I bought this monster of a book quite a while ago and finally decided to get my act together and read it on my two week holiday. I have read some of Stephen King’s books before and really enjoyed his writing style, especially Carrie. I would cautiously label his style ‘intellectual horror’. It did not disappoint. Clown disquiet aside, the idea that It could take on the shape of any of the children’s fears was fascinating. I loved the line drawn between adult and child […]
“You make a very handsome dead eel, my husband”
Radiance is an extremely clever romance, and the good-natured ribbing between the two leads, whose species find each other unforgivably ugly, is hilarious. It’s also a very thoughtful and reasoned take on societal beauty standards, and how remarkably different perceptions can be between two groups who aren’t all that dissimilar, but project and amplify their differences into something grotesque. Ildiko is a regular human noblewoman who enters a diplomatic marriage with Prince Brishen of the Kai. Neither is dragged kicking and screaming into it, because […]
Magical realism that falls flat
I do not have an issue with magical realism in books; in fact, I enjoy it. Isabel Allende and Sarah Addison Allen both use it — in very different ways — to add spark and dimension to their novels. Alice Hoffman’s Illumination Night, by contrast, seems weighed down by it — or maybe that was just the utterly depressing story. “He fell in love with the way she closed her eyes, long before he fell in love with her.” In Martha’s Vineyard, we’re introduced to a […]
The Eighth son of an Eighth son is a born WIZZARD.
“They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it is not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance.” Terry Pratchett is one of my absolute favorite authors, I was hooked from the first page of one of his books that I read as a wee lad so long ago. That book was “Equal Rites”, I picked it up when I was five years old, I understood maybe one word in five, I had to check the dictionary every few lines, or, […]