Selcouth.FYI

If Langrisser or Fire Emblem were to receive a shoujo isekai treatment, Enemy! would be the result. The story follows the tale of Kiara, a teenager in a fantasy world with a rough noble upbringing who finds herself essentially purchased off of her stepmother by one Count Patriciel, who intends to use her to solidify his power. This scares her, however, because she has flashbacks of her previous life as a teenager in Japan who played the strategy game “Farzia: Kingdom at War” and recognized from this that her fate is to become something of a midboss, attempting to kill the main hero before dying herself. Naturally, she doesn’t wish…

It’s hard to fully judge author Alexa Sommers‘s Level Up franchise in their entirety, as only three of the planned five books (and potential spin-offs) have been released. That said, they’ve proven to be a very interesting take on the “college conquest” and harem genres, wedding geeky references and witty banter with steamy wish fulfillment and managing to do justice to both romance and smut. Disclaimer: the above advertisement is an affiliate link. Making a purchase from this link may financially benefit the website. Dillion Strands is a 20 year old college student learning Game Theory and taking other classes to pursue his interests in game design. He has a…

Lana Kole is a romance author who does a lot of her marketing through the TikTok app, which was an unusual approach in my opinion. I’ve read so many romance books in the last year it isn’t even funny, but it’s refreshing to come across a good one. Feline Good is a stand-alone reverse harem about three cats turned into men, and it’s not even surprisingly good – it’s a-mew-singly so. It does a great job of showcasing the author’s voice, and it’s pretty much what one would be shopping for in this genre even if its supernatural elements are more camp than grounded. Disclaimer: the above advertisement is an…

“Hello,” he said, in fluent German. This sentence was found within the first couple of pages of Gary L. M. Martin’s latest work, Sleeping With Hitler’s Wife, and set my expectations of the novel floor low. I did not expect this nearly 600 page book to be good. And it’s not. But it’s a spectacular train wreck that’ll keep you warm at night long after you’ve bleached your brain from reading it. This book is a thing. It’s the sort of train wreck where you record video and send to your friends so they can gasp in horror with you. It is a thing that must be experienced to fully…

I made a mistake. I went on a book spending spree, buying books Amazon recommended to me with no consideration for if they were good or not, if they were even the type of book I’d care for or not. Most of these books were more or less reasonably priced. The one we’re gonna look at today is $10, written and self-published by a cosplayer and model named Bridget Kathleen Pueppke. It isn’t very good, as you’ll learn, and not even in a fun or damning way. Disclaimer: the above advertisement is an affiliate link. Making a purchase from this link may financially benefit the website. Before I get to…

As a general rule, I enjoy Wuxia novels as a premise but not in practice. They tend to be poorly translated, never-ending, and redundant. Often, the world building is forsaken and the focus is on how the hero cultivates their power, which won’t matter too much because in a dozen or so more chapters they are just going to need to cultivate it further. So when Brandon Varnell announced he was going to be publishing the cultivation-inspired serial previously only available to his Patreon subscribers, I was cautiously optimistic. I enjoy Varnell’s works, even if at times they come off as heavily inspired by anime tropes. Could he pull off…

The Light Novel and anime series Sword Art Online is far from the first work of fiction to have players stuck in some sort of game world, but boy if it hasn’t been the springing point for so many writers hoping to borrow the trope. The Young Adult Fantasy genre is no stranger to authors jumping on and imitating the trope. Endless Fantasy Online feels like another one of these. It straddles the line between “competent” and “redundant” and while the result is far from perfect it still manages to be enjoyable. Disclaimer: the above advertisement is an affiliate link. Making a purchase from this link may benefit the website.…

Way behind on my reading quota for the year, so I figured I’d cheat a little and grab something short and potentially sweet. So when I saw that Zoe Miller, the critically acclaimed author of such books as The Visitor and A House Full of Secrets, was doing literotica, I had to grab it quickly before it disappeared. Except, as it turns out, Demimondaine was not written by that Zoe Miller. Apparently, this Zoe Miller is a Brooklyn based author with a cult following on Archive of Our Own and Literotica.com, with a focus on lesbian and non-binary couples. With this in mind, I buckled down to read a book…