Top Ten Tuesday: Worlds I would NEVER want to live in

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly feature hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. Every week they post a new topic that the participants come up with a top ten list for.


Hey guys :) This week's top ten is about book world's we'd NEVER want to live in, no matter how much we liked the actual story. Or about character's whose shoes we'd never want to walk in. I'll give you 5 of each.


World's I prefer watching from the outside

Fever series - Karen Marie Moning
After the walls come down and the dark fey enter the world, most humans die. No power, little food, lots of baddies... I'd be toast.

Blood of Eden - Julie Kagawa
Either donate blood to your local vampire or live on scraps and be backstabbed or killed by rabids? Again, I'm not the most physically fit person. I wouldn't make it for too long. And it's a very bleak and hungry kind of life.

Wither - Lauren DeStefano
To be kidnapped on the street and sold to some old rich dude to bear his babies, then die at 18? Can't imagine anything much more horrible. Pregnant over and over, then death *shudders*

Any totalitarian regime that restricts knowledge and burns books
Book burning is one of the worst things ever, and one that makes me the angriest. Destruction of knowledge, of beauty... no. Think Fahrenheit 451. Definitely not a society I'd want to live in.

Coldtown - Holly Black
I'm actually divided on this one. Living in a Coldtown is very dangerous. You can never get out. Law is barely existent.You need connections, and you need your wits. Vampire slaying skills are advisable. And yet... I do feel the allure of the place. The never-ending parties. Immortal creatures. Desire. Passion. I admit, I feel torn. In the end I wouldn't make it though.



Characters I wouldn't want to trade places with

Cassel from the Curse Worker series by Holly Black
If you can't even trust your brothers or you mom, life is bleak. Loving the daughter of the biggest crime lord around, also not good. Having an ability everyone wants to use to strengthen their own position? Yeah, better make sure they never find out...
Seriously, ma heart ached for Cassel :(

Karou - Days of Blood and Starlight by Laini Taylor
The things that girl is forced to do... and her position is even worse at the end of that book than it was at the beginning!

Juliet - Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi
Slandered, beaten, bullied, put away into asylums and detention centers, isolated, forced into electroshock therapy... there's pretty much nothing that girl hasn't been subjected to. And her touch kills. Everyone. Apart from maybe the son of her worst enemy, who used to hold her prisoner.
Yeah, being Juliet truly sucks, despite her incredible powers.

Kaylee - Soul Screamers series by Rachel Vincent
That girl never gets a moment of peace. Some hellion always wants her soul, or her loved one's souls, or is possessing innocent strangers... her love life isn't a piece of cake either. Though I sure wouldn't mind spending some time with Tod ;)

Matthew Swift - Urban Magic series by Kate Griffin
That dude. Always in over his head! Made Midnight Mayor against his will. Always some crazy sorcerer or fey queen or other strange personified part of the city to deal with. Not to mention the annoyingness and not quite trustworthiness of his own Aldermen. Let's not even talk about the women in his life. The guy doesn't stand a chance. I feel this strange affection for him though. Can't resist the scruffy reluctant hero type with awesome magic, I suppose.


This was actually harder than I thought! What do you think of my picks, and what/who made your list?

Top Ten of 2013: best villains

Hi there, welcome back to day 3 of the Top Ten of 2013 event organized by Rachel from Fiktshun, Jaime from Two Chicks on Books and Mindy from Magical Urban Fantasy Reads.

Today we have a couple of topics to choose from, and I've decided to highlight my favorite bad guys. Because we all know they can be intriguing in their own right ;)
I must admit though that it wasn't that easy to actually identify books that had a villain! In quite many I've read this year, the adversary is either abstract (poverty, a fear, the character's situation), or a whole society system or some other intangible ideological thing. A real, charismatic villain? Not that easy to find... especially when it comes to lady villains!

There is no particular order. And sorry, but not links/covers today. I'm at my netbook, which is reaaaaally sloooooow and gets hung up all the time. Yesterday I was putting in covers and links (only that) for more than an hour!


Best villains I've read in 2013

The Darkling - Shadow and Bone, by Leigh Bardugo
He is very alluring, mysterious and sexy. And for a long time, I wasn't sure if he's a villain. I didn't want him to be. I'm still not sure he truly is one - I haven't read Siege and Storm yet - but he is cast that way in Shadow and Bone. Can't wait to read more of him.

Warner - Shatter Me, by Tahereh Mafi
What a sick, possessive guy! Very intelligent, but also completely ruthless and due to his upbringing, kind of a psycho. The way he treats Juliette like he owns her made me so mad. he certainly follows the Machiavellian idea that it's better to be feared than loved. Destroy Me let me understand him a bit better, but I still don't understand how some people ship him with Juliette.

Morpheus - Splintered, by A.G. Howard
Is he friend or foe? That's what kept me at the tip of my toes in Splintered. He clearly cares for Alyssa, but he's also a schemer and follows his own agenda. I found him compelling, creepy, and I love his sense of style. There's this jouissance about him that I love to read about.

The Godking - Night Angel Trilogy, by Brent Weeks
Very powerful figure, that guy. Whenever Kylar or Durzo thought they had him pinned... they didn't. His magic is basically all-powerful, he has no respect for women or life in general, and his greed (for land, for power, for cruelty) is basically unparalleled. Definitely a chilling guy.

Sarren - The Eternity Cure, by Julie Kagawa
Sick old psycho vampire with a grudge, who's got his hands on a character I care about. Need I say more? With the ending, whenever I thought it couldn't get worse... it did.

The King  - Throne of Glass / Crown of Midnight, by Sarah J. Maas
I don't remember if we know his name? I don't particularly care. It's his position that makes him dangerous. He's cruel, thirsting for power, and shrewd. He's strong both physically and with his skill in black magic. He's not just a danger to Caelena but to all of Adarlan.

Prince Prospero - Dance of the Red Death, by Bethany Griffin
I seem to have a thing for evil royal villains this year... Prospero is another one that makes torture into entertainment. It's also about his more subtle threats though, and what he's done/doing to his own people. Let's not even talk about the way he treats his own family and how he broke Elliott in his childhood.

Avari - With All My Soul, by Rachel Vincent
Avari is a great villain throughout the series. He's both strong and smart, and hella determined to get what he wants. And yet he is not completely repulsive but strangely... fascinating.

Death - Poison Princess, by Kresley Cole
He's domineering and omni-present in Evie's head, even though they don't meet in real life. I've always had a fascination with representations of Death in literature, and he's feeding my addiction. He's centuries old, lethal, cunning... and endlessly patient.

Tatiana - Flesh and Blood, by Kristen Painter
Evil, ambitious vampire bitch. She's the kind of character that is almost overdone in her vileness, so you can just love to hate her. As you've maybe noticed, I tend to develop a kind of sympathy for the devil villain or siding with the underdog thing... but not with her. And sometimes it's great to be able to just despise a character. Besides, the ladies are seriously underrepresented on this list...

Runners-up:
Demian - The Stone Demon, by Karen Mahoney
Because he's a demon king and even though he's clearly bad news, he's also compelling and a great addition to the trilogy.

The Queen - The Pledge, by Kimberly Derting
Her power is creepy! And she's definitely playing the long game. I was afraid of her when I read her.

The aliens - The 5th Wave, by Rick Yancey
Because they know just where our weaknesses are and they're not afraid to use them. Also, they are so hard to detect! Makes you paranoid.


Have you read any of those books and if so, do you agree with my assessment of villainy? I'm also curious what topics other people chose, so link me up!

Stacking the Shelves: Shatter Me in the Space Between the Hushed and Nameless Stars

Stacking the Shelves is a weekly meme hosted by Tynga's Reviews to showcase all the books we got in the past week. Those can be bought, won, gifted, for review, borrowed, print or ebooks... no matter, just share what you got :)

Hey guys! I'm slowly getting back to blogging... I actually wanted to write and post my Crash Into You review today but I ended up opening Allegiant this morning and I read all day instead of doing anything else and I just finished it and now I'm... processing.
That was an awful sentence. Ahem.

Anyway, these are the books I got in the past week:

For review

Me Since You, by Laura Wiess
Hushed, by Kelley York

I really wanted to read both books ever since I first heard about them, which was more than a year ago! I wasn't expecting to be approved for either of them :)

Bought in print

The Space Between, by Brenna Yovanoff

Shatter Me, by Tahereh Mafi

I got The Space Between via Better World Books. It's a used library copy so it was cheaper, but it's still in really good condition. And yes, I finally gave in and got Shatter Me! I just opened it up and even on the first 5 or so pages, the prose is already gorgeous!

Bought ebooks

Among the Nameless Stars, by Diana Peterfreund
For Real, by Chelsea Cameron
Among the Nameless Stars was for free and I guess it's a good way to check out Diana Peterfreund's writing. And For Real was a spontaneous buy and soooo worth it! Really, if you want a great NA that is not just about banging the bad boy, you should read it! It was the perfect combo of fun and serious :)

That's it from me this week. What do you think of my new pretties? And what did you get this week?