The Saucy Wenches Book Club

“He looks up at me with his night-colored eyes, beautiful and terrible all at once. “For a moment,” he says, “I wondered if it wasn’t you shooting bolts at me.”
I make a face at him. “And what made you decide it wasn’t?”
He grins up at me. “They missed.”
Holly Black, The Wicked King

With reluctance, I leave behind the stuffed animals from my bed. I leave slippers and books and favorite baubles. I step out of my second life the same way I stepped out of my first, holding too few things and with great uncertainty about what will happen next.
Holly Black, The Cruel Prince

“Don’t look at me like that,” said Ruza.

“Like what?”

“Like I’m a beautiful book you’re about to open and plunder with your greedy mad eyes.”
~ Laini Taylor,
Strange the Dreamer

The dream chooses the dreamer,
not the other way around. Strange the Dreamer tells the story of Lazlo Strange, a young orphan boy in a faraway land who dreams of magic.

Lazlo is obsessed with Weep, a mythical, Unseen city that has become “lost” because everyone has forgotten it. He remembers the exact moment when the city’s real name and history disappeared from the minds of everyone around him, so he knows what others no longer believe – that magic exists, because only magic could erase Weep from the world.

Lazlo also knows that fairy tales are real. And his dreams are magic. What he never foresees is how much the life he dreams for himself will become a magical fairy tale.

Pestilence clicks his tongue, and his horse is off.

I’m riding with one of the horsemen of the apocalypse.

Holy shit.

I’ve now got front row seats to the end of the world.

Laura Thalassa, Pestilence

Once upon a time there was a silence that dreamed of becoming a song, and then I found you, and now everything is music.
~ Laini Taylor, Muse of Nightmares

Amezrou. Once upon a time, a little boy in a frost-rimed orchard had roared it out like thunder, like an avalanche, like the war cry of the seraphim who had cleansed the world of demons, only to have it stolen from his mind between one slash of his apple bough sword and the next. Now it was back, and it felt, as it ever had, like calligraphy, if calligraphy were written in honey.
~ Laini Taylor, Muse of Nightmares

The fact that my reading plate was full last year — proudly flaunting Marie Kondo’s 30-book rule without even taking my several bookcases into consideration — didn’t keep me from lurking about in various online book groups in hopes of adding more to the pile.

I stalked a lot of fantasy groups, especially a Karen Moning fans spinoff group that focuses on fae fantasy. A year ago, they inspired me to finally read all the Sarah J. Maas books that Wench Merit had been telling me to read. Since that was such a delightful experience for me, I’ve been taking notes about the other series that have inspired them to rave for weeks on end, and eagerly awaiting the opportunity to dive into a few of them.

So here’s the list of recommendations I’ve compiled from my lurking notes. Plus a few books I didn’t get to last year. These should work nicely for the categories Wench Angela has provided in the latest Saucy Wenches reading group challenge on Goodreads.

Now that 2018 is behind us (and I hope the door SMACKED it on the way out), we can finally let out a big sigh of relief and reflect on some of the finer points of the year.

I don’t know about you, but I spent every single unscheduled minute with my nose buried deeply in a book, intent on escape into exotic realms or adventures. On the plus side, that means I read a lot of books that enthralled me. So I want to share four that I thought were particularly good, but never had time to review, before embarking on a new year of discoveries.

These books were deviations from the usual types of urban fantasy and dystopian sci-fi I read most of the year. They were from four different genres, led by strong but quite diverse female characters: an immortal witch goddess, a socially awkward orphan, an identity-swapping avenger, and backstabbing corporate ladder climbers. I wasn’t specifically looking for books about women, but isn’t it great that there are such a variety of female protagonists to…

For what was a person but the sum of all the scraps of their memory and experience: a finite set of components with an infinite array of expressions.
~ Laini Taylor,
Strange the Dreamer

Kingdom of Ash — the final installment in the wildly popular, roller-coaster thrill ride that is Sarah J. Maas’s Throne of Glass series — is finally out, and we’re here to sing its praises!

It has been a looooong journey through vast and complex realms, borne of exotic mythologies and inhabited by wondrous and wicked creatures — and by seemingly hundreds of major characters, including at least a couple of dozen with whom we’ve developed deep, personal relationships.

But in the end, we got our epic showdown between the forces of darkness and light, serially unfolding amidst an onslaught of twists, turns, shocking revelations, and nail-biting suspense. We added new names to our laminated list of favorite fictional friends. We got answers to lots of questions, including some that we didn’t know we had when we started this book. We got a definitive future for Terrasen, Erilea, and even the Southern Continent. And last but definitely not least important to saucy readers, we got generous…

The male I fell in love with was you. It was you, who knew pain as I did, and who walked with me through it, back to the light. Maeve didn’t understand that. That even if she could create that perfect world, it wouldn’t be you with me. And I’d never trade that, trade this. Not for anything.
~ Sarah J. Maas, Kingdom of Ash

She would be his wife, his queen. She was already his equal, his match, his mirror in so many ways. And with their union, the world would know it.

But he could see the bars of the cage that would creep closer, tighter, every day. And either break her wholly, or tun her into something neither of them wish her to ever be.
Kingdom of Ash, Sarah J. Maas

A princess who was to live for a Thousand years. Longer. That had been her gift. It was now her curse.
~ Sarah J Maas,
Kingdom of Ash (Throne of Glass #7)

Happy release day, ToG fans!!!

“Siblings aren’t always blood,” she whispered to me. “Sometimes they find you when your heart needs them the most.” Dragon’s Ground (Desert Cursed #2), Shannon Mayer

“I love you. I am in love with you. I have been for a while. And I know there are limits to what you can give me, and I know you might need time—”

His lips crushed into hers, and he said onto her mouth, dropping words more precious than rubies and emeralds and sapphires into her heart, her soul, “I love you. There is no limit to what I can give to you, no time I need. Even when this world is a forgotten whisper of dust between the stars, I will love you.”

~ Sarah J Maas, Empire of Storms

Slowly, his gaze lifted to hers. And she could have sworn that hunger—ravenous hunger—flickered there. ...

“I hadn’t realized the effect would be so...” He shook his head. He took in her face, her hair, the combs. “You look like—”

“A queen?”

“The fire-breathing bitch-queen those bastards claim you are.”

~ Sarah J. Maas, Queen of Shadows

Fans of this series know. When I reread this book, eight electrifying words stole my breath away.



“There you are. I’ve been looking for you.”

~ Sarah J Maas, A Court of Thorns and Roses

“As for Celaena,” he said again, “you do not have the right to wish she were not what she is. The only thing you have a right to do is decide whether you are her enemy or her friend.”

~Sarah J Maas, Heir of Fire (Throne of Glass #3)

“I love you,” he repeated, shaking her again. “I have for years. And he hurt you and made me watch because he’s always known how I felt, too. But if I asked you to pick, you’d choose Arobynn, and I. Can’t. Take. It. ...

“You’re a damned idiot,” she breathed. “You’re a moron and an ass and a damned idiot.” He looked like she had hit him. But she went on, and grasped both sides of his face, “Because I’d pick you.”

And then she kissed him.

~ Sarah J. Maas, The Assassin’s Blade
The Assassin and the Underworld
  (Throne of Glass, book #0.4)