The ramblings of a bibliophile.
This is such a great fairy tale! It’s filled with beautiful pictures, different outlooks (like an ogre dancing) and a great couple at the very centre. The fact that this great couple happens to be a lesbian one just makes this story all the sweeter and greater. It becomes this beautiful, encompassing storyline that makes you swoon again and again and again.
Like a lot of the short stories in Black Feathers, this tale had a very surreal and uncomfortable quality. It was haunting and kind of beautiful. But there was almost a sense of floating while I was reading this (alright, I can’t think of a better way to describe the experience of reading this short story other than floating…)
So I maybe shouldn’t have read this novella right before going to bed. Alone. Normally urban fantasy tales don’t really bother me right before bed. Because, well, they’re so obviously make believe. But, this one involves a dead woman who was sexually attacked right before being killed off. That hit a little too close to home… and made it a little difficult to get to sleep (even with my giant dog sleeping across my feet).
This is my first ever dieselpunk story. And it was a really good, fun introduction to the subgenre. This was kind of funny, very fast-paced and had a slightly pragmatic love story throughout. Alright, it’s not the kind of romance that will make you clutch your chest and sigh, but it is one that makes you have a little giggle and grin at the end.
Read more Rolling Steel: A Pre-Apocalyptic Love Story by Jay Lake & Shannon Page
I’ve only recently gotten involved in steampunk. It’s a genre that I only started reading late last year and one that I kind of love. Although, as I discovered with this collection of short stories, it is also a genre that I have to concentrate a little more to read (unlike genre such as romance).
Read more The Mammoth Book of Steampunk edited by Sean Wallace
I kind of forgot why I loved this book so much. I’ve been looking at it on my shelf for months, but couldn’t really figure out why I had such a need to stick my nose between it’s pages and lose myself. But this week I did. And it was so worth it. I’m incredibly glad that I finally succumbed to the voice in my head saying “It was awesome!”
This is a bit of a jumpy short story. Which is pretty typical for a tale from Mad Hatters and March Hares if I’m being truly honest with myself. But, it felt kind of jumpier and more confusing than some of the other stories that I had read. Not to say that it was bad… but it did take me a little more to understand what I was reading than usual. I actually read through this twice… just because there was not one, but two different storylines to try and get my damn head around.
Read more The Flame After the Candle by Catherynne M. Valente
As soon as I discovered that there was a Sherlock Holmes tale about Jack the Ripper, I was kind of excited. After all, Sherlock Holmes is an amazing storyline and character. And he always catches the bad guy. So I knew there would be a new version as to just who Jack the Ripper was. The answer to that was not what I expected in the slightest. But it was oh so good.
The introduction to this short story tells you that you are going to recognise the fairy tale upon which it is based at the end of the tale. And, to be honest, I wasn’t really sure that I was going to recognise it. there just seemed to be nothing recognisable in it. Until the last two pages… then I finally understood exactly which fairy tale this was. And I loved it.
This was a great play on the haunting of Heathcliff. It took the ideas and themes that highlight how badly Heathcliff treated Catherine, but twisted them into something a little more contemporary. Rather, it isn’t Catherine’s counterpart which is providing the haunting, but she does encourage it. And finds a way to twist it about so that he isn’t able to get away with his past and present actions.
