It’s time to think of another booktube topic for Monday’s video and while I have now done my re-read (and first listen) of The Night Circus and could just finally do that video, I never post a booktube video without a companion blog post before it or on the same day, and I don’t want to overshadow some other reviews I’m featuring this weekend and into the new week. So… book tags, right?
Up here in Canada Disney+ recently added the Hulu catalogue directly into Disney+ (and upped the subscription price, thank goodness ours is renewing for the year before that goes into effect…) and Criminal Minds is included in that catalogue. I love Criminal Minds! (Don’t ask me to pick a favourite character because I can’t narrow it down more than 4: Gideon, Reid, Garcia & Morgan.) So when I was looking for book tags to do today I decided to check and see if a Criminal Minds tag existed yet. If it didn’t I was going to create one, but YouTubers asreadbybrooke beat me to it back in 2017. Let’s go!
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1. Jason Gideon: Your favourite fictional teacher or mentor.
My answer is Chade from Robin Hobb’s Farseer Trilogy and Fitz and the Fool trilogy. He seems to be a typical hardened assassin who doesn’t really care for his apprentice or anyone else when you first meet him, but it’s all an act. He’s a very layered, deep person who has a bigger heart than most characters in the book, but his job has made it necessary to conceal it. As Fitz gets to know Chade he finds out who Chade really is in relation to the legitimate members of court, which false identities Chade takes on to live different lives, and even who he’s come to love in a more intimate way. Everything he does for Fitz and his other students he does because he cares for them deeply. On top of it all, he’s also a master assassin, and who doesn’t love a good assassin storyline.
Assassin’s Apprentice
The Farseer Trilogy Book One
by Robin Hobb
Published 1 March 1996
Spectra Book
Genre: High Fantasy
Page Count: 435
Add it to your Goodreads TBR!
In a faraway land where members of the royal family are named for the virtues they embody, one young boy will become a walking enigma.
Born on the wrong side of the sheets, Fitz, son of Chivalry Farseer, is a royal bastard, cast out into the world, friendless and lonely. Only his magical link with animals – the old art known as the Wit – gives him solace and companionship. But the Wit, if used too often, is a perilous magic, and one abhorred by the nobility.
So when Fitz is finally adopted into the royal household, he must give up his old ways and embrace a new life of weaponry, scribing, courtly manners; and how to kill a man secretly, as he trains to become a royal assassin.
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2. Aaron Hotchner: An iconic fictional leader you trust and would follow anywhere.
Aragorn from The Lord of the Rings. He’s honourable, kind, and not afraid to embrace emotions. A man like that isn’t going to make foolish mistakes for the sake of pride, and he’s not going to overlook the needs of those under him.
The Lord of the Rings (Box Set)
by J. R. R. Tolkein
Published 20 October 1955
Genre: High Fantasy
Page Count: 1216
Add it to your Goodreads TBR!
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them, One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.
In ancient times the Rings of Power were crafted by the Elven-smiths, and Sauron, the Dark Lord, forged the One Ring, filling it with his own power so that he could rule all others. But the One Ring was taken from him, and though he sought it throughout Middle-earth, it remained lost to him. After many ages it fell by chance into the hands of the hobbit Bilbo Baggins.
From Sauron’s fastness in the Dark Tower of Mordor, his power spread far and wide. Sauron gathered all the Great Rings to him, but always he searched for the One Ring that would complete his dominion.
When Bilbo reached his eleventy-first birthday he disappeared, bequeathing to his young cousin Frodo the Ruling Ring and a perilous quest: to journey across Middle-earth, deep into the shadow of the Dark Lord, and destroy the Ring by casting it into the Cracks of Doom.
The Lord of the Rings tells of the great quest undertaken by Frodo and the Fellowship of the Ring: Gandalf the Wizard; the hobbits Merry, Pippin, and Sam; Gimli the Dwarf; Legolas the Elf; Boromir of Gondor; and a tall, mysterious stranger called Strider.
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3. Derek Morgan: The most loyal fictional character you know.
Dang, now I have to repeat a book! The one and only possible valid answer is Samwise Gamgee from The Lord of the Rings!
4. JJ: Your favourite bad-ass female character.
Bree from Tracy Deonn’s Legendborn. This girl lost her mother less than a year ago, she finds herself tangled up with a horribly racist old boy’s club dealing with one sort of magic and protecting their campus from demon creatures and also learning about her ancestral magic that her mother hid from her through a counsellor on campus. That’s two magic systems she suddenly has access to and didn’t know she had. Does she lose her mind? Nope! She kicks butt and takes names. She’s still human, she’s dealing with the fallout of grief, but she isn’t a victim.
Legendborn
Legendborn Book One
by Tracy Deonn
Published 15 September 2020
Margaret K. McElderry Books
Genre: Paranormal Urban Fantasy, Own Voices
Page Count: 501
Add it to your Goodreads TBR!
After her mother dies in an accident, sixteen-year-old Bree Matthews wants nothing to do with her family memories or childhood home. A residential program for bright high schoolers at UNC–Chapel Hill seems like the perfect escape—until Bree witnesses a magical attack her very first night on campus.
A flying demon feeding on human energies.
A secret society of so called “Legendborn” students that hunt the creatures down.
And a mysterious teenage mage who calls himself a “Merlin” and who attempts—and fails—to wipe Bree’s memory of everything she saw.
The mage’s failure unlocks Bree’s own unique magic and a buried memory with a hidden connection: the night her mother died, another Merlin was at the hospital. Now that Bree knows there’s more to her mother’s death than what’s on the police report, she’ll do whatever it takes to find out the truth, even if that means infiltrating the Legendborn as one of their initiates.
She recruits Nick, a self-exiled Legendborn with his own grudge against the group, and their reluctant partnership pulls them deeper into the society’s secrets—and closer to each other. But when the Legendborn reveal themselves as the descendants of King Arthur’s knights and explain that a magical war is coming, Bree has to decide how far she’ll go for the truth and whether she should use her magic to take the society down—or join the fight.
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5. David Rossi: A fictional “father figure” you’d kill to have.
This is honestly a difficult one to answer. My father is a terrible person and I had lots of step father role figures in my life growing up. People growing up in that situation either cling to father figures in fiction or keep them at arm’s length, and I’m the latter. I’m not drawn to those characters, I don’t think much of them, I don’t go looking for them. On top of that I really don’t want to feature a JKR title and the characters coming to mind after I think hard on this one are from her series.
So…
Oh! Qui-gon Jin from the middle-grade Star Wars series Jedi Apprentice.
The Defenders of the Dead
Star Wars: Jedi Apprentice Book Five
by Jude Watson
Published 1 December 1999
Scholastic
Genre: Middle-Grade Science Fiction
Page Count: 140
Add it to your Goodreads TBR!
The Defenders of the Dead live in the past while they destroy the future. They face a revolt of the Young–a band of rebels led by two teenagers, Cerasi and Nield.
Thirteen-year-old Obi-Wan Kenobi and his Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn are not supposed to take sides in any war. But once Obi-Wan meets Cerasi and Nield, he feels he must join their fight…even though Qui-Gon forbids it.
The rebellion has become personal.
And Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon are on opposing sides.
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6. Spencer Reid: A character who’s equal parts intelligence and innocence.
Alix, the uniquely free-willed and educated atomaton from This Golden Flame by Emily Victoria. Check out my review here and you’ll understand why!
This Golden Flame
by Emily Victoria
Published 2 February 2021
by Inkyard Press (HarperCollins)
Genre: YA Fantasy, LGBTQIA
Page Count: 384
Add it to your Goodreads TBR!
Orphaned and forced to serve her country’s ruling group of scribes, Karis wants nothing more than to find her brother, long ago shipped away. But family bonds don’t matter to the Scriptorium, whose sole focus is unlocking the magic of an ancient automaton army.
In her search for her brother, Karis does the seemingly impossible—she awakens a hidden automaton. Intelligent, with a conscience of his own, Alix has no idea why he was made. Or why his father—their nation’s greatest traitor—once tried to destroy the automatons.
Suddenly, the Scriptorium isn’t just trying to control Karis; it’s hunting her. Together with Alix, Karis must find her brother…and the secret that’s held her country in its power for centuries
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7. Diana Reid: The sweetest parent-child relationship.
Do I need to branch out? Seriously, parent-child relationships in the books I read are either neutral, negative, past-tense only due to parental death, or not addressed at all. And again, not promoting JKR and naming any of her books, so a certain ginger family is off the table.
Let’s feature a book from my TBR!
Me, My Dad and the End of the Rainbow
by Benjamin Dean
Published 4 February 2021
Simon & Schuster
Genre: Middle-Grade Contemporary, LGBTQIA
Page Count: 336
Add it to your Goodreads TBR!
My name’s Archie Albright, and I know two things for certain:
1. My mum and dad kind of hate each other, and they’re not doing a great job of pretending that they don’t anymore.
2. They’re both keeping a secret from me, but I can’t figure out what.
Things aren’t going great for Archie Albright. His dad’s acting weird, his mum too, and he all he wants is for everything to go back to normal, to three months before when his parents were happy and still lived together. When Archie sees a colourful, crumpled flyer fall out of Dad’s pocket, he thinks he may have found the answer. Only problem? The answer might just lie at the end of the rainbow, an adventure away.
Together with his best friends, Bell and Seb, Archie sets off on a heartwarming and unforgettable journey to try and fix his family, even if he has to break a few rules to do it…
‘A powerful new voice in children’s fiction’ – Aisha Bushby
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8. Emily Prentiss: A character who’s been to hell and back, but who’s stronger and better than ever.
Kvothe from The Kingkiller Chronicle by Patrick Rothfuss. He’s been hunted by demons called Chandrian ever since childhood, he makes enemies far easier than he makes friends, and he’s no stranger to dire physical injuries and serious illness. Despite this, Chronicler finds him very effectively living a double life as innkeeper Kote who protects his new home town without their knowledge and privately instructs Bast, a noble of the fae courts.
The Name of the Wind
The Kingkiller Chronicle Book One
by Patrick Rothfuss
Published 27 March 2007
DAW
Genre: High Fantasy
Page Count: 662
Add it to your Goodreads TBR!
Told in Kvothe’s own voice, this is the tale of the magically gifted young man who grows to be the most notorious wizard his world has ever seen.
The intimate narrative of his childhood in a troupe of traveling players, his years spent as a near-feral orphan in a crime-ridden city, his daringly brazen yet successful bid to enter a legendary school of magic, and his life as a fugitive after the murder of a king form a gripping coming-of-age story unrivaled in recent literature.
A high-action story written with a poet’s hand, The Name of the Wind is a masterpiece that will transport readers into the body and mind of a wizard.
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9. Penelope Garcia: A fictional character with the quirkiest sense of style.
I don’t like to criticize the creators of these tags… but really? Yeah, sure, she has a quirky fashion sense, but that’s what you’re going to highlight for Garcia? I’m getting the feeling this is a YA romance fangirl who wrote the questions to fit her favourite books, and I really don’t have the right books in my repertoire to answer them.
You know what I think is more important about Garcia? She’s loyal, cunning, clever, and has a sordid past. If she has a parallel in adult fantasy it’s Vin from the Mistborn books.
The Final Empire
Mistborn Book One
by Brandon Sanderson
Published 17 uly 2006
Tor Books
Genre: High Fantasy
Page Count: 544
Add it to your Goodreads TBR!
For a thousand years the ash fell and no flowers bloomed. For a thousand years the Skaa slaved in misery and lived in fear. For a thousand years the Lord Ruler, the “Sliver of Infinity,” reigned with absolute power and ultimate terror, divinely invincible. Then, when hope was so long lost that not even its memory remained, a terribly scarred, heart-broken half-Skaa rediscovered it in the depths of the Lord Ruler’s most hellish prison. Kelsier “snapped” and found in himself the powers of a Mistborn. A brilliant thief and natural leader, he turned his talents to the ultimate caper, with the Lord Ruler himself as the mark.
Kelsier recruited the underworld’s elite, the smartest and most trustworthy allomancers, each of whom shares one of his many powers, and all of whom relish a high-stakes challenge. Only then does he reveal his ultimate dream, not just the greatest heist in history, but the downfall of the divine despot.
But even with the best criminal crew ever assembled, Kel’s plan looks more like the ultimate long shot, until luck brings a ragged girl named Vin into his life. Like him, she’s a half-Skaa orphan, but she’s lived a much harsher life. Vin has learned to expect betrayal from everyone she meets, and gotten it. She will have to learn to trust, if Kel is to help her master powers of which she never dreamed.
This saga dares to ask a simple question: What if the hero of prophecy fails?
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10. Luke Alvez: The new kid on the block (i.e. your favourite recent read)
(Who? Guess I’m gonna find out. I didn’t have cable for the last 8 seasons…)
The Lost Apothecary
by Sarah Penner
Publishing 2 March 2021
by Park Row (HarperCollins) & Harper Audio
Genre: Historical Fiction, Women’s Fiction
Page Count: 320
Audio Length: 10 Hours 18 Minutes
Add it to your Goodreads TBR!
A female apothecary secretly dispenses poisons to liberate women from the men who have wronged them—setting three lives across centuries on a dangerous collision course.
Rule #1: The poison must never be used to harm another woman.
Rule #2: The names of the murderer and her victim must be recorded in the apothecary’s register.
One cold February evening in 1791, at the back of a dark London alley in a hidden apothecary shop, Nella awaits her newest customer. Once a respected healer, Nella now uses her knowledge for a darker purpose—selling well-disguised poisons to desperate women who would kill to be free of the men in their lives. But when her new patron turns out to be a precocious twelve-year-old named Eliza Fanning, an unexpected friendship sets in motion a string of events that jeopardizes Nella’s world and threatens to expose the many women whose names are written in her register.
In present-day London, aspiring historian Caroline Parcewell spends her tenth wedding anniversary alone, reeling from the discovery of her husband’s infidelity. When she finds an old apothecary vial near the river Thames, she can’t resist investigating, only to realize she’s found a link to the unsolved “apothecary murders” that haunted London over two centuries ago. As she deepens her search, Caroline’s life collides with Nella’s and Eliza’s in a stunning twist of fate—and not everyone will survive.
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Read my review here.
11. Tara Lewis: Your favourite psychological thriller.
Not a genre I really read, so let’s go with the last gothic horror I loved…
The Hush Sisters
by Gerard Collins
Published 5 October 2020
by Breakwater Books
Genre: Gothic Fiction
Page Count: 312
Add it to your Goodreads TBR!
49TH SHELF UTTERLY FANTASTIC BOOK FOR FALL
Sissy and Ava Hush are estranged, middle-aged sisters with little in common beyond their upbringing in a peculiar manor in downtown St. John’s. With both parents now dead, the siblings must decide what to do with the old house they’ve inherited. Despite their individual loneliness, neither is willing to change or cede to the other’s intentions. As the sisters discover the house’s dark secrets, the spirits of the past awaken, and strange events envelop them. The Hush sisters must either face these sinister forces together or be forever ripped apart.
In The Hush Sisters, Gerard Collins weaves psychological suspense with elements of the fantastic to craft a contemporary urban gothic that will keep readers spellbound until the novel whispers its startling secrets.
Amazon US | Amazon CA | Amazon UK
Breakwater Books | Chapters Indigo
Read my review here.
12. Haley and Jack Hotchner: A parent who would sacrifice everything for their child.
Fitz from Robin Hobb’s Fitz and the Fool books. I know I didn’t pick him for the father question earlier and I stand by that, he has a terrible relationship with Bee before her abduction, but the trilogy hinges on his quest to stop at nothing getting her back.
Fool’s Assassin
Fitz and the Fool Book One
by Robin Hobb
Published 12 August 2014
Del Rey
Genre: High Fantasy
Page Count: 706
Add it to your Goodreads TBR!
Tom Badgerlock has been living peaceably in the manor house at Withywoods with his beloved wife Molly these many years, the estate a reward to his family for loyal service to the crown.
But behind the facade of respectable middle-age lies a turbulent and violent past. For Tom Badgerlock is actually FitzChivalry Farseer, bastard scion of the Farseer line, convicted user of Beast-magic, and assassin. A man who has risked much for his king and lost more…
On a shelf in his den sits a triptych carved in memory stone of a man, a wolf and a fool. Once, these three were inseparable friends: Fitz, Nighteyes and the Fool. But one is long dead, and one long-missing.
Then one Winterfest night a messenger arrives to seek out Fitz, but mysteriously disappears, leaving nothing but a blood-trail. What was the message? Who was the sender? And what has happened to the messenger?
Suddenly Fitz’s violent old life erupts into the peace of his new world, and nothing and no one is safe.
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13. William LaMontagne Jr.: Your favourite fictional married couple.
*screams into the void* I give up! Why didn’t I read the questions before I put hours into trying to answer them? I don’t read books about healthy adult relationships. Let’s say Magic Max and his wife from The Pricess Bride.
The Princess Bride
by William Goldman
Published 1 September 1973
Ballantine Books
Genre: Fantasy
Page Count: 456
Add it to your Goodreads TBR!
What happens when the most beautiful girl in the world marries the handsomest prince of all time and he turns out to be…well…a lot less than the man of her dreams?
As a boy, William Goldman claims, he loved to hear his father read the S. Morgenstern classic, The Princess Bride. But as a grown-up he discovered that the boring parts were left out of good old Dad’s recitation, and only the “good parts” reached his ears.
Now Goldman does Dad one better. He’s reconstructed the “Good Parts Version” to delight wise kids and wide-eyed grownups everywhere.
What’s it about? Fencing. Fighting. True Love. Strong Hate. Harsh Revenge. A Few Giants. Lots of Bad Men. Lots of Good Men. Five or Six Beautiful Women. Beasties Monstrous and Gentle. Some Swell Escapes and Captures. Death, Lies, Truth, Miracles, and a Little Sex.
In short, it’s about everything.
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14. The BAU: An iconic fictional team or group.
The Jedi!
Into the Dark
Star Wars: The High Republic
by Claudia Gray
Published 2 February 2021
Disney Lucasfilm Press
Genre: YA Science Fiction
Page Count: 425
Add it to your Goodreads TBR!
Long before the Clone Wars, the Empire, or the First Order, the Jedi lit the way for the galaxy in a golden age known as the High Republic!
Not everyone who hears the call to adventure wants to answer it…
Jedi Padawan Reath Silas loves adventure—reading about it, that is, not living it. Content to spend hours browsing the Jedi Archives on Coruscant, Reath dreams of being one of the great scholars of the Jedi Order. But Reath’s master, the well-respected and virtuous Jora Malli, has other plans: she’s taken a post at Starlight Beacon, the Republic’s shining new outpost on the edge of known space. As her Padawan, Reath must join her, whether he likes the idea or not. (And he most definitely does not.)
So Reath reluctantly boards the ship that will take him and a few other Jedi to the dedication of Starlight Beacon, where Master Jora waits for him to start their new adventurous life on the frontier. But trouble in hyperspace leaves the ship and other nearby vessels stranded, with only an eerie abandoned space station reachable for shelter. And the secrets hidden there will not only bring Reath to a crossroads but, if left unchecked, could plunge the entire galaxy into darkness…
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B&N | iBooks | Kobo | TBD | Bookshop.org
15. “Baby Girl:” Your favourite fictional male-female friendship.
Angela & Dave from All Bags Go to Cleveland. Read my review here to find out why!
All Bags Go to Cleveland
by C. S. Hale
Published 21 August 2020
Genre: Paranormal Romantic Comedy
Page Count: 338
Add it to your Goodreads TBR!
Angela Grimalke appears more blonde bombshell than the gremlin she is. But there is no denying her supernatural truth after her clumsiness gets her fired from her modeling career. Forced to work for her family’s upscale airline, she spends her days slinging luggage and wishing her parents would get off her back about finding a nice gremlin guy to settle down with.
Relationships were the last thing on her mind, not that her family would accept that.
For Dave Ford his frequent business travel made it next to impossible for him to find a woman who could tolerate his chaotic schedule. Which is why he appreciates Angela. Neither of them are looking for love, but Dave feeds Angela’s addiction for chocolate while she provides him with the chaos to keep him on his toes.
However, as Angela’s parents bombard her with a parade of “eligible” gremlin men at their weekly family dinners, she finds herself torn between who she longs to be and her family’s expectations. Will she give in and live the life of magic they want for her? Or risk it all by to confessing to Dave that she isn’t human?
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Is that it? Did I survive? Somebody remind me to write a different version of this tag for adults.
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