#shadowshapes

[lanternlightersblog]

#Repost @allonvoirsi • • • • • • C’était tellement une belle journée 🌟that was such a lovely day 🪴 #shadows #shadowsandlight #treestagram #treemagic #lanterns🏮 #shadowspoetry #shadowhunters #shadowstreetlight #shadowsonthewall #shadowshapes #shadowplay #shadowpaintings popyacolour #thepictoriallist #fubiz #basicallyclassic #fatalframes #noicemag #subjectivelyobjective #urbanabstractions #lantern #addicted_to_lanterns #be_one_benchlantern #thetaxcollection #banalmag #poetryofsimplethings #observationmag #mundaaang #treephotography #treelovers #treeworld #Ukrainewillwin #lanternlighter https://www.instagram.com/p/CnoPNerIPFk/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[gilbertkingelisa]

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[melitadala]

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사랑하고 사랑 받는 사람을 가 르쳐 줘서 고마워

[caribeandthebooks]

Shadowshaper by Daniel José Older

Genres: Urban Fantasy, Young Adult Fiction

Setting: USA (New York)

Description: Sierra Santiago was looking forward to a fun summer of making art, hanging out with her friends, and skating around Brooklyn. But then a weird zombie guy crashes the first party of the season. Sierra's near-comatose abuelo begins to say "Lo siento" over and over. And when the graffiti murals in Bed-Stuy start to weep.... Well, something stranger than the usual New York mayhem is going on…Read more on Goodreads/Storygraph

Content Warning information can be found via the above Storygraph link.

[bookcub]

book review: shadowshaper by daniel jose older

characters: i love sierra!! she was full of curiosity and frustration and conflicting emotions and i thought she was delightful. her friends were fun, her family was present, full of realistic contradictions, and key to the story, and the villain was despicable.

plot: a fast paced mystery full of magic. not very complex but it allows the reader to focus more on how the themes are relevant

relationships: my favorite relationships were the friendships in this book. it felt like a group of friends, which was nice. the romance was cute but i wasnt very invested.

writing: the writing was decent enough, and the dialogue was a little stilted sometimes but the audio really made this book shine for me. ankia noni rose has a gorgeous voice that i loved listening to.

themes: the commentary about white people feeling entitled to spaces and ideas that are for people of color and how they take advantage of those communities??? brilliant. the way it ties to the plot and worldbuilding??? brilliant. best part of the book. it ties in well with the worldbuilding too!!

overall rating: 4 stars, including the audio performance. recommended for those who like fast paced ya urban fantasy!!

[gher-bear]

[blackfemmecharacterdependency]

Why don't they sell book covers to the public as an industry? Like. I know that if you can find the artist you could get art from them, but like, they should have like prints of, for example

When you go to purchase a book and they ask if you want that thang hardcover or paperback, electronic or audio, there should ALSO be a selection of book cover prints that you can get.

And have all the versions that they will print available.

Like, maybe you only buy or rent the ebooks, but you can order postcard size covers for your personal collection.

Or you own a version of the book, but you also want a canvas print for your office or something.

I know that there are books out there where you can get that, but I think it oughtta be an available, easy to find, wherever you can find the books sort of thing.

And while I'm thinking about it: model credits...

Like, maybe they're somewhere in the book's acknowledgements, but I don't feel like I've seen them, and they rarely mention them on info websites for the books. Like, something like imdb, but they have models who've rendered their likeness to book covers that weren't drawn. I remember seeing on Instagram the model for A Song of Wraiths and Ruin when they were doing promos, and I've seen the model for The Shadowshaper Cypher (I feel like she had it in her bio at some point), but it isn't like information that I often just see and a lotta times you can't find it in a search.

Mainly though... I would like to be able to order artwork for books I may not necessarily need a physical copy of, or books I have a physical copy of, but enjoy the story or artwork so much that I also want just the art. Does this make sense?

Especially because so many books we have aren't gonna get a series or movies. I would like a bigger industry for book cover art. Or for someone to point me in the direction of it if it's out there like that.

[kellanwrites]

March TBR

For some accountabilty I thought I would post how many books I'm hoping to read in March. I have three books I'm reading for a book club:

Katie Colson's Patreon Hunger Games Readathon: Hunger Games

Katie Colson Patreon Duchess Book Club pick of the Month: Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow

Cari can read book club pick: Legends and Lattes.

I also plan on reading the second book in the Dark and Hollow Star series: A Cruel and Fated Light

The third Cassidy Blake novel Bridge of Souls

The Shadowshaper Trilogy

The Drowned Woods

Strange and Stubborn Endurance

The Dispossessed

Legendary (Book 2 of the Caravale trilogy)

So I'm intending to read Eleven books in the month of March. Considering I'm about to finish two more for February which would bring my total for February to 8, I think I can manage.

Currently Reading: The Song of Achilles

Next up: The house in the Cerulean Sea

[agardenandlibrary]

thanks to @logarithmicpanda I started wondering how many books I read the year they came out. And now, brought to you by my reading spreadsheet, I have the answer. I know you've all been wondering too.

2015

All the Bright Places by Jennifer Niven

Saint Anything by Sarah Dessen

Magonia by Maria Dahvana Headley

Shadowshaper by Daniel Jose Older

A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J Maas

Fairest by Marissa Meyer

The Darkest Part of the Forest by Holly Black

Jeweled Fire by Sharon Shinn

Winter by Marissa Meyer

2016

Pearl by Deirdre Riordan Hall

The Course of Love by Alain de Botton

The Raven King by Maggie Stiefvater

The Rose and the Dagger by Renee Ahdieh

The Princess Saves Herself in This One by Amanda Lovelace

City of Shadows by Pippa DaCosta

We Awaken by Calista Lynne

2017

Prince Orlofsky, Vampire Hunter by Isabelle Glass

Thick as Thieves by Megan Whalen Turner

If We Were Villains by M.L. Rio

2018

Tempest and Slaughter by Tamora Pierce

Dread Nation by Justina Ireland

Failure is an Option by H. Jon Benjamin

Calypso by David Sedaris

2019

Naturally Tan by Tan France

2020

The Faceless Old Woman by Joseph Fink & Jeffrey Cranor

Return of the Thief by Megan Whalen Turner

Harrow the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

2021

The Galaxy and the Ground Within by Becky Chambers

Witness for the Dead by Katherine Addison (x2)

2022 (so far)

The Cartographers by Peng Shepherd

Odder Still by DN Bryn

A River Enchanted by Rebecca Ross

I suspect the reason 2015 has so many is that I joined the book side of tumblr in 2015 and immediately added every popular book at the time to my TBR! I kept it up through 2016 then started moving away from that method of picking books haha.

However, I imagine this year I'll read quite a few more books published this year because I have a Book of the Month subscription and I'm trying to be good and read those pretty soon after I get them.

[kuiperoid]

The Words of a Palmist

[originally posted here]

Given my famous skepticism, it may surprise some to learn that this was not always the case. I was raised Catholic, though I left the church at age twelve. My exact spiritual identity changed over time, but, from about ages sixteen to nineteen, I was swept up in new age-type beliefs. A moment of doubt arose not because I was given much reason to doubt it, but because I was told something I did not want to hear. 

My higher education journey began when I was seventeen and started taking classes at the local community college. My intentions were to transfer to film school and eventually marry my high school sweetheart, my first significant other ever with whom I was currently in a long distance relationship as this person attended college in another state, after we both received our Bachelor’s degrees. I thought I had my entire future figured out. At this community college, being a first year student, I was pretty low on the list to register for classes and only made it into three. One of those three was Physical Anthropology, which I was sure to take with a professor who my sister had seen as something of a mentor before she began viewing him as ridiculous, the way she often became disillusioned with nearly all of those she had once admired. This professor was quite the character. He was a white man who had come from a conservative Catholic background in Ohio, but was radicalized by being forced to serve in the Vietnam War, after which he did not return to the United States for several years. When he returned to the US to study anthropology, his initial speciality was Chinese culture. I cannot recall his many off-topic rants about his life, but I do remember that he at some point turned toward Native American spirituality of the Lakota tradition. With his history of involving himself in so many spiritual traditions across cultures, I would come to wonder some years later if he had served as a partial inspiration for the Dr. Jonathan Wick character in Daniel Jose Older’s Shadowshaper. He was in his seventies and divorced and, according to my sources who knew him outside of school, known for his many dramatic relationships with women in the local Neopagan community. 

A mix of undiagnosed learning disabilities and stress from adapting to a long-distance relationship kept me performing particularly well in any of the classes I took that semester, but this professor’s familiarity with me through my sister meant that this professor remained cordial towards me. I was clearly entertained by his tangents and would spend the breaktimes examining all of the idols in the glass cases around the room. I never got to take his Magic, Witchcraft, and Religion class, which was both his favorite to teach and the one most students of his felt they learned the most from. The most entertaining artifact in his room was one of Darth Vader, standing out among the more conventional religious icons. I never got the spiel on it, but he felt Darth Vader represented something to do with technology gone wrong, fitting with notoriously anarcho-primitivist views. I did at least get the lecture on how he felt everything went wrong once humans developed agriculture. 

With Physical Anthropology being the most conventionally scientific of the three classes that he taught, one might think that this professor’s more spiritual views would not come up. Alas, he could not hold back his tangents on how astrology must be real and how certain groups of people could essentially communicate telekinetically. More relevant to the subject at hand was his interest in palmistry. This particular class focused on hands and patterns found in fingerprints. He inevitably brought up how it was so obvious that palmistry must be real. I do not even remember his justification other than that mentioning that medical doctors do now check your hands for signs of certain illnesses. Come breaktime, my curiosity got the best of me and I asked him what my palms had to say. 

He started with the left hand, the hand that says who you are. He mentioned that the rigidness of one line indicated my conservative tendencies, but assured me that it veered off into the section indicating imagination. He mentioned that a branch on one line indicated that I tend to go after people romantically who look a specific way. I do not remember everything he said about that hand or if he said much about it at all. It was the right hand, the hand of destiny, that stuck with me. 

He said that I would experience a career change when I was around thirty in something focusing on using my intellect. He said that I had a fame line connected to that line. That line also went through my love line. He said that the person that I would end up with for the rest of my life would be someone I meet around my thirties with some connection to my career and that they would be famous, that their fame and adherence to my aesthetic preferences would draw me in, and ultimately my destiny was to be known as the spouse of this person.

 As class carried on after the break, I was dumbstruck, barely able to pay attention. I stared at my hands. I was still a believer and had no reason to doubt what he had said, but I did not want to believe it. I was not meant to change careers; I was meant to become a filmmaker as soon as I got my Bachelor’s degree in four years. I would not meet my spouse through my future job and certainly not in my thirties, I had met my life partner already and we would have separate careers. I definitely was not going to be known as someone’s spouse; I was going to make my own fame as a cult filmmaker. 

I explained my palm reading the next time I saw my sister. She thought it all sounded quite accurate. My conservative tendencies manifested not in politics, but my restrained manner. Though I had only been in one relationship, I was shallow when it came to crushes and they all looked about the same. When it came to the idea of me being drawn in by some celebrity who happened to look the right way, all she said was “that sounds exactly like you.”

Over the next few years, my assured views of what my future would look like fell apart. The relationship that I was convinced that I was meant to stay in forever turned abusive and began to crumble, not before that person convinced me I lacked all creative talent, causing me to abandon the arts. At around the age of twenty, I became a complete skeptic and bordering on Nu-Atheist. I would definitely relax a bit over time, but I was far gone from the days of true, adherent belief. 

I am now in my thirties. I am in grad school for something quite different from film. Some might say the old professor was correct about me coming into a profession where my intellect is used more than anything else and just in time. I am currently single, so that love of my life has not been found. There were a few people since that first relationship who I thought were that to me or had the potential to become that, but I was wrong. Whether I meet that person tomorrow or I have to wait many more years, who knows. I certainly do not know anyone famous, let alone one that I am in love with. I joked in the past that I wished it was real because maybe that meant that my future spouse would have money and I would not have to worry about that anymore, but I suppose fame and money do not always go together. All I can think of that was my dad’s response, “Knowing you, they might be infamous.” In the end, it is best for me to carve out my own fate. If the dear professor’s prophecy turns out to be true, so be it. Whether it is adolescent dreams of a certain future or the words of a palmist, it is best to set that aside in favor of a future you can carve out for yourself.

[gilbertkingelisa]

Come Back Soon⁣ .⁣ .⁣ .⁣ .⁣ .⁣ #agro #blackandwhitephotography #bnw #bw #country #farm #instablackandwhite #landscapephotography #lightsandshadows #monochromatic #monochrome #noir #rural #ruralliving #shadow #shadows #shadowsandlight #shadowshapes #sky #skycolors #skylover #skylovers #skypainters #sun #sunlight #sunnyday #sunrise #sunsetphotography #sunsetporn #sunshine https://www.instagram.com/p/Cmsdk4_D2wn/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[hauntedexpertpeace]

Professional Clipping path service. Know info Message on Fiverr: https://www.fiverr.com/s/1LKQz5 or DM (+88 01815-503843) Whatsapp. #clippingpath #clippingpaths #clippingpathcreative #clippingpaththailand  #shadow #shadows #Shadowhunters #shadowroot #shadowplay #ShadowOfIntent #shadowofwar #shadowsense #shadowsandlight #shadowbox #shadowwork #shadowhunter #shadowart #shadowofmordor #shadowboxing #shadowology #Shadowhunterstv #shadowandlight #shadowline #Shadowman #shadowphotography #shadowroots #shadowhuntersseason2 #shadowshapes #ShadowsOfEvil #shadowthehedgehog #shadowworkoctober #shadowhuntersseason3 #shadowfade #shadowself #fiverr #transperantcolors #transperantpaper       #png #pngp #pngtourism #pnguadarrama #PNGKumuls #pngjewellers #PNGS #pngsforeditors #pngstyle #pngcoffee #PNGrfl #PNGThrowback #pngtravel #PNGOrchids #pngoo #PNGNRL #pnga #pngbutterflies #pngdubai #pngemp #pngfang #pnggirls #pngimage #pngisawesome #pngkids #pnglife #pngudarrama 

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Thanks.

[fantasybooktournament]

Send a Review!!

The first round of books was eliminated and I wanted some help talking about the book eliminated. There are so many amazing books that unfortunately were cut but still deserve their time to shine. I was hoping I could share people's reviews of the books eliminated, as I have not read them all.

I was hoping people would send asks with reviews or send me a review they had previously written to reblog. I'll post ones for the books I have read over the next week!

Not all reviews need to be glowing reviews, but if you didn't enjoy some of the books, also please feel free to send a review explaining why as well!

I'll use the tags of the eliminated works as well as "book reviews"

List of books under the cut!!

mercy thomas by patrica briggs

lightbringer by brent weeks

the golem and the jinni by helene wecker

prince of thorns by mark lawrence

chronicle of the unhewn throne by brian staveley

between earth and sky by rebecca roanhorse

criers war by nina varela

among others by jo walton

dead jinn universe by p. djeli clark

the raven tower by ann leckie

the grace of kings by ken liu

shades of milk and honey by mary roinette kowal

a land fit for heroes by richard k morgan

the stardust thief by chelsea abdullah

witchmark by cl polk

tailchasers song by tad williams

darkest powers by kelley armstrong

three dark crowns by kendare blake

the queen of tearling by erika johansen

mirror visitor by christelle dabos

we hunt the flame by hafsah faizal

the naming by allison crogan

iskari by kristen ciccarelli

kaikeyi by vaishnavi patel

a song of wraiths and ruin by roseanne a brown

book of tea by judy i lin

elatsoe by darcie little badger

blood heir by amelie wen zhao

labyrinth lost by zoraida cordova

girls made of snow and glass by melissa bashardoust

the reader by tracie chi

shadowshaper by daniel jose older

[siriuslyreads]

Ballad & Dagger by Daniel Jose Older: A Review

Title: Ballad & Dagger

Series: Outlaw Saints

Author: Daniel José Older

Genre: YA Urban Fantasy

Rating: 3/5

Release Date: May 3rd 2022

Format: Physical Book

Synopsis:

Almost sixteen years ago, Mateo Matisse's island homeland disappeared into the sea. Weary and hopeless, the survivors of San Madrigal's sinking escaped to New York. While the rest of his tight-knit Brooklyn diaspora community dreams of someday finding a way back home, Mateo--now a high school junior and piano prodigy living with his two aunts (one who's alive, the other not so much)--is focused on one thing: getting the attention of locally-grown musical legend Gerval. Mateo finally gets his chance on the night of the Grand Fete, an annual party celebrating the blended culture of pirates, Cuban Santeros, and Sephardic Jews that created San Madrigal all those centuries ago. But the evil that sank their island has finally caught up with them, and on the night of the celebration, Mateo's life is forever changed when he witnesses a brutal murder by a person he thought he knew. Suddenly Mateo is thrust into an ancient battle that spans years and oceans. Deadly secrets are unraveled and Mateo awakens a power within himself--a power that not only links him to the killer but could also hold the key to unlocking the dark mystery behind his lost homeland. From the author of the award-winning Shadowshaper Cypher series comes the first novel in the Outlaw Saints duology--a brilliant story that will transport readers to a world where magic, myth, and gods reign over the streets of Brooklyn.

Review:

I gotta be upfront with y’all from the beginning. I did not like this book. Something about it kept me reading the entire things, but it just did not hit right for me. It seemed like there was something always just on the brink of being fantastic, but the twists and reveals never delivered on the promise. Even the twist at the ending seemed trite to me. I got the Owlcrate edition of this and I always try to give those special editions the most honest shot I can, but this didn’t deliver what I hoped for. I think I am the wrong audience for this book. Maybe if I was younger, or a POC and not white. I think the story and the lore of the book were well presented, and for a lot of people it would resonate well with them.

I think in the beginning you were supposed to feel for Mateo, a boy raised by his tia and his ghost aunt. His mother and father are off being doctors somewhere and he doesn’t see them often. But Mateo never seemed to struggle with these things. He had a loving family, he knew his mother and father cared for him, and he didn’t seem to care overly much that they were out of the picture. Indeed he seemed to mind more that when he was a child they would shepherd him around the world instead of letting him stay in Brooklyn and Little Madrigal. Mateo did not make sense to me and did not have a lot of depth. In the end he became this being that saved the world, but that did not tie in with who he was in the beginning. I understand character growth, and I understand that in these circumstances, Matteo was actually also the spirit of one of his people’s maker gods. But that should not mean that Mateo changed so completely that by the end of a book he is completely unrecognizable, especially since not much truly happened before he changed.

The first two thirds of this book are all about the politics and the issues between the ruling factions of the city, but honestly, I can still tell you nothing other than one of those factions was pirates? It wasn’t until Mateo was betrayed that the book even picked up speed, and honestly, I think we all expected that betrayal. Then once the book picked up speed, it did not slow down, but it also felt disjointed. Almost like the author took separate scenes and tried to piece them together with the middle bits, without a clear understanding of what the story was supposed to be.

So much of the story was talking about finding a way to resurrect San Madrigal from the ocean, but we never truly know anything about San Madrigal. Maybe that is the point honestly. We are viewing this world through someone who was too young to remember the sinking of San Madrigal, but it also felt as if this grand thing that the book was leading towards meant absolutely nothing to Mateo, and thus we as readers don’t really know why we should care either. I loved the story of Atlantis growing up, and I expected to feel some kind of way about San Madrigal, but by the end of the book, when Mateo and Chela are seeing the island for the first time, I felt nothing but bored.

And Chela, I did not understand the relationship between Mateo and Chela. There were no sparks leading up to it, nothing at all to indicate the interest. Mateo went from being scared of Chela because she killed someone in front of him, to being in love with her. It did not make sense.

This book felt altogether too long and too short. The politics and factions of the beginning should have been cut down. The interesting fast paced story of the end should have been stretched out. And Mateo and Chela should not have been together in this book until maybe, MAYBE the very end.

[bookcub]

Book Discussion

for my audiobook listeners, which books were improved by their audio versions? the ones that come to mind for me are daughter of smoke and bone by laini taylor and shadowshaper by daniel jose older. khristine hvam and anika noni rose are splendid narrators!