Promise of Blood by Brian McClellan (Goodreads Author) 4.14 · Rating details · 39,559 ratings · 2,771 reviews The Age of Kings is dead . . . and I have killed it. It's a bloody business overthrowing a king... Field Marshal Tamas' coup against his king sent corrupt aristocrats to the guillotine and brought bread to the starving. But it also provoked war with the Nine Nations, internal attacks by royalist fanatics, and the greedy to scramble for money and power by Tamas's supposed allies: the Church, workers unions, and mercenary forces. Stretched to his limit, Tamas is relying heavily on his few remaining powder mages, including the embittered Taniel, a brilliant marksman who also happens to be his estranged son, and Adamat, a retired police inspector whose loyalty is being tested by blackmail. But when gods are involved... Now, as attacks batter them from within and without, the credulous are whispering about omens of death and destruction. Just old peasant legends about the gods waking to walk the earth. No modern educated man believes that sort of thing. But they should... In a rich, distinctive world that mixes magic with technology, who could stand against mages that control gunpowder and bullets? | Red Sister by Mark Lawrence I was born for killing – the gods made me to ruin. At the Convent of Sweet Mercy young girls are raised to be killers. In a few the old bloods show, gifting talents rarely seen since the tribes beached their ships on Abeth. Sweet Mercy hones its novices’ skills to deadly effect: it takes ten years to educate a Red Sister in the ways of blade and fist. But even the mistresses of sword and shadow don’t truly understand what they have purchased when Nona Grey is brought to their halls as a bloodstained child of eight, falsely accused of murder: guilty of worse. Stolen from the shadow of the noose, Nona is sought by powerful enemies, and for good reason. Despite the security and isolation of the convent her secret and violent past will find her out. Beneath a dying sun that shines upon a crumbling empire, Nona Grey must come to terms with her demons and learn to become a deadly assassin if she is to survive… |
Every Christmas and birthday my cousin and I do a book exchange. We give the other a book we like that we think the other will enjoy with the promise of {eventually} reading it. I still haven't read the one he gave me for Christmas, meaning I'm two books behind. So while these books aren't necessarily ones I REALLY want to read, they are ones that I will read and my cousin really wants me to actually get around to reading sometime soon.
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Sorry I'm going to be lazy answering this one and just reference back to Day 6 seeing as that's basically the same thing... right? Day 6 link here. Spoiler alert the books are House of Earth and Blood by Sarah J. Maas and Blood for Blood by Ryan Graudin.
The first book I ever read was Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone-- and since then I've read it about a bajillion times. It's not that original, Harry Potter has been a big part of a lot of people's lives at this point, but that's my first read. I read the whole series in first grade, I think. And I have never been the same, haha.
I love a lot of romance books. There are so many options out there, but the one that pops to the forefront of my mind is Love and Other Words by Christian Lauren. This book is just... beautiful. It's really moving, and it hits on a deeper level. You really get to fall in love with the romance because it goes through these characters' whole relationship, starting from the moment they meet. You see them become best friends, and then it turn into something more. The story is told between then and now. The then is them becoming friends, and in the now the two have been estranged for 10 years and have only just reconnected... Wow. I just can't tell you how much I love this book, but I really, really do. Synopsis: The story of the heart can never be unwritten. Macy Sorensen is settling into an ambitious if emotionally tepid routine: work hard as a new pediatrics resident, plan her wedding to an older, financially secure man, keep her head down and heart tucked away. But when she runs into Elliot Petropoulos—the first and only love of her life—the careful bubble she’s constructed begins to dissolve. Once upon a time, Elliot was Macy’s entire world—growing from her gangly bookish friend into the man who coaxed her heart open again after the loss of her mother...only to break it on the very night he declared his love for her. Told in alternating timelines between Then and Now, teenage Elliot and Macy grow from friends to much more—spending weekends and lazy summers together in a house outside of San Francisco devouring books, sharing favorite words, and talking through their growing pains and triumphs. As adults, they have become strangers to one another until their chance reunion. Although their memories are obscured by the agony of what happened that night so many years ago, Elliot will come to understand the truth behind Macy’s decade-long silence, and will have to overcome the past and himself to revive her faith in the possibility of an all-consuming love. Love, loss, friendship, and the betrayals of the past all collide in this first fiction novel from New York Times and #1 international bestselling author Christina Lauren (Autoboyography, Dating You / Hating You). Lord of the Rings. Let me repeat for emphasis LORD OF THE RINGS. This book-to-movie adaptation is nearly perfect. It actually follows the books, without trying to add interesting whirls and such to be "cooler." The casting is perfect, as are the props, sets etc. These films are beautiful. I rewatch them every year around Christmas-- that's how much I absolutely love them.
Both of these were spectacular books. I loved them as books, and they were phenomenal reads. But I found I was disappointed with both of these because while they were supposed to be the finales of the trilogy, they didn't wrap the stories up well enough-- leaving too many loose ends. See, while both books were pitched as the finals of their trilogies, they left a lot of open ended bits and led into other things because they're leading up to spin offs. The issue with this is that while they are still great books, they don't do well to resolve the stories and truly feel like a send off. So they're disappointing as endings, but not as books themselves. If they hadn't been pitched as finales, they'd be perfect.
Uhhh... I used to keep track and memorize quotes from books. Not so much anymore... So while these quotes might not necessarily be my FAVORITE from my FAVORITE book, I like the books and I like the quotes?
This one is hard. There are so many great male characters out there. Like, in every good book there are MULTIPLE male characters to fawn over. I can't pick one, so I'll give you two but THERE ARE SO MANY MORE OUT THERE.
There are about 3 hundred million examples of this. WHY CAN'T THE MOVIES EVER GET IT RIGHT? THEY HAVE THE MATERIAL ALL WRITTEN OUT THERE SO CLEARLY IN THE BOOK. Here are 3 terrible examples out of the many. If we're being completely honest here, as a movie, the Lightning Thief isn't bad. As a book-to-film adaptation? The film is terrible. Absolutely terrible. I actually watched the movie first and then found the book-- so yes, the movie itself isn't bad. It's when you see the much better source material when you realize how truly atrocious the movie is. I don't know what these people were thinking when they wrote the script. The actors did their best, but the script just didn't to this excellent story justice. Disney plus just picked this up for a TV adaptation-- hopefully it will do what the movies could not. This is especially painful because City of Bones is part of a series that is so close and dear to my heart... And then the movie came. It was terrible... And then we got a second chance! We got a TV show that promised to be better... Yet the TV show ended up being worse, sorry Shadowhunters fans. As a fan of the source material I couldn't even get through the first season of this show. Especially with the extra helping of cheese from being on Freeform. I know there are a ton of battles between the TV fans and the book fans. To all the TV fans who say the books are crap... Um, if that were true your favorite TV show would never exist. You may not have to like the books if you love the TV show, but you have to respect them at least. I just couldn't watch the show because the portrayal of the characters was painful and the plot was just so... twisted and wrong that I couldn't. Somehow the show made the movie look accurate. This movie was so bad that it couldn't even stay in theaters for two weeks. I had to drive an hour out of my way to find a theater that still played it. I knew it would be bad from the trailers, but I still wanted to see it for myself. And it was so bad I had to look away sometimes because GOD. The downfall of all of these book-to-movies is trying to fall into what's more 'popular' and becoming cliche and dumb, instead of original and intriguing. There's a reason these books are best sellers. People enjoy the stories, so if you gave them a chance, chances are they will do well!
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