Eggplant.place

128d

Standard ebooks Fundraising Campaign

229d

Chapter 4 of Princess of Kurg is available to read on #RoyalRoad: https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/108234/jigsaw-city

Minerva and Thistle face an impossible choice: give up the enchanter working on their escape plan and delay their escape by ten years, or make substitutions in violation of the rules set by The Void?

They choose to lie, but will it work? Will The Void be fooled?

@bookstodon
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130d

People always say you shouldn't rush growing up, so I'm saving my adulthood for when they put me in the incinerator 😜😂

@reading @bookstodon @books @humor @humor@lemmy.world @aiop @worldbuilding

#SpeculativeFiction #FantasyBooks
#FantasyMemes #Fantasy #Tolkien #LotR #Hobbit
#ReadingMemes #Meme #Memes #Humor #Humour #Funny
#Reading #Readers #ReadingCommunity
#Novel #Books #Fiction
#Bookwyrm #Bookstodon

Post by ohsalome:
Me, aged 14, reading Tolkien: Hobbits are considered
chuldren until they are 30? How funky! Fantasy
worldbuilding! This is so different from us humans!
Me, aged 25: Oh i get it now
Reply by roguebelle:
Me, aged 34: Actually the Hobbits might be rushing
things a bit.

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Edited 129d ago

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229d

Ebook: https://books2read.com/TheWizardsScion

Levi Jacobs always dreamed of being like his father, the greatest wizard in the world, but had no understanding what it would be like. Follow Levi’s journey from bumbling teen to a great hero, while the young wizard learns to master magical powers that are initially completely beyond him and barely under control.

@bookstodon
#author #indieauthor #writing #fantasy #scifi #sciencefiction #sff #sciencefantasy #scifi #actionadventure #fiction #books

The cover for the omnibus edition of The Wizard's Scion.

The background is a symbolic representation of a wormhole, hinting at the time-travel elements of the series.

The foreground consists of four figures, in silhouette, each filled with a different texture and behind them is a black octopus with red eyes and a menacing, red aura.

The central figure is a wizard in the midst of casting a spell, with his arms and robe outstretched. The texture used is black, with patches of mottled gold, overlaid with eight pointed stars. He's surrounded by a golden aura.

To the immediate left of the wizard is a girl. The texture used has a black background, overlaid with symbols for music, in green, cyan and white. She's surrounded by a green aura.

Standing just ahead of the wizard, but also slightly to the left is a woman wielding a pair of short swords in a combat-ready pose. The texture used is of blood spatter on a black background. She's surrounded by a dark red aura.

Ahead and to the right of the wizard is another woman with short swords, in a more relaxed stance than the other dual-wielder. The two woman are very similar in appearance, hinting at the fact that the one is a clone of the other. The texture used for this figure is a combination of a golden sunrise and translucent parts of clocks, hinting that the clone was made by time travelers. She's surrounded by a dark golden aura.

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196d

Chapter 18 of Princess of Kurg is available to read on #RoyalRoad: https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/108234/jigsaw-city

Nicole attends a city council meeting and eventually tells a little lie about why she's not sleeping very well. Irkith reacts badly to that, ordering her to tell the truth.

The piece of Kurg lodged in her mind tries to take over and Kazic levels a blaster on the Ulkun King...

@bookstodon
#author #indieauthor #writing #fantasy #scifi #sciencefiction #sff #actionadventure #fiction #fairies #webseries

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229d

📚 Pines by: Blake Crouch

One way in. No way out.

Secret Service agent Ethan Burke arrives in Wayward Pines, Idaho, with a mission: locate two federal agents who went missing in the bucolic town one month earlier. But within minutes of his arrival, Ethan is involved in a violent accident. He comes to in a hospital, with no ID, n...

https://bookblabla.com/book/pines

@bookstodon

#books #reading #libraries #fiction #thrillers #technologicalfiction #horror #generalfiction

One way in. No way out.

Secret Service agent Ethan Burke arrives in Wayward Pines, Idaho, with a mission: locate two federal agents who went missing in the bucolic town one month earlier. But within minutes of his arrival, Ethan is involved in a violent accident. He comes to in a hospital, with no ID, no cell phone, and no briefcase.

As the days pass, Ethan's investigation turns up more questions than answers: Why can't he get any phone calls through to his wife and son in the outside world? Why doesn't anyone believe he is who he says he is? And what is the purpose of the electrified fences surrounding the town? Are they meant to keep the residents in? Or something else out?

Each step closer to the truth takes Ethan farther from the world he knew, from the man he was, until he must face a horrifying fact—he may never get out of Wayward Pines alive.

The nail-bitingly suspenseful opening installment in Blake Crouch’s blockbuster Wayward Pines trilogy, Pines is at once a brilliant mystery tale and the first step into a genre-bending saga of suspense, science fiction, and horror.

The first book of the smash-hit Wayward Pines trilogy, from the New York Times bestselling author of Dark Matter, Recursion, and Upgrade

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229d

📚 Pachinko by: Min Jin Lee

Yeongdo, Korea, 1911. Teenaged Sunja, the adored daughter of a fisherman, falls for a wealthy yakuza. He promises her the world, but when she discovers she is pregnant, and that her lover is married, she refuses to be bought.

Facing ruin, she accepts an offer of marriage from a gentle minister passing thro...

https://bookblabla.com/book/pachinko

@bookstodon

#books #reading #libraries #fiction #familylife #generalfiction #romance #historical

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222d

📚 The Mountain in the Sea by: Ray Nayler

The transnational tech corporation DIANIMA has sealed off the remote Con Dao Archipelago, where a species of octopus has been discovered that may have developed its own language and culture. The marine biologist Dr. Ha Nguyen, who has spent her life researching c...

https://bookblabla.com/book/the-mountain-in-the-sea

@bookstodon

#books #reading #libraries #fiction #sciencefiction #generalfiction #thrillers #technologicalfiction

The transnational tech corporation DIANIMA has sealed off the remote Con Dao Archipelago, where a species of octopus has been discovered that may have developed its own language and culture. The marine biologist Dr. Ha Nguyen, who has spent her life researching cephalopod intelligence, will do anything for the chance to study them. She travels to the islands to join DIANIMA's team: a battle-scarred securityagent and the world’s first (and possibly last) android.

The octopuses hold the key to unprecedented breakthroughs in extrahuman intelligence. As Dr. Nguyen struggles to communicate with the newly discovered species, forces larger than DIANIMA close in to seize the octopuses for themselves.

But no one has yet asked the octopuses what they think. Or what they might do about it.

A near-future thriller, a meditation on the nature of consciousness, and an eco-logical call to arms, Ray Nayler's dazzling literary debut The Mountain in the Sea is a mind-blowing dive into the treasure and wreckage of humankind’s legacy.

*WINNER OF 2023 LOCUS AWARD FOR BEST FIRST NOVEL . FINALIST FOR THE NEBULA AWARD, and THE LOS ANGELES TIMES RAY BRADBURY PRIZE

The Mountain in the Sea is a wildly original, gorgeously written, unputdownable gem of a novel. Ray Nayler is one of the most exciting new voices I’ve read in years.
-Blake Crouch, author of Upgrade and Dark Matter

Humankind discovers intelligent life in an octopus species with its own language and culture, and sets

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144d

Why does fiction matter?

Because stories can sharpen the way we understand other people.

A meta-analysis found that reading fiction has a small but positive effect on social cognition. Including our ability to interpret emotions, motives, and inner lives.

In other words: novels may help us practice empathy.

#books #literature #bookstodon #mentalhealth @bookstodon #reading #fiction

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228d

📚 Departure by: A. G. Riddle

En route to London from New York, Flight 305 suddenly loses power and crash-lands in the English countryside, plunging a group of strangers into a mysterious adventure that will have repercussions for all of humankind.

Struggling to stay alive, the survivors soon realize that the worl...

https://bookblabla.com/book/departure

@bookstodon

#books #reading #libraries #fiction #dystopianfiction #thrillers #technologicalfiction #suspensefiction

En route to London from New York, Flight 305 suddenly loses power and crash-lands in the English countryside, plunging a group of strangers into a mysterious adventure that will have repercussions for all of humankind.

Struggling to stay alive, the survivors soon realize that the world they’ve crashed in is very different from the one they left. But where are they? Why are they here? And how will they get back home?

Five passengers seem to hold clues about what's really going on: writer Harper Lane, venture capitalist Nick Stone, German genetic researcher Sabrina Schröder, computer scientist Yul Tan, and Grayson Shaw, the son of a billionaire philanthropist.

As more facts about the crash emerge, it becomes clear that some in this group know more than they’re letting on answers that will lead Harper and Nick to uncover a far reaching conspiracy involving their own lives. As they begin to piece together the truth, they discover they have the power to change the future and the past to save our world... or end it.

A wildly inventive and propulsive adventure full of hairpin twists, Departure is a thrilling tale that weaves together power, ambition, fate, memory, and love, from a bold and visionary talent.

From the author of the #1 bestselling The Atlantis Gene comes a new novel in which the world’s past and future rests in the hands of five unwitting strangers in this definitive edition of A. G. Riddle's time-traveling, mind-bending speculative thriller.

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227d

Ebook: https://books2read.com/EmergentConsequences

The painter of the universe, known as Life, just wanted to fulfill her reason for being, by creating a universe full of beautiful wonders and living things, but her twin brother, Death, exists solely to destroy her work, leading to an intractable argument about whose work should prevail.

@bookstodon
#author #indieauthor #writing #fantasy #fiction #shortstory #life #death #creation #destruction #humor #satire #darkhumor

(Left) The Cover of Emergent Consequences, by Owen Tyme, illustrated by Ryan Johnson.

Life and Death lay asleep in a the grass, the way they lay slightly resembling the yin-yang symbol. The tools of their trades are scattered around them.

Life is a woman with black hair, in a white robe. Behind her are the paint brush and palette she paints the universe with. She's rather short and has rosy cheeks.

Death is a skeleton in a black robe, which appears to be continually disintegrating at the hem line. Behind him lay his scythe and scroll of names.

Between Life and Death is the hourglass that serves as the source of time for the entire universe, an item that's most commonly carried by Death, but which is part of the work of both of them.

The artwork is cartoonish, with some bushes and a tree that has one red piece of fruit dangling from it. The scene is looked upon by the sun, which frowns at everything.

(Right) The background is an image of some green bacteria with the following quote over the top:

"I think I'll call it Ted."

"Ted? You want to name micro-organism Ted? Are you serious?"

"Yes, Ted."

"Alright, I just thought Bob would fit better."

(Bottom) https://books2read.com/EmergentConsequences

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164d

Ebook: https://books2read.com/TheMostPowerfulWords
Audiobook: https://owentyme.bandcamp.com/album/short-of-tyme-the-most-powerful-words

Hungry and hunting alone, a goblin boy meets a bouncing, blue slime and assumes it will be dinner. Naturally, the slime has other ideas, and the boy gets his hind-end handed to him by what’s supposed to be one of the weakest monsters of the forest.

@bookstodon
#author #indieauthor #writing #fantasy #fiction #goblin #shortstory #audiobook #prejudice

(Left) The cover of The Most Powerful Words, by Owen Tyme, which consists of a temperate forest path in twilight, with a tree on the right side, which hangs over the path. At the base of the tree is a translucent, blue slime monster, with shiny, black eyes that give it a somewhat cute appearance, while the shadow that's visible at its base almost looks like a big mouth. The air has an almosty golden look, because there's a hint of fog in it. The cover is framed with beveled stone.

(Right) The background is a bookcase with three shelves that are filled with old-looking books. Some have bookmark ribbons that stick off the edge, adding a little color. The books are largely brown, with ribbed spines. The following quote is laid over it:

“There are words so powerful, they can shake the foundations of reality or alter the fate of the world.”

“The most powerful words of all can change a man’s heart and mind about old, incorrect beliefs.”

(Bottom) https://books2read.com/TheMostPowerfulWords

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227d

📚 The Friend of the Family by: Dean Koontz

The human "oddities" in the Museum of the Strange are less wondrous than the gawking rubes had been promised. But Alida is something else. The real thing. Traveling Depression-era America from carnival midways to speakeasies, Alida is resigned to an exploited and lonely l...

https://bookblabla.com/book/the-friend-of-the-family

@bookstodon

#books #reading #libraries #fiction #historical #20thcentury #thrillers #suspensefiction

The human "oddities" in the Museum of the Strange are less wondrous than the gawking rubes had been promised. But Alida is something else. The real thing. Traveling Depression-era America from carnival midways to speakeasies, Alida is resigned to an exploited and lonely life on the road as the museum's golden ticket. Until she's rescued by two compassionate strangers.

Franklin and Loretta Fairchild see in Alida a gifted and uncannily well-read girl in need of a loving touch and a family. With the openhearted couple and their three precociously imaginative children, Alida finds it. Yet despite everyone's overwhelming generosity and acceptance, Alida knows she is still a very different kind of girl. Her dreams bear that out. They're vivid, unsettling, and threatening. Alida fears that they're also warnings. And that it's the Fairchilds who may need rescue from a bad, bad world.

Alida will do anything to help those she now holds nearest and dearest. Empowered with a purpose to vanquish evil, she will not fail her family.

A girl liberated from a carnival sideshow discovers her mysterious purpose in a moving novel about family, sacrifice, and transcendent love by #1 New York Times bestselling author Dean Koontz.

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164d

This is how I feel when I look at my TBR pile 😜😂

@reading @bookstodon @books @humor @humor@lemmy.world @aiop @joinin

#ReadingMemes #Meme #Memes #ReadAllTheBooks #Humor #Humour #Funny
#Reading #Readers #ReadersOfMastodon #ReadingCommunity
#Book #Books #Novel #Novels #Fiction
#Bookwyrm #Bookworm #Bookstodon

Drawing of a sorcerer sitting behind a talbe filled with crystalballs, on each ball has been editing in the text "unread book".

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115d

A respectable complaint and/or a true criticism of an alternate reality fiction revolves around internal consistency and plausibility.

Demanding historical accuracy in alternate reality fiction—or any fiction for that matter—defeats the purpose of #fiction.

#TV #Movie #Film #Drama #Pdrama #Kdrama

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131d

Chapter 46 of Princess of Kurg is available to read on #RoyalRoad: https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/108234/jigsaw-city

Nicole refuses to attend her mother's funeral, because she's convinced she'll find a way to raise the woman from the dead, even though none of her research panned out.

Deep down, she knows it isn't possible and sinks into the darkest depths of depression...

@bookstodon
#author #indieauthor #writing #fantasy #scifi #sciencefiction #sff #actionadventure #fiction #fairies #webseries

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227d

📚 Jade City by: Fonda Lee

Jade is the lifeblood of the island of Kekon. It has been mined, traded, stolen, and killed for—and for centuries, honorable Green Bone warriors like the Kaul family have used it to enhance their magical abilities and defend the island from foreign invasion.

Now, the war is over and a new generation of Kau...

https://bookblabla.com/book/jade-city

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#books #reading #libraries #fiction #fantasy #epicfiction #thrillers #crimefiction

Jade is the lifeblood of the island of Kekon. It has been mined, traded, stolen, and killed for—and for centuries, honorable Green Bone warriors like the Kaul family have used it to enhance their magical abilities and defend the island from foreign invasion.

Now, the war is over and a new generation of Kauls vies for control of Kekon's bustling capital city. They care about nothing but protecting their own, cornering the jade market, and defending the districts under their protection. Ancient tradition has little place in this rapidly changing nation.

When a powerful new drug emerges that lets anyone—even foreigners—wield jade, the simmering tension between the Kauls and the rival Ayt family erupts into open violence. The outcome of this clan war will determine the fate of all Green Bones—and of Kekon itself.

Praise for Jade City:

In this World Fantasy Award-winning novel of magic and kungfu, four siblings battle rival clans for honor and power in an Asia-inspired fantasy metropolis.

Named one of TIME's Top 100 Fantasy Books Of All Time

An epic drama reminiscent of the best classic Hong Kong gangster films but set in a fantasy metropolis so gritty and well-imagined that you'll forget you're reading a book. Ken Liu, Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Award-winning author

"A beautifully realized setting, a great cast of characters, and dramatic action scenes. What a fun, gripping read!" Ann Leckie, Hugo, Nebula, and Arthur C. Clarke Award-winning aut

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222d

📚 Snow Crash by: Neal Stephenson

Hiro lives in a Los Angeles where franchises line the freeway as far as the eye can see. The only relief from the sea of logos is within the autonomous city-states, where law-abiding citizens don’t dare leave their mansions.

Hiro delivers pizza to the mansions for a living, defe...

https://bookblabla.com/book/snow-crash

@bookstodon

#books #reading #libraries #fiction #sciencefiction #generalfiction #cyberpunkfiction #actionadventure

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1y

This part really stuck with me while doing an immersive read of Paradise Lost tonight.

@bookstodon @reading #classiclit #ClassicLiterature #fiction #johnmilton #literature

O shame to men! Devil with devil damned firm concord holds; men only disagree of creatures rational, though under hope of heavily grace, and, God proclaiming peace, Yet live in hatred, enimity and strife among themselves, and levy cruel wars wasting the earth, each other to destroy: as if (which might induce us to accord) man had not hellish foes enow besides, that day and night for his destruction to wait!

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185d

Ebook and paperback: https://books2read.com/JigsawCity

Nicole’s brain is slowly being taken over by an ancient, magical artifact, a small fragment of a magic city. She seeks a cure, before the city can destroy her sanity and then eventually, take her life by replacing her mind. Racing against time, she gathers pieces of the city, hoping to find an answer among them.

@bookstodon
#author #indieauthor #writing #fantasy #scifi #sciencefiction #sff #sciencefantasy #scifi #actionadventure #fiction #books

(Left) The cover of Jigsaw City, by Owen Tyme.

The background is a futuristic city of sky scrapers covered in greenery, with water ways in place of some streets. The background has been divided by dark lines that cut it up, into a jigsaw puzzle.

The foreground is a hexagonal coin with an indentation in the center that follows the same shape, with raised lines forming a hexagram in the center, which has a smaller one turned at a ninety-degree angle inside the hexagon at the center of it. The smaller hexagram has another inside it, a pattern that repeats until the lines become so fine and indistinct, they blend together.

(Right) There's a pool of lava at the base of a rocky slope, with some sharp rocks sticking upward out of it and the following text over the top:

“I’m immune to heat and fire. I can easily carry and protect one of you…”

“Ye’d need to deliver an army to make a difference, not one person!”

“I *am* an army.”

(Bottom) https://books2read.com/JigsawCity

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226d

📚 The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle by: Haruki Murakami

In a Tokyo suburb, a young man named Toru Okada searches for his wife's missing cat—and then for his wife as well in a netherworld beneath the city's placid surface. As these searches intersect, he encounters a bizarre group of allies and antagonists. Gripping, prophetic, an...

https://bookblabla.com/book/the-wind-up-bird-chronicle

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#books #reading #libraries #fiction #literaryfiction #fantasy #contemporary

In a Tokyo suburb, a young man named Toru Okada searches for his wife's missing cat—and then for his wife as well in a netherworld beneath the city's placid surface. As these searches intersect, he encounters a bizarre group of allies and antagonists. Gripping, prophetic, and suffused with comedy and menace, this is one of Haruki Murakami’s most acclaimed and beloved novels.

A dreamlike and compelling tour de force (Chicago Tribune) an astonishingly imaginative detective story, an account of a disintegrating marriage, and an excavation of the buried secrets from Japan’s forgotten campaign in Manchuria during World War II.

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226d

Chapter 5 of Princess of Kurg is available to read on #RoyalRoad: https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/108234/jigsaw-city

Nicole speaks face to face with the Empress of the Northwestern Empire, to seek permission to travel and collect pieces of Kurg.

However, she's uncomfortable with her bargaining position, for once, because the Empress could ask for almost anything...

@bookstodon
#author #indieauthor #writing #fantasy #scifi #sciencefiction #sff #actionadventure #fiction #fairies #webseries

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1y

The Smashwords Read-an-Ebook sale has started — which is very convenient timing for anyone maybe looking around for alternatives to Amazon right now.

There’s heaps of DRM-free indie books on sale or even free for the next week:
https://www.smashwords.com/shelves/promos

Mine are here, all 50% off (making them the massive investment of US$2 to try out) for escapist queer romantic fantasy fun:
https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/wendylpalmer
All proceeds to Ukraine 🇺🇦
Content warnings on my website: https://wendypalmer.au/content-warnings/

There’ll be plenty of other #MastoAuthors on sale there too (feel free to tag yourselves).

Give it a browse, you might discover your next favourite writer

@bookstodon @indieauthors #BookSale #Smashwords #fiction #ebooks #fantasy #QueerRomance #IndieAuthors #IndieBooks

An extension of the usual Smashwords Read-an-Ebook orange and grey advertising banner, which is those words plus a cartoon woman reading on her phone. This one adds an ereader with a pile of physical books stacked atop it (cartoon still), and some words about discovering new indie authors, getting DRM-free, great discounts - the point being a fantastic opportunity to stock up.

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226d

Ebook: https://books2read.com/TheMostPowerfulWords
Audiobook: https://owentyme.bandcamp.com/album/short-of-tyme-the-most-powerful-words

Hungry and hunting alone, a goblin boy meets a bouncing, blue slime and assumes it will be dinner. Naturally, the slime has other ideas, and the boy gets his hind-end handed to him by what’s supposed to be one of the weakest monsters of the forest.

@bookstodon
#author #indieauthor #writing #fantasy #fiction #goblin #shortstory #audiobook #prejudice