Fantasy Book Club discussion

“Grace,” the drunk fairy said, “is by far the best of the blessings.”

Call me lamia, call me lilith, call me nightmare, slattern, slut. I don’t subscribe to labels. I’ve moved around, through many lives, and they’ve always invented new names for me.
When I care to name myself, “succubus” does just fine

“The sun is the only god empirically proven to exist,” I yell. “It created life on Earth. Gave life-sustaining energy. It gave and gave and gave, and—no matter our millennia of trying—our sacrifices could not reach it.”

“Why do you think men are more violent than women?”
“I don’t care why. Nobody does. It’s the way of the world.”
“What if it weren’t the way of the world? What if it didn’t have to be?”

The tongues that have power always want to sew shut the mouths of the ones who don’t.

In the chorus of the dead, there is one large, looming silence; the voice of the ship, forever beyond her, forever impervious to her prayers and entreaties—but then, wasn’t it always the case?

Generation after generation of seabird and bat colonies had added guano to the fertile soil that blanketed the wandering island's thick shell. I realized that the island's back had long ago become as earthy as land. The pulse of its heart was only a soft hum beneath my feet.

“At dawn, we raise the black.” A chorus of cheers erupts from his crew, eager for a good hunt and a hearty fight. Drasio raises his voice for the first time this evening amid the roar below, projecting each word with increasing volume. “There will be no prisoners.”

Bewitching creatures lurked in the Golden Chersonese, fantastic animals that populated your mind’s bestiary. Birds of paradise with tails that flamed like the sun, dragons with large flickering tongues and poisonous saliva, and large cats that roared and founded a city. It lured many explorers, sailors of the sea and wind. It lured me.

Jagga knew her reputation. They called her Jagga the Ripper, or Jagga the Bitter, or Jagga the Thorn of Gael. In the darker corners of Ulsh and Covengate they had much fouler names for her, filthy epithets that made her smile when she heard them.

He looked at his crew…the crew he had thought was his. Several of them wouldn’t meet his eye. It was a painful thing to see.

“Straight between the Devil and the deep blue sea.” Cat whistled through his teeth. “You don’t lie when you call that the best hiding place we’ll ever find.”

Hell hath no fury like a woman with nothing left to lose.

“I am Captain Henriette Talmadge. That,” she pointed, “is the Rib of Man. It’s my vessel. I took it from the man who had it before me because he used it as a chariot for the selling and purchasing of human beings. I thought it deserved a more righteous destiny.” She took slow steps forward as if marking distance. “I changed its name to Rib of Man because that, according to a certain book, is the origin of the female species”

The fog rolled in from the sea, twisting and curling through the cypress trees. Green moss hung down from the low branches like horsehair and algae clung to the trunks, a carpet of green that smelled musty and ancient in the still air. The swamp was never silent.

I knew that I had made the mistake of my life by making a deal with this devil.
He also instructed me to build another robot—the one that Natwar and others referred to as ‘the monster.’ It was by far the most dangerous and most sophisticated thing I had ever built. It was placed inside the Cave of Treasure.

A loud banging noise came from inside the crater. BANG. BANG.
Satellites didn’t usually have people fighting to get out, right? Jack’s mind went to the first thing he could think of. It was an alien. Definitely.

Once you touch the depths, the only way is up.

Like the old stories of Robin Hood, the pirates of New York stole from the rich. They were rather less enthusiastic about giving to the poor, though.

“There’s nothing but children on this ship,” Janet said.
Captain Reed holstered her weapon. She squatted down and looked at the little girl and smiled. “Can you tell me where all the grown-ups are?”
“The Tenari took them.”