#josefin

1) The Emelan books by Tamora Pierce. My first intro to fantasy, and it was really about found family and doing what’s right and facing unimaginable horrors and defeating sexism and ageism and, in later books, stopping murderers and surviving genocide. Nobody is doing it like her.

2) The Tortall books by Tamora Pierce. This is a little more of your standard sword and sorcery, with knights and magic, starting in the 80s with “girl wants to become a knight and disguises herself as her twin”, and continuing on til we get to “institutional unfairness and our heroines who take it down”. I cannot overstate just how much these have formed my psyche.

3) The Angels Unlimited series by Annie Dalton! Nobody has ever heard of these books and I love them SO much. London council-estate teenager is killed in chapter 1 of the first book and spends the rest of the series being a guardian angel and having a will they-won’t they relationship with a demon. (She doesn’t. She so should have. Instead, he dates her best mate? I’ve fixed that in numerous fics).

4) The Discworld series by Terry Pratchett. We come to the first man on our list! We might have got here earlier had Gaiman not been revealed to be a POS. Everyone knows Discworld, and for good reason. I started with Small Gods and my fave is Maskerade because I basically am Perdita.

5) The Percy Jackson series by Rick Riordan. I am a latecomer to enjoying this series as I started it in my 30s when the TV show came out. I really enjoyed the later books where he’s expanded on his premise and gone “yeah, actually, why are two of my three main characters white? Let’s fix that with this new series”.

It fell on on heavy heart seeing all of these people injured, scared and hurting. Some taking their last breaths. They were safe in here away from the fighting and the turmoil as Glasswater, a place that was near and dear to him had fallen into ruin before his very eyes. Maybe that was life, bittersweet with the promise of hope and soul crushing defeat that came later. His mind hand gone to Jo, how they had laughed and shared so many light hearted moments together, and how time seemed to standstill in those moments. And now as a stark contrast, he didn’t know if she were alive or dead. 

Absentmindedly he walked to keep busy, offering to help where he could to keep his morbid thoughts at bay, and yet subconsciously he was looking for those that he knew, looking for her, hoping beyond hope that maybe she was there. He’d caught a glimpse of someone at a distance, the pessimistic side of him said that surely it was his mind playing tricks on him, but as he neared, he was sure. Alek breathed a sigh of relief when he saw her. “Josefin,” he said almost as if he were letting out a breath that he’d been holding. “You’re...alive...I feared the worst,” he admitted. He wanted to hug her, hold her, not let go of her, but he wasn’t sure of the injuries that she’d sustained. “I thought I’d never see you again. How are you?” @stoneward-princess​