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 Priory of the Orange Tree, an absolute BEHEMOTH of a book. It’s an epic fantasy, with dragons and riders and politics and evil vs good, and hidden mages – and a TON of female main characters. So far it’s pretty great!

And of course, with all the women in this book, page 56 is concerned with one of the few MEN.  Heh.

Sometimes he wanted to unmask himself, just to see their faces. To tell them that he was the alchemist who had convinced the young Queen of Inys that he could brew her an elixir of life, removing any need for marriage or an heir. That he was the wastrel who had used Berethnet money to prop up years of guesswork, experiments, and debauchery.

How horrified they would be. How scandalized by his dearth of virtue. They would have no idea that even when he had made his way to Inys ten years ago, a walking tinderbox of pain and anger, he had remained faithful, in some hidden chamber of his heart, to the tenets of alchemy. Distillation, Ceration, Sublimation – these were the only deities that he would ever praise.

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 Weight Of Our Sky by Hanna Alkaf, a book that’s gotten a lot of buzz for its diversity, #ownvoices rep, and subject matter. My full review will be up tomorrow, as I sat down and read this book straight through!

After the failed trip to the doctor, Mama read the Quran to me each night, determined to chase away the mischievous spirits wreaking havoc on my brain. No longer was she the scientific-minded nurse, once so skeptical of djinn and the supernatural; with no other options, my increasingly worrying symptoms had turned her firmly into a desperate, faithful believer. I didn’t mind her doing it – I’d always found the verses beautiful, after all, and soothing – but I knew it wouldn’t work. He had forsaken me.

There’s a lot of heavy topics in this book, but it’s really, really good. I’ll explain more tomorrow!

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 Gutter Prayer, a fantasy novel by Gareth Hanrahan. In some ways it’s urban fantasy, as it’s set in a city that is very much a character in the novel – but it’s definitely more high fantasy than today’s “urban fantasy” genre.

They descend into darkness. He leads her by a circuitous route, for there are no straight paths down here, just a choice of labyrinths. She stumbles on rough floors and loose bones. She tries keeping one hand pressed to the tunnel wall, so he brings her under one of the city’s sewage works, down paths where the walls ooze black, and after that she keeps her hands to herself, her only tether to the surface Rat’s infrequent commands. Alchemical waste slithers past her legs, half-alive piles of pus that sprout blind eyes and hairy whiskers. They pass through abandoned sections of the city, and through still-inhabited ones. A door leads them into the cellar of a tavern, and he whispers to her to stay quiet as they pass beneath a room full of dock workers breaking their fasts. She can move surprisingly quietly when she has to, but otherwise she’s loud as a sewer boar in the tunnels. He can tell when she bumps or brushes against a new obstacle by each fresh profanity.

Full review up soon!

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 Girl King, by Mimi Yu, one of the books I’m reading for the Year of the Asian Reading Challenge.

When she looked up, the woman’s face was a chasm of writing light and fire, horrible to behold.

Cold fear seized her, but the sensation quickened into an unbearable heat. The woman’s robes turned to living flames, scorching Min’s arms and neck and setting her hair ablaze. She opened her mouth to cry out and the stranger bent over her, sucking the scream out of her with a cruel, searing kiss –

Min awoke with a start violent enough to chase the nightmare away.

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.

As you’ve probably noted by the lack of posts the past week, I’ve been too busy to read! We moved into our brand new house on Sunday, and I’ve been busily unpacking boxes, putting furniture together, and setting up the house. I did sneak in a little bit of time to read S. A. Chakraborty’s The Kingdom of Copper, the sequel to City of Brass. My full review will be up – oh, sometime next week, probably, when I have time to write it! But I’ll give you a quick glimpse from page 56.

Two women were waiting for him outside his tent.

“Sisters!” he greeted them, forcing a smile to his face even as he inwardly swore. “Peace be upon you.”

“And upon you peace.” It was Umm Qays who spoke first, one of the village’s stone mages. She gave Ali a wide, oddly sly grin. “How does this day find you?”

Exhausted. “Well, thanks be to God,” Ali replied. “And yourselves?”

“Fine. We’re fine,” Bushra, Umm Qays’s daughter spoke up quickly. She was avoiding Ali’s eyes, embarrassment visible in her flushed cheeks. “Just passing through!”

“Nonsense.” Umm Qays yanked her daughter close, and the young woman gave a small, startled yelp. “My Bushra has just made the loveliest kabsa . . . she is an extraordinarily gifted cook, you know, can conjure up a feast from the barest of bones and a whisper of spice . . . Anyway, her first thought was to set aside a portion for our prince.” She beamed at Ali. “A good girl, she is.”

Mothers will always try to push their daughters at eligible, well-off bachelors, no?

Thinks are starting to calm down here, and I still have library books to read, so hopefully I will have the blog hopping again in no time!

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 Slayer by Kiersten White. Slayer is set in the world of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, after the events of the comic book season that came after the TV show. (I’m a bit of a fan.)

Artemis had been even more affected by the test. When she had come back, she’d looked . . . haunted. “I don’t want to be a Watcher,” she had said. But being a Watcher was what she had always wanted. I couldn’t wrap my head around her not being on the Council someday in the distant future. In my mind, she already was.

When I tried to talk to her about the test, she refused. For the last four years she had been there for me, but I didn’t know how to offer her the same support, so I pretended like nothing was different. She let me. It was easiest for both of us.

On a side note, WE ARE CLOSING ON THE HOUSE TODAY. IN A FEW HOURS I WILL BE A HOMEOWNER!!!!