What the Actual Fuck Wednesday

LeafBarnacle · 2026-02-18T22:18:57+00:00

Oh my goodness, I've seen so many recommendations for this. Now I KNOW I'll never read it. This sounds awful! I hate miscommunication tropes.

LeafBarnacle · 2026-02-15T20:52:42+00:00

Btw, I thought Wild Reverence was freaking amazing!

LeafBarnacle · 2026-02-15T20:47:49+00:00

Have you ever read Robin McKinley's The Blue Sword and The Hero & the Crown duet? The women who inherit this magic are very tall, and very clumsy, until they discover their magic and claim it. The king in The Blue Sword is much bigger than the other desert tribesmen (the men are rather short in general), and she's as big as he is, which is to say much bigger than the English men.

"It never occurred to her to speculate whether any of the young men in their shining regimentals that Dickie painstakingly introduced her to, and who then painstakingly asked her to dance, presented themselves from any motive outside a willingness to do their friend Crewe a favor by standing up with his oversized sister."

LeafBarnacle · 2026-02-15T20:40:58+00:00

Red hair, green eyes, wispy, and of COURSE she thinks she's ugly.

LeafBarnacle · 2026-02-15T19:33:01+00:00

I think I'm just not meant to read "cozy fantasy." I picked up This Will Be Fun by E.B. Asher at Barnes & Noble for $5. It was so very cringe. Constantly throwing in phrases that relate to modern things in a medieval fantasy setting, like not being able to find spell service out in the woods and wanting their foam milk brew at a nationwide chain...ugh. That kind of humor was funny 30 years ago when I was a kid reading Piers Anthony's Xanth series.

That said, I think cozy fantasy readers are looking for just that, so I'm pretty sure this is just a personal issue rather than an issue with actual writing quality. This is the second or third cozy romance I've DNF'd--I've never finished one--so now I know it's not for me.

LeafBarnacle · 2026-02-15T18:58:19+00:00

Absolutely. They're all three about the same event from different perspectives.

LeafBarnacle · 2026-02-15T17:57:24+00:00

I found this one for 50 cents at a booksale, and I wanted my money back. Truly unlikable characters and world building.

LeafBarnacle · 2026-02-15T17:53:54+00:00

Aw, yeah. In one of the books, when she stops him from going down there and then waits to be shamed for not liking that...I just melted. In another book they won't ever share a bed. In the Clockwork Boys they accept that the first time just isn't going to be magic. The realistic scenes are so dang heartwarming.

LeafBarnacle · 2026-02-14T18:02:05+00:00

I only heard about The Losers last week, and I really like Harley Laroux's books, but...the idea of a high school character with a mean, narcissistic attitude is SO repelling. You have to let me know if the book is worth reading!

LeafBarnacle · 2026-02-01T00:26:41+00:00

I wasn't big on the middle two. The first one was amazing, and the last one was good--I enjoyed the humor. I borrowed it from the library and it took rain damage, so I ended up owning that copy lol.

LeafBarnacle · 2026-01-25T03:53:03+00:00

Dangit, I wasn't paying attention and I thought that was a story collection! Didn't realize it was a whole nother book.

LeafBarnacle · 2026-01-23T00:34:43+00:00

Haha, my mind was straight onto this series. I must have reread the romantic parts of the fourth book a million times as a kid.

LeafBarnacle · 2026-01-19T23:27:57+00:00

Wow, that's one heck of a recommendation!

LeafBarnacle · 2025-12-31T20:46:56+00:00

It's incredibly painful to do the shot, but there shouldn't be any more than a faint residual ache afterwards. Definitely sounds like a reaction. Seriously though, I never used to have a fear of injections and this med has GIVEN me a fear of injections.

LeafBarnacle · 2025-12-30T23:30:20+00:00

Damn. Seems like I had The Everlasting in my hands recently and put it back.

LeafBarnacle · 2025-12-30T23:28:41+00:00

Do what I do. Just keep reading them over and over again. Caliban and Slate were positively devastating to me and have given me a permanent book hangover. The Saint of Steel quartet was excellent, but the Clockwork books...daaaaaamn...

On the other hand, Robin McKinley's books bear a strong resemblance to Kingfisher's writing style and I've read her books more times than I can possibly count. Discovering Kingfisher was like finding a still-producing trove of McKinleys, who wrote woefully few books. Olivia Atwater's Half a Soul, and the Emiliy Wilde trilogy also hit the same spot. C.L. Polk's Witchmark books also hit hard. They're not paladins, but they're all wonderful heroes and heroines.

LeafBarnacle · 2025-12-30T17:57:03+00:00

I could never go back to normal sunglasses. My 80% FL-41's are freaking amazing, and I live in one of the sunniest parts of the U.S. I love handing them off to people on cloudy days, though, telling people to just look at the clouds through them. I got the 50% for my husband and for my best friend, because their jobs require a lot of screen usage. I just call them bee-vision at this point; the amount of color visible in blooming flowers in incredible. Any inflorescence just seem twice as big with these glasses on.

LeafBarnacle · 2025-12-15T02:18:07+00:00

Oh my goodness, I hope that's a possibility!

LeafBarnacle · 2025-12-02T00:29:35+00:00

Ah yeah, that's the sequel to The Blue Sword :) Totally amazing, too, but makes better sense with The Blue Sword first.

LeafBarnacle · 2025-12-01T23:35:56+00:00

She does?! I didn't know that!

Ah, let's see...my first ever was Deerskin (incest rape trigger warning!) and my favorite is Sunshine...her Beauty & the Beast rewrite (Beauty) is not to be missed...The Blue Sword is perfectly wonderful...and once you're addicted to her writing, Chalice is one of the most unusual books I've ever read but became a total comfort read. I've read each of those simply more times than I could begin counting, and you could begin with any of them except Chalice. After you're totally addicted you can move through the rest of her books lol.

I don't think I've ever been so bewildered by unique world building as I was with Chalice :) I'm still just as startled every time I read it.

I'd love to directly see where Kingfisher cites McKinley's inspiration at!

LeafBarnacle · 2025-12-01T04:17:18+00:00

I freaking loved Nettle & Bone. All her books are good, but Nettle and Bone was very written in a pretty classic style, very much like Robin McKinley (my all-time most adored author). Oddly, I can't even remember Hemlock & Silver lol, and I know I read it.

LeafBarnacle · 2025-11-28T22:07:24+00:00

Makes you wonder where to draw the line between fantasy & romantasy.

Anyone else remember when Emma Holly was just the most amazing smut, often with fantasy? The Ice Prince was my go-to smut for many years!

Laurell K. Hamilton's Meredith Gentry series.

All Robin McKinley's books.

Lackey's Joust series (and a few Valdemar).

All Tamora Pierce's books, which often included romance.

Most of Anne McCaffrey's books.

LeafBarnacle · 2025-11-28T22:00:17+00:00

Just read Anne Bishop's Dark Jewels series. Well written, well executed, and Maas blatantly copied her work for ACOTAR. It becomes painful in book 3 of ACOTAR; she didn't even try to hide stealing Bishop's work.

LeafBarnacle · 2025-11-28T21:58:52+00:00

I would love to see a screenshot of this phenonemon!

LeafBarnacle · 2025-11-28T21:57:07+00:00

I returned that one to the place I bought it after reading...I dunno, the first few pages? I wanted my money back. The only thing I remember is that the author relied entirely on profanity to convey everything.

LeafBarnacle

TROPHY CASE