Susan Hated Literature

Author: Herbie Brennan
ISBN:0747564671 DDC: 823.914
See also: LibraryThing ; Herbie Brennan’s blog ; Rosemary for remembrance ; BookLust
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Book one in the Faerie Wars series

Henry got up early on the day that changed his life.

When this arrived in the post I was slightly put off by the cover, the American version is much nicer. The only reason I ordered it in the first place was because it is an upcoming group read. But once I started to read it I was glad I had. The first page had a few clunky sentences but it also had some great writing and the more I read the more I enjoyed the book. The main protagonist is Henry Atherton, whose parents are going through a bad patch, he works for an old man, Mr. Fogarty, who believes in aliens and fairies, and pretty soon he discovers that faeries are in fact real as he has to rescue one from the mouth of a cat. This rescued individual turns out to be Pyrgus Malvae, a prince in the realm of the Purple Emperor who has been sent to the “alternate” reality that is our earth. Cross-overs like this aren’t my favourite type of fantasy, but in this case it works well, and Brennan blends the faerie world and the human world well, he even manages to bring in the demon world and aliens.

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Author: John Crowley
ISBN: 0413513505
DDC: 813.54
See also: LibraryThing ; Spike Magazine

On a certain day in June, 19-, a young man was making his way on foot northwood from the great City to a town or place called Edgewood.

This book, one of the classics of fantasy literature, did absolutely nothing for me. Okay, that is a slight exageration, because there were some touches that appealed to me. The whole fairy tale atmosphere. The house of different fronts. The randomness of so much of it. And even the language was appealing on occasion. But overall it was all a load of nothingness that I neither enjoyed nor hated. It simply was there. And the interesting lines, descriptions and ideas did nothing to help the sluggish nature of the book. There wasn’t any real story that appealed to me, and none of the characters seemed all that well drawn to me. They were all there to play a role.

Maybe that was the idea, they were after living the Tale. But it wasn’t enough to keep me interested through all those pages when nothing was going on. And even when things were happening, it read as though nothing was occuring.

“It’s as though,” Daily Alice said, “each day is like a step, and every step takes you further away from - well, from when things made more sense.

Well, reading this book was like an exercise in futility. Each paragraph was a step away from a story and into a desciption, but a description that didn’t really matter, entertain or interest me.

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