favourite characters: lady bhumika

“trade is dwindling,” he retorted immediately. “the merchants beyond our borders are frightened of us.” of you, he did not say. of the power in you. but she heard it. oh, she heard it.

favourite books: the jasmine throne by tasha suri

imprisoned by her dictator brother, malini spends her days in isolation in the hirana: an ancient temple that was once the source of the powerful, magical deathless waters — but is now little more than a decaying ruin. priya is a maidservant, one among several who make the treacherous journey to the top of the hirana every night to clean malini’s chambers. she is happy to be an anonymous drudge, so long as it keeps anyone from guessing the dangerous secret she hides. but when malini accidentally bears witness to priya’s true nature, their destinies become irrevocably tangled. one is a vengeful princess seeking to depose her brother from his throne. the other is a priestess seeking to find her family. together, they will change the fate of an empire.

favourite characters: chaghan suren

rin was beginning to see the reason why chaghan commanded the fear that he did. he was just like jiang—unthreatening and eccentric, until one understood what deep power lay behind his frail facade.

favourite books read in 2022: masters of death by @olivieblake

this book is about a real estate agent—only the real estate agent is a vampire, and the house she has to sell is haunted, and the ghost haunting the house has been murdered, and he has no idea how he died. this book is also about a medium, and though this particular medium is definitely a shameless fraud, he isn’t entirely without his uses—seeing as he’s actually the godson of death.

when viola marek seeks out fox d’mora to help her with her ghost-infested mansion, he becomes inextricably involved in a quest that neither he nor vi expects (or wants). but with the help of an unruly poltergeist, a demonic personal trainer, a sharp-voiced angel, a love-stricken reaper, and a few high-functioning creatures, vi and fox soon discover that the difference between a mysterious lost love and an annoying dead body isn’t nearly as distinct as they thought.

favourite books: shadow of the fox series by julie kagawa

now, for whoever holds the scroll of a thousand prayers, a new wish will be granted. a new age is about to dawn.

raised by monks in the isolated silent winds temple, yumeko has trained all her life to hide her yokai nature. half kitsune, half human, her skill with illusion is matched only by her penchant for mischief. until the day her home is burned to the ground, her adoptive family is brutally slain and she is forced to flee for her life with the temple’s greatest treasure—one part of the ancient scroll.

there are many who would claim the dragon’s wish for their own. kage tatsumi, a mysterious samurai of the shadow clan, is one such hunter, under orders to retrieve the scroll…at any cost. fate brings kage and yumeko together. with a promise to lead him to the scroll, an uneasy alliance is formed, offering yumeko her best hope for survival. but he seeks what she has hidden away, and her deception could ultimately tear them both apart.

with an army of demons at her heels and the unlikeliest of allies at her side, yumeko’s secrets are more than a matter of life or death. they are the key to the fate of the world itself.

favourite books read in 2021: the heartless divine by varsha ravi

Suri strained herself slightly to push up on her elbows. Across from her, Kiran was silent and coiled, all languid energy. But his eyes were open, sharp with curiosity. Suri felt a faint stab of bitterness at that; it made sense, in a crude way, that immortals would find humanity’s perception of its own mortality entertaining.

favourite characters: altan trengsin

like the cike, the masters at sinegard had conjured a more frightening power than they were equipped to handle. they’d done more than train a speerly. they’d created an avenger. altan was a commander who would burn down the world to destroy his enemy.

books read in 2021: portrait of a thief by grace d. li

Each member of his crew has their own complicated relationship with China and the identity they’ve cultivated as Chinese Americans, but when Will asks, none of them can turn him down.

Because if they succeed? They earn fifty million dollars—and a chance to make history. But if they fail, it will mean not just the loss of everything they’ve dreamed for themselves but yet another thwarted attempt to take back what colonialism has stolen.

books read in 2021: iron widow by @xiranjayzhao

The boys of Huaxia dream of pairing up with girls to pilot Chrysalises, giant transforming robots that can battle the mecha aliens that lurk beyond the Great Wall. It doesn't matter that the girls often die from the mental strain.

When 18-year-old Zetian offers herself up as a concubine-pilot, it's to assassinate the ace male pilot responsible for her sister's death. But she gets her vengeance in a way nobody expected—she kills him through the psychic link between pilots and emerges from the cockpit unscathed. She is labeled an Iron Widow, a much-feared and much-silenced kind of female pilot who can sacrifice boys to power up Chrysalises instead.​

To tame her unnerving yet invaluable mental strength, she is paired up with Li Shimin, the strongest and most controversial male pilot in Huaxia​. But now that Zetian has had a taste of power, she will not cower so easily. She will miss no opportunity to leverage their combined might and infamy to survive attempt after attempt on her life, until she can figure out exactly why the pilot system works in its misogynist way—and stop more girls from being sacrificed.

favourite books read in 2021: one for my enemy by @olivieblake

In New York City where we lay our scene, two rival witch families fight to maintain control of their respective criminal ventures. On one side of the conflict are the Antonova sisters, each one beautiful, cunning, and ruthless, and their mother, the elusive supplier of premium intoxicants known only as Baba Yaga. On the other side, the influential Fedorov brothers serve their father, the crime boss known as Koschei the Deathless, whose community extortion ventures dominate the shadows of magical Manhattan. After twelve years of tenuous coexistence, a change in one family’s interests causes a rift in the existing stalemate. When bad blood brings both families to the precipice of disaster, fate intervenes with a chance encounter, and in the aftershocks of a resurrected conflict, everyone must choose a side. As each of the siblings struggles to stake their claim, fraying loyalties threaten to rot each side from the inside out. If, that is, the enmity between empires doesn’t destroy them first.

favourite books: forest of a thousand lanterns by julie c. dao

she should seize her destiny with all the strength and spirit within her, and bend them all to her will. every man kneeling and every women overshadowed.