Top Five Tuesday: Authors on My TBR (U-Z)

It’s the final installment of Bionic Book Worm’s month-long challenge to list authors using the letters of the alphabet for inspiration!  It has been the LONGEST month, but hopefully you’ve found some new books to read (or at least been reminded of books already on your TBR).  Below are links to the previous weeks, and as always, covers link to Goodreads!

Top Five Tuesday: Authors on My TBR (A-E)
Top Five Tuesday:Authors on My TBR (F-J)
Top Five Tuesday: Authors on My TBR (K-O)
Top Five Tuesday: Authors on my TBR (P-T)

   

THE LEFT HAND OF DARKNESS by Ursala K. Le Guin
So I didn’t have an author with a last name that started with U, so I went for the first name for this slot.  Le Guin is another author in my “classics” list that I really need to check off some day; in this instance, a sci-fi tale that explores gender identity by sending a human emissary to a planet where the race that lives there can change their gender when they choose.

CRIER’S WAR by Nina Varela
Another YA tale that came and went, this is a F/F romance between an Automatae and a human who is planning to infiltrate and kill the automatae king.  It sounds like a fascinatingly original premise and I’ve heard good things!

SWORD OF KAIGEN by M.L. Wang
Okay, I really TRULY am going to read this when Wyrd and Wonder rolls around in May (and we’ll ignore the fact it was on my TBR LAST Wyrd and Wonder).  This self-published fantasy about a warrior woman forced to pick up the sword again as war draws closer has been taking the blogging community by storm for a while now, and it’s a finalist in this year’s Self-Published Fantasy Blog Off.  I’m determined to get this one read this year, if only so people will stop telling me to!

 

SKY IN THE DEEP by Adrienne Young
I have a beautiful hardcover of this one, a tale about a young Viking warrior trying to survive all kinds of battles and betrayals over the course of a brutal winter that’s left her stranded in an enemy village.  And to make things worse, the village is attacked by a clan that’s supposed to be myth – and they might be heading to the warrior woman’s village next.

BLOOD HEIR by Amelie Wen Zhao
Oh, BLOOD HEIR, what a troubled history you’ve had.  This book was pulled and reworked after a contingent of Twitter called out one scene for problematic elements.  I still want to try this book some day, but my fervor cooled a bit after all the drama.  While I think the flack it caught was a bit overblown, I’d love to read the revised version that was finally released.  This fantasy is set in a world where magic users are hated and sometimes enslaved, one princess has been hiding her gift of blood magic.  When her father is murdered and she is framed for the act, she’ll have to go on the run and turn to a notorious crime lord to prove her innocence and find the real killer.