Before I get to reviewing Naomi Novik’s Spinning Silver, I thought I’d share an anecdote. When I was in middle school, our chorus teacher asked me to try out for the state choir. Part of this, I’m sure, was just because my voice had changed early and I could produce a strong baritone/bass which for […]
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It’s always difficult to review a friend’s book. Do you read it with the same eye as you do other novels? Are you more critical? More forgiving? I’m struggling a little with what I want to say about McLaughlin’s novella. McLaughlin calls this book “Beauty and the Beast, but with dragons.” I think it’s a […]
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The Bear and the Nightingale is a soothing, familiar story. Katerine Arden tells her narrative with beautiful delicate phrases plucked from gossamer and fey. It leans, like the works of Charles DeLint, on folk tales and sets them into reality although Arden’s reality is a foregone Russia in the place of DeLint’s modern Ottawa. It […]
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