Pop Culture Princess

Pop Culture Princess
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Thursday, May 25, 2023

Setting out for a Sci-Fi Summer adventure

With Memorial Day weekend upon us, the official start to summer for many is here. Yet, for others of the page turning persuasion, Seasons of Reading’s Sci-Fi Summer readathon is our launching point for the hot and hazy months ahead.

Beginning June 1 and running the entire month, this readathon is firmly to science fiction but does allow for fantasy as well. That works for me as my taste runs more towards the magical than the mechanical.

The first book on my TBR pile for this challenge is the third entry in the School for Good and Evil YA series, The Last Ever After by Soman Chainani.

With formerly faithful friends Sophia and Agatha on separate sides of the fairy tale realm, finding a balance between the forces of destruction and harmony is more difficult than ever.

To preserve not only the fictional but the mortal world as well, both girls must find their way back to each other with the help of various allies on their mutual paths. Can they fix both realities and their friendship to save the day once and for all?

This series is very engaging, with good amounts of humor and heartbreak, plus plenty of good for thought regarding fairytale tropes. The conclusion ought to quite the battle royal indeed:


The closest to science fiction on my reading list here is N.K. Jemisin’s The Fifth Season , which starts off her Broken Earth trilogy.

The story is set on a world where all reside in The Stillness, a large continent that deals with “seasons “ of environmental chaos such as earthquakes and volcanic activity. The only people who can quell these turmoils are known as orogenes, who are feared and forced into the service of the ruling class.

Three characters are the focus of this book, one a girl newly recruited to the governing forces, another young woman angered by her situation and discovering a few secrets that might help or hurt her and a mother whose family has fallen apart upon realizing their orogene abilities.

As their paths collide , so do the fates of many others and with another destructive season to come, the choices to be made are potentially powerful in their impact to say the least.

I’ve read great things about Jemisin’s work and figured this would certainly be a good place to start. Hopefully, 
I will be continuing with the other two books that follow. The epic energy of this narrative promises to be captivating there:


Rounding this selection is one of my Book of the Month Club books that I saved for this particular occasion.

The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi by Shannon Chakraborty has a retired pirate queen as it’s leading lady. Amina fully intends to spend the rest of her days residing in a quiet mountain village with her daughter Marjana but her past literally comes back to demand her assistance.

The wealthy mother of a crewman who died during Amina’s last voyage wants her to rescue her granddaughter Dunya  from the clutches of Falco, a man obsessed with mystical objects and willing to risk any life but his to claim a very dangerous treasure known as the Moon of Saba.

Out of a sense of obligation as well as to protect her own child, Amina agrees to head back out to sea. Facing demons both personal and in the fearsome flesh, she is willing to do what she can yet can Amina truly resist the call of a pirate’s life once the task is done?

This is meant to be the first in a series (becoming a theme in this readathon for me!) and with any luck, I won’t have to wait too long for more of these seafaring stories:


There is still plenty of time to sign up as June starts in the middle of next week and much thanks to Michelle Miller at Seasons of Reading for getting our summer reading off and running here.

One of the best things about summer reading is that you can enjoy a blockbuster story right in the comfort of your home under whatever form of air conditioning is available to you. I’m all for going to the movies, mind you, but the heat does make one want to wait for cooler weather to go out for entertainment.

Not to mention that a certain book based epic will be in theaters before Thanksgiving and should whet your cinematic appetite for new sci-fi storytelling indeed:





 

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