| Title | : | We Will All Go Down Together |
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | |
| ISBN | : | 1771482028 |
| ISBN-10 | : | 9781771482028 |
| Language | : | English |
| Format Type | : | ebook |
| Number of Pages | : | 400 |
| Publication | : | First published October 28, 2014 |
We Will All Go Down Together Reviews
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Wow. This was such a strong book. So well-written, so rich, so complicated. I read it slowly (not as slowly as the dates indicate; I lent it to someone and got it back 6 weeks later) and took breaks to absorb the atmosphere. It gave me weird dreams.
If I have any criticism, it was that it was hard for me to keep some of the characters straight, especially the evil ones with similar sounding names. Well, possibly they didn't really sound similar, because there is a pronunciation key in back and I was saying several of them incorrectly, but you know what I mean.
The characters that stood out the most for me were Carra, Jude, and Maccabbee Roke. If I had to pick a career based on the options in this book it would be working in a magical item reselling shop, even though there does seem to be some risk involved. Dead last would be monster-slaying nun; that sounds cool, but only if someone else is doing all the exercise, chastity, praying, and other suffering.
"The Narrow World" is my favorite story. It's also one that is strong enough as a stand alone. This collection is less obviously connected than I expected going into it. Do all things come together later in any sort of conclusion...? Well, that would be spoiling, wouldn't it? Read it and find out for yourself.
Look closer:
Max Ernst's "Europe After the Rain" (produced after his 1940 escape from Germany) was created through a technique known as decalominie, which consists of squashing areas of highly diluted paint onto the canvas, then pulling it around so that the colours distribute themselves as random, suggesting through texture alone various biological structures...
[Decalomanie also includes other techniques, such as certain forms of transfer painting. It is the origin of the word "decal".] -
Complimentary copy generously provided by publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
I requested this book off of NetGalley a long time ago and kept putting it off...and now I'm actually kicking myself for doing so.
Why oh why did I find excuse after excuse to not read this...it started out with me being only a "cover whore" and requesting for that alone with the genre.
Then I saw some pretty decent reviews start popping up but I still kept it tucked away on my kindle.
Well, I finally gave in and didn't even realize that they were short stories comprised into a novel!
I was captivated and stayed up late a few nights trying to get these stories in!
Awesome book with plenty of twists and turns! -
This book was kind of uneven, and I almost abandoned it halfway through. For one, it's a book-length collection of short stories, not what I'd call a novel as I'd originally assumed. (Don't know if there's a formal definition for such things in literature.) Characters are introduced and reappear. There's a background story and resolution, but the weaker stories interrupted the momentum and didn't contribute much to the overall arc. It didn't help that I read this on my Kindle—with a very few exceptions, I find that I like books less when I read them for the first time in ebook format. I have a hard time absorbing a story a digital page at a time, in comparison to holding a book in one's hands and being able to see at a glance where one is in a story.
Anyhow, I was fascinated by the background story to the Five-Family Coven. I can't recall reading another book that combined the mythology of angels, the Fae, and paranormal phenomena as eloquently as Files did in her book. The writing is lyrical and dense, to the point of mushiness. I had to reread some sentences because I couldn't tell what was going on. I still don't understand certain aspects of the story, which is a little frustrating. At the same time, I feel inclined to get a physical copy of this book just to reread those parts I particularly liked. -
Gemma Files is on a completely different level than any other author I know...
A really fresh take on witches, psychics, religion and faeries, though not always easy to read definitely rewarding! -
I really want to give this 5 stars but a couple sections/stories took away from my overall enjoyment of the book, but I also LOVED the sections I loved so?
I would describe this as....?literary? urban fantasy? One of a pair of twins slowly turns into a Cthulhian monster. Mediums channel ghosts through their skin. Young women are possessed by Nephalem. MONSTER-HUNTING NUNS. Witches are burned! Changelings! Fae!
It's pretty neat and I absolutely love Files' writing style, her formatting, her use of fake blog posts and historical documents, etc. Also, what a lovely afterword about dark!Canada. -
4.5 stars, rounded up just for the writing.
Human nature at its darkest and ugliest, forces and myths beyond human comprehension, witches, fae folk, a feud across generations with the strangest cast (including a washed-out former child medium, defrocked priest turned magic objects store owner, monster slaying warrior nun, ghostbuster, excorsee/formerly possessed, shaman, psychic with a twist on being afraid of his own shadow, bodysnatching ghost, a couple of regular people) mostly set in Toronto in this dark fantasy horror. The Hexslinger trilogy was one of the darkest, weirdest, and amazing reads, so I looked forward to Gemma File's next release. Her trademark writing and fascination with the dark side of human nature and history, religion, and mythology are present, but it is such a different work.
It is a collection of short stories that jump back and forth, introducing characters and connecting to each other bit by bit, and it feels very fragmented and sometimes disorienting to go from new story and character to the next and piece how they connect to the overall story. Files has a convenient family tree and cast list at the end of the book (plus pronunciations) that helps keep track of the characters and their relation to each other. It started as a few random short stories that Files later connected to a larger story of the witches feud over generations and developed into this book. The feud is between a few witches who made a deal with a fallen angel and the Fae, and it's a cold war type of conflict. The feud started with a betrayal, and the betrayed have been slowly working their way to a confrontation with the traitors over generations. The short stories are about key characters and key events that lead to this final confrontation. This fragmented style kind of works, once you get used to it, especially since it spans generations. Focusing on key characters and moments created the sense of a cold war, where they weren't actively fighting or moving towards a final showdown. The moments were more poignant, especially since different kinds of experiences and moments were captured and illustrated with Files' uniquely dark imagery and poetry. In the final story, many of the characters from the previous stories are brought together, and it almost felt like there were too many, with too different abilities and power levels to be effective. The showdown could have become comically ridiculous, much like the final showdown in the Twilight series. The final story was the weakest for that reason, so maybe it was just as well the book was a series of short stories rather than attempting a novel length version of the final story. That said, I think she handled the showdown pretty well to address those very issues (too many people with different abilities and power levels), with a twist that's not the traditional fight until one side wins.
The writing is eloquent, punch-in-the-gut, or cutting at times, making it a book that required careful reading. The things Files does with words is practically poetry in prose form, though very dark and morbid. The inventive use of language and word combinations, the rhythms, pacing, and precision, and something more, where the words mean more than they say or have multiple meanings. There are some writers that can craft words and play with words, but it falls flat and empty, not Files. She has a way of blending description, observation, and experience into one thing, capturing what the character sees and thinks in place of the usual background description that can be skimmed. It makes the story more personal, deeper, more biased and sometime questionable, with intriguing insight mixed in. She really gets deep in her characters' heads, hearts, and experiences. The imagery is original and gives you so much to think about, the way she captures the dark and ugly side of human nature, the poignant way she captures the moments.
The characters are not nice people, very flawed, yet they are not necessarily evil. This confrontation is not about good guys vs bad guys, more us vs them. None of them would be what you called the good guys, but they aren't straight-up evil, even the angels and Fae are wild forces, with inhuman natures that don't follow the same rules as humans, and Files captures that really well. Then, her dialogue is something else, too. Especially the use of foreign voices. I can't say for the Scottish and bit of French used and how accurate it is, though it does add flavor and color. Often, I have to "hear" them to figure out what they say. The bits of Chinese in Jude's story were a little more grating, where I thought use of Pinyin for the spellings of Chinese words would have been more appropriate. The characters' voices really stand out, and Files really gets into her characters and develops them, their voice drives each of their stories, that the use of foreign language and accents served to add rather than detract for the most part. Even Toronto, the setting for most of the stories, is a character itself. Files brings an interesting look at the identity of Canada and Toronto, both insider and outsider perspectives, issues of diversity. I remember during the Olympic games, how Canada was noted for its good behavior and manners, a place of nice people. It makes this an even more fascinating read, where the place is an important part of the story and Files brings attention to Canada and Toronto's character, digging deeper beyond the nice facade. Her author's note adds some more thoughts on this, too. -
A good collection! Probably my third favorite work so far from her (out of the three I've read) but that's just saying the other two were brilliant.
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2.5 en realidad :c
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(I received a free copy of this book from Net Galley in exchange for an honest review.)
A mosaic novel whose characters are gifted and semi-monstrous people linked by shared blood and a violent common history, a Five-Family Coven whose 500-year-long vendetta with each other is finally coming to a head. It's Alice Munro meets Clive Barker, with a cast that includes body-stealing witches, time-travelling changelings, monster-killing nuns and evil angels.
What an amazing book. It is a novel told in loosely connected short stories which, surprisingly works very well.
After finishing the book, I popped over to Gemma's website to find out more about the stories and wasn't surprised to find that some of the stories were older than others:
"The book will therefore package not only (for example) “The Narrow World,” probably the oldest entry in this roster (which first appeared in Queer Fear II and was reprinted in The Worm in Every Heart), but also all the subsequent Five-Family Coven-related stories which have appeared in various anthologies, magazines and what-have-you since then, most of which very few people aside from me have ever seen contextualized in terms of their shared universe—after which I'll add in on top five entirely new pieces, never before published, the latter three of which will (hopefully) bring closure to various ongoing sagas."
At times, the prose is poetic and languid, filling the mind with beautiful descriptions and wonderful language which is a pleasure to sink into. At others, it is a frantic ramble that rushes through the pages at 100 miles an hour, begging the reader to keep up.
This is a delightful mash-up of genres and results in a horrifying - and deeply rewarding - novel.
Highly recommended!
Paul
ARH -
Not my favorite of Files' books--they can't ALL be--but an intriguing mix of psychics, witches, fae, clerics, and angels/demons. These intersecting stories show Files' ability (compulsion?) to worldbuild on an epic scale. A scene may be claustrophobically intimate (say, a medium shedding ectoplasm in a decontamination chamber; or a witch locked in a room with his severed shadow) while still evoking centuries of family history over two continents. Impressive, and as comforting as curses get. ;)
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A great idea which, at times, is also greatly executed while, at times, fails to deliver. Some stories are really well-written, whereas other stories are not very well fleshed out. Carra is probably my favourite character and my favourite story is Jude's. All in all, it's a good enough read - at times even amazing - but somewhat uneven.
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A very good collection!
The Five: A Warning to the Curious is mostly an introduction, kind of written in character.
Landscape with Maps & Legends: Dead Voices on Air was nice and interesting. I don't tend to like the more sad stories as much.
Black Box was lovely.
History's Crust was interesting. Gemma Files loves the witches, and the nasty type of witches, and I have a hard time with that. Fae I can believe, but the witches tends to hit my suspension of belief pretty hard.
The Narrow World was really interesting, and didn't do anything I thought it was going to do.
Words Written Backwards was also really lovely.
Heart's Hole (Time, the Revelator Remix) was a pretty lovely story, I liked it a lot.
Pen Umbra was lovely.
Strange Weight was also a really lovely story.
Furious Angels was great.
Helpless pulled it all together, the entire book. It was lovely. -
Well. First of all, I love Gemma Files. I used to read her columns in the free papers when I lived in Toronto, and when I started reading her fiction I was vastly impressed - it was really well-written and right in the genre I really enjoy. I don't think I've ever come across one of her stories in an anthology and not been blown away. I've also read several other mosaic novels - short stories all in the same universe - and liked them. But this was, I don't know - too much of a muchness, maybe. I liked the first few stories, but it all went on, and on, and on, and I started to lose track of who was in which family and there seemed to be a lot of information dumps, and by the end I was just desperate for it to be over. I guess I'll go back to her stories one by one in anthologies.
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I really enjoyed this book. It is constructed as a series of short stories, that progressively intertwine until the final chapter ties everything up. There are a number of interesting characters, and different situations that give this world a wonderful depth. I am now a big fan of Carra Devise and wish to read more about her in particular.
The only problem I had with the book was that at times I had a hard time differentiating the characters by voice. They didn't strongly differentiate for me, with a few exceptions, although putting them all together in the final chapter did pull them apart more. -
Tedious, disconnected, with unlikable protagonists and convoluted time and story lines.
What more can I say?
The original story about the Five was quite good, I managed to pull through a few of the short stories on that alone but it got old pretty fast.
The point of giving up on the novel as a whole was during the story of the Asian guy without a shadow, God, he was unbearable. If it had been a book and not my Kindle, I would had hurdled it against the wall in frustration.
Do not recommend it. The author does not pull through with the "unrelated stories that make a story as a whole" method. -
The framework using short stories featuring characters (and their descendants) from the "Five-Family Coven" and how they all intertwine made the narrative hard to follow at times. My favorite parts of the book were the stories about the original witches (some of the best and scariest I've ever read) and the Fae.
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A massive, ambitious sprawling set of seemingly separate stories, all interlinked by a common thread which comes together at the end for a massively good payoff.
The folk-horror equivalent of the Avengers movies, good stuff. -
3.5
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I liked the conceit and the characters, but the structure was harder to follow for me; maybe this was my own concentration issues, I don't know. I'd have preferred less breaking-into-stories.
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3.5/5
Nei boschi fuori Overdeere, in Ontario, ci sono alberi che sussurrano nella notte, un villaggio che non compare su alcuna mappa, luoghi inquietanti che intrappolano i viaggiatori incauti. Una musica sembra sprigionarsi dal sottosuolo, mentre i sogni e incubi prendono sembianze antropomorfe per serpeggiare nell’oscurità.
È un luogo mistico e agghiacciante, ma anche il centro dove le cinque linee di sangue di antiche famiglie potranno finalmente convergere.
Questa la premessa di We Will All Go Down Together, ultimo libro di Gemma Files, che non poteva non catturare la mia attenzione.
Non si tratta di un romanzo vero e proprio, bensì di una serie di storie legate da un unico filo conduttore, ovvero l’appartenenza dei vari protagonisti ai clan che compongono il famoso Five-Family Coven (da qui il sottotitolo), ossia i Devize, Glouwer, Rusk, Druir, Roke – famiglie di streghe, stregoni, mutaforma, in conflitto tra loro da tempi immemorabili.
Dai tempi della Scozia in cui imperversavano i roghi delle streghe, i discendenti del Coven hanno contratto matrimoni misti e talvolta incestuosi, anche per perseguire una vendetta uno contro l’altro, mossi da odio e rabbia.
Ora, dal centro di Toronto fino a lontane terre selvagge, forze oscure stanno in qualche modo colpendo e tentando di radunare gli ultimi eredi delle famiglie, tutti ossessionati da uno spirito di un potere tale che nessuno è in grado di esorcizzare da solo, bensì soltanto unendo le forze un’ultima volta.
Le storie non seguono un filo temporale lineare, ma raccontano in modo sparso alcune vicende ambientate nell’antica Scozia, allorché tutto ebbe inizio, altre negli anni più recenti, mostrandoci i personaggi che rappresentano gli ultimi figli dei clan.
La caratterizzazione di quest’ultimi è alquanto varia e punta a sottolineare sia come ormai questi estremi successori di un’eterna faida abbiano perso parte dell’antica motivazione, sia come siano preoccupati al loro lato più “umano”, cosa che contrasta alquanto con le loro pulsioni e “doti magiche”, spesso al limite dell’orrorifico o davvero mostruose.
Tutti questi ingredienti sono assolutamente interessanti, eppure il libro con me non ha funzionato in pieno.
Il fatto di spezzettare la storia in tanti racconti, spesso variando i personaggi e alternando flashback vecchi e nuovi, non mi ha dato la possibilità di entrare in sintonia con la trama. Ogni volta che si raggiungeva un climax e un momento di suspense, ecco finire la storia.
Inoltre, ho trovato un po’ forzato il gusto del macabro in alcuni passaggi, sembrava volutamente calcato per impressionare più che per rendere l’idea di mostruosità interiore rispecchiata all’esterno e negli atti di certi personaggi.
Così come mettere insieme streghe, stregoni, angeli buoni e cattivi, templari, fantasmi, e chi più ne ha più ne metta, mi è parso davvero un tantino esagerato… Una sorta di sfilata esibizionistica di creature sovrannaturali.
Le prime storie sono quelle che ho preferito – in particolare il racconto che apre l’opera è spettacolare.
Lo stile dell’autrice non mi è dispiaciuto, riesce a rendere bene tante scene dense e cupe, descrivendole in modo molto vivido.
In conclusione, una buona idea raccontata in modo diverso (non siamo affatto nel paranormal romance o simili), tuttavia con alcuni difetti che non mi hanno fatto apprezzare del tutto il libro.
*Ringrazio l’editore e Netgalley per avermi dato una copia dell’opera necessaria alla stesura di questa recensione* -
If I could I'd give this book 2.5 stars out of 5. I liked parts of it, largely for the imaginative elements, but overall I found it a slog to get through. A few of the reviewers here on Goodreads have said they nearly abandoned the book halfway through but hadn't, and yet still gave the book four stars. Taking comfort in the fact that others felt similarly, I decided to power through and finish it. A part of me is glad I finished it in spite of the fact that I grew to dislike it more and more as I read, but the rest of me wonders why I bothered. To be fair to the author, publishers, and other readers who DID enjoy the book, it's not a bad book; I'm just not the ideal audience for the book. Perhaps I decided to read it at the wrong time in life. It happens; there are books I've read in the past that I either outright disliked or felt indifferent towards while reading it for the first time, and then upon returning to the book later on in life I love it. Mary Shelley's FRANKENSTEIN, OR THE MODERN PROMETHEUS was one such book. (It's now one of my all-time favorites.) I sincerely hope this is one of those books.
I don't exactly know what it is about the novel that I disliked so much, or why I found it a slog. There are a number of complaints I have with it that, upon reading it a second time and knowing what to expect, may be more palatable to me when (and if) I decide to return. I'll briefly discuss them, if for no other reason than to vent my negative feelings.
First (and probably foremost): the prose is quite dense throughout. While that's not *necessarily* a bad thing, it's not conducive to my enjoyment of the book when I'm reading it for fun. Furthermore, it felt as though the prose was dense for its own sake, not for any artistic or experimental purpose. Maybe I'm wrong; either way it annoyed the shit out of me. Additionally, I *loathed* the dialects in which some of the of the characters spoke. I get it, it's "authentic" and "realistic," but I hated it. I'm not going to try justifying that. I just hated it, plain and simple.
Second: Although I wanted to like the experimental form of "short story collection turned novel", it drove me crazy because it made the entire "novel" seem disjointed and awkward. It also meant that there were so many narrative threads developing throughout the book, I found it difficult to keep track of who's who and what's what throughout. Which leads me to my next complaint:
Third, I felt very little connection to the vast majority of the characters. I just didn't care about most of them, or their problems. There were a few characters who I liked; Carra Device, Mac Roke, and Sister Blandina among them. The rest... well... I just didn't know them, or care about them. I kept getting confused about who was a part of what family in the Five Family Coven and how they related to the rest, blah blah blah. The family histories (as with much of the overall narrative) was too convoluted to hold my interest.
All that being said, there was enough that I liked about the book (a few of the isolated stories were pretty good) that I don't feel justified giving it a score of 2 stars, or even 1 for that matter. I may return to this book someday in the future when I've had a chance to let it pass from my mind, and hopefully I will like it more the next time around. I have a feeling that now I know what to expect, my experience will be different at the very least, if not better the second time around. -
This is a book of dark and horrific fantasy short stories woven together to create a tapestry of lore. They are all about the Five.
DEAD VOICES ON AIR
This story is about a girl who wants to write the ultimate folk song. She loves music and originality but folk music MUST be rooted in legend so she does research... Only to find more than she bargained for! Who is the strange man who seems to he following her?
(This story is written in blog and social media like form)
BLACK BOX
A super powered Medium squares off against a haunted tool of the trade from the Age Of Spiritualism in this quirky and endearing short story.
HISTORY'S CRUST
This story is a bit hard to follow at first due to all the time jumping but if you hang in there it is a horrific gem! Definitely more horror than anything else it show a much darker side of the Five Family Covens' history in an incredibly gruesome manner :) Not for the feint of heart but a must read for horror fans!
THE NARROW WORLD
In pursuit of his craft a magician cuts away his shadow and with it half his soul. This is the dark journey he encounters when forced to face the consequences of his actions. Being soulless is not all fun and games after all!
***pretty much pure horror with a dash of suspense
WORDS WRITTEN BACKWARDS
This is the story of a shaman trying to close the rotten holes in the world. They are gateways and pocket dimensions that feed off of people and destroy them in the process. The Old Blood flows unknown in many ... Until they feel the consequences.
HEART'S HOLE
Two members of different Five Family Covens meet and come up with a scheme. They will clean out buildings of ghosts and make a lot of money doing it. What can go wrong? Little do they know that ALOT can go wrong... Especially when involving two different bloodlines!
PEN UMBRA
Janis is an art student working on her doctoral thesis and sharing a house with some other students. One day she is encouraged to "rent" her body for science to make extra cash to live on. There she meets Carra and her Fate is sealed. She will definitely be participating in the "Mental Radio" experiment as a sender! Seems exciting ( or at least a good way to make extra cash) and she is on board...if only she had some idea what she was getting herself into! Soon her life is no longer her own and things start to get odd.
STRANGE WEIGHT
This is the tale of one of the decensants who went against the Five and became a priest. It makes him unique as he is allied by blood to the Five and The Fae and The Dark but yet he is also aligned with The Light. He has not had an easy time and probably never will but he is above all himself more than many others of his kin. This is the story of his struggles and his finally finding a place for himself in the world. This story also brings together many of the characters from the other stories and weaves the into a whole.
FURIOUS ANGELS
HELPLESS
***This book is suitable for adult readers who are not feint of heart and enjoy dark and gruesome tales of fantasy and horror -
4/7 stars. Some of the stories were really good but some left a lot to be desired, although the writing in the ones that I didn't like was still pretty good. Some were more creepy than others, but I also felt that some of what was supposed to be creepy didn't impact me quite as intended just because of my somewhat peculiar perspective. As I read the final chapter that brings the stories all together, I figured that the ones that didn't appeal to me were written to flesh out a few characters to make the planned ending work. Then I saw the publication history at the end and realized that the ones that I liked least were actually written first and that the ones that I liked most were fleshing out characters that were mentioned in passing in those stories. Although I liked the denouement, it did feel a little on the contrived side. Also, the two chapters that leaned heavily on Catholicism were a bit off for me for some reason. It's not my religion, though it's the sect of Christianity that I'm most familiar with, and it felt a bit too -- I don't know that I can say it was a caricaturized, really, but maybe too much an ill-formed fictionalization for an actively practiced, well documented religion. I found that the description of the faith underscoring the witchcraft of the Five Family Coven or the contemporary Knights Templar felt more coherent and fully formed than the shaky ground that the two heavily Catholic stories stood on, as entertaining as they were. Overall, I felt the writing was a little uneven but not so much more that one might expect from a collection of short stories that had been published independently.
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I'm a massive Gemma Files fan. "The Hexslinger Trilogy" are my favourite books of all time. So when I saw another book by her about witches and fae, my response was "sign me up!" I got worried when I saw it was a series of short stories, but Ms. Files came through, like always.
Another plus? The writing is gorgeous. Files is an incredibly descriptive writer. The book is filled with creepiness, the words dripping with gross, surreal horror. Like Hexslinger, some sections are a bit convoluted. But I found a couple rereads of the paragraph fixed that. Things are revealed in small, subtle things using the language. You read a couple of words and go, "oh! That's what that paragraph meant earlier!" It's a great feeling.
Overall, We Will All Go Down Together is another great Files horror book. I enjoyed it greatly. Can't wait to read her latest work :) -
So... I did not finish this book. And not because I didn't enjoy the 200 pages I read, but because my reading license expired before I could get to the end. I'm an awfully slow reader when it comes to reading on the computer (average of 150 pages per month), and sadly that was my only option here. Having said that, I am very likely to get a copy of this book in the future, but I don't know when that will be. And so, I thought of sharing with you my thoughts on the first half of the book.
We Will All Go Down Together is a collection of short stories by Gemma Files that portray snippets of the lives of the descendants of five families: Devize, Glouwer, Rusk, Druir, Roke. Five families that, in the times of witch hunts in Scotland, wished to change the world. And not quite for the better. Their plans might not have worked out, but their legacy continued. And so, centuries later, these descendants find themselves in modern Toronto, living lives not devoid of the supernatural. Ghosts, shamans, witches, ex-possesses, vampires, there's a little of everything, and none of it is sweet.
read more -
Witches, Fae, twisted family trees, ancient magic, and old blood abound in this novel from Gemma Files. This collection of connected novelettes is her attempt at creating a distinctly Canadian brand of horror, and she succeeds, for the most part. As always, her prose style is gorgeous and sumptuous, with long, poetic paragraphs reminiscent of Peter Straub. Likewise, her characters are diverse and interesting, and the way she connects them all together feels organic and satisfying. The best thing about this book is its sheer sense of scale and its evocation of an ancient Canada, of secret, dark places where powerful creatures dwell. My hang-up with this book is also slightly because of its scale. This thing is dense, with highly literary language and a huge cast of characters that make it difficult to grasp completely. But overall, I enjoyed working for my entertainment, and even when my attention wavered or I was utterly confused I could coast on the lyricism of Gemma's beautiful writing.
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I received this book for free from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.
So, I did not finish this book. I was very excited when I first requested it, but didn't realize the novel was a series of short stories. I know there are other reviewers who really liked this style, but for me it just didn't work. I think I only managed to get about 10% in when I decided this was not the right book for me. I LOVE the cover and that's what drew me in to request it, but I was really disappointed with the contents. -
Reseña completa:
http://ow.ly/BYBT8
Un fix-up muy interesante y original que recomiendo sin duda. Ángeles cabrones, brujas, clanes de linajes antiguos en guerra, monstruos indescriptibles y una batalla en ciernes.
