May is Wyrd and Wonder, a fun month-long fantasy blogging challenge that comes with daily prompts. I originally wanted to pick a couple of the daily prompts to make posts for, but I found that I didn’t have enough to talk about for each prompt to make a post – instead I’m taking inspiration from Zezee with Books and doing one post covering a lot of the prompts. This one is going to cover the prompts from day 16 to 30 – check out part one here.

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This post includes affiliate links – clicking on a book title will take you to Bookshop.org UK where 10% of your purchase will go to independent bookshops in the UK and 10% to me. If you are not based in the UK, I encourage you to support your local independent bookshops.

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Day 16: New Moon – The start of the lunar cycle: fresh starts, rebirth, renewal, regeneration

One of my favourite tropes/subgenres is that where a character is given a chance to do something over with knowledge of events to unfold. I do like an isekai version of this where a character enters a world they’ve read about or back in time to a period they’ve learnt about (for example, This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me or the K-drama/webnovel Reborn Rich) but my favourite kind is when someone goes back to an earlier point in their own life with their memories in tact.

Unfortunately, most of the stories I’ve consumed like this have been TV shows rather than books – some of my favourites include Again My Life and Perfect Marriage Revenge (these are based on webnovels/webtoons but haven’t been translated into English – the shows have English subtitles though!).

This subgenre is particularly popular in East Asia – there are lots of web novels and webtoons that also feature it, and most of the books I’ve read in this genre are Korean and have unfortunately not yet been translated into English (your girl can hope though).

One I read this month that I’m really hoping has an English translation at some point so I can make you all read it is 검을 든 꽃 (A Flower Holding a Sword). I’ve only read the first of four books but I own all of them (it was a box set) and as soon as I get to my mum’s house to yank book two out of storage I will be continuing this series – hopefully that will be very soon, since I’m going to be at my mum’s next week!

If you do have any recommendations for things that have been published in English (or originally written in English), please let me know!!!

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Day 17: Dark side – Black magic, evil witches and things that roam the darkest nights

The fact that nothing comes to mind for this prompt drives home something I probably already knew about myself: I’m not super into very dark stories. Luckily, though, there quite a few people who posted about this prompt since it was one of the main Sunday prompts, so check out their posts:

• Mayri @ Book Forager shared five fictional towns/cities that come alive at night
• Starr K @ Pages and Procrastination recommended books with evil witches
• Anouk @ Time for Tales and Tea recommended four series with dark magic

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Day 18: Earthshine – Debut or new-to-you authors you’d like to read

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Day 19: Not at the front – second in command/support characters

I actually did a full post for this one (yay!) which you can find here.

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Day 20: Illumination – Medieval illuminations, share some gold foiled covers

So many pretty covers!

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Day 21: Banshee – stories featuring a banshee or other omens (of death)

I didn’t really have any great ideas for this, so I’ve decided to pick books with banshees or other omens of death as very minor characters.

The third book in the Kate Daniels series, Magic Strikes, features a banshee, and one of the animals in the Emily Wilde series is related to the grim.

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Day 22: Light the way – upcoming releases to look forward to

I have my anticipated releases of quarter two posts that you can check out and I’ll be doing quarter three lists in June, so I thought I’d highlight a quarter two releases that I’ve found out about since making my original lists.

I really enjoyed the Final Architecture series by Adrian Tchaikovsky and I definitely plan to check out more of his works; his upcoming standalone sounds very interesting.

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Day 23: Half full – Hopeful/optimistic reads

My go-to answers for this prompt were all science fiction, so I had to have a bit of a think, but I think A Witch’s Guide to Magical Innkeeping is pretty hopeful. Check out my review here:

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Day 24: Skinwalkers – Shapeshifters

I have pretty much exhausted my repetoire of shapeshifter books at this point (feel free to leave recommendations) so I’m not offering any new recommendations here. However, I thought I’d give you some of my thoughts on famous literary shapeshifters.

I’m not Team Edward because I particularly like Edward, but because I’m usually always Team whoever-the-protagonist-likes-more, since I believe in… consent? Freedom of love? Who am I to tell the character to love someone else, right? (This is maybe one of the reasons love triangles are boring to me.) And it was obvious who Bella liked more. Sorry, I’m just not a fan of people trying to get someone to love them when they’re clearly crushing on someone else.

If it were me, though, I probably would have picked Jacob since I’m not actually all that into the dangerous, forbidden love thing. I just respect character autonomy.

But yes, in general, I prefer stories about shapeshifters/werewolves etc. to stories about vampires, despite being Team Edward. I did also read a lot of the various vampire stories that came out around the same time, but shifter stories have had much more sticking power for me. Partially, I think it’s because they come with interesting pack dynamics or community elements that I find particularly interesting (and much more interesting than a bunch of vampires trying, or not trying, to give in to bloodlust).

My favourite shifter at the moment is Curran from the Kate Daniels series by Ilona Andrews, although I also love a lot of the side character shifters from the series. If anyone has any shifter recommendations for me based on this, I would love to hear them.

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Day 25: Children of Air – Shape-changing curses and folkloric tales

The only shape-changing ‘curse’ that I could think of would be something from fairy tales like Beauty and the Beast or Alice in Wonderland. However, I love reading books with folklore elements, so I thought I would share a few!

Some are more fantasy and some are more literary with a speculative twist, but all incorporate folklore in some way.

• Emily Wilde series by Heather Fawcett – This is an extremely popular series that I’m only just getting to, but if you’re interested in Folk and Faerie stories from around Europe, then this might be the series for you!
• The Ninth Child by Sally Magnusson – This is a more historical, literary piece, but it’s deeply steeped in Scottish folklore, including the legend of a famous Scottish minister and folklorist who is thought to have been taken by the Folk to the land of faerie.
• Kate Daniels series by Ilona Andrews – Magic in this world can bring the monsters and gods of folklore and mythology to life, and so this series is full or references to religions, mythology and folklore from around the world.
• Ending with a book that’s on my TBR list but that I haven’t actually read yet – Spirits Abroad by Zen Cho, a collection of short stories inspired by East Asian and Malaysian mythology and folklore.

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Day 26: Out of this world – favourite books by my favourite fantasy authors

I did kind of do this one as I did the Top Ten Tuesday prompt, but I didn’t limit myself to fantasy authors only.

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Day 27: Bare chested – The ultimate shifter trope – have fun with cover art of reinterpret as you see fit

Yeah, I hate these covers. Not only do they make reading in public awkward (thank goodness for e-readers), I also find they often reduce books that are actually complicated stories with lots of thematic explorations, politics etc. to some kind of sexual fantasy for women. Not that there’s anything wrong or bad with wanting to read a romance or fantasising about a sexy shifter with a six pack, but that’s not the whole sum of what these books are and it has definitely prevented me from recommending some books to some people who I think would otherwise like them.

In honour of this, I’m going to share the absolute biggest cover glow up in regards to bare-chested dudes on a cover (even if this series doesn’t actually have any shifters): the Hidden Legacy series by Ilona Andrews.

I don’t necessarily think the new covers are the best covers ever, but boy are they are an improvement.

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Day 28: Kitsune – Morally grey/untrustworthy characters whose actions can be both benevolent and malevolent

Unfortunately, I don’t have any kitsune recommendations, but anything with the Folk in it is bound to entail morally grey/untrustworthy characters, so please refer to my recommendations for day 25 above.

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Day 29: Celestial – a divine story or story about the gods OR space fantasy

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Day 30: Share a tale with a character who has great personal growth

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Don’t forget to come back tomorrow for my wrap up post and my top five favourite things of the month!

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And with that, Wyrd and Wonder is halfway done! Please leave your fantasy recommendations down below, and if you’re participating in the challenge this year, leave me a link to your favourite blog post of the challenge so far (self-promo is encouraged).

Keira x