The Friday 56 is hosted by Freda’s Voice. The rules are simple – turn to page 56 in your current read (or 56% in your e-reader) and post a few non-spoilery sentences.

This week’s quote is from The Warrior Moon, the third book in K. Arsenault Rivera’s Their Bright Ascendancy trilogy. (The first two are The Tiger’s Daughter and The Phoenix Empress.) I’ll be doing a combination review for the entire trilogy as soon as I finish this (650 page!) book.

Shefali and Barsalai are two names for the same person.

Two more li they travel, Barsalai clutching at the arrow in her chest the whole way. Dismounting is simple enough – all the excitement has granted her the energy to do so with little trouble.

It is the healing that will be the issue.

She slumps against a tree. Her blood drips onto the earth and she curses. Trees may be eternal symbols of everything the Qorin dislike, but that is no reason to poison them. When she is done, she will see if the kumaq can cleanse it.

But there is the matter of the arrows first. She snaps the shafts between her fingers. Shoddy craftsmanship, to start. Fletching with sparrow feathers is always bad luck. That the arrows are bone tipped and not metal should make this a little easier – they’re narrower. If she focuses, she can feel its shape.

Another deep breath.

Shefali stares at the arrow in her chest, at the wound around the base of the shaft, and wills the laceration to expand. Shifting her form like this takes focus – but it is easiest when she can stare down at the thing she wants to change. Holding the image in her mind is the integral part, after all.

The Friday 56 is hosted by Freda’s Voice. The rules are simple – turn to page 56 in your current read (or 56% in your e-reader) and post a few non-spoilery sentences.

This week’s quote is from The Dragon With A Chocolate Heart, a middle-grade book by Stephanie Burgis.

What was the point of being human if I couldn’t be around chocolate? I’d finally found the thing I wanted to work with for the rest of my life, but no one here would even let me near it. If only I had my wings and claws! Then I could go ahead and just take it, like a proper dragon, whether they liked it or not.

If I ever saw that dastardly food mage again, I would bite him! I didn’t care if my human teeth were too blunt and puny to do real damage.

The Friday 56 is hosted by Freda’s Voice. The rules are simple – turn to page 56 in your current read (or 56% in your e-reader) and post a few non-spoilery sentences.

This week’s quote is from Song of the Crimson Flower, the third book in the Forest of a Thousand Lanterns trilogy by Julie C. Dao. (The second book was Kingdom of the Blazing Phoenix.) These are a gorgeous pair of paragraphs, and illustrate why I love this author.

And yet, as night began to fall, Bao could easily imagine this part of the river to be home to a witch. Here the trees bent their ropy necks over the water, blocking out the sun, and the limestone mountains hovered like malicious giants casting shadows over the land. The riverbanks seemed to close in on either side, and the branches in the water were sentinels, lifting their thick, mold-strewn leaves in warning.

Bao shivered despite the pungent heat, forgetting his hunger. He considered turning the boat back and trying an alternate route; he was certain that while dreaming his disturbing dreams, he had missed other possible paths. But his resolve hardened before he could dig his oar into the riverbank and flip himself around. Going back in the direction from which he had come felt like losing a battle. It felt like returning to Lan, like admitting his worthlessness. This was meant to be a new beginning, and what was a new beginning without adventure?

The Friday 56 is hosted by Freda’s Voice. The rules are simple – turn to page 56 in your current read (or 56% in your e-reader) and post a few non-spoilery sentences.

This week’s quote is from one of my rare nonfiction reads, You Are Your Own, about being an ex-evangelical woman. As an ex-Christian woman myself, a lot of this hits very close to home, and it’s a pretty difficult book to read.

While this may sound ridiculous or possibly not even that big of a deal, it’s important to recall that for a girl growing up in Evangelicalism, the only option available to me for stability was submission as a wife to an Evangelical man. Pursuing an education or becoming a working woman were largely discouraged – and are discouraged even still today. This idea may sound old fashioned, but for so many cisgender girls and women it is very much alive and well within that belief paradigm. So, if one of those women were to compromise her “purity”, she would effectively be compromising her entire future.

The Friday 56 is hosted by Freda’s Voice. The rules are simple – turn to page 56 in your current read (or 56% in your e-reader) and post a few non-spoilery sentences.

This week’s quote is from The Storm Crow, the first volume in a duology. I’m very excited because the main character struggles with depression and PTSD – the first one stated, the second one obvious but not named on the page. Yay for representation! My full review will be up soon.

Kiva eyed me as if seeing something she hadn’t expected to find. “I hate to say it, but Ericen might actually be good for you.” I must’ve looked absurd, because a grin split across Kiva’s face, and she hastened to explain. “Don’t get me wrong. He’s worse than an ice bear in heat, but I haven’t seen you that engaged with something in months.”

I stared at her. “An ice bear in heat?”

She shrugged. “They’re notoriously foul and vicious. And strangely fond of chocolate.” I rolled my eyes, and she laughed. “I’m serious, Thia. You’ve always needed an opponent. Your mother, Caliza, other riders; you’re the most competitive person I know, and Ericen’s nothing if not a challenge.”

The Friday 56 is hosted by Freda’s Voice. The rules are simple – turn to page 56 in your current read (or 56% in your e-reader) and post a few non-spoilery sentences.

This week’s quote is from Serpent & Dove by Shelby Mahurin, an enemies-to-lovers young adult fantasy romance about a witch and a witch hunter.

Bas was already moving, slamming the safe shut and hauling the portrait back into place. “Can you get us out?” His eyes were still wide with panic – desperate. We could both hear the constables and Chasseurs surrounding the manor. All the exits would soon be blocked.

I glanced down at my hands. They were shaking, and not just because of the broken fingers. I was weak, too weak, from the exertion of the evening. How had I let myself become so inept? The risk of discovery, I reminded myself. The risk had been too great –

“Lou!” Bas grabbed my shoulders and shook me slightly. “Can you get us out?”

Tears welled in my eyes. “No,” I breathed. “I can’t.”