Seriously, this book really frustrated me and it’s hard not to focus on those frustrations to the detriment of the novel. It is however, a perfect example of why I will never claim Ilona Andrews as a favorite author. I often find that their books have a subtle current of misogyny/gender issues which is easily overlooked because in general I like everything that surrounds that current and it’s a small current. That current ebbs and flows depending on the novel and oh boy did high […]
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 […]
Anna Should Be So Lucky
The Raven and the Reindeer is Ursual Vernon’s (under her ‘grown-up book author’ pen-name of T. Kingfisher) retelling of The Snow Queen. It’s fantastic, bloody, and dark without loosing the magic that is fairy tales. Vernon has a kind of no-nonsense, logic based method to her storytelling that appeals strongly to me. She also manages to incorporate animals in a way that makes perfect sense for those animal types, her raven feels very raven-y and her reindeer are very reindeer-y, yet still makes them unique […]
Honey a Day
I so loved Amal El-Mohtar’s story in The Starlit Woods that I went searching for other books by her. Sadly, it seems that most of her writing is in the form of short stories for various anthologies, however there was this collection of poems and short stories. I picked it up, and it’s quite good. I enjoyed the short stories a bit more then the poetry, but I’m a bit out of practice with poetry. El-Mohtar was given a sampling of honey and she spread […]