Saturday, January 06, 2007
Book Review: Solstice Wood by Patricia A McKillip
Thoughts:
I was very excited when I found this book, Patricia A. Mckillip is one of my all time favourite authors and I love her dreamy imagary filled style. All her previous books have been high fantasy/fairy talish so it was very cool to read a modern fantasy in her style.
The book centers around Lynn Hall, an old country manor in a place where many doors open to Faerie. A group of ladies have a sewing circle where they really stitch closed the doorways to protect our world from Them.
The entire book is written in first person, with the person changing from chapter to chapter. It takes a little bit to get used to but she pulls it off very well and...it works.
Here's an bit so you can see how pretty her writting is (about the Faerie Queen).
"Sometimes she only sends her voice, coiling and purring like a cat into my mind. Or a bolt of lightening, sudden, swift, and white-hot. I've seen enough love in human fashion to know she doesn't. Love. Me, or any of us. But it doesn't stop me. Or any of us. She is our moon. Our tidal pull. She is the rich deep beneath the sea, the buried treasure, the expression in the owls eye, the perfume in the wild rose. She is what the water says when it moves. She is what humans remember when they step into the wood: a glimpse of her, memory receding faster and faster, into sunlight and scent and shadow, of what once they saw, once they knew."
Hanna Stars (out of a possible 5): *****