Preface: I usually post my book reviews on /r/Fantasy. With reddit's future being uncertain right now I figured I'd experiment with posting on here, let me know if you're interested in future reviews. I should add that this probably isn't my most interesting book review ever, it just happens to be my latest read.
Please feel free to let me know if you'd like to see more fantasy book reviews in the future, I am new to Tildes.

Recommended if you like: ottoman empire inspired setting, royalty/bodyguard romance, MC with anxiety, queernorm setting, low-magic setting, m/m romance, homoerotically washing each others' hair, royal palace slice of life, fake-dating (sort of), gay yearning

Blurb

Kadou, the shy prince of Arasht, finds himself at odds with one of the most powerful ambassadors at court—the body-father of the queen's new child—in an altercation which results in his humiliation.

To prove his loyalty to the queen, his sister, Kadou takes responsibility for the investigation of a break-in at one of their guilds, with the help of his newly appointed bodyguard, the coldly handsome Evemer, who seems to tolerate him at best. In Arasht, where princes can touch-taste precious metals with their fingers and myth runs side by side with history, counterfeiting is heresy, and the conspiracy they discover could cripple the kingdom’s financial standing and bring about its ruin.

Review

• This book starts out by throwing you in the middle of a handful of political machinations already underway - the inciting incidents have basically already happened off-screen beforehand. That is fine, but don't expect massive developments on these plots or new plot points to really matter. The book basically goes "this is the political background for this story" and then takes its time for the rest of the book to focus on the romance.
• I should find this book too fluffy and romancey for my taste but I couldn't help but loving it. Some of it is really dumb, it's transparently obvious that the narrative only exists to facilitate a lot of gay yearning, but I also found myself very much enjoying all that gay yearning.
• I feel like I logically shouldn't have enjoyed this so much, because the worldbuilding is negligible, the magic (touch-tasting, i.e. sensing the origins or compositions of metals) is an afterthought for most of the time, and the plot constantly takes breaks for everyone to talk about their feelings a lot. But somehow, I was totally here for all that and was sad when it was over.
• There were various aspects I found a bit grating, from some very obviously contrived setups to make the two leads have to get closer (or make drastic choices that bind them together) to some of the side characters sounding rather anachronistically sassy, to just how often the plot takes a break for people to talk about their feelings. I can list a ton of things this book does "wrong", but none of them actually managed to tip the scale away from me being into it, don't ask me why. Maybe I was just in the right mood for it.
• The setting is very queernormative and progressive in other ways, while maintaining a historical veneer in terms of technology and (for the most part) style. The use of neopronouns for some side characters caught me a bit off guard in the audio narration, but it's done with such a complete nonchalance that I assume many queer readers will find refreshing.
• The main character has anxiety and panic attacks (without quite having the language to articulate what he suffers from, and equating it with cowardice), and I thought that topic was treated pretty well. Then again, everyone that matters is super supportive and understanding the whole time, so it doesn't really serve as a source of conflict for longer.
• I've said that action often takes a backseat to the romance, but I found the action that was there pretty good.

Discussion

In conclusion: I really liked this, but I completely understand anyone who didn't. The only previous Rowland book I'd read is A Conspiracy of Truths (link to my review), where I had the opposite experience: I found it well crafted but didn't enjoy it all that much. This one just happened to vibe more with me.

Title, basically. The A Song of Ice and Fire subreddit has seemingly gone indefinitely private, so I was wondering if any other ASOIAF fans migrated here during or after the blackout. I definitely miss all the crazy theories we could read on there (I cannot believe D+D=T, the most legendary ASOIAF theory, may become lost forever if the subreddit never opens again, truly a loss of a masterpiece.)

Since it was still pretty active despite the book series being rather dormant, I wondered if any other fans came over here and wanted to chat about it. Just crazy theories, favourite characters, that sort of thing.

Parents of young kids: Who are your favorite authors for reading to your young kids? I have a soon-to-be 4 year old who loves books and I'm always looking for new ideas. I'll start off with a few of her favorite authors, with a good title from each (not in rank order).

Alice and Martin Provensen - Our Animal Friends on Maple Hill Farm
Julia Donaldson - Room on the Broom
Kaya Doi - Chirri and Chirra
Margaret Mahy - Dashing Dog
Anne Hunter - Possum's Harvest Moon
Paul Goble - The Girl Who Loved Wild Horses

I'll single out the Chirri and Chirra books with an explanation because they're very different from the others. They are translated from Japanese, and despite having super simple plot lines, the drawings are a lot of fun and a wonderful complement to the text.

Here are a few of my favorite examples:

1. "Long had he believed that a gentleman should turn to a mirror with a sense of distrust. For rather than being tools of self-discovery, mirrors tended to be tools of self-deceit." p. 36

2. "For if a room that exists under the governance, authority, and intent of others seems smaller than it is, then a room that exists in secret can, regardless of its dimensions, seem as vast as one cares to imagine." p. 64

3. "After all, what can a first impression tell us about someone we've just met for a minute in the lobby of a hotel? For that matter, what can a first impression tell us about anyone? Why, no more than a chord can tell us about Beethoven, or a brushstroke about Botticelli. By their very nature, human beings are so capricious, so complex, so delightfully contradictory, that they deserve not only our consideration, but our reconsideration - and our unwavering determination to withhold opinion until we have engaged with them in every possible setting at every possible hour." pg. 120-121

I read "Legends and Lattes" recently and liked the premise of the entire book. Does anyone know any other books that have a laid back and chill adventure story with little to no violence, gore, and stuff like that?

Thanks in advance.

I'm always looking recommendations for my next read. I haven't read many "pure" horror books this year, but I would like to recommend The Raw Shark Texts and The Library at Mt. Char. The former especially leads to some great discussions between readers.

I’m always looking for a good new book or, on lesser occasions, a good documentary. I love reading about “how stuff works”, astrophysics (space and its sheer size are insane to me), and oddly, random fantasy stuff like wizarding worlds, etc.
Judgements aside I like reading Harry Potter and some of the books by Neil Degrasse Tyson as well as watching Cosmos (Carl and Neil both).

What hidden gems do you have?

Any fans of this series over here? I was planning a series reread before book 5 comes out. It was going to be hosted on the bobiverse subreddit, but... well, ya know.

If enough people want to do one here I'd be happy to host it, probably starting in about 4 weeks and doing one book every 2 weeks.

I'm big on audiobooks and trying to move away from the Audible monopoly starting with the book "Chokepoint Capitalism" (which is about monopolies like that).

Unfortunately, the smaller library is hampered even more by the dodgy search (I just finished two books in a trilogy, why are you showing me the spanish translations of the author's other books?) and I'm struggling to fill my wishlist which has never been a problem on Audible.

So far I'm really liking Chokepoint Capitalism but looking for any suggestions once that's done. I've read a decent amount of mainstream fantasy (Stormlight archive, Wheel of Time, Robin Hobb, Tolkien), some popular scifi (Aasimov, w40k stuff, recently enjoyed "Armor" by Steakly), a lot of light nonfiction about finance, history and pop psychology ("The Big Short" or anything by Michael Lewis, "Debt: The first 5000 years", "Girt", "The man who mistook his wife for a hat") and have recently been on a big Ken Follett kick (historical fantasy?)

Any good listens that I should give a go?

PS. sorry for sounding like a shill post for audiobooks.com. I swear I'm not trying to drive clicks that's just the name of the company and recent Brandon Sanderson drama has made me aware of how much power Amazon has over the only way I consume literature nowadays

What were your highlights for the year? What were the best things you read? What surprised you? What let you down?

Reflect back on the year and talk about anything and everything related to the books you read in 2022. You do NOT have to limit it to 2022 releases -- anything you read this year counts.