Jak and the Wormhole

Heroes can be found in the most unlikely of places. Perhaps we all have it within us to do great things, but may simply lack the circumstances or the reason to be heroic.

The Three Little Sontarans

Brilliant. Exactly what I expected from a book called 'Time Lord Fairy Tales'.

The Twins in the Woods

I have a stack of fairy tales, Grimm's, Anderson's, various other collections. Haven't read all of them, some are very familiar, others just plain weird. So I don't know the origins of this one. Not Hansel and Gretel, not The Two Sisters.

No matter, it's a great story. Somewhere nice.

Cinderella and the Magic Box

I have never liked Cinderella (Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine being the exception), she doesn't do anything, things just happen to her. Until this one. I was a bit apprehensive at the beginning but it got very good very quickly.

Frozen Beauty

This one is also really good, really clever (as I'm suspecting they all will be). However, I was completely distracted by the idea of space travel normally taking centuries and arriving at your destination and waking up and everything could have changed.

The Garden of Statues

This book is beautiful, the contents intriguing; and this story, which could have been really obvious, was not.

---

'Where is she?' Tarmin yelled at the statue. 'What have you done with her?'

Of course, the statue did not reply.

This evening

A teeny, tiny story-like thing.

This evening, this little, nowhere, stick-sown lane, with the sun still bright on the layers of new beech leaves, and on the airborne insects caught in its beams, where the only sound is of robins and blackbirds and home-bound hounds baying...

The Opposite of Loneliness, Why We Care about Whales

I was, I admit, skeptical about this. Was it really that good or was it just the horrible tragedy lending meaning?

It's really that good. Marina had exceptional talent, as a writer I feel both inspired and intimidated by her. 'Why We Care about Whales' will stick with me forever.

Trigger Warning

I tried to read it slowly and savour each tale but I couldn't stop. Then I had to do that thing when I finished where I just sit and stare into space for a while.

Now I'm left with the feeling that all of them are true in some way.

Trigger Warning, Witch Work

There is a world in there.

The witch was as old as the mulberry tree
She lived in the house of a hundred clocks
She sold storms and sorrows and calmed the sea
And she kept her life in a box.

Trigger Warning, Jerusalem

When descriptions are spot on.

His head was like a filing cabinet that had fallen downstairs, and all the information in it was jumbled and disordered.

Trigger Warning, My Last Landlady

A snippet:

I've heard we see the world not as it is
but as we are. A saint sees a world of saints, a killer
sees only murderers and victims.

Trigger Warning, Introduction

I did have a thought, a very good thought, and a quote, but I lost it.

This is fantastic, of course, in all ways. I'm having a hard time not reading it all at once - that would be like scoffing a delicious and carefully prepared meal. I'll probably just read it again, once I'm full.

A New Hero

Handing this in today.

Will stopped at the end of the road on the edge of a greenish plain. He turned to Penny and pointed across it.
       ‘You see that?’
       ‘No.’
       ‘That’s where we’re going.’

The Library of Babel

I can't pick a single quote from this, let alone one short enough for here. You're just going to have to read it for yourselves, if you haven't already. Or re-read it if you have. It's only 8½ pages.

Enjoy.

Fire in the Hole

Every now and then, a line from a story get stuck in my head. Here, it's the last one.

Art said, "You remember the girl he married, Ava?"
     Raylan's tone came alive as he said, "Ava, yeah, she lived down the street from us." He remembered her eyes.

Justified, episode 1.9

I wasn't in a shootout, I was just near one.

It doesn't have Timothy Olyphant, but Elmore Leonard's short story (well, just short of 14,000 words) on which this series has been based is currently available, free, right here. Watch enough and you may start reading it in their voices.

The Bloody Chamber (and other stories), page 140

One beast and only one howls in the woods by night.

Nearly finished now. The Werewolf freaked me out as much as the cat in Neil Gaiman's Feeders and Eaters, which was lots. I'm glad they're short stories, not sure I could stay through a book. Beautiful but most macabre.

The Bloody Chamber (and other stories), page 74.5

I'm exactly halfway through this collection; reading the last paragraphs of The Tiger's Bride. They'll linger. Puss-in-Boots waits.

It's definitely odd, but not as weird as I'd thought. Too much Neil Gaiman perhaps.

This may, of course, all change.
That's the beauty of reviewing this way.