Good Afternoon,
It’s Monday! What are you Reading is hosted by Kathryn from Book Date, this is a weekly event to share what we’ve read in the past week and what we hope to read, plus whatever else comes to mind.
Books I have Finished Recently
Mermaid Saga Collector’s Edition, Vol. 1 by Rumiko Takahashi | (Mermaid Saga Collector’s Edition #1) | Manga, Fantasy, Horror | Add to Goodreads
Manga legend Rumiko Takahashi’s classic horror series about mermaid flesh and immortality!
They say that if one consumes mermaid flesh, one can attain immortality. Unfortunately, the more likely results include becoming horribly deformed or turning into a vicious monster! Even if one were to gain eternal life, however, is such an anomaly a lucky blessing or a terrible curse?
Yuta became immortal when he unwittingly ate mermaid flesh, and now he seeks a way to become human again. Hundreds of years later, he encounters a volatile and determined young lady named Mana while searching for a mermaid. Could this mysterious woman hold the key to saving Yuta’s humanity?
Mermaid Saga Collector’s Edition, Vol. 2 by Rumiko Takahashi | (Mermaid Saga Collector’s Edition #2) | Manga, Fantasy, Horror | Add to Goodreads
Manga legend Rumiko Takahashi’s classic horror series about mermaid flesh and immortality!
They say that if one consumes mermaid flesh, one can attain immortality. Unfortunately, the more likely result includes becoming horribly deformed or turning into a vicious monster! Even if one were to gain eternal life, however, is such an anomaly a lucky blessing or a terrible curse?
Immortals Yuta and Mana continue to come across people who are dealing with the consequences of having eaten mermaid flesh. Some are scarred, in excruciating pain or just trying to survive, but they all lead mysterious lives filled with unspeakable horror. Is one’s humanity doomed to be lost in exchange for immortality?
Yona of the Dawn, Vol. 10 by Mizuho Kusanagi | (Yona of the Dawn #10) | Manga, Fantasy, Romance | Add to Goodreads
Yona and her friends have taken to calling themselves bandits and have been protecting Fire Tribe villages from cruel government officials. Meanwhile, Kang Tae-jun, the Fire Tribe chief’s second son, goes to Katan Village with orders to eliminate the bandits there. He still believes that he’s killed Yona—but suddenly, he hears her voice! What will happen when they come face-to-face again?
A Brief History of Japan: Samurai, Shogun and Zen: The Extraordinary Story of the Land of the Rising Sun by Jonathan Clements | History, Non-Fiction, Japan | Add to Goodreads
This fascinating history tells the story of the people of Japan, from ancient teenage priest-queens to teeming hordes of salarymen, a nation that once sought to conquer China, yet also shut itself away for two centuries in self-imposed seclusion.
First revealed to Westerners in the chronicles of Marco Polo, Japan was a legendary faraway land defended by a fearsome Kamikaze storm and ruled by a divine sovereign. It was the terminus of the Silk Road, the furthest end of the known world, a fertile source of inspiration for European artists, and an enduring symbol of the mysterious East. In recent times, it has become a powerhouse of global industry, a nexus of popular culture, and a harbinger of post-industrial decline.
With intelligence and wit, author Jonathan Clements blends documentary and storytelling styles to connect the past, present and future of Japan, and in broad yet detailed strokes reveals a country of paradoxes: a modern nation steeped in ancient traditions; a democracy with an emperor as head of state; a famously safe society built on 108 volcanoes resting on the world’s most active earthquake zone; a fast-paced urban and technologically advanced country whose land consists predominantly of mountains and forests.
Among the chapters in this Japanese history book are:
The Way of the Gods: Prehistoric and Mythical Japan
A Game of Thrones: Minamoto vs. Taira
Time Warp: 200 Years of Isolation
The Stench of Butter: Restoration and Modernization
The New Breed: The Japanese Miracle
Currently Reading
The Starless Crown by James Rollins | (Moon Fall #1) | Fantasy | Add to Goodreads
A gifted student foretells an apocalypse. Her reward is a sentence of death.
Fleeing into the unknown she is drawn into a team of outcasts:
A broken soldier, who once again takes up the weapons he’s forbidden to wield and carves a trail back home.
A drunken prince, who steps out from his beloved brother’s shadow and claims a purpose of his own.
An imprisoned thief, who escapes the crushing dark and discovers a gleaming artifact – one that will ignite a power struggle across the globe.
On the run, hunted by enemies old and new, they must learn to trust each other in order to survive in a world evolved in strange, beautiful, and deadly ways, and uncover ancient secrets that hold the key to their salvation.
But with each passing moment, doom draws closer.
WHO WILL CLAIM THE STARLESS CROWN?
City of Storms by Kat Ross | (Nightmarked, #1) | Fantasy | Add to Goodreads
For the Shadow is a tight passage, a narrow door, whose painful constriction no one is spared who goes down the deep well . . .
After decades of civil war, the Via Sancta has declared victory over humanity’s basest instincts. Anger, hatred and greed are suppressed by intricate Marks on the skin. Wards have tamed the wild psychic magic of the ley. Four of the six cities still stand, and if a few rebel Nightmages haunt the ruins of the other two, the Church has dismissed them as toothless.
Alexei Bryce is a priest in the storm-wracked southern capital of Novostopol. He hunts deviants whose Marks have inverted, driving them mad. When a prominent doctor violently turns, Alexei stumbles across a conspiracy at the highest levels of the Via Sancta. The trail leads to Kasia Novak, a tarot reader with dangerous secrets of her own. The cards say their fates are intertwined — but only if the threads aren’t snapped short.
Now the ley is rising again. A Nightmage has infiltrated the city, bent on finding Kasia. And Alexei discovers that his faith’s victory over the darkest recesses of the human soul is more fragile than he imagined.
What is your deepest desire? Money? Power? Revenge? Lust? I’ll give to you.
Malach is many things. Corrupter of the pious. Survivor of the Via Sancta’s bloody campaigns. Implacable enemy of all it stands for. He’s primal desire made flesh, and the thing he wants most is a child. Half-bloods are fragile creatures, but if this one survives, it will be monster, a savior — or both.
What are you hoping to get to read this week?
Follow me on other platforms:
Instagram | Goodreads | Bloglovin |
Facebook | Amazon Wishlist
Sophril Reads 