Shadow of the Fox by Julie Kagawa

Julie Kagawa is best known for her Iron Fey series, but my introduction to her work was the Blood of Eden trilogy, a dystopian/vampire adventure that I really enjoyed.

The Shadow of the Fox is the first in this fantasy series with creative mythological elements.   

from the description:  Every millennium, one age ends and another age dawns...and whoever holds the Scroll of a Thousand Prayers holds the power to call the great Kami Dragon from the sea and ask for any one wish. The time is near...and the missing pieces of the scroll will be sought throughout the land of Iwagoto. The holder of the first piece is a humble, unknown peasant girl with a dangerous secret.

Yumeko, half-human and half-kitsune, has an important role to play in keeping the forces of evil at bay, but she is half-kitsune and is inclined to pranks.  Raised in a monastery, Yumeko is truly naive about the wider world, but she is good-hearted and aware of what she owes to the monks.  When the temple is destroyed by demons, Yumkeo finds herself charged with a great responsibilty: she must deliver the fragment of the scroll entrusted to her to the Steel Feather Shrine.  Her experiences have been limited to the sanctuary of the monastery, but now she must undertake a journey into a world she knows little about.

The second pov comes from Kage Tatsumi of the Shadow Clan, whose life has been circumscribed by his clan leaders.  His current mission it to dispatch anyone who stands in his way of obtaining the fragment of the scroll that Yumeko carries.  Unaware that she is carrying the fragment, Tatsumi believes Yumeko can help him locate it and aids her in her journey. 

Villains, demons, samurai, ronin, shape-shifters, kami and more.  A little slow at the start, the pacing increases with the destruction of the temple that sets Yumeko in her prophesied role.

Read in May; blog review scheduled for Sept. 13.  

NetGalley/Harlequin Teen

YA/Fantasy/Folkore/Adventure.  Oct. 2, 2018.  Print length:  400 pages.

Circe by Madeline Miller

Circe by Madeline Miller.  (I wrote about this on my other blog in April.  I'm just copying and pasting instead of writing another review)  

It was wonderful!  Beautiful prose and a fascinating look at myths and gods from the point of view of Circe, daughter of Helios, who drove his chariot of the sun across the sky each day.  Circe (unloved child, nymph, sorceress, witch) exiled to her island tells her version of the gods and heroes and monsters she knew.  

Circe has a depth that the other, more powerful gods lack.  She has the ability of introspection; she makes mistakes and regrets them.  She resents the power of both the Titans and the Olympians and stands against them as best she can.

Her first rebellion was a kindness to Prometheus when--as a timid child--she brought him nectar in secret.  Prometheus, the god who aided mortals, is aided by the young Circe; a theme develops. 

A few excerpts...

At one point, Circe speaks of her beautiful loom, a gift from Daedalus, innovator and craftsman:  "I have it still.  It sits near my hearth and has even found its way into the songs.  Perhaps that is no surprise, Poets like such symmetries."

  Witch Circe skilled at spinning spells and threads alike, at weaving charms and cloths:  Who am I to spoil an easy hexameter?"  

She recalls a song she has heard of her meeting with Odysseus:  "I was not surprised by the portrait of myself:  the proud witch undone before the hero's sword, kneeling and begging for mercy.  Humbling women seems to be a chief pastime of poets.  As if there can be no story unless we crawl and weep."

Later, in a conversation with Penelope, Penelope tells Circe:  "I am from Sparta.  We know about old soldiers there.  The trembling hands, the startling from sleep.  The man who spills his wine every time the trumpets blow."  I like that passage because I never thought of the Greek warriors suffering from PTSD, but of course they did.  
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Madeline Miller's Circe is one of my favorite retellings of ancient myths.  I love the way different authors interpret the stories: telling the tales from one POV or another, adhering  to the original or expanding and enhancing incidents, and sometimes, changing outcomes entirely.

There are also some other wonderful retellings available:  The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood and Weight by Jeanette Winterson are also great examples of modern mythic retellings; these are much shorter, condensed, but powerful.    Antigo Nick is a campy, amusing modern translation of Antigone by Anne Carson.

Do you have a favorite myth or modern retelling?

Read in April.  Blog post scheduled for June 26.

NetGalley/Little, Brown

Historical Fiction/Myth.  July 10, 2018.  Print length:  400 pages.

Den of Wolves by Juliet Marillier

Den of Wolves by Juliet Marillier may or may not be the last in this series.  Originally planned as a trilogy, the characters of Blackthorn & Grim have reached a satisfying conclusion, and yet many readers are not ready for the series to end.

I liked Den of Wolves much more Tower of Thorns. The characters of Blackthorn and Grim have more depth and variety in this latest adventure, and again, Marillier melds plot, folklore, and myth in an intriguing way.  

Grim separated from Blackthorn more than he would like when he undertakes the job of helping the crippled Bardan build the heartwood house for Tolas, the master of Wolf Glen and Cara's father.  Grim takes pity on Bardan and is unhappy with the way he is treated by everyone at Wolf Glen.  Grim, big of body and huge of heart, cannot leave Bardan unprotected. 

Blackthorn is asked to befriend Cara, the child-woman who tells stories to trees while birds perch on her shoulders; who loves her father, but is more comfortable with Gorman, the forester who taught her to carve; who is sent away from her beloved Wolf Glen without understanding why; and who eventually reveals great strength under apparent fragility.

Mathuin, the Laois chieftan, remains a specter throughout the first of the novel, and while Blackthorn continues to fear that he has spies who will discover her whereabouts--the secrets of Wolf Glen dominate most of the story.

Near the end, however, the connection to Mathuin is renewed.  

If Marillier chooses to let Blackthorn and Grim go for a while, Cuan and Segan and the rest of the Swan Island Warriors would make a fitting diversion.  I would happily see these characters develop and have no doubt that the author would find fitting plots for them.

Read in Aug.; blog review scheduled for Oct. 17

NetGalley/Berkley Publishing Group

Fantasy/Myth.  Nov. 1, 2016.  Print length:  448 pages.

Blog Absence, N.K. Jemisin, and Medieval Mystery

I've taken a blogging break for the last several weeks.  It wasn't intentional, but somehow events kept interfering, and I found myself thinking less about blogging.  I always have several months of reviews scheduled, so I knew that I'd have several posts ready to break through despite my absence.

I've done some gardening when it wasn't raining.  We have had way too much rain this year. After several years of drought, having so much rain for the last few months has been a surprise--initially appreciated.  Then the combination of our own rain and the rain in Oklahoma and Texas had the Red River rising to flood stage...then past flood stage, flooding all that was in reach of the river's expanding banks.  Early June spelled disaster for many.

The water is mostly gone now, but the clean up continues.  

We are fortunate not to live in the flooded areas, but it was both amazing and horrifying to see the normally well-contained Red spill over its bank and destroy so many homes.     

Because I couldn't work in the garden, my reading became unusually obsessive.  Now in July, it is so hot and the humidity so high, that at 7:30 AM the sweat burns my eyes and by 10:00, I'm bedraggled, debilitated, almost prostrate with exhaustion--ready for a shower, air conditioning, and a book.  And still facing so many gardening tasks that didn't get done in the spring.  If the humidity is 60% or less, we rejoice.  Right now, my Weather Bug app says 94% humidity at 8:00 AM.  

At any rate, I spent most of June reading like some kind of crack addict.  Right now I have 12 reviews scheduled (most of which were June reading) for between now and October (keeping in mind their publication dates)...and probably that many left to write.  

So here are some quick reviews of books I purchased and read last month.  Since they are not ARCs or NetGalley ebooks, no need to schedule them.

The Inheritance Trilogy by N.K. Jemisin.  The trilogy consists of 3 novels:  The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, The Broken Kingdoms, and The Kingdom of the Gods. 

 Whoa!  The gods in these novels are the powerful, petty, flawed, unreasonable, impetuous, interfering, often malicious kind.  They resemble the Greek gods with all of their flaws and destructive behavior--intriguing, but frightening.  Each novel in the trilogy is connected, but emphasizes different characters; the role of Sieh the Trickster, however, is important in all of them.  

The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms and The Broken Kingdoms were awesome, but The Kingdom of the Gods was less appealing and too long with occasional pacing problems.  There is also a novella (The Awakened Kingdom) included in this omnibus that is less connected, but interesting.

Overall, The Inheritance Trilogy is more a modern take on myth than epic fantasy, but it is a strange, imaginative, fascinating, and original world.  Jemisin has created a character-driven trio of novels set in a curious world with eccentric gods and mortals.  More please.

Read in June.  Purchased.

Myth/Fantasy.  2014.  Print length: 1,472 pages.  (lotta' pages, but 3 novels & a novella--all in one)
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Season of the Fox by Denise Domning

I loved the first book in A Servant of the Crown series (Season of the Raven) and was eager to continue. 

Book Description:  A wealthy merchant has been murdered in his own home, and the suspect has fled to sanctuary in a local church. Enter Sir Faucon de Ramis, the king’s new Servant of the Crown in the shire, to solve the murder, assisted by his prickly secretary, Brother Edmund. 

As Faucon begins his hunt, the shire’s new Crowner finds himself in the upside-down world of a woman’s trade. Not only does the merchant’s wife own the business—unheard of!—the suspect is the daughter’s betrothed, or so the town believes. But what about the bloody shoe prints and missing tally sticks, and what does the sheriff have to gain?

 As much as I loved the first in this series, I was a little disappointed with this one.  What was missing?  

The first book had much more about the characters and the medieval world they inhabit (with such interesting historical details that I found myself Googling for more information about "hue and cry"-- its historical significance and all that was involved in the process, Keeper or the Pleas, Coronarius/Crowner/Coroner, and various other medieval laws and practices).  Season of the Raven was character driven with excellent world-building, while Season of the Fox is more about the plot with less character development, although there are interesting elements about sanctuary and women who managed their own business.

 I enjoyed it, but while I gave Raven 5 stars on Goodreads, Fox would only merit 3 stars.  It was shorter, less detailed, and lacked much of what made the first in the series so engrossing.  A good mystery, but without the same whole-world atmosphere Domning created in Season of the Raven.

 

Hopefully, the next in this series will return to developing Faucon, Edmund, and Brother Colin.  I'm also eager to find about about the thread that is curiously (and briefly) winding through the first two books.

Read in June.  Purchased.

Medieval Mystery.  2015.  Print length:  193 pages.

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Tomorrow:  my John Connolly digression.  

Darling Jim by Christian Moerk

Darling Jim is one of my favorite books so far this year!  It is a like a helix, or a double helix, or a triple helix all threaded together in this fantastic spiraling fashion, and I LOVED it.  Moerk captures the voices of the characters with an amazing ability to take them fully formed from the page into your head. The delicate balance of beauty and suspense, humor and apprehension, especially through the voices of Fiona and Rosie, kept me enthralled.

From the first few pages that described the experiences of a very minor character--Desmond, the mailman in the community of Malahide, a little north of Dublin--I was Hooked.  Yes, Hooked, with a capital H.  Dangling like a fish on the line, drawn toward the next paragraph, the next page.

"Everybody liked Desmond, even if he might have been a little too nosy for his own good.  He was also a slave to ritual, always noticing if anybody's grass needed tending or whether the paint on a flagpole had   begun to chip.  Taken together with his guilt of having seen details without understanding their true meaning, these otherwise sociable qualities cost him his sanity."

Some books manage to make the opening chapter so intriguing that I find myself fervently hoping that the rest of the novel holds up, and this one does, indeed, hold up.

When Desmond discovers the body of one of the women on his route, the garda quickly descend on the house and find two more bodies, young women who have evidently been held captive for some time.  What has been going on in this house?  Then, the possibility of a third captive, who has evidently escaped....

Stories begin to circulate, but no one really knows what has occurred or why.  When the diary of one of the young women appears and is read by an unassuming postal clerk, the story begins to unravel in the voice of Fiona Walsh.  Niall, the young clerk, learns about a handsome young man on a red motorcycle,a seanchai, a bard or story teller, who initiated the events that ended in the deaths of the three women.  Darling Jim, a catalyst for murder, who wove myth, fairy tale, and reality into the tales he told at local pubs, beguiling men and women alike.

Niall, captivated by Fiona's voice and story, begins his personal quest to discover the events that  led  to the murders.  Both Niall and the reader are mesmerized by first, Fiona's diary, and later, Rosie's recording of the events.  Compelled by the voices of the young women, Niall travels to Castletownbere in search of answers, and perhaps,  to ascertain what happened to the third sister, Aoife.

The only nitpicking  I'll admit to with this story is in the concluding chapters that deal with a connection that was foreshadowed earlier.  Without giving anything away, this portion seemed like an unnecessary addition to what was otherwise, for me, a perfect novel.

I loved the intertwining of story-telling, myth, and fairy tale.  I loved the Walsh sisters.  A joy to read.

To sum up, I'll quote Annie and link to her review:

I adore this novel.  Darling Jim is poignantly funny, enchanting and horrific.  Intrigued?  I hope so!  You’ll be rooting for the Walsh sisters and their knight in shining armor, Niall.

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 And thanks again, Annie, for sending me your copy.  Reading Darling Jim was such fun! 

Once Upon a Time challenge (second book)

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Fiction.  Mystery/Fairy Tale/Contemporary Literature.  2009.  285 pages.

The Stone Gods

Winterson, Jeannette. The Stone Gods.

Six word synopsis: Future. Past. Same thing. Same thing.

Jeanette Winterson is fascinated by repetition and myths. Mankind repeats: makes mistakes, attempts to recover, makes the same mistakes. Over and over.

This a dystopian future myth that incorporates the past. It is a warning, a reminder, a lament. A tiny novel that explores man's arrogance, his tendency toward self-destruction; it raises questions about robo-sapiens and examines the power of love.

Divided into three separate satiric versions of Billie Crusoe's life (& Winterson's?), there is even a reference to the fact that the manuscript was left at an underground station, found, and returned.

This was an ARC, an uncorrected manuscript, that I only recently got around to reading. It reminded me of Winterson's Weight: The Myth of Atlas and Heracles which I reviewed here. In both, Winterson matches style to content and provides a poetic example of the power of myth in our lives.

In The Stone Gods, she concludes with: "Everything is imprinted for ever with what it once was. (At least in the uncorrected manuscript I received.)

In Weight, Winterson says, "What can I tell you about the choices we make?" and "I want to tell the story again."

And, I suppose, she has. The choices, the mistakes, the telling, and re-telling.

Fiction. Science fiction/Myth. 2008. 207 pages.

A Combined Challenge

Here are some of the books I hope to read for Carl's Once Upon a Time II Challenge. I've decided on Quest the First because it is the most flexible.

Quest the First

Read at least 5 books that fit somewhere within the Once Upon a Time II criteria. They might all be fantasy, or folklore, or fairy tales, or mythology…or your five books might be a combination from the four genres.

I read the first in each of the following series last year for this challenge ( loved them both!) and look forward to reading the second in each series:

The Orphan's Tale: In the Cities of Coin and Spice - Catherynne Valente
Shadow Gate: Book Two of the Crossroads - Kate Elliott

Some others that I've jotted down recently when visiting other blogs in anticipation of this challenge. ~~I found another great challenge, Twisted Fairy Tales, over at Sqeaky Books (discovered by way of Connect the Plots). ~~Here are some great YA titles that will work for both challenges:

Zel - Donna Jo Napoli
A Curse Dark as Gold - Elizabeth C. Bunce
Book of a Thousand Days - Shannon Hale
East - Edith Pattou
Ever - Gail Carson Levine

I have another list of possible titles somewhere, but can't locate it right now.

Have 3 more reviews to write and some new books have arrived from FSB (thanks to Anna) and from William Morrow/Harper Collins (thanks to Christine). More about the new books later; some of them look very good.

It is that time again! Time for Carl's Once Upon a Time Challenge, my very favorite challenge of the year; the perfect way to welcome spring.

There are at least 8 books that I've been adding to my TBR list for this challenge. I will look for it later. Some of the books on my list are a result of authors I read for this one last year and that I want to re-visit, some are titles picked up from reading other blogs.

Have to get on the road, but when I get back, the list must be located, the version of the challenge decided upon, and a library visit scheduled.

One of the books is already in my stacks: Valente's In the Cities of Coin and Spice which I pre-ordered last year after reading The Orphan's Tale: In the Night Garden which I reviewed here. It took a great deal of will power to hold Coin and Spice for this challenge.

a digressive post

After thinking about the Booking Through Thursday questions in the last post, I found this article.

Dr. Stephen Prothero has been "conducting informal tests of the religious knowledge of undergraduates and what he finds is disturbing. Students have told him that it was Moses that was blinded on the road to Damascus and that Paul led the Israelites on their exodus out of Egypt. He notes that more scientific polls have found that only one out of three US citizens is able to name all four Gospels and that one out of ten think that Joan of Arc was Noah’s wife. Small wonder, he writes, that noted pollster George Gallup has concluded that the United States is 'a nation of Biblical illiterates'." (emphasis mine)

"On the principal that it is better to light a small candle than to curse the darkness Prothero’s book offers a set of proposed remedies based on his hope that 'the Fall into religious ignorance is reversible.' Among those remedies the most controversial is his call for the teaching of the Bible in American public school classrooms, not simply as literature but also a study of the Bible’s impact on history. As the professor notes, teaching about religion as opposed to preaching about it, is not prohibited by the First Amendment’s ban on an 'establishment of religion.'"

At the risk of offending some, I have to say that I agree. The Bible's impact on literature and history is worth examination.

And what of Joseph Campell in the examination of world religions? In The Power of Myth, Campbell and Bill Moyer's exchange views about the importance of myth in civilization and in individual lives.

Belden C. Lane's The Power of Myth: Lessons from Joseph Campbell begins: "Theology and myth are stepsisters of truth. The one probes with questions, the other spins out tales on gossamer threads. But both serve a common mystery."

Also from Belden: "Simply put, theology gets caught up too often in explaining the meaning of life instead of seeking an experience of being alive."

Oops, I'm wandering again... One subject leading to another. I think what I'm saying is that theology and myth have importance in our lives -- and learning more about religious works can be useful in ways we aren't even aware of. Western literature draws heavily on the the Bible and without understanding the allusions and symbols, much of the impact of the literature is lost. A general knowledge of myth and world religions adds to our appreciation of what we read.

Philip Pullman and Neil Gaiman

Since the Once Upon a Time challenge is now in play, some of you may be interested in this interview with Philip Pulman, or this (conversation between Pullman and and his former teacher), or this. As usual, following one link over at Endicott Redux is impossible...

Today, Midori Snyder at Endicott Redux has links to Neil Gaiman's trailer for Stardust if you haven't been following Neil Gaiman's blog. I watched it again...just wonderful. (Claire Danes, Robert de Niro, Michelle Pfeiffer)

Once Upon a Time...

Carl has posted his Challenge! I'm not sure which Quest (or Quests) I will pursue. The books I have in preparation are listed here, and I can't wait to dive in! Have one book to finish before starting (The Rossetti Letter) and will continue with Flannery O'Connor's The Habit of Being.

I'm combining the Once Upon a Time Challenge with Callapidder's
Spring Reading Thing.

The Uses of Enchantment

Amanda Craig (novelist, journalist, blogger) has a site (which I found in the oddest of ways, but that is worthy of a post in itself) where she has posts of her lectures, articles written for various publications, book reviews, and more. I loved her reviews of Beyond Black and Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell and was comforted that by abandoning these two celebrated works I didn't show a complete and total lack of taste.

Craig's lecture/post about The Uses of Enchantment is fascinating. "If you understand that Jane Eyre is a conscious variation on the fairy-tale of Bluebeard, Mansfield Park a version of Cinderella, and Pride & Prejudice a reworking of Beauty & the Beast, your understanding and appreciation of their author’s genius is deepened, not lessened." Novelists such as Margaret Atwood, Angela Carter, Helen Fielding, A. S. Byatt, Joan Aiken and others use "archetypes and structures of the fairy-tale to address not only our deepest fears and desires, but also to explore the act of story-telling itself."

"Fairy-tales don’t pretend to describe the world as it is. What they do is to free the dreaming part of your mind that helps you to find your own solution," says Craig. There is so much to think about in this post that I can't begin to cover it well, but take a few minutes and check it out.

Crones don't whine

No, I don't have enough on my plate. Obviously not, as my reach is exceeding my grasp; so here is a list of other books I really need:

Bolen, Jean Shinoda (2003) Crones Don't Whine: Concentrated Wisdom for Juicy Women. York Beach, Maine: Red Wheel/Weiser

Bolen, Jean Shinoda (1998) Close to the Bone. New York: Scribner

Bolen, Jean Shinoda (1995) Crossing to Avalon: A Woman's Midlife Pilgrimage. New York: Harper San Francisco

Brewi, Janice and Brennan, Anne (1988) Mid-Life Spirituality and Jungian Archetypes. York Beach, Maine: Nicolas-Hays

Chinen, Allan B. (1989) Once upon a Midlife: Classic Stories and Mythic Tales to Illuminate the Middle Years. Wilmette, IL: Chiron

Chinen, Allan B. (1989) In the Ever After: Fairy Tales and the Second Half of Life. Wilmette, IL: Chiron

Corlett, Eleanor Nancy B. Millner (1993) Navigating Midlife: Using Typology As a Guide. . Palo Alto, CA: Davies-Black Publishing

Dass, Ram (2000) Still Here: Embracing Aging, Changing, and Dying. New York:Riverhead

DeSalvo, Louise (1999) Writing as a Way of Healing: How Telling Our Stories Transforms Our Lives. New York: Harper San Francisco

Hillman, James (1999) The Force of Character: And the Lasting Life. New York: Random House

Hillman, James (1979) Puer Papers Putnam, CT: Spring Publications

Hollis, James (2000) Creating a Life: Finding Your Individual Path . Toronto: Inner City Books

Hollis, James (1993) The Middle Passage: From Misery to Meaning in Midlife. Toronto: Inner City Books

Hollis, James (1996) Swamplands of the Soul: New Life in Dismal Places. Toronto: Inner City Books

Luke, Helen M. (1987) Old Age: Journey Into Simplicity. New York: Parabola

Millner, Nancy Bost (1998) Creative Aging: Discovering the Unexpected Joys of Later Life Through Personality Type. Palo Alto, California: Davies-Black

Metzger, Deena (1992) Writing for Your Life: A Guide and Companion to the Inner Worlds. New York: Harper San Francisco

Moore, Thomas (2004) Dark Nights of the Soul: A Guide to Finding Your Way Through Life's Ordeals. New York: Harper Collins

Pretat, Jane R. (1994) Coming To Age: The Croning Years and Late-Life Transformation. Toronto: Inner City Books

Stein, Murray (1983) In Midlife: A Jungian Perspective, Putnam, CT: Spring Publications

Woodman, Marion (2002) The Crown of Age: The Rewards of Conscious Aging. (audio cassette). Louisville, CO: Sounds True

Woodman, Marion (2001) Bone. New York: Penguin Books

Weight: The Myth of Atlas and Heracles

Winterson, Jeannette. Weight: The Myth of Atlas and Heracles. The book begins in a very heavy manner with the weight of the world--the physical world of sedimentary rock and fossilised remains, with layer after layer of strata that is twisted and folded to form this earth.

The slow and scientific build-up eventually leads to Poseidon and Earth, the parents of Atlas, and their courtship is told in a lovely metaphoric manner. (Words that echo throughout this re-telling: boundaries, nothing, infinite space, and "I want to tell the story again.")

Atlas joined the Titons in their war against the gods and lost. His punishment: the weight of the world.

Now that the background is established, enter Heracles, a rowdy, raucous, rapacious character. Heracles moves the somber and the serious to farce.

His first words: "Have a drink Atlas, you old globe. We've all got our burdens to bear. Your punishment is to hold up the universe. My punishment is to work for a wanker."

A trickster and a clown, Heracles (and his relationship with his step-mother Hera) is one of the highlights of Winterson's version of the myth. The contrast between Heracles and Atlas entertains, but makes you think.

I really don't know how to explain this re-telling because it circles back on itself. Again and again.

Winterson says, "What can I tell you about the choices we make?" and "I want to tell the story again." And she does. She does.

(I love the end)

Fiction. Myth. 151 pages. 2005.

Great Mail

Today's mail brought wonderful gifts! The Habit of Being (a hefty tome 596 pages), one of the Amazon orders I've been waiting on) and Shadow Cities from Lotus Reads! Thanks, Lotus!

Now, I'm only waiting on two books that I ordered earlier this month. I'm resisting the library and further orders.

I've finished two more books: Candide and Weight: The Myth of Atlas and Heracles. Both are tiny little books. Both are weighty books with a good deal more influence than their small sizes would indicate.

I'd almost finished Candide and took it with me when I went to my father's to spend the night. He's on a new medication, and I'll stay again tonight to make sure there are no difficulties. The doctor said to give him the meds at 9:00 and stay with him for 3 nights, but I have someone else to stay tomorrow night.

Anyway, I finished Candide and almost finished Weight last night. Today, I rushed through the rest of Weight and will be reviewing both of them soon. Both are excellent

The Orphan's Tales: In the Night Garden

Valente, Catherynne. The Orphan's Tales: In the Night Garden. If you believe in fairy tales, you must read this book. I've written about this wonderful book here and here. Valente's writing pulls you in through the cycle of tales that circle around and back again, introducing new characters and new tales that all have interconnections; every apparent loose thread is deftly interwoven with a new story. Myths, folklore, and fairy tales are re-created with a Beastiary both familiar and new. Volume 2 is not due out until October, and I know I will have to re-read this shortly before it does appear.

Here is a link to the title song from the CD For the Girl in the Garden:Songs and Readings in Celebration of The Orphan's Tales: In the Night Garden by S. J. Tucker.

I admit to pre-ordering Valente's sequel. And I will searching out her other works as well.

Fiction. Myth/Fairy Tale. 483 pages. 2006.

myth, influence, allusion, analogue

Found the link to this article The Ecstasy of Influence: a Plagiarism at The Endicott Studio for Mythic Arts. I had the old site bookmarked, but now there is a wonderful blog full of all things fairy tale, fantastic, and mythic. Since I had not visited in nearly a year, I've had so much to catch up on because the blog was begun in June and is full of great information and links to wonderful articles and illustrations. (Thanks to Jude for reconnecting me to Endicott Studios.)

Back to the article. Again, a bit of synchronicity because I've just finished The Orphan's Tales: In the Night Garden which reworks so many old myths and fairy tales into such an intriguing new creation. Analogues and allusions have enhanced literature from its beginnings, and I've long loved seeing the influence, conscious or unconscious, of ideas that are borrowed and re-created in works of literature: "...that art of quotation that Thomas Mann, himself a master of it, called “higher cribbing.”


The Ecstasy of Influence is a long article that moves into the areas of copyright, intellectual property, "UseMonopoly," "The Beauty of Second Use," "Source Hypocrisy (Disnial)." Fascinating examples are given for each area discussed, and the article documents these in a wry twist at the end.

Myth and Magic

I'm almost through with The Orphan's Tale: In the Night Garden by Catherynne Valente. What a wondrous book! I've been diving into it at every opportunity for the last few days, but now, today, when I have lots of time to devote to it, I'm slowing down. Finding other things to do, in order to avoid finishing.

I pulled from the new book shelves at the library with no prior information...just that I liked the title and the cover; the back cover mentioned myth and fairy tale--PERFECT. The right book at the right time, it fits right in with the direction of my book orders.

But to have it turn out to be such a beautiful and intricate experience is more than I could have expected. Two lonely children, an outcast orphan and a prince...

I'm at a loss to explain the intricacy of this book, as the girls spins her tales for the prince, and then the characters within the tales take over and tell their own tales, and the characters in that tale must offer their own explanations by way of another tale.... A cycle of tales related and informative, all manner of creatures fanstastic and monstrous, magic and cruelty, faith and inspiration, old tales with a new perspective, tales with strange twists and turns like a labyrinth where every new path can provide a different outcome.

As eager as I am to find how all of the tales will turn out, I do not want to finish the book.