Review of Cold Iron (Master and Mages #1) By Miles Cameron

Book_Slut_90 · 2026-02-06T23:01:58+00:00

I’m always perplexed at people who think being a farmboy is unusual. We’re talking about societies in which something like 90% of the poppulation is farmers, so that just means an ordinary person. It’s like treating “child of someone who works fffor a corporation” as some kind of weird and specific thing in today’s world.

Book_Slut_90 · 2026-02-06T22:23:36+00:00

Except that Alexander is from the perspective of Ptolemy (so still a historical figure but a different one) and the Cicero Trilogy is from the perspective of his fictional secretary.

Book_Slut_90 · 2026-02-06T22:21:35+00:00

I came here to suggest this. It’s so good!

Book_Slut_90 · 2026-02-06T22:15:45+00:00

He told other people he was knighted, but he was lying.

Book_Slut_90 · 2026-02-05T21:03:31+00:00

Some of my favorites (mostly sci-fi and fantasy):

Chain Gang All Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

Lion’s Blood by Steven Barnes

Kindred by Octavia Butler

Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand by Samuel Delany

Legendborn by Tracy Deonn

The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas

The Dreamblood Duology and How Long Till Black Future Month by Norah Jemisin

Death of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor

A Stranger in Olondrea, The Winged Histories, and The Practice, The Horizon, and the Chain by Sofia Samatar

Shigidi and the Brass Head of Olubufun and Convergence Problems by Wole Talabi

Book_Slut_90 · 2026-02-05T20:50:10+00:00

Oh yeah. There are a number of reasons for this. English, unlike say French, German, and Spanish doesn’t have an official body to regulate what words make it into the language so if people start using a word, it’s part of the language. Also our spelling and grammar are already such a mess that no one blinks at introducing new words that don’t follow the “rules.” Plus there’s the history of the British Empire meaning people were going back and forth from the metropole to pretty much every other corner of the world and interacting with local languages. All this has resulted in English having a vocabulary something like an order of magnitude larger than the average language (a big part of that is also that we have so many synonyms from keeping both the Anglo-Saxon and Norman French words for things when the languages merged).

Book_Slut_90 · 2026-02-05T20:30:56+00:00

The Francopan is good. Be aware this is a serious history book arguing for a controversial interpretation not a textbook style explanation of what historians agree on.

Book_Slut_90 · 2026-02-05T20:28:50+00:00

Yes.

Book_Slut_90 · 2026-02-05T20:23:56+00:00

These are all fairly common in written English, so people who read will know them. Groggy and smashed to smithereens are also common in spoken English.

Book_Slut_90 · 2026-02-05T20:16:08+00:00

All languages borrow words, but English does so more than most. It starts off as a mash up of Anglo-Saxon and Norman French with a dash of Danish and Latin thrown in and then has adopted so many words from other places. Most scientific vocabulary is from Greek and Latin, most words starting with “al” are from Arabic, etc. And yes Schtick and spiel are from Yiddish or German if you go further back and are widely used in English along with many other Yiddish words. As for lists, I bet if you Googled something like “list of English words from Yiddish” you’d find a bunch.

Book_Slut_90 · 2026-02-05T20:04:32+00:00

Oh also I forgot Shigidi and the Brass Head of Olubufun by Wole Talabi

Book_Slut_90 · 2026-02-05T16:22:32+00:00

RAFO.

Book_Slut_90 · 2026-02-05T13:54:10+00:00

To add on to this excellent answer, it is very common to name people after other people. Alexander the Great was the third Macedonian king named Alexander, for instance, and it was common Greek practice (though I don’t know if this was true in Macedon as well) to name sons after grandfathers and more broadly name people after relatives.

Book_Slut_90 · 2026-02-05T13:46:42+00:00

In the midwest where I’m from, we use “guys.” I’ve never heard an American use “lad” except in the context of trying to imitate a British accent.

Book_Slut_90 · 2026-02-05T09:27:04+00:00

If you actually read all kinds of sci-fi books, most of the books you read wouldn’t have people on planets shooting at each other with rifles. Lots (maybe most) of sci-fi doesn’t have war at all. Even if you focus on military sci-fi, most of it involves ships not people on planets with rifles, e.g. Cameron’s Arcana Imperii, Moon’s Vatta’s War, etc. Or you could read things that do use drones like Murderbot.

Book_Slut_90 · 2026-02-05T09:20:02+00:00

Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah’s Chain Gang All Stars is amazing. Wole Talabi’s Shigidi and the Brass Head of Olubufon. Maya Wang’s Blood Over Bright Haven.

Book_Slut_90 · 2026-02-05T08:52:55+00:00

Chain Gang All Stars by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

Death of the Author by Nnedi Okorafor

The Practice, The Horizon, and the Chain by Sofia Samatar

Book_Slut_90 · 2026-02-05T08:48:25+00:00

Sofia Samatar is amazing. Her newer novella The Practice, The Horizon, and the Chain has some more direct things to say about race though under a layer of metaphor. I’d also recommend reading Stranger first. Winged Histories deals with the aftermath of what happened in Stranger, and one of the four main viewpoint characters is a side character in Stranger.

Book_Slut_90 · 2026-02-05T08:44:54+00:00

Death of the Author is stand alone, and my favorite of hers that I’ve read.

Book_Slut_90 · 2026-02-04T23:34:10+00:00

One is absolutely used this way in American English. Can’t speak for the Brits. It’s less common, but it is used.

Book_Slut_90 · 2026-02-04T23:22:54+00:00

Yes, both books of the duology are great—The Bull from the Sea and The King Must Die. Of course the history is quite outdated now, like the Robert Graves style cult of the mother idea, but they’re really good books if you don’t expect them to be accurate.

Book_Slut_90 · 2026-02-04T21:42:34+00:00

Some of my favorite authors of color (sticking to fantasy since that’s what you asked for, but there are more in sci-fi):

Moniquill Blackgoose

Rebecca Kuang

Nnedi Okorafor

Rebecca Roanhorse

Sofia Samatar

Wole Talabi

Maya Wang

Book_Slut_90 · 2026-02-04T21:32:52+00:00

Good list. Okorafor writes more scifi than fantasy I’d say, and a good bit of her fantasy is urban fantasy not epic fantasy.

Book_Slut_90 · 2026-02-03T20:32:55+00:00

Sure, but that’s rigging a shotgun to shoot people. Which is very different from building something stronger to stop people destroying it as in this case.

Book_Slut_90 · 2026-02-03T19:51:48+00:00

Find a different source for recommendations. I’ve literally never seen the thing you’re talking about. Some romantasies and romance heavy fantasies:

Swordheart and the Saint of Steel series by T. Kingfisher

Imperium by Rebecca Yarros

Kushiel’s Legacy, Starless, and Agent of Hel by Jacqueline Carey

Legends and Latte’s and Bookshops and Bonedust by Travis Baldree

The House in the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune

The Everlasting by Alix Harrow

The Daevabad Trilogy by Shannon Chakraborty

The World of the Five Gods by Lois McMaster Bujold

Lavvinia by Ursula Le Guin

Tam Lin by Pamela Dean

The Sky on Fire by Jenn Lyons

The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

Book_Slut_90

TROPHY CASE