated book so far in 2026, ‘Steel Gods.’ Just noticed that Ch 1 begins w/ a quote from ‘Chun Parsifal’s The Infinite State’. Swan’s publishing a sci-fi novel, ‘The Infinite State’ this August. Does anyone know if his new Decurian Saga takes place in the same world of The Great Silence & Empire of The Wolf trilogies?

“Love tears open like a wound that rots and bubbles.”

“It lays eggs of sheer horror deep inside you, and you can feel them hatching, growing, their burgeoning new life trapping your nerves against the bone.”

“The trick to meditation was to let the mind sit in a quiet, soft place full of ease and warmth. Marghe imagined that she was curled up, not under a piece of skin covered in blood-smeared snow in the middle of a blizzard, but on the mauve and green rug that lay in front of her fireplace in Whales.”

“The gate was open at this entrance, and the boatmen steered them out of the current and into the canal that fed into the guts of the city like an architectural cunt.” Jesse Bullington’s prose, so very demure. 🤭

Rereading for context prior to first read of Wide Sargasso Sea.

“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.” 💜