Bitter_Melancholy's Reading List
7 stories
The Blood-Stained Empress by disappearwithoutlife
disappearwithoutlife
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After Li Meixing is executed by her lover alongside her family, she wakes up four years earlier and searches for a way to survive the coming conflict. ***** Li Meixing is living the perfect life. Her father is a powerful politician in the Qi Kingdom, and she is engaged to the charismatic new Emperor, Huang Siming. But at the Emperor's coronation, Li and her family are framed as traitors by and ruthlessly executed. When Meixing wakes up, she finds that she has returned to the day when she first met Huang Siming. Now no longer naive and knowing what is to come, Meixing must dive into the world of politics that she has always avoided in order to save her family from their terrible fate. If she fails, she won't have a third chance.
THE END OF WAR (Watty Award Winner) by BenSobieck
BenSobieck
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A secret program in the United States seeks to replace human militaries with artificial intelligence-driven machines, but the machines aren't so willing to play along. *** Picture a world where humans no longer fight wars. No more families missing loved ones. No more veterans with lifelong mental and physical scars. No more conscription. For the super-secret End of War Project inside the United States government, such a reality is already here. The project models out how artificial intelligence can overcome dangerous and morally sensitive war scenarios with algorithms and automation. The centerpieces are "autonomous combat machines," or ACMs, that look like humans but function like supercomputers. After a string of brilliant successes in the field of combat, the End of War Project is preparing to reveal itself to the public, but something unusual stands in the way. Against their programming, the ACMs start exhibiting all-too-human signs of apprehension, guilt and compassion as they're pushed to perform ever more extreme tasks. The human leaders of the End of War Project race to find who "hacked" the ACMs, but what they find is even more startling--and revealing--than they could ever imagine. ***2019 Watty Award Winner - Science Fiction***
Carnival Souls by RedasNight
RedasNight
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    Parts 71
COMPLETED: 2019 Watty Award Winner in Fantasy Every night she plays...and every night they come... Lira is a violinist by nature and a performer by imprisonment. Stolen as a child by a malevolent wraith and trapped in the Spirit World, Lira now spends her days playing the very music that seduced her in the first place. She sees no escape from her existence under the sorceress Bebinn, until one day her music lures Owen who, at age 16, is supposed to be too old to succumb to its spell. Imprisoned alongside Lira and desperate to find a way back home, Owen vows to find a way to free them both. The only problem: no one has ever escaped Bebinn and the Spirit World alive. 1st Place Winner in Fantasy for the Undiscovered Writer Awards! 1st Place in Fantasy for the Hidden Author Awards! 1st Place in Fantasy for the Hot Dog Awards! Winner of @EventualElites "Hypnotized and Hooked" Award! 3rd Place in Fantasy for the Book Center's Summer Awards! Cover by: @Baneen121
The Kingfisher by shinrili
shinrili
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❈ Watty's 2019 Fantasy Winner ❈ 'I'll take pride over power and guts over greed'. The five nations of Schamaria have been in conflict for many years now. With a war breaking out and the continent being divided into two sides, irreversible damage and stigmas on the earth and the people are inevitable. But when a royal heirloom -- which happens to contain the secret to gaining magical and elemental abilities -- is stolen from the Seyali Palace, the raging flame of the battle is only fueled. A gang leader, a thief, a magic manipulator, a spy, a traitor to the crown; they know nothing about each other, yet they must come together to find the Kingfisher before everyone else. When dark secrets and unseen connections are revealed, when greed lays its golden claws on the adventurers' hearts, and when it all becomes a game of power and deception, will they be able to reach their goal? Five strangers. Five motives. One target. ⸻ Long chapters ahead! Word count ⇢ 117,363
Incipience by Authorkssmith
Authorkssmith
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Incipience (\in-ˈsi-pē-ən(t)s), noun: the act or process of bringing or being brought into existence. The meteors came without warning. Hundreds of thousands of them came raining down to the Earth, but they did little damage to the planet itself. It's the people that they brought ruin to. Upon impact, the meteors combusted into this fine powder that saturated the planet in its entirety. Within a few weeks, billions grew weak, millions were sick, and hundreds of thousands were dead. That's when they came. These beings from across the stars, the Inovarians, landed on the UN's front lawn with technology capable of fixing the planet within a few weeks. People around the world celebrated until we realized what their help would cost: us. Follow Charlotte-Amalie, a teenager from the USVI, as she feigns assimilation into Inovarian society and races against the clock. She has a year of experimentation to survive through before having to face an ultimatum: be drafted into the military to fight the Inovarians' war or forced into their breeding program. With the help of a covert rebel sec of the military, Charlotte-Amalie may just be able to beat the clock in time to get her and a few of her fellow Earthlings out before the battle begins. Book 1: Chapters 1-12 (Complete, publishing with New Degree Press Winter 2021) Book 2: Ongoing (Update Hiatus to meet publication deadlines for book 1)
Shift by Bdicocco
Bdicocco
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Kayden Lee is a girl from New Jersey with newly divorced parents and an annoyingly perfect cousin staying with her for an entire summer. Blaze Merg is a wizard... but not a particularly good one. He's still surprised that he managed to graduate, and finding a job has proved to be a lot more difficult than expected. Their lives become intertwined just as the magical world erupts into chaos. Spells begin failing, people start dying, and the two are magically bound together against their will. As the magical community struggles to survive without magic, Blaze and Kayden try to find a way to break the spell that has physically bound them together. But as they navigate through magical politics, they must also control their growing attraction to one another, which may just be another unfortunate side effect of their spell gone wrong. * * * Awards and Featuring: Ranked #13 in Fantasy (Dec 2016) Wattpad Featured (Dec 2016) Editor's Choice (May 2020) Featured on @ContemporaryLit (Jan 2020) Featured on @Fantasy (Feb 2021) Featured on @WattpadUrbanFantasy (May 2021) Cover image by @TheRainbowPig
Siren Song (The Fated #1) by UnboundWings
UnboundWings
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    Parts 74
Iliana Katrakis couldn't care less about the will of the gods, and she's certain they feel the same way about her. After all, it's rare for the god-touched to live normal lives--and that's all she wants. Having spent the last three years aboard the merchant ship Airlea, Iliana couldn't be happier. Sure, her best friend Kain is the only one who knows she's a girl, but it's a good life. The work is simple, and her shipmates are the closest thing to a family she has. Fate, however, is not on her side. A storm tosses the Airlea wildly off course. Within the day, she's stranded, alone and injured, on a foggy island known only as Inna's Cove. She's given a choice: become one of the islands' goddess blessed sirens and rescue her best friend, or take her chance with the monster-infested woods. The choice seems obvious. That is, until the mercenaries arrive. Their captain wants a siren--and not even the threat of the goddess' wrath will change his mind. **Cover by Morana