Two recent books
Wondrous strange : a novel Livingston, Lesley. Urban fantasy. Okay, I haven’t quite decided how good this is. The mixture of theatre and faerie is always fun. I had a problem with the gratuitous dragging in of mythological or legendary names (like Fenris Ulf) that were not the actual legendary person, and I prefer the usage of Faerie for the place, not the people. At several points I thought that it was about to break through and become sublime, but it never did, quite. The minor character of Tyff, however, worked delightfully well.
Flora Segunda, by Ysabeau Wilce-The house is a mixture of Hogwarts and the Beast’s house in McKinley’s Beauty; the butler reminds me of Oreg in Dragon Bones; the family reminds me a little of some of Diana Wynne Jones’s families, but mostly just of itself. Well crafted, inventive world (wildly alternate world west coast? with magic?). Flora, with her friend Udo, tries to rescue the house’s butler, then the Dainty Pirate, then herself-but it’s much more complicated than that. Very good. I look forward to the sequel (especially since I didn’t understand the significance of the last couple of paragraphs).
Flora Segunda, by Ysabeau Wilce-The house is a mixture of Hogwarts and the Beast’s house in McKinley’s Beauty; the butler reminds me of Oreg in Dragon Bones; the family reminds me a little of some of Diana Wynne Jones’s families, but mostly just of itself. Well crafted, inventive world (wildly alternate world west coast? with magic?). Flora, with her friend Udo, tries to rescue the house’s butler, then the Dainty Pirate, then herself-but it’s much more complicated than that. Very good. I look forward to the sequel (especially since I didn’t understand the significance of the last couple of paragraphs).