The Quill To Live Most Anticipated Watchlist: 2023

Every year the members of The Quill to Live gather together to plan out our reads for the next year and flag the books we are most looking forward to in order to ‘claim’ reviewer status among ourselves. We figured it might be fun to share our list of choices in case you were curious…

SFF Archrivals

Every Young Hero Needs An Archrival: Do You Have What It Takes?

This article originally appeared on Tor.com. Hello there, and welcome to The SFF Rival Academy! We’re thrilled you’ve enrolled in our educational program for youngsters of the generic magical/scientific arts. Did you know a courageous avatar of pure goodness will be joining you this year? How amazing! They may draw all manner of evil entities…

Death Note Is The Perfect Beginner’s Guide To Hard Magic Systems

This post originally ran on Tor.com. There’s a lot to be said about the intersection of fantasy and the insanely large pantheon of anime content, to put it mildly. Today, I’d like to focus on Death Note and its smart, if a bit on-the-nose, use of a hard magic system to tell its story. My anime sample size…

A Guide To All Things The Witcher

Every year The Witcher seems to increase in popularity because it’s a fantastic IP and because it has shown up in a multitude of forms and mediums. However, unlike the more centralized efforts like Sanderson’s Cosmere, or the MCU, these cross-medium takes on the property are mostly self-contained and have seemingly different objectives. This can…

A Beginner’s Guide To Little Free Libraries

So you want to run a Little Free Library! Great, excellent, amazing! I’m an LFL steward myself, and my bookworm friends often ask what it takes to get a Little Free Library installed at or near their home.  I’d love to tell you it takes brains, moxie, and spunk. But in reality, all you need…

Cibola Burn Re-Read Guide: Act 3 – Eye Of An Angry God

Hi all, and welcome to part 3 of The Quill to Live and Orbit reread of Cibola Burn - the 4th book of one of the best space operas to grace the page, The Expanse. We will break this reread into three parts to discuss the various acts of the book, its themes, and the statements…

Cibola Burn Re-Read Guide: Act 2 – Playing With Corpses

Hi all, and welcome to part 2 of The Quill to Live and Orbit reread of Cibola Burn - the 4th book of one of the best space operas to grace the page, The Expanse. We will break this reread into three parts to discuss the various acts of the book, its themes, and the statements…

Cibola Burn Re-Read Guide: Act 1 – Tragedy On New Terra

Hi all, and welcome to The Quill to Live and Orbit reread of Cibola Burn - the 4th book of one of the best space operas to grace the page, The Expanse. We will break this reread into three parts to discuss the various acts of the book, its themes, and the statements it makes. We…

This Or That: Booktok’s Bookish Debates

Earlier this year, my sister and I started a joint TikTok account: BookRush. Mostly, it features the Rush siblings ribbing each other for their poor taste in books and sharing new reads with the larger “BookTok” community.  Occasionally, we’ll put out a poll asking BookTok folks to chime in on big bookish debates. To date,…

We’re In The Middle Of A Bardic Revolution

When I filled out Brandon Sanderson’s website contact form, I did it in the most bardic way I could: by unfurling a metaphorical scroll, standing in the town square, and shouting: “DO YOU HAVE A MOMENT TO TALK ABOUT BARDS?!”  And while he may not have had time to spin a tale longer than a…