Get Lost in Literature

  "Hope is a fickle, dangerous thing. It steals your focus and aims it toward the possibilities instead of keeping it where it belongs—on the probabilities." Violet Sorrengail, frail and fragile, trained her whole life to be in Scribe Quadrant, wanting nothing more than to be surrounded by books, recording history. But her mother, the general, has other ideas. She's being sent to college to train in the Riders Quadrant to follow in the footsteps of her siblings to become a dragon rider. The problem? Besides being too weak to carry her own bag, she'll be in a school where every test she takes is graded by life or death and everyone wants her dead. I can absolutely see what the fuss is about, this was a little addicting for me. I was pulled in right away by the idea of Violet, this smart young woman with physical infirmities being forced into a war college where only the strongest survive. She's the heroine of the story, so you know she's going to survive, but s...

Palimpsest is an enchanted city, beyond our own waking world, ruled over by the impetuous Casimira, Queen of the Insects. It's a place where war veterans become chimeras, where the dead are buried in bamboo, and where trains pulse with life. Four people -- Oleg the Locksmith, November the Beekeeper, Ludovico the Bookbinder, and Sei the Train Enthusiast -- are about to earn their passports to Palimpsest, through the magic of a one night stand. Those who've been to Palimpsest return with a tattoo: a map of the place they've been. The only way to get in is by having sex with someone who has been there. But Palimpsest isn't a fairy-world. It isn't a place for those who are happy and content. This is a place where the sad and the troubled, escape to. Oleg is mentally ill; he's in love with the ghost of his dead sister. November, is OCD and alone, caretaker to her beehives. Ludovico is madly in love with his wife, but she's been cheating on him and now she...