The rest of the exchange year...

[chock_coal_ate_bawks]

...is worth wanking over, too.

Discuss Chocolate Box, Age Gap Exchange, Unusual Bearings, etc.

Comments

Re: Rec me a canon

[(Anonymous)]

I’m currently listening to Sufficiently Advanced Magic by Andrew Rowe, which is the first in a fantasy series of the LitRPG style. The book has strong family bonds, political intrigue, deities and boons, and involves a puzzle-filled tower. The POV character is a 16-year old boy who is touch averse and a-spec, and his dungeon party includes his powerhouse sister and a handsome mysterious transfer student who asks him to prom. The second in the series has been published in kindle and paperback but the Audible edition hasn’t been released yet. It’s narrated by Nick Podehl and feels a lot like the Percy Jackson books. Not so much surreal horror, though.

I have just finished Tomi Adeyemi’s Children of Blood and Bone, which I quite liked for a YA epic fantasy about the horrors of war in a world with Yoruba-inspired magic— this one features mind links and soulbonding and blood magic and the spirits of the dead, with a delightfully twisty plot. Book two won’t be out til next year. The het romances in the narrative are interesting and complicated, and there’s good femslash potential throughout. The narrator for the audible edition wrestles with the cadence of the Yoruba language, but her acting is effective so it may not pull you out of the story unless you’re familiar with Yoruba pronunciation.

In podcasts, I can’t get enough of Sayer— a sci-fi horror narrative that places the listener as property/employee of a futuristic company, told in the form of soothing (yet disturbing) announcements and instructions.

Re: Rec me a canon

[(Anonymous)]

Oh shit Sayer sounds like just my jam. I'll definitely check it out. Would you say it's Nightvale-ish?

Blood and Bone has been on my radar so I'm glad to hear the plot holds up. Would love to get some femslash this year, too.

Thanks for the recs!!

Re: Rec me a canon

[(Anonymous)]

You’re welcome and happy listening!! I think Sayer is sort of nightvale-ish in that it is explicitly a broadcast program that slides past weird shit as if it’s normal, but where Nightvale likes to do the suburban gothic thing, Sayer is more about reassuring you that your corporate overlords care about your life (after all it is a part of the cost calculation of production)! Nightvale doesn’t give me the same depersonalization vibes, because things don’t happen to the listener in it so much as Events In The Community or about the setting, whereas Sayer is mediating or filtering the listener’s experiences of described events so the listener can process what is happening to them in the setting. Full disclosure: Nightvale isn’t so much in my wheelhouse, but my partner who enjoys both Nightvale and Sayer says it is more like Nightvale Presents: Within the Wires (in the form of guided meditations) than WTNV itself.