Tag: fantasy

Rosie | Little Bird Book Blog1 Comment

Blog Tour – Fae Child by Jane-Holly Meissner

Welcome to my stop on the Fae Child blog tour! Huge thanks to Random Things Tours for giving me the opportunity to take part in this! I was provided a copy of the novel in exchange for an honest review. 

Publisher: Inkshares
Publication Date: 15/12/2020
Length: 220 pages
Genre: Fantasy | Middle Grade

CW: n/a

Blackwells.co.uk

When eight-year-old Abbie Brown discovers a quiet pool of water while wandering through the woods behind her Oregon home, she wades out into it and discovers she’s not alone. A wild-haired boy in green stares at her from the other side of the water. Mesmerized, Abbie reaches down to him and is yanked underwater.

She emerges on the other side as an unwelcome visitor to the Otherworld, the land of the Fae, with only the boy Foster to guide her. Back in Oregon, a changeling lookalike has taken her place, bonding with her mother while her father, hiding a secret of his own, views the “girl” with suspicion.

In the courts of the Fae a truce has long been in place between Winter and Summer. What havoc might a human child wreak in the careful machinations of beings older than time? And to what lengths will Abbie’s father go to get her back? 

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Rosie | Little Bird Book Blog3 Comments

Thoughtful Thursday – How Video Games Influenced my Reading Habits and Vice Versa

Continuing with the video game theme of this month with the launch of the PlayStation 5, I’ve been thinking a lot about how video games have actually influenced the kind of books I read, and how reading influences the types of games that I play. Whilst opinions have changed somewhat in recent years, some people still believe it is the case that you either enjoy reading or enjoy playing video games. That these two activities are very different and one is allegedly superior to the other. However, I believe the two not only go hand-in-hand but can influence how you consume each media. 

I’ve been an avid reader and gamer since I was a child and would spend a lot of time doing both. As you can tell, both things have stayed with me my whole life and are still huge passions of mine. Like a lot of gamers my age, I started with Nintendo and Mario (more specifically a SNES and Super Mario All-Stars). I continued with platformers for quite some time, although Spyro: Year of the Dragon became my favourite title when I eventually moved to 3D gaming on the PS1. It wasn’t until university, and treating myself to a PS4 that I began to notice how the two could influence each other and how far my tastes had come since I first started reading and gaming. 

At university I learned about Roland Barthes’ theory The Death of the Author in which he discusses the idea that consuming a text is far more of an active process than passive. This places much more importance on those who consume the texts rather than those who write them. This idea has really stuck with me since and this, coupled with the exposure I had to different genres and themes in novels that I hadn’t come across before, I began to move away from platformers (but not entirely) and started to play more RPG and story-based games. Games where the plots are complex and well developed and have a cast of characters to match. I found that I became more drawn to open-world, story/character driven titles as these allowed me to explore the story at my own pace instead of being forced into a chronological narrative. 

To have slightly more freedom over the direction you want to see the story take (even if it doesn’t have a huge impact on the ending) makes me feel much more connected to the story and the characters. Novels are able to make me connect the same way, although they are a fixed narrative with no ability to deviate from it, they provide such detail and complex plot that you are able to become attached to the story and the characters. This is something that you don’t get in classic platformers or battle royale games etc. I still play these and find them fun, but they don’t leave as much of a lasting impression on me as a good single-player campaign game. 

Whilst it may seem that my love of novels and the idea of readers having more power over a text than originally thought, the genres of games that I play also influences the types of genres that I read. As I began to play more and more open-world RPG type games, I found that I was drawn to the fantasy elements in the games more than anything else (Dragon Age: Inquisition rather than Grand Theft Auto V). After graduating from university I was in a reading slump, but even when I did read I would tend to read general fiction or literary fiction. However, the more I began to play fantasy based games, the more I wanted to explore the genre in other ways. 

Up until this point I hadn’t read much fantasy since I was a child. Despite still loving the genre I couldn’t find anything that I could get into or wanted to pick up. As I began to play more fantasy games of different types (high fantasy vs urban fantasy) I started to realise how diverse the genre is, not just in video games but in novels too. This then helped me understand the aspects I enjoyed in fantasy and which elements I didn’t, which made it much easier to navigate the genre and find fantasy novels that I was genuinely interested in reading. I’m much more interested in high fantasy and magic than I am in fantasy that are war based (although, there are always exceptions to the rule). 

I’m sure that as I continue to play more games and read more books I will find other ways that the two have influenced each other, and get to discover many more amazing games and books because of it!

Are you a gamer as well as a reader? Have you noticed any similarities or influences between the two? Let me know in the comments!

Rosie | Little Bird Book Blog5 Comments

Nevernight by Jay Kristoff

Publisher: Harper Collins
Publication Date: 19/06/2017
Length: 463 pages
Genre: Fantasy

CW: n/a

Blackwells.co.uk

Mia Corvere is only ten years old when she is given her first lesson in death.Destined to destroy empires, the child raised in shadows made a promise on the day she lost everything: to avenge herself on those that shattered her world.

But the chance to strike against such powerful enemies will be fleeting, and Mia must become a weapon without equal. Before she seeks vengeance, she must seek training among the infamous assassins of the Red Church of Itreya.

Inside the Church’s halls, Mia must prove herself against the deadliest of opponents and survive the tutelage of murderers, liars and daemons at the heart of a murder cult.

The Church is no ordinary school. But Mia is no ordinary student.
The Red Church is no ordinary school, but Mia is no ordinary student.
The shadows love her.
And they drink her fear.

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Rosie | Little Bird Book Blog3 Comments

The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern

Publisher: Vintage
Publication Date: 06/08/2020
Length: 512 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction

CW: n/a

Blackwells.co.uk

Far beneath the surface of the earth, upon the shores of the Starless Sea, there is a labyrinthine collection of tunnels and rooms filled with stories. The entryways that lead to this sanctuary are often hidden, sometimes on forest floors, sometimes in private homes, sometimes in plain sight. But those who seek will find. Their doors have been waiting for them.

Zachary Ezra Rawlins is searching for his door, though he does not know it. He follows a silent siren song, an inexplicable knowledge that he is meant for another place. When he discovers a mysterious book in the stacks of his campus library he begins to read, entranced by tales of lovelorn prisoners, lost cities, and nameless acolytes. Suddenly a turn of the page brings Zachary to a story from his own childhood impossibly written in this book that is older than he is.

A bee, a key, and a sword emblazoned on the book lead Zachary to two people who will change the course of his life: Mirabel, a fierce, pink-haired painter, and Dorian, a handsome, barefoot man with shifting alliances. These strangers guide Zachary through masquerade party dances and whispered back room stories to the headquarters of a secret society where doorknobs hang from ribbons, and finally through a door conjured from paint to the place he has always yearned for. Amid twisting tunnels filled with books, gilded ballrooms, and wine-dark shores Zachary falls into an intoxicating world soaked in romance and mystery. But a battle is raging over the fate of this place and though there are those who would willingly sacrifice everything to protect it, there are just as many intent on its destruction. As Zachary, Mirabel, and Dorian venture deeper into the space and its histories and myths, searching for answers and each other, a timeless love story unspools, casting a spell of pirates, painters, lovers, liars, and ships that sail upon a Starless Sea. 

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Rosie | Little Bird Book Blog3 Comments

The Binding by Bridget Collins

Publisher: The Borough Press
Publication Date: 10/01/2019
Length: 437 pages
Genre: Fantasy

CW: n/a

Blackwells.co.uk

Books are dangerous things in Collins’s alternate universe, a place vaguely reminiscent of 19th-century England. It’s a world in which people visit book binders to rid themselves of painful or treacherous memories. Once their stories have been told and are bound between the pages of a book, the slate is wiped clean and their memories lose the power to hurt or haunt them.

After having suffered some sort of mental collapse and no longer able to keep up with his farm chores, Emmett Farmer is sent to the workshop of one such binder to live and work as her apprentice. Leaving behind home and family, Emmett slowly regains his health while learning the binding trade. He is forbidden to enter the locked room where books are stored, so he spends many months marbling end pages, tooling leather book covers, and gilding edges. But his curiosity is piqued by the people who come and go from the inner sanctum, and the arrival of the lordly Lucian Darnay, with whom he senses a connection, changes everything.

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Rosie | Little Bird Book Blog7 Comments

Thoughtful Thursday – Seasonal Reading Patterns

Generally, I’m very much a mood reader but I will also be mindful of ARC publication dates at the same time. I try to read two, quite different books, at the same time but I always go by what I feel like reading otherwise it could end up feeling like a chore. Although, traditionally, summer is the time for ‘beach reads’, I’ve found that I’ve never quite done that myself. Instead, I find that October, or Autumn in general, is the time of year that I do more seasonal reading. 

Autumn is my favourite season, I love that it is getting colder, that there’s more rain and that the days are getting shorter. To me, there’s nothing better than a cool, rainy day and being wrapped up in a giant fluffy blanket with a book and a hot drink. At the beginning of Autumn, in October, I will lean more towards the Gothic reads, or those which are darker or more haunting than my typical reads. Whilst, as I mentioned in my Top Five Friday post this month, I don’t like Halloween I still find myself drawn to more spooky novels, but not necessarily traditional horror novels, as the days grow darker and colder. 

There’s just something about getting cosy with a novel that has the ability to unsettle you, or allows you insight into the darker side of the human mind and imagination, that I adore. Maybe it’s because you can’t escape the Halloween atmosphere in October regardless of whether you like it or not. Maybe it’s because there’s a sense of security of being inside and wrapped up in a huge blanket that makes you feel safe in exploring something darker. Or, maybe, it’s just because so many great dark or spooky reads come out around this time of year. 

As we move through Autumn and onto the cusp of Winter, I find myself reaching for more fantasy novels, YA or otherwise. Unlike Halloween, I love Christmas (although, I may not love Christmas music being on 24/7). It just feels like a more magical time of year with all of the lights and it’s for this reason that I love reading fantasy novels during this season. I loved fantasy growing up and wanting to be in a world with dragons and unicorns, and potentially have one as a pet (because who wouldn’t want dragons at their beck and call?). This love of fantasy changed as I got older, which will need to be the subject or a whole other post entirely, but that love of being in a different world has stayed. 

Now, this doesn’t mean that I don’t read dark reads or fantasy novels at other times of the year. Nor does it mean I only exclusively read these genres at this time of year but I find myself more in the mood for these kinds of reads as this time of year. Whereas in the Spring and Summer, I don’t feel inclined to read a particular genre…

What does Autumn get you in the mood to read? Do you think you’re a seasonal reader? Let me know in the comments!