unabridgedchick's reviews
1395 reviews

A lovely small book, a kind of book-of-hours for pagans. Varied goddesses.

Ultimately unsatisfying, Phillips' inventive collection of short stories sucks the reader into mysterious, dark worlds where natural laws are bent, twisted, and at times, outright ignored. Unfortunately, too often, her stories are high on mood and light on substance, abandoning the reader to imagine what could be and wish for what wasn't. There are stand-out stories in this collection, however, that are worth the book alone. In particular, I found the title story evocative as well as 'A New Ecology'. Otherwise, I found the rest of the stories to be incredibly moody; but I reached the end of each puzzled and feeling empty.

These quirky short stories are set in Dublin and Vancouver, and explore the lives of women slightly out of their element. Short and snappy, the stories paint quick and furious pictures of people and place; Hunter has a gift for providing the reader with enough background to make us care without losing the rhythm of the pieces. My two favorite stories were 'Hagiography' and 'At the Bus Stop in Love with the Idea'; both main characters take personally dangerous steps with bittersweet results. I felt rather lukewarm about the rest of the collection, especially the title novella; Hunter uses second person for those stories, and I felt like I was in an incredibly banal Choose-Your-Own-Adventure novel (especially since her characters made choices I never would!). A lovely read overall.

Though published by Luna Books, the sci-fi/fantasy arm of Harlequin, this book seems to have little in common with her romance novel sisters. There is romantic tension but very little in the way of actual sex. While I did come to this book hoping for a tawdry fantasy novel, I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed it, lack of sex notwithstanding. Dayton's world-building was wonderful -- even though a map and glossary was included, her narrative was thorough enough I did not need to refer to either.

While the plot is interesting enough -- a quest ultimately to destroy a demon -- I found the cultural world building more fascinating. The primary culture, Adaran, has a polyamorous family unit called ilian. It can be sexual, business-like, multi-generational, all of the above, none of the above. The main character, Kallista, enters into ilian with her male bodyguard, two male prisoners of war, a female defector, and a male merchant of foreign origin. Though Kallista feels intense sexual attraction with all of the males, the ilian is initially entered into contractually. The secondary plotline weaving through the story explores Kallista's feelings toward all the men and the evolution of the ilian.

Ultimately I was disappointed in Dayton's exploration of the ilian. Though the ilian is the only form of marriage in Adara, and requires four or more adults of any gender combination, there seems to be little change in sexual attitudes: all four men displayed no bisexual or homosexual interests and each man had intense jealousy at the idea of Kallista having sex with the other men. I know that romance novels have constraints, limits placed on the author by the publisher, but I found it slightly unbelievable that a culture used to polyamory would display rather traditional, Western, monogamous sexual mores.

That quibble aside, the story read quickly and I am eager to read the sequel. (I am assuming there will be a sequel; the ending seemed to beg for one!)

Despite the cheesy cover, this is a great book to learn about dream interpretation. There's a wonderful intro section on Jung and dream interpretation, then a rather interesting 'dictionary' of dream symbols.

Quick, enjoyable beach read but a bit forgettable. An early techno-thriller.

I'm unfamiliar with Heavy Metal magazine, so I had no idea what to expect from Pleasure Model. What it was is unexpected, delicious fun.

Even though it's got a bit of a cyberpunk/sci-fi setting, it reads like a noir: gritty setting, sexy and amoral heroes, a strong sense of place, lots of shades of gray. The world building was just appropriate -- enough to give the reader a sense of what life is like without bogging anyone down with unnecessary details.

This is the first book in a series and I'm eagerly anticipating the sequel.