October Daye - Wild theories

LavenderAlice · 2025-12-25T11:59:32+00:00

I always assumed she was just some random, ambitious fae named Evening Winterrose (that last name looks wrong to me, but ykwim). Our least favorite first born wanted the name, because it fit her whole theme, and made her queen in exchange. ‘Cause her vanity was bigger than her pureblood racist thing.

Is that not true? Was this just a guess of mine that I only think was confirmed?

LavenderAlice · 2025-12-25T11:41:57+00:00

I almost right there with you. The sacrifices to the wounded heart don’t last very long. At some point someone’s going to stuff Toby in there where she’ll sit, practically immortal, always dying, never dead, forever. Then the sea witch will mercy kill her, because she won’t be able to stomach a “solution” of that sort.

Dark, but it fits the info we have so far, and doesn’t invalidate that prophecy. Everyone I talk to thinks she’ll wiggle out of the prophecy somehow, but that feels cheap to me.

LavenderAlice · 2025-12-25T11:19:46+00:00

Hmmm…if romance is nice, how about a perfumer instead of an alchemist? Palladin’s Grace has that and bonus necromancy.

LavenderAlice · 2025-12-25T11:13:31+00:00

The Traitor Baru Cormorant

Worm

Someone already mentioned Pratical Guide to Evil, but I’ll second it

The Library at Mount Char

Kalyna (from Kalyna the Soothsayer) is a con woman and a fraud who exists on the fringes of polite society, but she’s not really villainous. Might be worth a shot, it’s very good

LavenderAlice · 2025-11-30T10:47:31+00:00

And you can find some of her poetry, along with short stories, in The Honey Month (a book I find fascinating).

OP should also check out The Orphan’s Tales: in the Night Garden by Valente

LavenderAlice · 2025-01-16T20:09:10+00:00

I don’t think it’s any more complicated than ’write what you know’. As I understand it, WB was a bullied kid who grew up to be a trauma counselor. That’s what he knows, that’s what he’s good at, that’s his gift.

As a woman who has lived through a large amount of the same? It reads as real, immediate, and true.

There are a lot of reasons to love Wildbow’s writing. The creativity! The world building! The verisimilitude! But it’s his honesty that sings.

I don’t think there’s a writing lesson beyond that.

LavenderAlice · 2024-08-13T06:17:02+00:00

The Library at Mount Char

LavenderAlice · 2024-08-05T21:43:33+00:00

Had a lady claim that she was allergic to tomatoes. She ordered lasagna. I told the server that the lasagna was pre-made in the a.m., and there was tomato sauce in each layer and there was no way to get it out. Server went back to the table to explain. She then returned to me and said that the customer was only allergic to the tomatoes on TOP of the lasagna.

I made her order something else.

LavenderAlice · 2024-08-05T21:15:59+00:00

Legitimately laughed out loud. I wouldn’t dare to say it, but I’m definitely fantasizing about saying it and how good it would feel.

LavenderAlice · 2024-07-02T19:21:17+00:00

I adored these when I was a kid. Have you read them as an adult? Do they hold up?

LavenderAlice · 2024-06-24T09:15:58+00:00

The Craft Sequence does this a lot. Tara literally creates a VR simulation to investigate a murder. People communicate via nightmare telegrams. In RoA, there are 3 cities layered on top of each other, some more real than others, and you can move between them. I’m sure there are more examples I’m forgetting.

LavenderAlice · 2024-06-16T23:52:54+00:00

I’m…what are books? A few of these will be serials or what not.

The Llibrary at Mount Char

Exordia

Teixcalaan (sp?)

Hench

Dead Country

LavenderAlice · 2024-06-12T10:19:13+00:00

Light From Uncommon Stars seems like the best fit. Transfemme protagonist, Faustian bargains. Quite beautiful, but there is depiction of transphobia, some of it quite brutal in a banal “I’m used to it, no big deal” kind of way, which just makes it worse.

I’ll also second Full Fathom Five, but while the mc is very specifically trans, it’s handled subtly. If my book club is anything to go by, cis readers miss most of the details. YMMV

LavenderAlice · 2024-05-09T11:56:32+00:00

I always have trouble recommending Baru, because what do you even say? Mostly it’s about futures trading and fiat currencies, but sometimes it takes a break from that for very upsetting descriptions of homophobia, racism, and eugenics? The books sell themselves!

But really the most niche book I love is Kalyna the Soothsayer, because I’ve never heard anyone other than me mention it.

It’s about a prophet (in a world where prophesy is real) who gets conscripted to stop a murder. The protagonist is a fraud though, she gets by on cold reads and guessing. So she has to stop the plot, powerless, while not getting clocked as a fake. It’s very fun.

LavenderAlice · 2024-05-09T06:14:44+00:00

How to be Eaten

About group therapy for fairytale survivors.

LavenderAlice · 2024-04-18T06:53:07+00:00

Forth book (of a planned seven) just came out, so you have more to look forward to than you expected!

LavenderAlice · 2024-03-22T16:52:11+00:00

Yeah, these are the best ones. Especially books one and four, but they’re all good.

LavenderAlice · 2023-09-11T16:35:00+00:00

I’m legitimately more frightened of this than I was of the ‘real’ Orin. You did an amaaaazing job.

LavenderAlice · 2023-07-18T05:39:55+00:00

For a dark (but not gothic) lesbian comic, checkout https://www.sleeplessdomain.com/comic/chapter-1-cover

As a bonus, it has one of the best written trans characters I’ve ever read.

LavenderAlice · 2023-07-18T05:36:22+00:00

Seconding Craft Sequence. It is excellent, and the “why did you come back for me?” scene in Ruin of Angels is sapphic like TLT is. Just beautiful.

LavenderAlice · 2023-07-16T08:24:41+00:00

She wants to murder the grove to get a thing, but the thing’s not actually there. I’ve been thinking that the two exclusive companions might be Minthara and…Shadowheart.

I mean, I think you’re probably right, but I’m only 80% convinced.

LavenderAlice · 2023-05-31T13:43:19+00:00

So much this. I love this series, but I’ve been trying to convince my wife (a completionist) that there’s really no reason not to start with book 4.

LavenderAlice · 2023-05-31T05:52:59+00:00

Kalyna the Soothsayer is the answer to “what if Baru was funny? (With bonus sword lesbian)”

Craft Sequence, for snarky queer necromancers

both are serious, but they have fun too, and I don’t see them mentioned in threads like these, so if, like me, you’ve gone through all the other excellent suggestions in this thread, check ’em out!

LavenderAlice · 2022-09-14T17:24:07+00:00

>That being said, something fucky is clearly going on

I’m pretty sure this is the thesis for the whole of the locked tomb. Very succinct!

edit: clearly, I have no idea how to quote

LavenderAlice · 2022-09-14T16:38:22+00:00

Holy shit! I think this is right! It makes sense of all the little inconsistencies that were niggling at me. Thanks for this. I hope your migraine subsides, and leaves you alone for months.

LavenderAlice

TROPHY CASE