Many know the story of Chang'e, the lonely goddess imprisoned on the moon as punishment for drinking the immortality elixir meant for her husband. Not many know that the elixir saved her unborn daughter's life. Xingyin, now grown, is forced to flee the moon when her existence is almost revealed. She has to learn to navigate the dangerous and magical Celestial Kingdom while hiding her true identity. Court intrigue, immortal battles, love, and betrayal follow as she attempts to free her mother and make a new life for herself. A fierce and beautiful re-imagining, sure to be a new favorite.
This medieval India-inspired tale is full of mythology, goddesses and magic. A prophecy has destroyed everything in Gul's life, now she'll stop at nothing to avenge her family. Cavas wants nothing more than to care for his sick father, but a mysterious girl threatens to upend all his plans. As their lives intertwine, the fate of their kingdom is thrown into chaos.
East-Asian folklore meets the Grimms' "The Six Swans" in this gorgeous reimagining set in the world of Spin the Dawn.
Exiled and enchanted for magic she can't help but possess, Princess Shiori must find a way to save her brothers and her kingdom - all with the help of a shapeshifting dragon and the boy she was once supposed to marry.
Vivid and rich, Lim expertly weaves together familiar tales and folklore in such new and exciting ways, allowing for mystery and discovery in the stories we thought we knew so well.
I love fairytale/mythology retellings, so from the beginning I expected to enjoy this reimagining of Homer's Iliad, as told from Patroclus' perspective. I didn't expect to fall in love with this quiet and gentle story about legacy and how we choose to honor the ones we love. If you're on the fence about it, jump off and pick it up!
A collection of traditional Japanese myths molded to fit contemporary times leads to the following: an incense company that brings lovers and pets back from the dead, fishing for skeletons and potential ghost girlfriends from the Edo period, very pushy but top performing door-to-door saleswomen, and a tree that requests you to stop bringing your hungry children over for blessings because her burrs are not what you think they are and you are making the tree uncomfortable.
With whimsical illustrations and a plethora of mer-lore from all over the world, this book would have captivated little Dean for hours. Lets be honest, adult Dean is pretty jazzed as well.
Ann Leckie is so intelligent and so wise about the way she crafts her stories. What we have here is a slow burn fantasy novel told from the perspective of an ancient god that resides in a huge rock, a plot summary which does not sound even remotely exciting. But friends, I'm here to tell you that it is. You will see life evolve, languages emerge and change, cultures form and get subsumed, and religious worship come into being. There is war, there is blood sacrifice, there are fully developed queer / trans characters. There is the deep, echoing feeling that life existed before you were born and will continue after you die.
At first glance, this is a well researched series about an order of medieval assassin nuns sired by Death Himself, so I was pretty much already sold. But THEN I started reading it, and could not stop. For weeks. I burned through all 3 books (and the related upcoming February 2019 release Courting Darkness) in like a week and a half.
The series takes place in 15th century Brittany, a time when everyone is at war, the duchy has been inherited by a 12 year old girl, and the Catholic Church chose to actively subsume pagan beliefs in order to gain acceptance among a reluctant populace. It is one of these old pagan gods, Mortain, now considered the patron saint of death, that our heroines worship and struggle and fight for. But they are also fighting for themselves.
The history is fascinating, the trauma is brutal but very well handled, the romance is the healthy and supportive (but fuuun) kind that you want your teens reading about, and the weapons are historically accurate. Don't you want to read about young women finding self actualization and liberation through violence and subterfuge and epic battles? DON'T YOU?
In this gender-bending retelling of the Oedipus myth, Johnson's words gnash, bite, and bruise, taking on a harsh beauty that mirrors the darkness of the river canal wilderness. With interweaving perspectives and characters on the edge of madness or beyond, this book is one of my most memorable reads of the last few years.
