Sravika's Books - Reviews and Other Trivia

 A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking  By T. Kingfisher  Published Year: 2020 Page Count: 282 pages  Medium Used: Kindle PW  Genre : Fantasy, Bread Men, Magic, Action, Young Adult, 2025-read.  Rating : 4.25/5  This is my first book by the author. I have many other books from her in my tbr and having read this, I feel she is worth checking out! This book felt more targeted for children and adolescent audience but I also enjoyed it. I felt a bit of disconnect with the story because the narrator is so objective and detached in her style of writing. I didn't feel that invested in the plot as I would have had if there was more emotional depth created through the narrative. The Duchess,one of the key characters, in the story, seemed more interested in bestowing laurels, badges of honor on heroes of war than controlling the wild elements of her council or running her government efficiently. Lol. But still, this felt like a good enough story if not the most cr...

 Beneath the Sugar Sky (Wayward Children #3) By Seanan McGuire  Published Year: 2018 Page Count: 174 pages  Medium Used : Kindle Scribe  Genre: Novella, Fantasy, Science Fiction, Multiverse, Multiple Worlds, Academia, Adventure, 2025-read.  Rating: 3.65/5  Weaving this series around children at a school for special kids, magical worlds which are tempered and curated for each of their innate desires, which feel like true "home" for them, is very appealing to me. It feels warm, cozy and like a drug to my imagination. 🥰 Even when I come across one not so spectacular a story(a partial dud, in short😆) like this one - it doesn't put any significant dent in my opinion of the over all series. I guess what I didn't like about this book is that it is set in a very bright, colorful and frothing Sugar world where everything is made up of sugar syrup, candy or bread. I would have liked a world that is more darker.🤫 I am drawn to the drowned worlds, the underground wo...

 Rebel Witch  (The Crimson Moth #2) By Kristen Ciccarelli  Published Year: 2025 Page Count: 464 pages  Medium Used: Kindle Scribe  Genre: Fantasy, Romance, Romantasy, Adventure, Magic and Sorcery, Witches, Witchcraft, 2025-read.  Rating : 3.5/5  I usually take a detour between books of a series but with this Crimson Moth, I liked the first one well enough to pick up the second one right away. This book started on great promise for me but then got to the point of me desperately trying to not DNF it. The romance angle between the lead pair, Rune and Gideon, felt distracting and after a while, I have had enough. This is one of the main drivers of  the narrative and I felt exhausted with all the repelling misunderstandings and attracting sexual tension between them. In this book we see their non committal, suspicious bonding evolve into trusting and selfless love. The other important thing is Cressida,the evil witch from book 1 who is revealed to have...

 Heartless Hunter  (The Crimson Moth #1) By Kristen Ciccarelli  Published Year: 2024 Page Count: 410 pages  Medium Used: Kindle Scribe  Genre: Romantasy, Romance, Fantasy, High Fantasy, Witches, Witchcraft, Witch Hunters, 2025-read.  Rating : 4.25/5  I finished this book under two days. It felt so easy to read and connect with the main characters. I could sympathize with Rune for her vulnerabilities and applaud her for her bravery. I could understand what drives Gideon to hunt her kind and put them to death. The pacing is fast and the world building is flawless. Only towards the end, I thought the author took logic into her hands and twisted it so that it ceased to make much sense. At one point, Gideon wishes Rune to be the Crimson Moth so that it would be more of a intrigue and romantic challenge for him. But when he finally learns the truth, he doesn't hesitate to surrender her to death. Alex,Gideon's brother and Rune's bestie one moment feels like t...

 Dissolution  By Nicholas Binge Published Year: 2025 Page Count: 384 pages  Medium Used: Kindle Scribe  Genre : Science Fiction, Memory Travel, Time Travel, Time Looping, Psychological Thriller, Suspense, Prose, 2025-read.  Rating : 5/5 😀😀😀😀😀 This is a very easy and compulsive 5 pointer story. The prose is so good that I kept reading past the last page into acknowledgements. Despite being a story about time/memory travel and fighting a hungry force of nature, this story felt wholesome and soothing. The deep commitment and enduring love the main characters share over their decades of marriage with each other brought happy tears to my eyes. Even if they have now become old with rickety bones and batty minds, they and their love is something to cherish! So getting into the story. Stanley, Raph and Jacques are three students under a nearly blind, old, eerie professor Waldmen in their university. Stanley comes from a poor background and always felt an outsider i...

 Manacled  By Senlinyu Published Year: 2018-2019 Page Count: 957 pages  Medium Used: Phone  Genre : Romantsy, Romance, High Fantasy, Harry Potter Universe, Alternate Theory, Hermione Granger, Dark Magic and Sorcery, 2025-read.  Rating : 5/5  I have a habit of reading multiple books at a time. This book! This book has knocked me off my mind. I was glued to my phone reading and sticking to this one till the end. Even though this is a long book and had some of the actions mentioned on repeat, - like the multiple times the main characters meet and rescue or heal each other, the many times they spend together as a host and surrogate - it didn't feel boring. I never once said 'enough'. I wanted to keep reading.  This book is so so good. It recounts an alternate version to Harry Potter series. In order to fully understand and follow the book, one must also possess a knowledge - even if only very brief and vague - of the original series. In this book, Hermione...

 Black Sun Rising  (The Coldfire Triology #1) By C. S. Friedman  Published Year: 1991 Page Count: 516 pages  Medium Used: Kindle Scribe  Genre: High Fantasy, Sorcery, Magic, Dark Fantasy, Vampires, Adventure, Action, Horror, 2025-read.  Rating: 5/5 🌟 😎 😀  👌 🌟  Spine tingling. Mind lickingly good! Some of the scenes are so enshrined within my mind - they are incorrigible. I have been reading this book for a while - shuffling/switching among other books and other work - and when I got back to this one, its like I have never left. So uncanny! The world building is great and reminiscent of beautiful, older times fantasy fiction. It brought the world of Erna to life in my mind's eye. The characters are flawed -  they have their reasons and personal motivations for setting out on this adventure but they abide by their promises and oaths - which made them all noble in my eyes.  A priest of the church, Damien, who is also a sorcerer that ca...

 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....

 The Chola Tigers : Avengers of Somnath  (The Indic Chronicles #2) By Amish Tripathi  Published Year: 2025 Page Count: 460 pages  Medium Used: Kindle Scribe  Genre : Historical Fiction, Fantasy, Mythology, Lord Shiva, Muhmad of Ghazni, Action, Adventure, Gore & Macabre, Good prose, Ancient India, 2025-read.  Rating : 5/5  Superb!! Amish has outdone himself with this flawlessly rendered love song to lord Shiva. With every page, he has offered his devotion and love to Lord Shiva. Although this story deals with foreigners desecrating the idol of Lord Shiva at Somnath, Gujarat .. it felt like that was only an act performed in isolation and it has brought together brave people from different cultures, faiths and religious inclinations together.. each praying and showing their deep respect and devotion to Shiva. A must read to every Indian who is proud of their heritage and who would be better off learning their past .. like the sage Shanakaracharya says...

 Down Among Sticks and Bones  (Wayward Children #2) By Seanan McGuire  Published Year: 2017 Page Count: 189 pages  Medium Used: Kindle Scribe  Genre : Coming of Age, LGBTQ+, Vampires, Fantasy, Magic, Multiverse, Parallel Worlds, 2025-read.  Rating : 5/5 😀 Mind blowing. One of the very indulging and engrossing series ever! I couldn't put the book down, I had to finish it! Two twin sisters, brought up with little love from their parents and for each other, travel to a parallel world (called the Moors) studded with humans cohabiting vampires, werewolves and drowned Gods/monsters, through a door in their closet. They are twins but they couldn't be more different. While one wants to be decorated with rich gossamer clothes, the other wants to be toughened with hard work and tomboy looks. They are brought up by their parents in a certain way and they throw away the cautions and rules to the wind when they go into this new world. They choose opposite paths and spe...

  The Voyage Home   ( Women of Troy #3) By Pat Barker   Published Year: 2024  Page Count: 320 pages  Medium Used: Kindle Scribe   Genre : Historical Fiction , Mythology , 2025-read, Ancient Greece , Women Empowered, Murder, Vengeance.  Rating : 4.8/5 The main story - Agamemnon comes home,flaunting his ego, after ten years of war at Troy, destroying Troy and taking his share of war spoils. Before setting out for Troy, he callously murders his daughter Ipigenia, offering her as a sacrifice for the Gods, for fair weather. His wife hasn't forgotten this, despite the time that has passed. Agamemon's father, Atreus, has murdered and offered his brother's children as edible meat to his brother, to show off his power. Someone doesn't forget this either. Cassandra, his new concubine, doesn't forget the blood that flowed in Troy and all the children that are slaughtered by Agamemnon or under his direction. Its all about and about all these children and doing th...

 The Spacetime Pool  By Catherine Asaro  NEBULA AWARD WINNER Novella  Published Year: 2008 Page Count: 136 pages Medium Used: Kindle Scribe  Genre : Multiverse, Time Travel, Fantasy, Magic, 2025-read.  Rating : 3.75/5  I thought her prose is good. It is easy to understand and flowing to keep me riveted. But she took some logical leniencies with the plot and didn't tie all the loose ends for me. I had many questions that had no answer and I felt a bit dissatisfied as a result. This book has two short stories/one novella and another short story - The Spacetime Pool and Light and Shadow .. both with elements of Science Fiction and the first with Fantasy, Magic too.  The novella The Spacetime Pool is really good .. I wished she expanded more on the story. A woman who is kidnapped by accident by a man from another universe finds that she is part of a 40 year old prophecy and that she can never make it back to her world alive. She becomes the object of ...

 Its Kind of a Funny Story  By Ned Vizzini  Published Year: 2006 Page Count: 444 pages  Medium Used: Kindle Scribe  Genre: Young Adult, Mental Illness, Clinical Depression, Drugs, Psychiatric Clinics, 2025-read.  Rating : 5/5 🌟 😎 😀  This story is so so relatable. It could easily happen to any of us. The world has become very competitive and there is FOMO among people for everything. Looking at others and comparing our life with them and wanting, craving things that they are enjoying has become the norm. This builds and places enormous pressure upon young people right from a very early age.  One such individuals is the fictitious main character in our story - Craig Gilner. He has studied real hard and made it into a very competitive school. Unable to cope with the pressure after entering there, he begins thinking in a loop - without doing anything - of all the study he must do for homework, all the things that he must do to finish the school bec...

 Whereever Seeds May Fall  (Seeds #1) By Peter Cawdron  Published Year: 2021 Page Count: 360 pages  Medium Used: Kindle Scribe  Genre : Science Fiction, First Contact, Aliens, Horror, 2025-read.  Rating : 3.5/5  For the most part, this books is suspenseful and intriguing. Then there are some parts where it felt dragging and drawling. Reading near 60-70 percent, this book managed to put me to sleep multiple times. But I trudged through. This book is about a first contact with an alien race. An alien object is identified and a plethora of reactions erupt among humans. Some countries make hostile overtures while others prepare for safe and friendly connection. Conspiracy theories flourish and crazy ideas are bounced off of people from all sides. I thought a few redundant characters like Jorge and Veronica are added .. maybe to give on the ground reality but it didn't add any new information to that already known. Kath's character is given more importance ...