"My grandfather's Heaven is bloodless, and I am not. Let him offer me a better place, where we may love and sing and grow as we are wont, where our children and our children's children may join us, and I will go."

- Elua, Kushiel's Dart

Art:

The Fallen Angel

Original by Arantzazu Martinez (2007)

Edit by ZB.IX

Songs of Love and Death ♥️☠️🗡️

Edited by George R. R. Martin & Gardner Dozois

Features stories by Neil Gaiman, Jim Butcher, Jacqueline Carey, Diana Gabaldon, Majorie M. Liu, Carrie Vaughn, and many more.

My first process video - PART 1

Here is PART 2 on Instagram

Here is PART 2 on tumblr

📚📖

This is my most ambitious rebind so far. I’ve printed on bookcloth before, but this time it was particularly challenging. I printed a much larger pattern for the covers and spine than I’d ever previously attempted. I ran into some issues with printer jamming for the first time since I started the regular practice of printing directly onto bookcloth. It was immensely stressful, because any damage to the printer as a result would have voided the warranty, since book cloth is not one of the accepted printing mediums for the machine.

But with some patience and realignment, I managed and the cloth printed successfully. But the next problem I ran into was smearing. I’d never had this problem before either. I had changed up my settings out of caution for the machine’s acceptance of the cloth, but the result was probably a heavier and denser layering of ink than usual. This is becuase the machine believed it was printing onto matte brochure paper, not regular paper.

So as I was making the case, the design was smearing heavily on my fingers. I had to be extremely careful where I touched the book to make sure I wasn’t destroying the design as I wrapped the cover boards and spine, but it was still an absolute mess.

In the end though, I got through it. I’m pretty pleased with the overall design. I’ve been told by some that the pattern reminds them of azulejo ceramic tiles, or delftware porcelain. Hopefully my gift recipient likes it as well.

My original cover designs can be seen HERE.

Put off reading Kushiel's Legacy thinking it would be vaguely racist harem-fantasy BDSM smut in high fantasy dressing. Instead I got feminist George R. R. Martin if he was less racist and skeezy.

You need to take notes to follow all the names and I can barely keep up with who's doing what and the author has never heard of cutting to the goddamn chase, but good God you get so invested in the characters within a hundred pages that it sends you reeling when they die. I'm only at 200 out of 500 pages but I'm so fucking gutted that I stopped reading to skim the rest of all three books to see whether any of my other favourites were going to die and who I should be braced for dying because good fucking god. I'm even heartbroken about characters that died before the book!

It really sneaks up on you because this book is so dense and crammed with so much detail that you don't realize you've begun to really love the characters. The fuckton of foreshadowing probably didn't register because they're front and center like main characters would be, so you're not prepared for them to die in the middle. And Phedre lives such a happy, sheltered life that it's a genuine shock when it all gets blown up.

I want them back. I like Joscelin, but he isn't them. Jacqueline Carey how could you. 😭😭😭😭😭

Oh btw, this series is also gay as shit. Heterosexuality doesn't seem to exist and it's so unremarkable it didn't even occur to me that this is a full-on LGBT series. It's not like in fanfic, when even in stories where queerness is universal and unremarked in-universe there might as well be a giant fuck you rainbow flag over it all. In Kushiel's Universe it's just so matter-of-fact that you realize this could actually have been what society was like in the past when the Church wasn't all up in everybody's business. Sure, in this universe there's a hippie Jesus that followed regular Jesus who was all flower power and free love and founded alternate universe France, so that nobody has any sexual hang ups, homo or otherwise (much like regular medieval France Ig), but even if there were, everybody's either too rich to give a shit or too poor to care (also like regular medieval France). It feels historically accurate somehow. Idk. But this book came out in 2001. Eat that, GRRM, with your two male gays and off-screen lesbians.

Edit: Just checked the AO3 tag and. Sigh. You know a book isn't trashy when it only has 350 works on AO3. Fanfic runs on trash and guilty pleasure, not sensitive and quality story-telling.

hey tumblr i keep forgetting to post about my good omens/kushiel's dart fic, serpent's eye, and i'm sure there's someone out there besides me and @voluptatiscausa who wants this combo!

do you like angst? slow burn? sexy fantasy religion? warrior monks not realizing they are horny? angst? slinky party dresses? vibes and feelings with no plot?

i am at 40k and aziraphale and crowley might just talk to each other for real soon! i promise it's a romance!

vote yes if you have finished the entire book.

vote no if you have not finished the entire book.

(faq · submit a book)

melisande shahrizai if you read this I’m free on thursday night and would like to hang out. please respond to this and then hang out with me on thursday night when I’m free

Character, book, and author names under the cut

Phèdre nó Delaunay- Kushiel's Legacy series by Jacqueline Carey

Luo Binghe- Scum Villain's Self-Saving System/Ren Zha Fanpai Zijiu Xitong by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu

Lucifer- Angels Before Man by Rafael Nicolás

Ophelia- To Be Or Not To Be by Ryan North

Joy to you on the Longest Night!

Kushiel’s Legacy GIF sets || Eglantine House

Eglantine maintains she charmed with the sweetness of her song. Eglantine is the artists’ House, and her adepts are skilled in a dozen disciplines: players, poets, artists, musicians, dancers and tumblers. And, it would appear, clothiers.

📚 March Reading Round-Up 📚

Read some pretty great books in March, and there's a few I'm still reading that I hope to finish in April!

I was able to continue some series that I've been reading, such as The Murderbot Diaries and Kushiel's Legacy. I also finally finished the Imperial Radch trilogy!

- House of Sky and Breath by Sarah J Maas (partial re-read, Partial re-read, very good, kept wanting to read more, didn’t cry but felt the Emotions, friendship! Connected much more to some characters this time around)

- Divinity 36 by Gail Carriger (Good, engrossing, very emotional, lots of heart at its core, enjoyed it more as I continued reading)

- This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone (thank you Bigolas Dickolas for the push to finally read this book! Loved the audiobook, beautiful, not as confusing as I’d feared, loved how their relationship developed, the prose and metaphors and language…)

- Traveller's Joy by Victoria Goddard (Good, emotional, heartwarming, some sadness and dramatic irony, friendship!)

- Kushiel's Chosen (finally got to the second book, and it didn't disappoint! So good, kept binging it, so emotional and philosophical, heartbreaking at parts, loved it even more than book one)

- Network Effect by Martha Wells (so good and readable, Murderbot my beloved, loved seeing the characters and their relationships and Three, Murderbot being rescued!!!!)

- Ancillary Mercy by Ann Leckie (Read it in one sitting immediately after finishing Network Effect, so very good, loved the themes and characters and how they developed and grew, that ending!)

Songs of Love & Death

♥️☠️🗡️

Edited by George R. R. Martin & Gardner Dozois

Features stories by Neil Gaiman, Jim Butcher, Jacqueline Carey, Diana Gabaldon, Majorie M. Liu, Carrie Vaughn, and many more.

This is the finished look of my latest rebind!

📚📖

Process videos:

PART 1

PART 2

Original Cover designs:

HERE

Really love that in Phedre's Trilogy she and Joscelin are petty, self-involved disasters whose motto is "fuck it, we ball" and literally can't communicate to save their fucking lives, and in Imriel's Trilogy he's like "my foster mother is a goddess, the most perfect human, an angel on earth, my foster father is the greatest warrior alive, full of wisdom and dignity, they're practically telepathically linked by love, have never done a thing wrong in their lives—".

WEEWOO WEEWOO FIC UPDATE ALERT

This is an ongoing one by @malachitegrey that I'm SUPER enjoying, gogogo reading time!

Femslash february, day 20

Smut: Phèdre/Mélisande (Kushiel's Lagacy)

I came across quite a lot of nice smut scenes between women, be it for sexyness, emotion or characterisation, but to my kinky ass nothing can beat the bsdm sex scenes between Phèdre and Mélisande, they have all of this.

I’m rereading kushiel’s dart for the first time in maybe a decade? inviting thoughts from anyone who may have them! I remember vague impressions of my feelings about it (primarily the worldbuilding) from when I first read it but not specifics