4.5 STARS!!

The person who decided to put the first story in this collection as the first story did the book a disservice. I have started this collection many times, only to have the first story bore me to death and I kept reshelving it.

Why, yes, I could have simply skipped the first story, she says in hindsight.

If you, like me, are struggling with that first story, skip it. The rest of the collection is not only worth reading, it is at times stunning prose. I wish I could write like this woman. I truly do.

Obviously, I don't like the first story, Life on the Sun.

Then comes The Bone Swans. A swoon-worthy fairy-tale retelling, with vivid, engaging characters. Brilliant. Compelling. One hell of a story.

Martyr's Gem was good, though it lacked some of the sparkle of the fairy tales. It was, however, a solid tale of legend.

How the Milkmaid Struck a Bargain, another fairy tale, was also great, only slightly behind Bone Swans.

I know many people have said The Big Bah-Ha wasn't their cup of tea, or didn't quite fit, but I have to say, it is quite the legend. I like it equally, but differently, than Bone Swans. If you took King's IT, The Stand, and The Body, smashed them together, handed the resulting story back to him when he was 35 and said, "Now, make it just a little weirder", you'd have a rough estimate of the great story this is. Spoiler alert: I went from very unsettled to ending the story in tears, so there's that.

Overall, I regret not just skipping the first story when I originally got the book. Even if Bah-ha isn't for you, the two fairy tales, especially The Bone Swans, are worth the price of the book all by themselves.

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Created May 10, 2019 at 9:48pm • Submit your own review...