Sravika's Books - Reviews and Other Trivia

 The Incandescent  By Emily Tesh  Published Year: 2025 Page Count: 394 pages  Medium Used: Kindle PW  Genre: Fantasy, Magic, Sorcery, Multiple Planes, Demons, Action, Lesbians, 2025-read.  Rating: 4.75/5  This is my first book by the author and I find her prose good, logic sensible and acceptable. This story revolves around a centuries old Magic school, Chetwood, which houses six hundred students learning and practicing magic, teaching staff and other management. The school is carefully warded against demons that are always on the look out to cross over from a parallel demonic plane and possess objects, eat the enormous amount of magic that is here, all concentrated in one place. Among the people that are keeping the school and students secure is the Director of Magic, Sapphire Walden. She is the protagonist of this story. She is a thoughtful, compassionate teacher and a spectacular magician. She has spent all her career learning how to combat demons a...

 Alchemy of Secrets  (Alchemy of Secrets #1) By Stephenie Garber  Published Year:2025 Page Count: 324 pages  Medium Used: Kindle Scribe  Genre: Fantasy, Science Fiction, Mystery, Adventure, Magic, Young Adult, Mythologies,2025-read.  Rating: 5/5 😄😄😄😄😄✌ Just amazed. I found this so immersive and gripping that I finished about 75 percent of the story in a day. Easily one of the best books to come out this year. Easily one of the best reads for me of all time. It is an alchemy of all the elements I like - dark magic, murder mystery, time loops .. all the twists in the story just had me going wow. It is a fast paced adventure story where the main character has to search and find an Alchemical heart - the most magically powered object in the world. She will die if she doesn't find it by 11.59 pm on Halloween. She has to solve a series of riddles her father has sent down from the past. She teams up with strange guys whom she doesnt know if she can fully trus...

 The Compound by Aisling Rawle Published Year: 2025 Page Count: 315 pages Medium Used: Kindle PW Genre: Young Adult, Romance, Reality TV, Horror, Suspense, Psychological Thriller, 2025-Read. Rating: 4.5/5 Very gripping. Very compelling. I guess what really kept me hooked and what worked out for me is that there is always a hint of danger, of things going out of control with the whole world sitting on its butt and watching, doing nothing, while a bunch of young contestants try to best each other, no matter how far they go, because stakes are high and they don't want to get back to the "real" world where their lives mean boring, exhausting and nothing.  It is a reality TV game which is set up in a desert like setting. The participants are ten boys and ten girls collected from different walks of life. They are given community tasks which all of them must participate in and they are rewarded for them with things they lack like wood, freezer, food and water. Should they fail t...

 The Bewitching  By Silvia Moreno Garcia  Published Year: 2025 Page Count: 371 pages  Medium Used: Kindle PW  Genre : Dark Fantasy, Mythical Beings, Supernatural, Horror, Sorcery, Magic, Dark Academia, Witches & Warlocks, Suspense, Psychological Thriller, LGBTQ, 2025-read.  Rating : 5/5 🥰🥰🥰🥰🥰 First of all, what a gorgeous cover page. The glittery green with a gnarled witch's hand and a canary with seven pins stuck into its dead body .. breathtaking! Few pages into the book, I realized that this is the book I have been waiting for a long long time. It totally sucked me in - I forgot time and surroundings. With unwavering attention and a thudding heart, I flipped the pages. I wanted the story to never end but I was also skittish to reach the end of it. The surprise twists made my heart skip a few beats and my pulse to quicken. This is the stuff nightmares are made of. It is so very scary and it only gets better as the story progresses. Until the end,...

 The Mote in God's Eye  (Moties #1)  By Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven  Published Year: 1974 Page Count: 535 pages  Medium Used: Kindle Scribe  Genre : Science Fiction, Aliens, First Contact, Speculative Fiction,Political Intrigues, 2025-read.  Rating : 5/5 😀😀😀😀😀 This is my first book with Larry Niven and I will definitely explore more of his brilliant concoctions in future. 🤞✌ Brilliant. I am speechless. The plot and narrative are simply superb. I wonder why the average rating on goodreads is not higher for this one. I got so invested in the story that I felt my fight or flight adrenaline spike in response to some events in the plot. I didn't want the aliens to visit human civilization because they could render the whole settlement useless. Yes, the first contact alien race is super intelligent and super good at using tools but they are madly involved in endless cycles of self destruction and repopulation. First, an alien artifact enters h...

 Isles Of The Emberdark  By Brandon Sanderson  (Novel set in the Cosmere Universe)  Published Year: 2025 Page Count: 495 pages  Medium Used: Kindle PW  Genre : Science Fiction, Fantasy, Multiple Realms, Strange Creatures, 2025-read.  Rating : 5/5  Went blind into this.. without knowing it is an amalgamation of science fiction, interstellar politics, fantasy, dragons, giant snakes and all the kthet wonderful things. Very happy with this read!  This is an easy 5 pointer. This story is a man's crusade to save his primitive/non technological  planet/home world from being enslaved by advanced and selfish men/creatures from the outside. There are many islands in his world but the island,Patji, which he comes from is special. It breeds birds that make bonds with humans and bestows special powers to them. It has a pool which acts as a portal between the physical realm and the spiritual plane also called ShadesMar. Naturally there are alien power...

 The Mammoth book of Extreme Science Fiction  By Mike Ashley  Published Year: 2006 Page Count: 670 pages  Medium Used: Kindle PW  Genre : Science Fiction, Aliens, First Contact, Space Travel, Time Travel, Anthology, Short Stories, 2025-read.  Rating : 3.75/5 😀😀😀😀 This is a collection of short stories describing scenarios that represent extremes of imagined science fiction. I would say many - or rather, most - of them felt really extreme. I mean, too extreme to ever happen or we knowing them to happen. Some of them went right over my head - got too technical -  that I settled for understanding the overall gist of the story. Some of them made me tear up and feel sentimental because of the kindness and compassion they invoked. All of these will make for really good potential tv series or movie script materials. That said, I feel since this is 2025 and the book was composed in 2006 with the best stories generated till that point, these are a bit stale....