Month: March 2015

Review – The House on Parchment Street

Posted March 2, 2015 by in Reviews / 0 Comments

Cover of The House on Parchment Street by Patricia McKillipThe House on Parchment Street, Patricia McKillip

This book isn’t really quite what you’d expect if you know McKillip’s other work; it’s for a younger audience, and it feels like a different sort of story altogether. It’s more like… Famous Five, with ghosts; it’s not the total magic of The Forgotten Beasts of Eld or Winter Rose. It’s fairly specifically placed in time and space, and it has a lot of concrete, real-world detail.

The writing is still absorbing, the characters well portrayed, but the magic is really what I read McKillip’s work for, and this wasn’t at all like that. It’s also, as I said, rather younger; the kids are very frustratingly kids. Realistically, but yeesh. Puberty is not so interesting when you’re out on the other side of it.

I’m fairly lukewarm about it, in the end; it was fun enough to read, but it’s not by any measure a favourite and I wouldn’t have minded having to skip it.

Rating: 3/5

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Review – The Castle of Crossed Destinies

Posted March 1, 2015 by in Reviews / 8 Comments

Cover of The Castle of Crossed Destinies by Italo CalvinoThe Castle of Crossed Destinies, Italo Calvino

I don’t know why I keep trying; it’s quite obvious that while there are aspects of Calvino’s writing that I love, even coming blurred through the translations, his structures, styles, plots, characters (or lack thereof) really get on my nerves. The idea is fine, but then telling a whole series of stories via someone guessing at what other people mean by laying out certain patterns of tarot cards… gets wearing.

It’s nice at first to keep your mind on the cards, the symbolism, the way the story happens… And then, for me, it loses its novelty. Maybe it’d have worked as a short story, but the more tortuous it got, the more irritated I got.

Rating 2/5

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