She handed the open tube across the cello.What do I do with this? I asked. You write your name. You’re being dramatic. Am I? she asked. The name of the lipstick was Japanese Maple. Against her pale skin, the letters looked lurid and blotchy. The Japanese maple on our roof was slightly more purple than the lipstick. Its leaves in fall the color “of bruises” Ana once said. She would have looked good wearing that pigment. I held the glistening tube in my hand, not knowing what to write or where. I wanted to write Ana’s name, or both our…
1 CommentTag: unsatisfying endings
HUMPH (or, The Sweet Far Thing, Libba Bray)
Published 14 Feb 2008
by
Gin Jenny
HUMPH. I AM DISPLEASED. Spoilers to follow. But first: This is the third book in a trilogy that basically, for me, has been the Gemma-and-Kartik (that’s his name) show, with some other stuff about magic or something going on as well. To be brutally honest, I haven’t been terribly interested in the main story, so I’ve just been carrying on reading in the hopes that Gemma and Kartik would move to The Land Where People Don’t Care About Race and get married and have lots of little babies. AND THEN KARTIK WENT AND DIED, DAMMIT. I mean, I knew that…
Leave a CommentThe Semi-Attached Couple, Emily Eden
Published 19 Jan 2008
by
Gin Jenny
“Don’t you think Reginald Stuart very much out of spirits?” said Lady Portmore, when she was lingering over the breakfast-table, after the other ladies had withdrawn and Lord Teviot and Stuart had gone out shooting.”Yes, I think he is,” said Ernest, “rather out of spirits, and very much out of cash, I suspect; the old story of cause and effect.” Recommended by: Box of Books Now, if I recall correctly (as of course I unfailingly do), the recommending book blog said that Emily Eden was a lot like Jane Austen but bitchier, and I am not particularly finding that. I…
2 CommentsSunshine, by Robin McKinley
Published 13 Jan 2008
by
Gin Jenny
It was full dark….I knew he could see in the dark; I knew vampires can smell live blood….No, I thought. That hardly matters. He isn’t going to forget about me any more than I am going to forget about him, even if I can’t see or hear him – even if I’ve got so used to the vampire smell I’m not noticing it any more. Which just made it worse. I thought I would have to see him cross the gray rectangle between him and me – I was pretty sure his chain wasn’t long enough to let him go…
4 CommentsLittle Boy Lost, by Marghanita Laski
Published 7 Jan 2008
by
Gin Jenny
Recommended by: imani, more or less. Or rather, she mentioned The Victorian Chaise-Longue, also by Marghanita Laski, and I picked up Little Boy Lost at the library at the same time. So “recommended” is actually a pretty big stretch on this, but whatever. For a while I was convinced that this book had to be in translation. It just had these weird bits that you get when you are reading books in translation, and the author’s name is unusual and might quite easily have been foreign; and anyway I was all set to write this review and say I hate…
1 Comment