The ramblings of a bibliophile.
It took me a little longer than I would have liked to really click as to what this story was even about. Although, a lot of that is probably because of the fact that I was trying to watch someone play Far Cry whilst also reading a steampunk story… not a combination that really works surprisingly.
As a rule of thumb, I don’t really sleep. I’m not an insomniac, but neither am I the kind of person who tends to get enough sleep. Or find it easily. So, I figured that I may as well buy this book and see what it has to say on the subject. After all, I figured the worst thing that could go wrong is that it could be a total load of crock. It wasn’t. It was actually quite interesting.
This was my least favourite of the short stories in Mad Hatters and March Hares. Yet it followed the jumpiness of the original story far better than any other tale in this collection. Each section of this tale jumps from one perspective to another. With the same man as the central character. I think. I’m actually not 100% sure. And there were wasps. Lots of wasps.
This kind of wigged me out. But in a really good way. To start with, this story was about a man practicing to be a tour guide. Talking about Jack the Ripper, highlighting his crimes and the mystery surrounding the Butcher of Baker Street. Then it becomes far more twisted…
This was the least disturbing short story I’ve read in the Snow White, Blood Red collection in a while. Don’t get me wrong, it was still kind of sexualised and disturbing. But a lot less so than the past few stories that I’ve read. They were just downright, destroy my love of fairy tales disturbing. This was just a slightly uncomfortable feeling of disturbing.
This story was incredibly weird. I’m still not 100% sure what was going on and how I felt about it. It was just plain weird. At the beginning, when the protagonist started talking about the “love” in this story, I thought it was based very much on a time in the 1800s when she’s fallen in love with a man at one glance. It’s not about a man though… and the love isn’t really sexual, but it’s still weird.
Romances that show a tragic past and soul mates are some of my favourites. They’re a reminder that some couples don’t get that love at first sight, happily ever after tale. And some do (which is why I also like the other type of tale). From the very beginning, this falling out was a beautiful travesty of mistakes, miscommunications and misunderstandings. With a happily ever after in it for all, of course.
I’m getting more and more into poetry as time passes. There is just something about the lyricism of the words and the symbolism they often impart. It just works beautifully. And the use of a female coyote in this story was just fantastic. I love that Dunn finds a way to impart the femininity of tricksters and can share this in so few pages.
I was a little eh about this story. It wasn’t horrible and stomach turning like some of the short stories that have come before. But it also wasn’t the kind of tale that I’ll remember for a long time. Even writing this review is a little difficult because it is already starting to feel a little faded.
Heathcliff is a douche. Total and utter, pain in the bum, can’t even get into this story kind of douche. There’s a chance that Catherine might also be a bit of a douche. But I really couldn’t move past my blinding hatred for Heathcliff to even concentrate on the object of his obsession.
