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Let’s Talk Tropes: Happily Ever Afters
I’m not sure when happy endings fell out of fashion, but I do know that present-day narratives generally strive for a distorted concept of realism where the grittier and darker it is, the more “realistic” it is. At the very least, this is the case for fantasy novels, so much so that the concept of…
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Setting Study: Scythe and Utopias
In the time since The Hunger Games, young adult literature has been mesmerized with dystopias. Neal Shusterman tries to take dystopia back to its more perfect, idealistic roots with the creation of Scythe. Of course, the nature of stories require conflict, and utopias, by definition, shouldn’t, which means that today we’re going to be looking…
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My Spring Book Haul
Now that we’re well and truly out of the last reading challenge, with the next one not scheduled until September, I thought I’d share what books I’ve got queued up on my reading shelf. And there’s quite a few, because when it comes to Barnes & Noble, I have no restraint. Right now, I’m reading…
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Stories Within Stories: A Consideration of Novel Structure (Cloud Atlas, Starless Sea, If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler)
Stories are funny things. Character, setting, and plot get all twisted together to create something magical, capable of transporting the reader out of the present and into some fictional place of curious make-believe. It’s a fickle process, too. Books that shouldn’t work can sometimes turn out to be biggest craze of the season. Other times,…
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Romance Reading Challenge Wrap-Up
Romance. A genre filled with characters chasing after that ever-elusive thing called love, filled with cheesy lines and instalove and vain attempts to rewrite destinies. Or is it? I should start with a bit of a disclaimer, I suppose. This is a blog dedicated to the fantasy genre, most especially those written for the older…
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Rapid Book Review: Mistborn and the Romance Reading Challenge
Welcome! We have six books to review today so I’m going to try to keep each of them brief. But for those of you who don’t know, I decided to do a reading challenge in February with books that were primarily about romance. Now, this isn’t my wrap-up post for that; that’s going to come…
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15 Fantasy Books For The Curious Reader
Most of my regulars on the blog are presumably avid fantasy readers like myself, but my romance reading challenge has made me wonder what books I might recommend for those who aren’t. After all, fantasy can certainly be an intimidating genre to step into. It’s incredibly difficult to find standalone novels, or to find books…
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Setting Study: Mistborn’s The Final Empire
The second novel of Brandon Sanderson’s career, The Final Empire, is a high fantasy book taking place in the titular Final Empire, led by the tyrannous, immortal Lord Ruler. Rebellions of the past have always failed, but rebellions of the past never had Kelsier, Vin, or their team of Mistings and Mistborn. As usual, these…
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Katie Bachelder 