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Tag: the archive undying
Fantasizing About Revenge
Revenge is a dish best served cold, but these revenge-centric fantasy novels are hot!
Check ‘em out!
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opens in a new windowProjections by S. E. Porter
Catherine Bildstein is dead. She is not gone. She was murdered. Now, she’s out for revenge.
In a gothic historical fantasy about poisonous attraction and strange magic, a sorcerer obsesses over a woman, and when he understands he cannot possess her, kills her. Unsatisfied with this peak level of despicability, he sends projections of himself out into the world to ruin the lives of more women who won’t deliver to him the affection to which he believes himself entitled.
Dead Catherine may be, but her slighted ghost feels strongly the magnetism of revenge. The world is full of strange magic. Garbage wizards better watch out.
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opens in a new windowOne for My Enemy by Olivie Blake
This story of star-crossed love and Manhattan’s occult underworld is Romeo & Juliet done Olivie Blake-style. Those who have read opens in a new windowThe Atlas Series know that Blake doesn’t play when it comes to writing emotionally devastating arcs, and One for My Enemy is no exception. It’s the scions of shadow underlord Koschei the Deathless versus the daughters of potion maven Baba Yaga as heirs to two respective magical crime families. Doesn’t matter how supernatural you are though—love will turn the lives of you and everyone you know upside down, and strong feeling is a prerequisite for revenge.
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opens in a new windowThe Traitor Baru Cormorant by Seth Dickinson
Baru wants revenge. She needs it, and her target: a colonial empire called the Masquerade. Educated in their schools and knowledgeable in their ways, Baru begins accumulating power but plays by their rules—for now. She becomes an accountant. Her goal is to hold the Masquerade accountable.
Sometimes revenge is a numbers game.
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opens in a new windowVicious by V. E. Schwab
Victor and Eli start out as college roommates and that’s also where things go wrong. In their senior year, their shared passion leads them to research superpowers and the conditions under which a person might develop them. Of course, like many roommates in college, everything goes wrong and they despise each other. Victor’s been in prison for ten years now but is cooking an escape. Eli is at large in the world on a mission to exterminate everyone with superpowers. They both want vengeance.
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opens in a new windowThe Archive Undying by Emma Mieko Candon
This epic science fantasy about giant robots that eat people, tyrannical AI deities, and totalitarian police states follows a man named Sunai who cannot die. He was inferfacing with his AI god when it corrupted and now he’s immortal and upset about it. He’s been killed plenty of times though. It just hasn’t stuck. Sunai is fundamentally sad however, and unlikely to seek revenge against his many killers. Himself though? Yeah, he’ll take revenge on himself for every mistake he’s ever made.
Pretty heavy, and the rest of this book is too. It’s also heart-achingly beautiful and there’s a robot composed of a chittering shifting coral carapace.
7 Icy Songs & 7 Cool Books
by Julia Bergen & a cat
Yo VIP, let’s kick it.
Ice. It’s cool. It’s…there. But there’s not much humor to it. Not like opens in a new windowsand.
But with winter upon us, we wanted to make an article about ice. But how to give ice a little chaos, a little twinkle, a little magic?
We thought. And we thought.
Ice…
Ice…
Baby?
And thus was born, the chaotic, twinkling, maybe even magical, icy songs and books pairing listicle.
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Vanilla Ice’s Ice Ice Baby + James Rollins’ opens in a new windowThe Cradle of Ice
Taken in a certain light, Vanilla Ice’s classic Ice Ice Baby is a quest song. A group of heroes must collaborate and listen. They travel for a while, pursuing to the next stop. Action heats up when Gunshots ranged out like a bell and our heroes must get away before the jackers jack. But in the end they pull together as if with a rallying cry of, if there was a problem, yo, I’ll solve it.
What does that make you think of?
Obviously, the fantasy epic The Cradle of Ice by James Rollins! Where a soldier, a thief, a lost prince, and a young girl must form a fellowship to stop an apocalypse by traveling into a vast region of ice and to a sprawling capital of the world they’ve only known in stories. It’s an incredible, gripping fantasy, because Rollins truly understands that “anything less than the best is a felony.”
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Pat Benetar’s Fire And Ice + Olivie Blake’s opens in a new windowThe Atlas Six
This anthem to the inevitability of attraction and heartbreak is the perfect tune to compliment the messy, messy personal dynamics at play in The Atlas Six. In the book, six powerful magicians do graduate research and contemplate asking out their crushes and murdering their friends. In the song, Pat Benetar is familiar with the capricious and cruel nature of the one she’s craving (You come on like a flame, then you turn a cold shoulder), but knowledge is not enough to prevent carnage. She knows if she surrenders to the heat she feels, it’ll fall away and she’ll be left in the cold (I want to give you my love, but you’ll just take a little piece of my heart).
In the end, Pat seems determined not to fall for her crush’s games, while the characters of The Atlas Six are pretty much incapable of not allowing their peers to burn them, but talk is cheap.
Ask Atlas Society resident Tristan Caine if he’s going back for more Fire And Ice, knowing he’ll be hurt, and he’ll tell you to shut up and get lost, but that’s only because he has somewhere to be.
Also something something re: Robert Frost’s poem about fire, ice, and the end of the world.
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Foreigner’s Cold as Ice + John Scalzi’s opens in a new windowStarter Villain
Okay, on the outside, Cold as Ice by Foreigner may seem like it’s about a broken-hearted ex describing a former lover’s rejection. But ice can be deceiving, just like this song! I think it’s actually about a group of billionaire super villains trying to run the world, much like the cabal in John Scalzi’s sf romp, Starter Villain.
They are cold as ice. They are willing to sacrifice. The line you’re digging for gold, particularly relevant, as these turds are just as into money as they into power. You want paradise well, their version of paradise, anyway. You leave the world behind, they don’t care about the world, they just want what they can get out of it.
But it ends on a hopeful note, as both Starter Villain and Foreigner promise us, someday you’ll pay the price, I know. Oh, we know.
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PinkPantheress & Ice Spice’s Boy’s a liar Pt. 2 + Emma Mieko Candon’s opens in a new windowThe Archive Undying
So before getting into more advanced parsing, The Archive Undying is a match for Boy’s a liar Pt. 2 because every boy in this book is lying through his teeth. Now, you could say that about all the women characters, nonbinary characters, and nonhuman characters too, and you’d be right. But Sunai, who is the main character of The Archive Undying—well, you just want to grab him by shoulders and plead with him to love himself a little and tear himself away from the long line of men that have only emotionally devastated him, knowing that Sunai himself is absolutely one of those men. The lyrics I don’t sleep enough without you / And I can’t eat enough without you are very Sunai-coded; he’s definitely not taking care of himself. He’s a man who would sooner feed himself to a giant starving robot than love himself enough to tell someone he loves them.
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Billy Joel’s Running on Ice + Cory Doctorow’s opens in a new windowThe Bezzle
When we were picking out pairings, this one felt like an obvious choice. Although Billy Joel could not possibly have read The Bezzle (on sale 2.20.2024) when he wrote Running on Ice (part of Joel’s album The Bridge, released 7.9.1986), it does feel like this song is about forensic accountant Martin Hench, AKA the culmination of technology and civilized experience.
The song describes someone pushed to the brink by modern civilization, and though the narrator doesn’t specifically say that he’s battling amoral billionaires trying to make their next buck no matter the cost, it’s basically implied. In a world of high rise ambition most people’s motives are ulterior? Definitely what Hench runs into in both Red Team Blues and the follow up, The Bezzle, where now he’s pitted against a group of the ultra rich taking advantage of the private prison system to make even more money. Poor Martin Hench, always wandering into another nefarious scheme. But as the song says, as soon as I get one fire put out
There’s another building burning down.
At least that means we’ve got lots of Martin Hench adventures to read?
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Simon & Garfunkel’s A Hazy Shade of Winter + Max Gladstone’s opens in a new windowLast Exit
Look around / Leaves are brown / And the sky is a hazy shade of winter.
Last Exit is kind of like that. Look around—things are not as they were. Leaves are brown—no youth, no hope. There’s a patch of snow on the ground.
In the distant past before the events of Last Exit, Zelda and her friends discovered a magic sort of spiritual momentum that could propel one into a different dimension. The roads to alternate realities were a navigable spiderweb, and they knew they could use their findings to improve not just their world, but all of them.
There’s a patch of snow on the ground.
They were wrong, and they suffered for it, and the future is colder than the past. The rot between worlds—an interdimensional sickness—claimed Zelda’s girlfriend, but she’s still out there. Calling. Approaching. Does the old gang have enough idealism left to band together for one last adventure?
There’s a patch of snow on the ground.
It is very cold.
opens in a new windowChristina Perri’s Jar of Hearts + S. E. Porter’s opens in a new windowProjections
When we made this list, things were pretty silly. We called our brainstorming sess ice ice meeting. We were so, so goofy. But honestly, a lot of these songs that invoke ice are about pain, which perhaps we could have anticipated, had we not been so initially focused on Vanilla Ice.
Anyway, the ice in Jar of Hearts comes from this chorus: You’re gonna catch a cold / From the ice inside your soul / So don’t come back for me / Who do you think you are? The novel Projections is about as harrowing as those lines. A rejected sorcerer murders Catherine, the woman who denied him, and then sends projections of himself out into the world to seduce more women to add them to his jar of hearts.
Catherine’s not about this, and haunts him. Seeks vengeance. As Christina Perri sang, Don’t you know I’m not your ghost anymore?
The song and book aren’t 1-1 parallels, but the notes are all present. The hurt. The betrayal. The haunting.