Wow, it only took me eight days to read this. I feel like I was reading it forever. Actually, that’s not always a bad thing to say, though it certainly sounds bad. Sometimes I feel that way about a book if it’s a slog, but sometimes I feel that way if I was really sucked into the world and I’m having trouble pulling my head out of it again. I think this may be more of the latter than the former, here, though the book […]
The Hidden Chamber
I got on the library queue for this book because I knew that it contains “The Monarch of the Glen,” which is the novella follow-up to American Gods. I am committed to my American Gods love, and wanted to complete my library of knowledge of all things Shadow. But this book, oh, this wonderful book. It’s a collection of some of the most beautiful poetry and short stories, in perfect Gaiman-ian language, set in dark landscapes that are undeniably his. I could pick these works […]
Early Fantasy: Long Stories in Which Not Much Happens
Part of my Masters thesis is on the evolution of the fantasy novel. This means I had to delve into the pre-Tolkien works, which while important to the evolution of the fantasy process, is a scary place to go and, frankly they’re downright boring. I DNFed The Wood Beyond the World by William Morris at about the 20% mark since I could barely understand the sentence structure, never mind the plot, and slogged through The King of Elfland’s Daughter by Lord Dunsany instead since it […]
My other theme this month is Fairy Tales
Toad Words and Other Stories is a collection of fairy tale retellings by T. Kingfisher (Ursula Vernon) most of which were published previously on her blog, though there is at least one new story. I’ve read a couple of the stories when they were on her blog, but there were a number that were new to me. I really enjoy Kingfisher’s approach to fairy tales, where magic may exist but that’s no reason to throw logic out the window. For the most part this book […]
Great Start to a Fantasy Series with Neat Magic Logic
This book was recommended to me by my cousin, and I am definitely feeling it and want to continue on with the series when I get a chance. It is an interesting way to begin a story, having a character recount their own story before something else is obviously going to occur in the present of the tale. Filled with new types of magic that I have not really experienced in other books, as well as a dark mystery that the protagonist wants to solve […]
I blame everybody on this website for my nightmare after I finished this book.
My initial review of this book was just two words: “What” and “the”, arranged in a sentence with a leetle question mark after it, like so. What the? I still feel it’s an appropriate response to reading this book. If this wasn’t your response, at least subconsciously, I worry for your mental health. I really do. This book was super weird, and super gross. And funny. But also violent and horrible. It is many things at once, and they all combine to do things to […]