#skullsworn

[chaykhalazza]

Skullsworn by Brian Staveley

~ “The world is broken. Anyone who doesn’t know that, who doesn’t feel it right down in their bones, has to be broken too.” / “What if we’re all broken?”

~ I stared in the cage of my mind, wondering what I had done.

~ Truth doesn’t matter to a mob. Justice doesn’t matter. What matters is rage, having a target for that rage.

~ All the time I’d known him, he’d been so cool, so ready. Even busted up, even bleeding, her never really looked hurt....I could have ended him in that moment, but I needed more. I needed him to scream at me, or beg, or start sobbing. I needed him to deny me, or accept me, or anything other than rock with another punch. I needed to see past the calm to the beating heart of him. The surface of the man was gorgeous, but I couldn’t love a surface.

~ “And who said love was beautiful or gentle? Who said it was only those things?”

~ “What’s the sickness in thinking love is bigger than a few kisses, bigger than running through the same platitudes night after night? Why shouldn’t love be more than that? Why shouldn’t it be braver, more frightening?

~ What I felt--that need to have you close, to have you near me all the time--that wasn’t love. It was something else, something small and grasping and selfish. Love is not this stupid holding on. Love is larger.

~I wanted to be like that, like her. I was tired of doubting the heft of my own heart, of parsing my emotions as though they were weights on some merchant’s scale. I wanted to be full, and furious, and free. I ached with that need, and the ache kept me pinned in place...

~...love is not some eternal state, but a delight in the paradise of the imperfect. The holding of a thing is inextricable from the letting go, and to love, you must learn both.

~ She was gone, utterly gone, but that didn’t matter either. Love is not something you can keep. It is something you do, every day, every moment, regardless of who is dying.

[ladyandherbooks]

Book Review 12 - Skullsworn

18.5/20

Skullsworn by Brian Staveley tells the story of Pyrre, an assassin from a religious order serving the god of death, who, in order to pass the Trial must kill 10 people in 10 days, including the person she will love most. This story is full of action, violence, death, sex, love and above all life. This is a story of a woman who is beginning to grow tired of and begin questioning her religion and its gods and whether she really wants to pass the Trial and become a true assassin. 

Brian Staveley has constructed a complex world and religious systems in which Pyrre and the rest of the characters exist and live. It is dangerous and exciting and pulls you in from the moment you begin reading.  

This is not the first book Brian Stavely has written in this universe, he has a trilogy, The Unhewn Throne which already establishes this world and its people and given how much I enjoyed this book I will definitely be picking them up sometime this year..     

[torpublishinggroup]

32 Books for American Gods Fans

Sometimes they walk among us. Sometimes they empower us. They try to trick us, or don’t care for us, or don’t even notice we’re there. Whatever their agendas, the gods of fantasy literature rarely make characters’ lives any easier. Sometimes, they’re even willing to descend from on high to get their divine hands dirty. Inspired by the brilliant television adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s American Gods—in which the old gods are at war with the gods of modernity—here are 32 books in which deities take direct action.

[torpublishinggroup]

Skullsworn author Brian Staveley on the tedious--but necessary and often rewarding--calculations involved in fantasy world-building.

[torpublishinggroup]

Need TBR ideas? io9 has you covered with 27 recommendations.

[torpublishinggroup]

Find out why Tor.com calls Skullsworn "an ideal entry point to Brian Staveley's work."

[torpublishinggroup]

Skullsworn Provides an Irresistible Entry Point to a Stunning Epic

Brian Staveley’s The Chronicles of the Unhewn Throne trilogy, which concluded last year, was a remarkably complete, compelling specimen of the epic fantasy genre. How to follow up such an accomplishment? In Skullsworn, Staveley returns to his world of immortal races, strange magic, and giant birds to explore the past of a beloved, but secondary character we met in the first three books. There, we met Pyrre Lakatur: wise, experienced, and deadly with any weapon, deadlier with her bare hands, thrumming with an ecstatic energy, as sure to dance with you as murder you.

[torpublishinggroup]

Read an interview with Skullsworn author Brian Staveley on Fantasy Faction.