Again, this is my second time reading this book. I’ve been rereading the series in preparation for the third and final book The Battle of Evernight (which has been sitting on my Mt TBR for about three years now).

I found myself growing increasingly impatient as I read. I kept wanting to skip ahead to the parts I remember and avoid the two page descriptions of what someone is wearing. The excessive description grows tiresome and the story could benefit from picking up the pace a bit.

The story also grows increasingly more epic, involving bigger events and the most important people in the story’s world. I understand that this is the nature of the story (and even enjoy it to some extent), but I’m starting to find it hard to quieten my inner critic, who wants to believe that the story should never involve all the most important people and all the most important events in the world’s history.

I also had a bit of a quibble with the ending. Sure, it was suitably dramatic, but it occurs in the middle of a recollection, without coming back to ground itself in the present first.

I have a few ideas about how the series will end, but I guess I’ll just have to read on and see.

This is my second time reading through this book and there’s a lot I like about it. It’s got an old world feel to it, with its feudal society and bringing to life traditional tales of wights, waterhorses and the like. It fascinates me how that rather distinctly European feel is combined with scenery and wildlife native to Australia. Somehow it works.

I also enjoy how the author plays with identity. This is definitely a novel with post-modern influences, which seems strange for a fantasy.

It can be a bit slow paced, though. The author is obviously in love with language, but goes a bit overboard with her description in places, which really slows things down. Some of the turns of phrase also leave one feeling like the author is just trying to show off how clever she is.

Some of the encounters that the characters face seem a bit random and don’t necessarily add anything to the overall story.

I enjoyed it, but I can certainly see it isn’t for everyone.

Being both an avid journaler and creative writer, the title of this book immediately attracted me with the promise of being able to combine the two. The lovely presentation of the book also helped!

This was the first book I’ve read by Stephanie Dowrick. I found her writing style to be quite intimate and full of her gentle personality. It felt comfortable to read, like snuggling down in bed on a rainy weekend morning.

The book itself is rich with resources. Every time I picked it up, I found myself thinking more deeply about the way I write and use my journal, bringing a new richness to my journal writing. Sometimes I’d find myself reading just the thing I needed, apparently by chance.

At first I took things slowly, working through all the exercises as I went so that my reaction to them would remain fresh. But I found the writing (and life) provided me with so many other subjects and avenues to pursue that I ended up just reading the book. I can come back to the exercises later.

On the whole, a great book and one that I look forward to coming back to time and time again.

This book just wasn’t for me. It’s hard to know where to begin, but I believe the previous owner of the book said it best: “Reminiscent of psychological thrillers “The Game” and “Eyes Wide Shut” – it’s intriguing, maddening, chilling, confusing. You’ll either love it or hate it!” It wasn’t that I hated it. However, I did find it maddening and confusing.

I think the essence of it for me comes down to emotion. I found the book made me work so hard intellectually, trying to work out what was going on, what the characters motivations were, what was going to happen next, how it related to Jungian theory, trying to work out what on earth it was trying to say, that I just didn’t connect with it emotionally. The protagonist started out thoroughly unlikeable, and that improved only marginally throughout his trials. Nor were any of the other characters likeable in any way. Since there was no one to connect with on an emotional level, I didn’t find it at all chilling, terrifying or erotic (though that last may also be due to the fact that what was erotic in 1968 is no longer so today).

I found the foreword self indulgent and rather reminiscent of the millionaire trickster character. The beginning was very slow and it didn’t seem to pick up until about 50 pages in, when the protagonist (finally) arrives in Greece. The whole approach of “this is the year I was born in, this is what my parents and childhood were like” annoyed me, but in retrospect I can see how it was necessary, even though that didn’t make me enjoy it any more. The story seemed to drag out for entirely too long and I found the constant twist after twist a bit tedious by the end.

SPOILERS
I objected to the books treatment of Australia and Australians, but that is just a personal thing. Also, I wonder if the author is a little confused on the pronunciation of Goulburn? The much-maligned town is not far from here.

The connection between Alison and the Montgomery sisters seemed tenuous, quite implausible.

Overall, just not for me.

I was surprised that R.S Thomas turned out to be so contemporary. His style has a lot more in common with W.B Yeats. There was certainly a very country feel to it, though I felt some of the poems were a little too Christian focused for my taste. The poem “Sian” particularly tickled my fancy.

A great little book for a bus trip, though some of the poems require a lot more thinking about than such a trip can afford.

I surprised myself by actually liking this book, in spite of all the hype and all that has been said about the terrible writing. I’ll admit that the characters certainly needed to be a bit more 3D and there were a few twists that I easily saw coming.

But you know what? I’m a sucker for an adventure. I’ve also discovered I love books that take reality and put a bit of a twist on it. I love symbology and etymology, so this book was right up my alley.

I felt the pace was good. It really sucked me in and made it hard for me to put the book down. I kept telling myself “just one more chapter” and then it’s nearly midnight and the book is finished.

At first, the vast amount of detail annoyed me, but it tapered off as the book went on and I began to see why it had been done that way; some of the details were important and the rest were to disguise the important ones and to help set the scene.

I’m certainly interested in reading more of his work.

It’s hard for me to pinpoint exactly what I disliked about this book. I guess I felt it was preachy, in some respects, more the author’s opinion of how to live life, rather than his scientific work with water crystals.

Some of his theories seemed solid enough, a logical extention of his work with water crystals. Other theories seems solely his attempt to try and reconcile his work with his religion.

I guess I was simply expecting this book to be something other than it was, something more scientific.

I found this book to be so wonderfully bittersweet. Vonda is deft at portraying relationships—the bonds in these stories are touching. It’s just a shame that the stories were so unrelentingly dystopian.

Writing short science fiction is difficult and there were times when I struggled to orient myself. The ideas were fascinating, however, and she’s created some very interesting worlds and societies.

It was an excellently written book and a pleasure to read.

I have to admit that I was a bit dubious about this book at first (an acquaintance sent it to me). The extract used on the back has a threatening hint of Mills & Boon. It was an absolute delight to find that this book isn’t like that in the slightest.

I enjoyed its ecclectic nature. There were stories with a real Australian feel and some not. There were some that were a wonderful portrait of moments in time and some I didn’t really understand at all. I felt that the Rapunzel adaptation didn’t really work, but I was enchanted by enough of the other stories not to mind over much.

They were a great length too, most not more than a few pages, making it an excellent ‘handbag’ book, as lmn60 put it.

Overall, quite a delightful read.

Like most anthologies, the quality was a bit uneven. There were some stories that made no sense to me whatsoever, and some that I really enjoyed. I think the ones that were extracts from longer stories left me the most unsatisfied and I rather feel the fact that they were extracts should have excluded them from a collection of short stories.

They were a great length for reading on the bus though.