Ribbon
Cats and ravens are classics, but Unfamiliar Familiars offers some fun alternatives. Each animal has a color picture (often really friggin adorable), strengths and weaknesses, and a brief description. Also a few name ideas, like Boop Noodle for a ball python.
This is an ideal book to leave out for guests to flip through and have a giggle. It even has a page marking ribbon so they know you're high class as they flip to the page you marked (it's the Dik-Dik page, it's always the Dik-Dik page.)
Why gender roles are reversed from our world is unclear, but maybe the mentions of Boudicca are the hints and I don't know English history well enough to get it. Regardless, women are the political leaders and heads of household in this world. Men are magic users. A woman cannot be a politician unless she is married to a magic user. Now let's subvert the gender roles.
This is a nice taste of repressed Regency romance at a fancy ball in a magic underwater ballroom. It's included with the audiobook for Snowspelled.
A whole family gets portaled to a fantasy world with light LitRPG elements just before Christmas. They get to choose their fantasy race, class, and talent when they arrive and the main character, a transgirl, is able to magically change to being biologically female as well. The family gets settled in, there's almost no conflict, and it's just a pleasant wish fulfilling time.
About halfway through there's some God and Jesus talk, which took me by surprise. The “A Christmas Story” should have been a hint but it's such a non-secular holiday in my experience that I forgot.
Emily randomly gets super powers and loses all control over her life. The system decided she's a villain, which means every hero will want to capture her for easy skill points. Her power creates other sentient beings, “little sisters” who want to help her become the bestest villain ever. She never clearly explains to them she doesn't want to be a villain.
There's a mechanic to the morality system to move up or down the hero-villain scale but no indication that Emily or her sisters are making progress in either direction. She passes herself off as a hero among the local heroes, while local villains think she's an evil mastermind.
The sisters feel like the cast of a moe anime. They're preteens and their smallness is emphasized. The word “tummy” is used a lot and there's lots of cuddling and head pats. Teddy, the werebear sister, talks about poop a lot.
One anthology dares to ask “What if stepmoms aren't terrible?”
These stories feature heroic stepmothers, supportive stepmothers to heroic stepchildren, and heroic women who become stepmothers somewhere along the way. They're written for adults who grew up on anti-stepmom propaganda and are maybe stepmoms themselves, rather than meant to be read to/with stepkids.
Most of the stories are pretty short but the story “The Bird of Many Voices” is more novella length. It's about a bird in an abusive relationship. Some readers may want to skip that one, but it's very well done.
Many of the stories feature good disability rep.
This is a fun book of prompts for any fantasy tabletop game. They're split up by setting, so if the party is in a village you'd flip to the village chapter and roll percentile dice. The prompts range from serious to goofy and often are open to both violent and non-violent approaches. Some are based around classic fairy tales or movies like Home Alone.
The “Game Master Tools” section has tables for individual elements like NPC motivations and locations. I wish it had more tables here, as it's impossible to create an encounter using only the tables provided.
Minor quibble: This book was written by multiple people and feels like it. Some prompts reference “the players”, others reference “you”, and others don't mention the players at all.
If most LitRPGs are like Dungeons and Dragons or role-playing video games, Goddess Reborn is a board game. Sammy's initial followers are whoever happened to be speaking in front of a mirror when she was looking around. They're scattered around several countries where an anti-religion group called the Dominion hold sway. Sammy tries to keep her pawns on the board, gain new ones, and move the pieces closer together, all while avoiding the notice of the Dominion and more powerful gods.
Sammy the isekai protagonist is a college student who's into Tarot and swears a lot. I'm not a Tarot enthusiast so I can't say if the Tarot elements are well done, but at least some of it is intentionally bad. The system running this world didn't bother getting it right and Sammy gets annoyed it's so simplistic here.
Sammy also has her public persona as Samantha, Virgin Goddess of Mirrors. This persona has a soothing voice and comes off as sweet and innocent. In spreading her influence and hiding her identity, she develops even more personas, all very different.
The system messages are very repetitive. Every time Sammy gains a new follower, there are four lines of system text. When she gets daily faith points for followers, a message is given for each one until she fixes it to just give a total. I suspect this book would be an hour or two shorter if the system messages were pruned down.
The audiobook has two readers. The female reader voices all female characters and all general narration. The male reader voices all male characters as well as the system messages. They both do a wide variety of accents/voices. Some characters are a little quieter than others but mostly the production is solid and even.
Goblin Mode is a jumble of mindfulness and aesthetic tips that give you permission to be messy and weird. Projects range from super basic, like how to sew on a button, to more ambitious like embroidery. For ambitious projects you'll want to find in-depth guidance elsewhere. This book is more about laying out the possibilities and maybe reminding you what you already know how to do.
The audiobook reader is very pleasant and this could be a nice book for relaxing and/or falling asleep.
Expect some familiar stories if you've ever dabbled in fairytale and mythology, but I found a surprising number I'd never read before. Many stories are simplified to fit on a single page, but maybe you'll be inspired to explore them further in more details books.
The art is gorgeous and this book may be worth it on that alone. The author also made a tarot deck with the art, so that's another way to enjoy the art.
Past the frustrating setup parts of volume 1, we've entered pure awesomeness. The brothers aren't on the verge of killing Penelope anymore but she decides they're too dangerous. Instead she unlocks the remaining two routes. I like all the boys except Prince Psycho. Looking forward to seeing how Penelope can tempt death next.
Threadbare is the most Adorable golem you've ever met. He has so many levels in the Adorable skill, you might have to pass a Willpower check to not turn to mush in his presence.
Being a newly created toy golem, Threadbare cannot read the system prompts that invade his vision. He has no mouth so he cannot talk to his girl or anyone else to ask questions. Nodding in response to questions seems to make the little girl happy. Thinking “yes” makes the text disappear. Threadbare is the most agreeable little guy.
The premise is adorable but there is a lot of swearing in Stuff and Nonsense, so don't pick it up for young kids. It's more appropriate for teens and adults who want something cute but cheeky.
It's not all hugs and tea parties though. Threadbare has many adventures - on his own, with his girl, and even with the family's very large housecat.
Be cautioned this book ends on a cliffhanger. You'll want more but thankfully this is a complete series, at six books.
A twenty-something woman from Earth is reborn in a fantasy world. Reborn in the most literal sense. It's not written in gross detail but there is a first person childbirth scene from the perspective of the baby. This is one of those books that is about a child but isn't for children. It covers the first twelve or thirteen years of Alanna's life but she has a young adult's capacity for using bad words.
The first third of the book is set on a farm, which is very exciting for a fantasy farming fanatic like me. Alanna has to learn girl chores like washing dishes or sweeping, but sometimes the farm needs all hands on deck. She also sometimes goes foraging in the forest with her brothers. Once her magic is discovered, training with the local wizard takes up much of her time.
Alanna is a bard and it's very much the utility caster type. She learns some healing, create food, create water, and other minor spells that another spellcaster could do better. Magic is rare in this world, so that “other spellcaster” is rarely an option.
I found it hard to keep track of Alanna's physical age. The narrative reminds us sometimes but she has the mind of an adult so she feels older. The book occasionally changes from Alanna's perspective to other characters, still first person. The character is made clear at the start of each section and the voices are distinct. A small child won't be told everything, so it helps give context for things happening around her.
The worldbuilding is cool. Border farms, small towns, big cities, and everything in between all feel distinctly different. Two religious sects are fleshed out as well as several professions. It also has, quite honestly, the most interesting take on fantasy world birth control I've ever read.
There is no grand climax or resolution in this book, but also no cliffhanger. It definitely feels like a web serial. The author's Goodreads lists five books currently.
Content warning: Pregnancy loss
If you ever wanted to be a sanitation worker in a fantasy world, this is the book for you. Clyde wants to be a Robin Hood type but fights a lot of mud and poo covered stuff along the way.
Clyde comes off as sarcastic and disinterested. The game system is disinterested and uses outdated slang, which comes off as sarcastic. Most other characters are disbelieving of Clyde's ignorance of the world... and express that with sarcasm.
The game system is my favorite character.
The fantasy sanitation system is actually pretty interesting but that's not exactly what I'm looking for in a book.
Characters talk around each other and many misunderstandings stem from the the main character suddenly being unable to speak aloud. It's the most annoying kind of noble-political drama.
The first half of this volume is taken up by Aristia's execution and flashbacks to what led up to the execution. Then we're thrust back to Aristia at age ten, with full memories and PTSD, trying to find a way out of her doomed betrothal. The age difference is jarring, from hot angst to cute sad.
This book is full color, so it should be easy to tell characters apart with the rainbow of hair colors. It is not. All the adult men have the same face. There are few enough women and children that those groups aren't confusing, at least.
Content warning: Miscarriage
The formatting on Kindle takes some getting used to. Pages go right to left but panels go down from the left side then right.
Chi plays with other kittens around the neighborhood and I teared up a little because one has no family or home. Chi learns how to stay warm when it's cold out and dry when it rains. Very cute and full color but the baby talk translation (“pway” instead of “play”) is annoying.
Playing an otome game, a girl finds herself stuck in the game as the villainess. We've seen this dozens of times by now. What makes this story stand out is it takes place during the game timeline and she's stuck with the multiple choice answers from the game, which are all terrible. It's frustrating to read, so thankfully she unlocks free will after a few chapters.
Penelope's life is otome game hard mode, both playing the mobile game and being stuck in it. It's not the “everyone loves me” power fantasy as these stories usually end up. Expect a lot of bullying, suffering, and danger.
The art is full color throughout and quite vibrant. All the guys have different hair colors so it's easy to tell all the important characters apart.
I found the timeline of this book confusing, as it runs through a period of time, then circles back to the same period in other areas. Every time I think we're done with World War 2, we're back to the start again. Every time we near modern day, it's back to the 50s. I listened to the audiobook, which may have contributed to the confusion.
It's very interesting to learn how neurodiversity science developed and figuring out what exposure people of different ages would have had.
This is going to be a very slow burn healing love story, isn't it? Miyo is tentatively opening up to the idea that she's not utterly worthless. Kudo finds ways to stealthily improve her situation. The scenes from the perspective of the deranged half sister are the best part.
Art-wise, Miyo gets a wardrobe upgrade with really gorgeous kimonos and accessories.