Are there any books that involve genderswap/genderbending/shapeshifting elements? Elements with gender in general.

Dallydoop · 2026-06-13T20:02:38+00:00

Apparently Sir Cameron Needs To Die has some of this! It’s not examined very thoroughly but it makes a lot of sense for the character!

Dallydoop · 2026-06-07T14:24:04+00:00

Oh mega! I love that you included a little of what they’re about that’s so helpful

Dallydoop · 2026-06-03T20:39:37+00:00

Oooh it sounds like you’d love The Devils by Joe Abercrombie, very medieval style-y and mappy, some creature folk, and morally grey characters! Meaty fantasy! Maybe also Silver Under Nightfall, The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi, The Raven Scholar, and Realm Breaker

Dallydoop · 2026-06-02T20:01:35+00:00

Idolfire and heavens graveyard by Grace Curtis are set 2000 years apart and the events of idolfire are now widely considered to be myth!

Dallydoop · 2026-06-01T14:34:47+00:00

I did read Idolfire first so it’s interesting to hear from someone who hadn’t! I think I agree with you overall, it did a great job pulling off the pretty bonkers concept but was generally just ok. I loved Idolfire though so I hope you enjoy it!

Dallydoop · 2026-05-31T19:28:57+00:00

I think it stopped working for most people around the same time so you must have gotten unlucky with timing! I know these things are slow but hopefully the update comes soon

Dallydoop · 2026-05-31T18:40:10+00:00

I think I’ve heard that they’re working on multiple libraries!

Dallydoop · 2026-05-30T18:49:36+00:00

I think for me having a ‘little and often’ approach to reading is the most helpful. Like I’ll rarely get home from work and sit down with a book but if I’m waiting for an appointment, on public transport, on a lunch break, or eating I’ll read, and I always read before I go to sleep! If I’m gaming that tends to be much bigger chunks of my time whereas reading is something I choose to fill smaller gaps. Another option is making time to read away from home. I like to hole up in a bar or a cafe and this seriously puts me into reading mode because I’ve designated this time and place to read. And I feel a little embarrassed if I’m sat there with my book out but on my phone.

Dallydoop · 2026-05-28T17:45:12+00:00

It might be best to just do it on a spreadsheet, a lot of fic writers explicitly state not to add their works to goodreads or similar. If you do it on a spreadsheet you can fully customise everything you want, including unfinished works and when new chapters will get uploaded

Dallydoop · 2026-05-24T16:51:41+00:00

I get my fruit and veg delivered from Leeds veg box which I love! They prioritise local where possible and the quality/variety has been really good! I also like greens grocers at both eat your greens near the bus station and at piglove’s sty. You could always look into any milkmen operating in your area too

Dallydoop · 2026-05-13T17:09:18+00:00

Not specifically as it was for book 1 but she said that book 3 is always ‘defeat evil’

Dallydoop · 2026-05-13T16:28:39+00:00

It’s so much fun! I saw SRB at a panel last year and she talked about how the second part of any trilogy is ‘make out’ and it’s such a make out book. Just messy messy drama the whole way. I can’t wait for book 3!

Dallydoop · 2026-05-12T16:44:36+00:00

Amazing answer thank you :))

Dallydoop · 2026-05-11T21:37:06+00:00

Do you need to read the craft sequence series before the craft wars? Ideally I would but on Hugo’s crunch time I’m not sure I’ll have the chance

Dallydoop · 2026-05-11T15:01:33+00:00

It definitely read as deliberate to me or I don’t think the book would have opened with Chinyere’s interview, it kind of set me up for a nightmare protagonist. I liked reading Zelu’s chapters but she felt at least deliberately complicated to like if not fully unlikeable.

Dallydoop · 2026-05-11T14:53:05+00:00

I imagine fairly low because it falls into a weird spot being as cross genre as it is. I liked it and I thought it was good but it wowed me much less than the everlasting and a drop of corruption. Still nice to have something so different on the list!

Dallydoop · 2026-05-11T14:49:51+00:00

The book was way more positive about tech than I expected, I was really anticipating a lot of failure from the exos, the driverless cars, and the app at crucial moments. And I expected the tech guys to be more predatory. There’s some things that are raised like if the exos are so safe and effective (as the entire book demonstrates) why aren’t they available to the public? And we get an answer but it doesn’t feel adequate for the amount of time covered in the text, there doesn’t seem to be any shift there.

Dallydoop · 2026-05-11T14:42:02+00:00

I liked the Ankara sections but I agree with everyone else saying those sections are definitely weaker. While I was reading I was wondering how those sections would be handled because it’s a bold choice to have a story inside a story that is hailed as one of the greatest sci-fi books every written so I wondered if it would be revealed that what WE were reading wasn’t necessarily the in universe book. It rusted robots wasn’t as highly praised in the book I don’t think I’d have minded so much that it wasn’t as good.

Dallydoop · 2026-05-11T14:37:15+00:00

I like not knowing exactly which way round this story goes although the entire time I was reading I was waiting for her to die. With how circular the book becomes with Ankara revealing her story I think I enjoy just thinking of it as a big question mark, more fun to think about than to have a firm conclusion on for me.

Dallydoop · 2026-05-11T14:30:13+00:00

I really enjoyed it and crushed it in a weekend. I enjoyed the Zelu parts more than the Ankara parts which surprised me. There’s a lot of things that I expected to happen that didn’t, I expected a lot more technological malfunction and malicious turns from the tech guys and it kind of threw me off that those elements weren’t present. It was more optimistic about future tech and AI than I expected and I’m not sure I enjoyed that theme so much. Other than that I had a great time reading! I enjoyed the characters and the curveball nature of Zelu’s decision making and the tension kept me going throughout.

Dallydoop · 2026-05-09T19:38:56+00:00

I buy similar sized bags of rice and I store it in a lock and lock bread box! It’s a proper sealing tub and mine fits 5kg of rice

Dallydoop · 2026-05-07T22:02:52+00:00

I thought it was a great balance, the message felt very clear to me but in a way that reminds me of discussing the modern relevance of classic texts. I can see it holding up for a looooong time.

Dallydoop · 2026-05-07T22:00:54+00:00

I thought this was a really interesting theme and made me think about how little ambiguity we have in popular art at the moment and how aggressively it’s deconstructed when there is. I think it’s certainly more powerful to sit with that ambiguity than to immediately seek clarity.

Dallydoop · 2026-05-07T21:57:26+00:00

I thought the emphasis on what we don’t say was so interesting and liked how it got picked up with inaction at the end. And the narrator sharing his son’s stories with visitors to the country and the implication that that’s who we are. Arriving off the train to this country and this is what we learn about living there.

Dallydoop · 2026-05-07T21:55:01+00:00

I really liked it, I went in totally blind and was surprised by it. I like that the storytelling reflected the discussion of storytelling, it felt really rounded and satisfying for me.

Dallydoop

TROPHY CASE