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    Grim Fandango Remastered

    Grim Fandango Remastered

    Games and Entertainment

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    IMPORTANT: This game uses Metal and will only play properly on iPad Air, iPad Mini 2, iPhone 5s, and...

    Starlight AR

    Starlight AR

    Education and Reference

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    Point your iPhone or iPad like a magic lens into the night sky, and see in real time what stars,...

The Forest Grimm
The Forest Grimm
Kathryn Purdie | 2023 | Fiction & Poetry, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Young Adult (YA)
9
9.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
There are no two ways about this: I love fairytale retellings. I’ve yet to find one I don’t like (I’m also picky). Perhaps it’s because I like the firm sense of right and wrong with no nuance in-between? Or the fact that I immersed myself in myth, folklore and fairytale as I was growing up? Well, whatever the reason, it has stuck 🤷🏼‍♀️

What I really enjoyed about The Forest Grimm was its pastiche style: as Clara makes her way through the dangerous Grimm forest on the hunt for a magical book that has disappeared from her village (Sortes Fortunae, or the Book of Fortunes), she encounters characters out of fairytales who are as far from helpful as they can be!

These characters reminded me of the original Brothers Grimm fairytales: poisoning, maiming, murder all methods used by the fairytale characters. Clara and Axel (the boy she’s destined never to be with) stick together to survive and discover that perhaps fate isn’t necessarily set.

I really enjoyed this, and I have the second book all ready to listen to at some point, too!
  
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Morgan Sheppard (1036 KP) created a post

Jun 5, 2026  
Happy Folklore Friday! 🌸

Today's figure is one of the most complex and compelling in all of Welsh mythology. Blodeuwedd, whose name means flower face, was created from the blossoms of oak, broom, and meadowsweet by the magicians Math and Gwydion to serve as a wife for Lleu Llaw Gyffes, a man whose mother had cursed him never to take a human woman.

She was never asked. She was made, and given, and expected to be content.

What happened next depends on how you read her. She took a lover, Gronw Pebr, and together they plotted Lleu's death. The plan nearly succeeded. When it failed, Gwydion transformed her into an owl as punishment, condemned to fly only at night, shunned by all other birds. 🦉

Welsh mythology doesn't really give us villains. It gives us people, and Blodeuwedd is perhaps the clearest example of that. She was created without consent to fulfil a function, and she refused it. Whether that reads as betrayal or defiance says rather a lot about the reader.

She's stayed with me for years, and I suspect she always will.

#FolkloreFriday #TalesFromWales #WelshFolklore #FolkloreFantasy #MythAndMoonlight
     
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Morgan Sheppard (1036 KP) created a post

Jun 10, 2026  
Welsh lake mythology is some of the most quietly unsettling folklore I know, and I mean that with enormous affection.

The lakes of Wales, in the old tradition, are not passive landscape features. They are active, wilful, and possessed of long memories.

Llyn y Fan Fach gives up a woman of the Tylwyth Teg to a mortal man under precise and fragile conditions, and when those conditions are broken — three times, three causeless blows — she walks back into the water and takes everything she brought with her. The lake doesn't mourn. It simply closes over her again, as though she had never left.

Other lakes hide drowned villages beneath their surfaces, places that were swallowed for a transgression or simply because the water decided to reclaim what had always been its own. On still nights, the bells of those sunken churches are said to carry upward through the water.

There is a particular kind of mythological thinking at work here — one that understands landscape not as backdrop but as character, and water not as resource but as sovereign. The lake gives. The lake takes back. It was never yours to keep.

#WelshFolklore #FolkloreFantasy #TalesFromWales #StillWatersDeep #BetweenHillAndSea #IndieAuthor
     
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Kyera (8 KP) rated The Raven Boys in Books

Jan 31, 2018  
The Raven Boys
The Raven Boys
Maggie Stiefvater | 2012 | Paranormal, Science Fiction/Fantasy, Young Adult (YA)
6
7.7 (35 Ratings)
Book Rating
It took a long time for this book to draw me in and even then I'm still not entirely sure how I feel about it. I am not the type of person to put down a book if I'm not enjoying it, I always try to finish it so that I have a complete picture. I don't know if my lack of engagement was solely due to the story or the fact that I decided to listen to this as an audiobook.

The two main characters are Blue and Gansey, although they are joined by a supporting cast of about eight others. Blue is the daughter of a psychic, but the only ability she has is to amplify her surroundings. She has always known that if she kisses her true love, he will die. Gansey is the rich boy who goes to private school and has a lot of problems. His school friends also had a lot of struggles. Honestly, that's about as deep as the characterization and development felt for me, most of the times. There were a few scenes that we got to see below the surface, but in general, it felt very superficial to me.

Although the book is set in Henrietta, Virginia it takes aspects from Welsh folklore and weaves them into the narrative. As I am not familiar with Welsh folklore, I cannot speak to how accurately it is done. Personally, I didn't feel like the world or magic system was well explained. The mundane was adequately described, but the supernatural was left with a permeating air of mystery.

While the book followed an overarching plot, it also had myriad side plots and points of view thrown in which was also off-putting. They seemed incredibly irrelevant at the same and didn't contribute much to the story. Some of them ended up tying into the story in the very last chapters, leading me to say oh so that's why I've been bothering to listen to this character complain and grouse for the first three-quarters of the book. But others it seems still had no true relevance to the plot, they just added pages to the novel.

I wasn't even going to consider continuing the series until I reached those final few chapters. I still don't love the book, but I'm curious. The ending intrigued me enough that I will take a chance. I have hopes that it will improve, as so many people are in love with this series.