Reblog to let me know you want to play!

Follow me and I'll sort you into the one of the three gods-blessed elemental magic users in my epic fantasy SAINTS OF STORM AND SORROW 🔥🌊⛈️

Stormcaller

Tide-touched

Firetender

Which old gods call to your heart?

Fight me Aku! by Manuel Castañón

Pillow options...

DnD and Taoism

My friend @digitalagepulao recently told me about the "Heroes' Feast" from Dungeons & Dragons.

This reminded me of the Xingchu (行厨, "Traveling Canteen or Mobile Kitchen") from circa 4th-century CE Taoist literature. Immortals can summon this spirit cookery to feed guests with celestial food:

Another indication that the [immortal cultivator]’s alternative cuisine featured marvelous and exotic ingredients is the curious business of the “traveling canteen,” “mobile kitchen,” or cuisines de voyage (as xingchu 行厨 has been variously rendered), a sumptuous banquet of delicacies served up by spirits anywhere on command to those who know how to summon it. The ability to summon the traveling canteen allowed for easy procurement of distant, rare foodstuffs. In Traditions [of Divine Transcendents] we read that the adept Li Gen “could sit down and cause the traveling canteen to arrive, and with it could serve twenty guests. All the dishes were finely prepared, and all of them contained strange and marvelous foods from the four directions, not things that were locally available.” In the hagiography of Wang Yuan and Ma gu (Maid Ma) we read: When they were both seated, they called for the traveling canteen. The servings were piled up on gold platters and in jade cups without limit. There were rare delicacies, many of them made from flowers and fruits, and their fragrance permeated the air inside [their host Cai Jing’s home] and out. When the meat was sliced and served, [in flavor] it resembled broiled mo, and was announced as kirin meat (Campany, 2002, p. 29).

This could be an interesting alternative for anyone who has set their DnD campaign in a world inspired by Asian fantasy.

Source:

Campany, R. F. (2002). To Live as Long as Heaven and Earth: A Translation and Study of Ge Hong’s Traditions of Divine Transcendents. United Kingdom: University of California Press.

[I have attached a PDF of the book above. But a weird glitch has made all the Fs in words with double Fs disappear (e.g. "o er" instead of "offer"). Please keep this in mind.]

Queer characters on Asian fantasy book are often the best characters

The Poppy War #1 by R. F. Luang

„I have become something wonderful, she thought. I have become something terrible. Was she now a goddess or a monster? Perhaps neither. Perhaps both.“

“Find the light that makes your lantern shine," she used to say. "Hold on to it, even when the dark surrounds you. Not even the strongest wind will blow out the flame” - Elizabeth Lim, Six Crimson Cranes

Fantastic watercolor art pieces inspired by a imaginary “old Japan”, by Kigisu/(they are here on tumblr @kigisu go follow them <3)

hi, everyone! i'm rereading poppy war (i know, crazy) and i still can't picture out how sinegard academy looks like, including its grounds and stuff (as in the whole campus). can someone drop a fanart or at least a place that kind of looks like it. thank you huhu😭

Hi Tumblr I'm an Asian fantasy author fleeing the sudden death of all my other social media sites 👋 I've used Tumblr for years as a fandom lurker and rarely posted but in light of all my other communities imploding I guess I'll have to figure out how to be actually active on Tumblr and find bookish and writerly folks here 💜 say hi if that's you 🥺

If you love diverse filipino fantasy with bipoc leads, angry bi women clawing for space in a world that's always rejected them and soft boys who'd do anything for them, awesome elemental magic based on early Filipino shaman/ babaylan/katalonan mythologies and the Tagalog creation story, and the Bakunawa/Laho the 🇵🇭 sea dragon 🐉 and drowning colonizers then I hope you'll keep an eye out for SAINTS OF STORM AND SORROW coming in June 2024 from Titan Books

The Water Outlaws review

4/5 stars Recommended if you like: Wuxia fantasy, action adventure, renegade heroes, political intrigue Big thanks to Netgalley, Tordotcom, and the author for an ARC in exchange for an honest review! TW attempted sexual assault This book is interesting because the characters, by and large, don't turn out to be who you think they're going to be. I don't mean in a bait and switch kind of way or that the characters experience growth, but rather a realistic way. The characters themselves have their own self-conceptions about who they are and what they would do in certain circumstances, just like we form perceptions of the characters, and then over the course of the book, those self-perceptions are repeatedly and thoroughly challenged to get at the heart of who the character actually is. Lin Chong, for instance, has a very strict code of values and believes in both justice and the law, but as the synopsis says, she ends up as a criminal running from the empire. So how does what she's experienced and what she does next fit into her self-conception, if at all? I really enjoy how the characters answer these questions for themselves and it's interesting to see internal conflict dealt with in this manner. The story is told in multiple POV, so we get multiple angles of the things happening both in the capital and in Liangshan. While it might seem redundant to have two POVs for both locations, I actually think it adds to the story because then we can see the various schemes and layers that are going into each move on both sides. Lin Chong is definitely a character that grew on me. She's a straight arrow and believes the law, and empire, is just and that criminals are criminals for a reason. Unfortunately, she still struggles with the idea that the law can be wrong, that the government can be corrupt, even after she's branded a criminal. I'm not a fan of characters who think like that, especially when the corruption is right in front of them, but Lin Chong grew on me. She started to question her own line of thinking and began putting those martial arts skills to use for a good, albeit illegal, cause. Once she decides to be loyal, then she's loyal, and I liked seeing her friendships grow with the other women. Lu Junyi is a savvy intellectual who is a friend of Lin Chong's before she has to go on the run. Surprisingly, Lu Junyi remains an important character throughout the story. When the book opens, Lu Junyi is a socialite who hosts salons where intellectuals can gather and debate anything from science to poetry to politics, with Lu Junyi often taking an active and liberal role in these meetings. As the book goes on, however, she's faced with needing to put that knowledge to use in a dangerous endeavor. Like Lin Chong, she has to examine who she thinks she is and who she actually is. Lu Da is introduced as a friend of Lu Junyi's but ends up becoming sworn-sisters with Lin Chong. In contrast to the other two women, Lu Da is brasher and more impulsive, interested more getting things done than in thinking things over thenacting. She's an exceptionally loyal character and willing to fight to the end to protect those she cares about. Lu Da is also someone who isn't afraid of owning up to their mistakes. At times her narrative did make her feel younger than she actually is, like a child in an adult's body, which I wasn't a fan of. Wu Yong is another bandit with Liangshan and is the major strategist of the group. While we did get her POV, it was hard to fully grasp her plans and motivations since so much was left unsaid. I didn't really like her at first, but once we got a peek inside her head, I ended up liking Wu Yong a lot more. She has, as mentioned, a tactician's mind and I liked seeing how she schemed and came up with contingency upon contingency. Cai Jing is the grand chancellor for the empire and is really a mixed bag. He's definitely not a good person, but he's also not totally unlikable (which is kind of shocking). He fully believes that everything he's doing is for the good of the empire, which makes him a dangerous enemy to have. And like Wu Yong, he's good at planning for multiple contingencies. With him as one of the antagonists, I really did question whether the Liangshan Bandits could/would win. The last 20% or so is probably my favorite. There's a lot going on there but it's fast paced and interesting. I liked the battle in particular since we get to see a lot of different strategies brought out and it's really the only major showdown in the book, so I enjoyed being able to root for the bandits. I will say that I think this book could've been shorter. It was hard for me to get going and the action doesn't really pick up until ~40-50% of the way through. I would've liked to see some of the earlier parts compressed so that we can get to the main plot faster. The science bits were kind of hard for me to follow. There was a lot of technical work going on and some of the speakers weren't always coherent, so I had difficulty understanding what was happening. I know what the end goal of the experiments was, but I suppose I'm kind of confused still about what exactly the scientists were doing and how they were doing it. Overall this is a good book, particularly if you're looking for an action/adventure. Some parts of it dragged and I found some parts hard to follow, but the Liangshan Bandits definitely make up for it and I enjoyed reading their parts.

Historical inspiration for my fantasy novel: Pre-colonial Philippines

Seeker of the Lost Song is a historically-inspired fantasy novel merging medieval Finnish & pre-colonial Filipino elements, and I wanted to share two elements of Filipino history I included.

☼ 1) Dulang, a low table ☼

One of my favourite tidbits from my research is that pre-colonial Filipinos ate at a low table, sitting on the floor. Part of me worries that readers will think “Hey you stole that from Japan!” but I’m excited for the chance to show my people at their own low table, eating rice with their hands.

☼ 2) The balangay boat ☼

Another pre-colonial Filipino element I included in the book was a balangay, an ancient Filipino boat that’s recently come back into the public consciousness, with ancient boats being excavated and working replicas made. A quote from this article in STARweek, from one of the people who worked to rebuild the balangay, really resonated with me:

“It is very sad because we are a maritime people. We should be gifted and natural in the waters but colonialization robbed us of that consciousness. I am doing this to help rekindle that spirit”

The balangay that appears in my novel has a double outrigger (something that always feels so Filipino to me), but essentially it’s a larger version of the sketch pictured.  And I have to admit, the scenes on the balangay did stir something in me. Something ancient and ancestral, perhaps?

Seeker’s as-yet-unnamed sequel also features elements of pre-colonial Filipino history, but more on that at another time. Suffice it to say I’m enjoying this opportunity to learn more about the history of my people and use it in a fantasy setting!

Tree reference #2

I saw this tree in the Central Culture Park (中央藝文公園) of Taipei, Taiwan.

New L5R art! My character from Legends of the Five Rings, Kitsune Hiyori.

she wants to be the next best writer and her favorite genre is romance. Her character is inspired by Murasaki Shikibu, the author of Genji Monogatari :D

Darker By Four by June CL Tan

Pages: 400 Publisher: Hodderscape Released: 2nd of April 2024 From Jade Fire Gold author June CL Tan, Darker by Four is the launch of an epic, sweeping contemporary fantasy duology that is the Shadowhunter Chronicles meets the Chinese underworld, drawing inspiration from diaspora folklore. A vengeful girl. A hollow boy. A missing god. Rui has one goal in mind—honing her magic to avenge her…

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