Top 5 Tuesday || Black and Orange Books

Spooky season is well and truly upon us!

And I’ll admit I’m not a huge fan, but that’s a discussion for another time. For now, we just need to worry about the new Top 5 Tuesday prompts Meeghan @ Meeghan Reads has set! She’s kicking things off with black and orange books, and charmingly, I am…a whole week late.

But this means you get a T5T double feature, so how’s that for bad timing turned good timing, huh? Happy haunting! 🖤🧡

Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir

There’s probably a Spooky Scary Skeletons joke to be made here, but more to the point, Gideon the Ninth has the perfect cover for this prompt! And even better than that, it has the delightful line “We do bones, motherfucker” in it.

A point in favor of spooky season indeed! 💀

 

Umbertouched by Livia Blackburne

Umbertouched well and truly has one of my favorite covers. Simple as it is, that watercolor style is absolutely stunning, and really captures the somber air of the book. This one is more harvest season than spooky season, but it deserves the mention today without a doubt!

 

Ashlords by Scott Reintgen

Not only is Ashlords founded on the super cool concept of phoenix horse racing, where the horses are resurrected at dawn and die at dusk, but it has a phenomenally intense cover. I adore all the little details, because they do a perfect job of adding that explosive touch of fantasy to an otherwise normal horse head!

Also, it’s just a really cool book that does some interesting things with second person POV and, like I said, the phoenix horse racing.

 

For a Muse of Fire by Heidi Heilig

Another fiery cover, sure, but a beautiful one nonetheless! Truthfully, the whole series is just picture perfect with these stellar covers, and I’ve got to go back and reread this one before picking up the next two. Following Jetta, a girl who can bind souls into puppets and control them, it’s about the costs and dangers of rebellion, and it deals with the ins and outs of having bipolar disorder!

 

The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon

I am a simple reader with simple needs: give me more dragons. Thankfully, Samantha Shannon does exactly that with The Priory of the Orange Tree (and she delivers an astounding book to boot), so I have to say I’m quite the happy camper about it.

And it’s also a cover that lends itself well to silly Photoshop nonsense. If you weren’t around for April Fool’s, I have a link to the shenanigans ready and waiting for you. Go on, give yourself a few minutes to shake your head at my nonsense. You’ll feel better, I promise! 🧡

 

It turns out that some of these black and orange books are more orange than black. Still, they’re amazing inside and out, and I hope you appreciate them as much as I do! Which titles have I missed, though? Admittedly, there’s a lot of black books on my shelves, which is why there’s so much orange. That’s much easier to spot!