Category: Fantasy

The Mermaid — Christina Henry

By 5t4n5

The Mermaid -- Christina HenryAnother great story from Christina.

I certainly feel rewarded for reading The Little Mermaid and The Fabulous Showman before diving straight into this, as they do give one the feeling and attitude of the age and thereby give this story a sense of genuine realism.   So i would certainly recommend reading both before hand if you’re looking for a more immersive experience from this story.

Reading a work of fiction that contains real historical characters, in their real historical places, in their real historical time, while only twisting the factual narrative where needed to make the fictional narrative fit, was, at times, quite emotionally disturbing.   One can truly feel for Amelia as though she is a genuine historical person, because all the people around her were genuine historical people.

For example, Barnum really did put a huge tank into his museum, but he put whales in it.   And the way in which he treats the mermaid in this story is not too dissimilar to how he treated the whales; one can almost read this story as the story of those whales with Amelia’s voice speaking for them.   Sadly, the whales never had a voice, nor did they have someone like Levi to champion their corner; each successive pair of whales suffered awfully and died, entertaining the ignorance of the masses while nicely filling Barnum’s bank account.   It made me feel genuinely uncomfortable and moved in ways that an ordinary work of fiction simply cannot.   So, yes, do read the above mentioned two books before this, it really is quite the experience and one i certainly recommend.

As with all of Christina’s books, the writing is wonderful, flowing and, for me, perfectly edited.   A wonderful read.   It really does capture the feeling and attitude of the age.

Christina’s latest book, The Girl in Red, is out now.   All aboard for a Little Red Riding Hood reading binge.

Christina’s Page

#fantasy #mermaids #christinahenry

Jade — Joseph R. Lallo

By 5t4n5

Jade -- Joseph R. LalloThe following review was written when this was the last book in the main story line of The Book of Deacon series, since then Halfax has been added.

I really don’t know what to make of this book.

Mostly it’s written in what feels like a children’s story style, but at the same time it is part of the main story line being set many years after the last events we read about in The Crescents.

In this book we are told that the Chosen have only left 3 surviving family lines, that of Trigorah, Celeste and Myn.   But the thing is, if you remember, Myn took Trigorah’s place as a Chosen, thus we should have had at least another 3 or 4 family lines, but there’s no mentioned as to what became of them: that of Ether, that of Ivy, that of Lain and possibly that of the original knight that Miranda found.

So we are left with the question, what happened to Ivy and Lain’s lines over in The Crescents?   Totally wiped out apparently.   Ether, totally wiped out???   The original knight’s family, totally wiped out.   But we are given no explanation of how, only that Epidime may have had something to do with it.

And that Halfax is the last surviving dragon — which he must be because he’s never had offspring of his own, which one would think he and the other dragons of Myn’s line would have if, as he claims, the dragons cared so much about protecting the Chosen family lines.   So what happened to all the dragons, why’s there only one left?

This book, which i thought would have been tying up the loose ends and living happily ever after, has taken us back to the very beginning of not having all the Chosen ready and the D’Karon beginning to gain a power base, but with no explanation of how we got back here.

So i’m a bit confused, to say the least.

But, i’ll be the eternal optimist and surmise that Joseph has a ton more books for this series planned to deal with everything that’s suddenly gone missing, answer all the questions now being asked, and then tie up the story nicely, destroy the D’Karon completely, and have everyone live happily ever after — just coz that’d be nice.

We shall see.

This book can also be found in The Book of Deacon Anthology.

Joseph’s Page

#fantasy #josephrlallo