Svetlana's Reads and Views

Name of Book: How to become the dark Lord and die trying  Author: Django Wexler  ISBN: 9780316392204 Publisher: Orbit Part of a Series: Dark Lord Davi  Type of book: comedy, satire, fantasy, adventure, flipping the fantasy tropes, power of evil vs good, quest, humans vs other humanoids, mastermind  Year it was published: 2024  Summary: Groundhog Day meets Guardians of the Galaxy in Django Wexler’s laugh-out-loud fantasy tale about a young woman who, tired of defending humanity from the Dark Lord, decides to become the Dark Lord herself. Davi has done this all before. She’s tried to be the hero and take down the all-powerful Dark Lord. A hundred times she’s rallied humanity and made the final charge. But the time loop always gets her in the end. Sometimes she’s killed quickly. Sometimes it takes a while. But she’s been defeated every time. This time? She’s done being the hero and done being stuck in this endless time loop. If the Dark Lord al...

Name of Book: The Tower of fools Author: Andrzej Sapkowski  ISBN: 9780316423694 Publisher: Orbit  Part of a Series: the hussite trilogy   Type of book: Poland, 1420s, fantasy, foiled love, family, reputation, religion, Latin tongue, church, anachronistic women, wealth, middle class  Year it was published: 2020 ( original 2002)  Summary: Reinmar of Bielawa, sometimes known as Reynevan, is a doctor, a magician and, according to some, a charlatan. And when a thoughtless indiscretion finds him caught in the crosshairs of powerful noble family, he is forced to flee his home. But once he passes beyond the city borders, he finds that there are dangers ahead as well as behind. Strange mystical forces are gathering in the shadows. And pursued not only by the affronted Stercza brothers, bent on vengeance, but also by the Holy Inquisition, Reynevan finds himself in the Narrenturm, the Tower of Fools. The Tower is an asylum for the mad, or for those who...

Name of Book: these deathless shores  Author: p.h. low  ISBN: 9780316569200 Publisher: orbit Type of book: dark, Asian Peter Pan retelling, expectations, captain hook side, island, anorexia, romance, drug use and dependency, murders, real world vs Neverland, fantasy   Year it was published: 2024  Summary: Jordan has gotten good at pretending. On an Island where boys fly and fight pirates, but girls can only be mothers, Jordan's shaved head and false swagger are the only things keeping her adopted crew of Lost Boys from forcing her into a role she has never wanted. When she gets her first period, she's exposed and thrown back Outside—into a world where grown-ups die slowly in offices, flight is a fantasy, and withdrawal from the Island’s magical Dust slowly strips its afflicted of their dignity. To Jordan, it’s a fate worse than death. Nine years later, when the drug she has been using to medicate her withdrawal begins to show its fatal final symptom...

Title of the book: The Burning Earth; A history  Author: Sunil Amrith  Publisher: W.W. Norton  Publishing Date: 2024  ISBN: 978-1-324-00718-0 Summary: A brilliant, paradigm-shifting global history of how humanity has reshaped the planet, and the planet has shaped human history, over the last 500 years. Ever since innovations in agriculture vastly expanded production of food, our remarkable achievements in reshaping nature have allowed billions of humans to exist and thrive. Yet every technological innovation has also empowered us to exploit each other and the planet with devastating brutality. In this magisterial book, historian Sunil Amrith twins the stories of environment and Empire, genocide and eco-cide, human freedom and planetary costs. His environmental lens provides an essential new way of understanding war as massive reshaping of the earth through global mobilizations of natural resources, including humans; and explains patterns of migration as a...