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Damara ✨

@damarvelousreader

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CR: The Jasad Crown by Sara Hashem
Fantasy ⚔️ 🧚🏽‍♀️ | Sci-Fi 🧪🛸| Horror 🫣
ARC Reviewer & Book Enthusiast 💜
🏳️‍🌈♉️📚🇵🇸

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Didn’t have the energy to do a collage carousel this time, but here is my October line up! Surprisingly my TBR is decidedly less spooky than it was last year, but it’s definitely in tune with what I’ve found myself really enjoying lately genre-wide. I’ve already finished The Jasad Heir in record time (LOVED IT) and have already started The Jasad Crown which is shaping up to be even better than its predecessor. I’ve also got a horror/dark fantasy anthology, a highly anticipated romantasy sequel, and an epic fantasy that comes highly recommended by @literaturelylou I can’t wait to start!

What are you reading this October?

#books #bookworm #bookstack #tbr #octoberreads by @damarvelousreader

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11 days ago

With just a little under a month until its release, I’d like to thank @tordotcompub and @netgalley for access to an advance digital copy of The Slantwise Histories by @alix.e.harrow , and to the author herself for blessing me with yet another phenomenal reading experience 💜

My Review:

“When they burn the books and drown the land—when even our gravestones are cracked, dug up, washed away—when they have won—then all we have left is what we remember, and what we whisper to one another.” — “The Last Archive”

There is an expectation, I think, that at a certain age beyond what society dictates as childhood, one must dispense with fanciful notions of magic, abandon all yearning for whimsy and grand adventure, and replace them with a strict adherence to *History and *Fact that is widely accepted, but not widely accepting of any questions or amendments. Fairytales and folklore invite questions about the world and its workings, encourage the reader to look beyond what they can (or have been told to) see, and teach lessons that take us to entirely new realities. The Slantwise Histories is a phenomenal collection that walks the path alongside the greatest folktales of humanity, telling grand and uniquely human stories of love, transformation, sacrifice, grief, and connection, while reminding us that our history and our legends are not independent of each other. Rather, history is all the ways in which we love and yearn, scream and sob, fight and escape, create and destroy. And how we tell those stories, how we pass them down generation after generation, how we remember and keep remembering long after the writing on the walls has faded and the dead outnumber the living…well, that there is what is truly legendary.

Favorites from the collection:
• A Witch’s Guide to Escape: A Practical Compendium of Portal Fantasies
• The Knight and the Butcherbird
• The Last Archive

#books #bookreview #readersofinstagram #alixeharrow #theslantwisehistories by @damarvelousreader

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a month ago

Happy pub day to one of my most anticipated sequels!!! Ugh, I’m soooo happy to be back in the Stonewater Kingdom universe, and getting to see Sybil, Rory, and my sweet baby gargoyle Bartholomew 🥹 just know that if you invite me to anything this week, no I can’t make it, and this is why lol

#books #booksbooksbooks #newbookrelease #theknightandthemoth #theknaveandthemoon by @damarvelousreader

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2 months ago

Got not one, but TWO special surprises as August comes to a close from @harpervoyagerus in the mail!

Forward all future mail to the Wandering Inn and the kingdom of Ys-below, for that is where I shall be.

#books #booksbooksbooks #bookmail #fantasybooks #harpervoyager

The term LitRPG wasn’t even in my vocabulary until about a year ago when I was talking with friend about South of Midnight and how I wished it was a book so I could read the story, because I’m not really a video game person. However, I became really intrigued by the idea of LitRPG as a genre because it affords people like me, who are more comfortable being an observer rather than a participant, to finally engage with these cool worlds and storylines in a way that appeals to my brain. Plus this is one of the coolest book PR packages I’ve ever gotten, and can’t wait to visit The Wandering Inn 😊

The girl in me who was raised on H2O: Just Add Water, Aquamarine, The Little Mermaid, and Barbie: Mermaidia yearns to be whisked away by a beautiful merperson to an undersea kingdom. I shall, alas, settle for simply reading about in this stunning book! by @damarvelousreader

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2 months ago

Upon the four year anniversary of its publication, I present to you all my review of The Spear Cuts Through Water by Simon Jimenez, one of the best novels I feel to ever be written, and no one will ever be able to convince me otherwise. I will think about this book constantly, I will recommend it to everyone, and if I were to take any one book with me to a deserted island for a year, this would be a top contender.

Title: The Spear Cuts Through Water
Author: Simon Jimenez
Genre: Epic fantasy/magical realism
Publisher: @delreybooks
Rating: ♾️/5

#books #booksbooksbooks #bookreview #bookrecommendations #fivestarread by @damarvelousreader

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2 months ago

With just four days until its official release, here is my review of Blood Rising by Markus Redmond:

If Redmond’s Blood Slaves was a raw scream of anguish and rage, then its sequel Blood Rising is the first unsteady inhale that comes afterward: not entirely calm, but with a certain satisfaction that comes from a grand release of pent up emotion. The sophomore novel of the Blood Saga takes place a mere few weeks after the events of the first book, and delves deeper into the political maneuvers and changes in social hierarchy brought about by the Ramangan revolt on the Barrow Plantation. I was so happy to be back with Kwadzo, Gertie, Irene, and Fanna (not so much Rafazi, but I won’t spoil anything), as well as getting to meet new characters and learn new Ramangan lore. I was even quite fascinated by the addition of a very different character perspective in Penelope Knudsen, who (THIS TIME spoiler alert if you haven’t read Blood Slaves) inadvertently became Ramangan herself after ingesting Fanna’s blood and then subsequently killed. Her character was the antithesis of Kwadzo’s, him being formerly enslaved and freely choosing the Blood, while Penelope is a privileged and bigoted white girl who, for all intents and purposes, stole a power not meant for her, with both of them reckoning with their new capabilities in drastically different ways. Outside of this, there were a lot of moving parts that one would expect in the aftermath of such a grand shift in power that I thought Redmond did a great job balancing and keeping the audience engaged, especially with the fewer instances of violent action and gore when compared to the novel’s predecessor. And given where the novel ends (again, no spoilers), I’m excited to see how the wider world of the series is impacted by this alternate turn in history, and what’s in store for those of the Blood.

Thank you to @kensingtonbooks @kensingtoncreatorhq and @netgalley for allowing me early access to this title and to be part of the street team for its release. And to @markusredmond thank you once again for giving us this story and these characters 💜

#books #bookreview #bookstagram #bloodrising #newbookrelease by @damarvelousreader

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2 months ago

✨Boston Trip Book Haul✨

I had sooooo much fun exploring bookstores in and around the Boston area, the city truly is a haven for literature lovers. I saw so many people reading on the bus, the train, in the park, at restaurants and cafes, walking down the street, and one person memorably with their book out while sitting in traffic (they were the driver btw lol) plus the city itself is so nice, full of beautiful buildings and lots of things to do, and even BIGGER PLUS: it doesn’t smell bad AT ALL. I’m seriously considering making this a yearly tradition, and wanna go with friends or family next time 😊

#books #bookstagram #booklover #bookhaul #booksbooksbooks by @damarvelousreader

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2 months ago

Today found me at a very Adam Parrish time in my life 🐦‍⬛ iykyk

#books #bookstagram #theravenboys #booksbooksbooks #adamparrish taken in Harvard University by @damarvelousreader

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2 months ago

There would’ve been more photos but I was laughing too much to hold the phone steady lol

@brooklinebooksmith truly was the land of dreams today getting to see @olivieblake and @roshanichokshi in person, hearing some hysterical tales of troublesome groundhogs, fear (or lack there of) of Oedipal complexes in your children (wild sentence to type), and the woes of not possessing white woman calves, as well as discussions of want, desire, and understanding the myth making you are doing in being alive (thank you for that particular quote Ms. Chokshi 💜)

Also @torbooks thank you for letting our girl win the title war, can’t wait to finally see Newphoria!

#books #booklover #authortalk #olivieblake #dreamland by @damarvelousreader

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2 months ago

I love: books, Renee Rapp, dumplings, and (contrary to the song title) Boston 💜

#books #bookstagram #photodump #bookishtrip #boston taken in Boston, Massachusetts by @damarvelousreader

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2 months ago

Enjoy this mini photoshoot I did (while I should’ve been packing lol) in the morning sun featuring my current read, some recent book purchases from Pango and B&N, and new book mail from @harpervoyagerus 😁

Off to Boston I go! Be prepared for a ton of photos (mostly of more books lol)

#books #bookstagram #bookhaul #fantasybooks #bookmail by @damarvelousreader

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2 months ago

I feel like there’s nothing more quintessentially fall than sitting by the window with a mug in hand, creating a list of books to curl up with as autumn finally arrives 😌🍁🍂

#books #booksbooksbooks #booklover #tbr #autumnreads

I love reimaginings of all the fairytales and folktales I grew up fascinated with, as well as exploring new ones from different cultures. There’s a reason these stories have survived hundreds and even thousands of years from the times of oral tradition until now. The things that can be learned from them are timeless and profound, and I always walk away from reading them having been changed in some way.

#fairytaleretelling

My idea of a good time will always be reading books that explore the untold or seldom told stories of female figures from myth and how in telling these stories it places the impacts of past and current societal structure upon women side by side to show us just how far or not far we’ve come.

#mythology #greekmythology #mythretelling

The aesthetics of dark academia are certainly provocative, but I will always stand by the statement that dark academia as a genre is so much more than moody libraries, dark cobblestones, and plaid skirts paired with Oxfords and tortoise shell glasses. The critique of the academic sphere and how the pursuit of knowledge is connected to privilege and power should never be pushed to the wayside for the sake of a “vibe”. I’m so very curious to see what each of these books has to add to the conversation.

#darkacademia #darkacademiabooks

This one is simple: I like expansive and imaginative worlds written by and/or centered around women capable of toppling regimes and going toe to toe with powerful deities and majestic creatures of lore. Bonus points if there’s a love story with a slooooooow burn 😌

#fantasy #fantasybooks #highfantasy

The caption for the dark academia slide also applies here. Actual intersectional critique of current societal structures and laws instead of just having a horrible world as a backdrop to a romance with shallow tension just for the sake of “struggle”.

#dystopian #dystopianfiction #dystopianbooks

To clarify from the previous caption, there’s absolut by @damarvelousreader

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