Title: G.
Author: John Berger
Genre: Historical Fiction
Year: 1972
G. is the story of a modern Don Juan, an account of a young man’s sexual career during the first years of the last century, on the backdrop of a turbulent period in Italian history.
Through each woman he seduces, G. reveals the truth of the libertine’s condition: his impossibility to find contentedness, and his growing loneliness.
Title: The Starless Sea
Author: Erin Morgenstern
Genre: Fantasy
Year: 2019
Far beneath the surface of the earth, the Starless Sea awaits those who can open the right doors. Its harbours are home to a labyrinthine series of tunnels connecting all kinds of rooms, all of them filled with stories waiting to be found.
When Zachary finds an event from his own childhood written in an old, mysterious book from his campus library, he is determined to find out what it means. The symbols on the spine of the book – a bee, a key, and a sword – lead him to two fascinating strangers: Mirabel, a pink-haired painter, and Dorian, a man with a voice perfect for storytelling.
Continue reading The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern
Title: The Time of Contempt
Series: The Witcher #2
Author: Andrzej Sapkowski
Genre: Fantasy
Year: 1995
Yennefer and Ciri are travelling toward the Wizard’s Council, while Geralt is trying to figure out who are the people still chasing Ciri even after word has spread that the Lion Cub of Cintra has died.
War ravages the country, alliances shift and change, and when a coup threatens the Wizard’s Guild our protagonists are split apart, left for dead… or lost.
Title: Hall of Smoke
Author: H.M. Long
Genre: Fantasy
Year: 2021
Hessa is an Eangi, a warrior priestess of Eang, the goddess of war. Exiled from her temple for failing to kill a man as instructed by her goddess, she is trying to atone for her sin when her village is razed by the enemy. As the last priestess alive she vows to protect her people while they are taken into slavery, and win back her goddess’s favour, so that she can be reunited with her loved ones in the High Halls after death.
But the only way to do that is to find the man she was supposed to kill and complete the task the goddess has assigned to her.
Travelling in a world torn by invaders to the south and refugees from the north, she navigates unlikely friends and deceitful deities, old gods and new ones, all vying for power. With her faith wavering, Hessa will realise that far more than her place in the High Halls is at stake; ancient beings are stirring, ready to walk the earth once more.
Continue reading Hall of Smoke by H.M. Long
Title: Remote Control
Author: Nnedi Okorafor
Genre: Science Fiction
Year: 2021
In Sankofa’s years on the road, she’d learned that people were complicated. They wore masks and guises to protect or hide their real selves. They reinvented themselves. They destroyed themselves. They built on themselves.
The day Fatima forgot her name, everyone in her town died a mysterious death. Since then she’s been known with the name Sankofa, a name that doesn’t mean anything to anyone but her.
Everywhere she goes, death follows; it’s not by chance that rumours say death adopted her. Followed by her fox companion, she walks on, searching for the one thing that started it all, in the hopes of understanding what happened to her and all the people she loved.
Title: The Eye of the World
Series: The Wheel of Time #1
Author: Robert Jordan
Genre: Fantasy
Year: 1990
The Wheel of Time turns and Ages come and go, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth returns again. In the Third Age, and Age of Prophecy, the World and Time themselves hang in the balance. What was, what will be, and what is, may yet fall under the Shadow.
Rand Al’Thor knows little of the world outside of the Two Rivers, where he tends sheep with his father Tam. Until the eve of the Winternight Festival, when Trollocs and Fades attack his village, and he’s forced to leave together with his closest friends in a flight that might save their lives, or deliver them into the clutches of a different kind of danger.
Continue reading The Eye of the World by Robert Jordan
Title: In a Free State
Author: V.S. Naipaul
Genre: Fiction
Year: 1971
A nameless traveller who faces human cruelty on his way to Egypt; an Indian immigrant searching for freedom in Washington; a West Indian man sacrificing everything for his little brother; and two English people travelling through an unnamed African country on the cusp of revolution.
In a Free State is a cynic exploration of the meaning of freedom, belonging, alienation, and the prize of colonialism.
Continue reading Reading the Booker Prize winners (4): In a Free State by V.S. Naipaul
Title: The Liar’s Key
Series: The Red Queen’s War #2
Author: Mark Lawrence
Genre: Fantasy
Year: 2015
Prince Jalan Kendeth has spent the winter in the north, hiding from the cold – and from the husbands of his conquests, until the day comes when he is forced to leave and embarks in a new journey with Snorri, this time heading south – music to Jalan’s ears, already dreaming of home and all its comforts.
But comfort is the last thing on Snorri’s mind. Now in possession of Loki’s key, he only needs one more thing before he can bring back his wife and children: to find death’s door, and open it.
But their enemies have eyes on the key, and they won’t make his search easy.
Title: The Year of the Witching
Series: Bethel #1
Author: Alexis Henderson
Genre: Fantasy
Year: 2020
Blood. Blight. Darkness. Slaughter.
Immanuelle Moore only wants to be a normal young woman in Bethel’s society and follow Protocol and the Prophet’s word just like anyone else, but she has always been frowned upon for being the result of a union between her mother and an outsider.
When a mishap lures her into the dark forest that surrounds Bethel, she encounters the spirits of four witches that were slain on those grounds by the first Prophet, and they bestow a gift on her: her own mother’s diary.
Immanuelle sets to reading her mother’s words, but what begins as the diary of a young woman in love soon turns to something darker and worrisome. Immanuelle doesn’t understand everything, but one thing is clear: if she wants to save Bethel, she needs to get to the bottom of what happened before she was born.
Title: The Seep
Author: Chana Porter
Genre: Science Fiction
Year: 2020
It’s been twenty years since the alien entity called the Seep infiltrated human society. In the Seep everyone and everything is connected: no more capitalism, wars, diseases, even death. The Seep allows everyone to be who and what they want to be: it just wants humanity to be happy and content.
Trina was happy as well, until the day her wife Deeba started dreaming of being a baby again, and finally decided to move on to this new existence without her. Heartbroken, Trina embarks in an unexpected quest, a desperate attempt to overcome her grief and find a new purpose in life.
Continue reading The Seep by Chana Porter
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