Tag: Fairy tale inspired

Review: Orfeia

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Orfeia
Joanne Harris

Finishing out the year with Joanne Harris yet again, and far from the only Joanne Harris novella I read after indulging in Honeycomb, Orfeia stuck with me in a biting way.
I find with Harris’s work I have a tendency to incorporate it into my understanding of a given mythology. Blue Salt Road is how I always saw selkie stories, isn’t it?
Orfeia was unique and beautiful. I absolutely recommend it, her prose style reminding me of George MacDonald or Edgar Rice Burroughs but deeply cemented in a network of fae stories with Harris has been weaving through her many novellas and Honeycomb.
Orfeia follows a mother who has lost her adult child and is willing to travel into the land of the dead, through various fae traps, to restore her.
It was absolutely lovely.

Review: The Night Circus

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The Night Circus
Erin Morgentstern

This was a reread for me, which typically I don’t reread books so soon after the first time I’ve read them. It tends to be a decades later ‘oh yeah, I can appreciate this differently now’ vibe. But I read this book for the first time in 2020 and I’ve probably aged a few decades between them and now.

I remember, both times I’ve read it, immediately thinking of the Hunchback of Notre Dame. The opening lines are from the perspective of and detailing the Night Circus itself, the edifice, and I remember the first time I read it being drawn in by this comparison. It’s something that promises something unusual.

What I find funny, having read this book twice, is that the characters are so crisp and well developed while giving the smallest amount of detail necessary. That’s how a mysterious air is achieved, after all, but it really does smack you in the face to realize how little you know and how much you still attach yourself on.

My opinion of certain aspects has changed given the time and life experiences I’ve had between readings; I am far more sympathetic to Isobel the scorned card reader; far less sympathetic to Tsukiko who betrayed her love.

I still love the man in grey and Chandresh.

The characterization is evocative. The storytelling and pacing; the sense of being out of time in several aspects, is something which manages to draw you in while keeping you separated, exactly as a circus should.

Plus, who doesn’t live a story that comes with an aesthetic?

It’s an absolute recommendation

Review: Thistlefoot

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Thistlefoot
GennaRose Nethercott

I’ll cut to the chase, this was one of my favorite books I read in 2023.
Thistlefoot takes place in a world of magic and not, a world where most things are exactly the same as they are in reality but with an important exception —the scars of an event can awaken the spirit of a place.

One of the early mentioned examples of this is a Burger King that grew eyes after a break in.

Thistlefoot, the book’s name sake, is a house that sprouted chicken legs.

The sibling pair at the heart of the story, Bellatine and Issac Yaga, are the inheritors of Thistlefoot and the generational trauma that both makes them who they are and that has been kept from them by their family. They both have their own unusual gifts, which unbeknownst to them are adaptations to that trauma. The book examines disapora in a fascinating way.

The story follows both the Yaga siblings and the history of the house itself in a slow burn reveal of the tragic events that led Thistlefoot to sprout legs and flee.

All while being hunted by a similar oddity, which intends to destroy Thistlefoot.

This book was such a delicate and well constructed handling of generational trauma and particularly genocide. I had gone into it blind and was taken in immediately with the world and characterization.

It’s an absolute recommendation.

Review: Honeycomb by Joanne M Harris

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I’ve been sitting on writing this review because I’m not sure how I want to structure it. Structure is fundamental to Honeycomb by Joanne Harris and this is my second contender for my favorite book that I’ve read in 2023.

In fact, the reliance on bees within the story is, I’m sure, a direct reference to the importance of structure to the novel.

I want to be assured that I do it justice.

Honeycomb is presented as a series of short chapters introducing interlocking stories and continuations of earlier chapters and characters, chiefly following The Lacewing King. Characters are, importantly, not named but given honorifics as the book utilizes traditional fae myths. As a person with ….an unkindly level of entomophobia, you’d think that this book would be near impossible for me to read as the many factions and clans of fae are all based on different insect species. However, I persevered and I actually really enjoyed the way the insects and the affectations of each fae were discussed.

Anyone who may remember the horrific katydid incident last year where I blew up discord channels and texts demanding to know how I got rid of the beast that had flown into my window (it took me four hours to work up the nerve to trap him between the screen and sliding glass door) should be very proud of me!

Not only did I push through, but this book has stuck with me incredibly. I love the very arch yet traditional approach to fae stories. It was nostalgic, reminiscent of reading collected fairy tales and brother’s Grimm compilations, but with an interconnecting thread that built and drove you deeper into the world that Ms. Harris was creating. It had an atmosphere similar to Susanna Clarke’s fae. The characterization both holds you at a distance as a reader and is engrossing, drawing you in to learn more about the various flawed characters and is reminiscent of old school fantasy like George MacDonald.

I recommend it highly.