Book Rec! Read this NOW!

[lady_sarai]

Okay, so I stayed up until 3 am last night, even with my fever and headache, because I could not stop reading my book.

I read A Curse Dark as Gold, by Elizabeth Bunce and it is absolutely amazing. No, really. AMAZING. I could not stop reading it.

I've been trying to figure out how best to tell you all how great this book is, and I just don't have the words. It's a retelling of Rumpelstiltskin, which is amazing enough, but it's possibly the best version I've ever read. Seriously. It's so different and yet the same, and the world in this book is so real and rich and amazing.

And Charlotte!! Charlotte is so awesome, and fierce and loyal and protective and logical and stubborn and strong. She's flawed in just the right ways to keep her from being too perfect, and in believable ways, and not annoyingly at all. She's wonderful. And Stirwaters! The Mill is a character in itself and it's awesome. I have a soft spot for inanimate objects/places/buildings that have Character--like Woodwold in Spindle's End by Robin McKinley. I love everyone we're supposed to love in this novel. Rosie, and RANDALL and Harte and the whole town of Shearing! And oh, the descriptions of the wool and cloth making. (aradiachiba, you will love this book. Seriously.)

And it's well paced and beautiful and I could not put it down for the last few hundred pages because I had to know what was going to happen. And I IMed zoe_chan and told her that this book was BREAKING MY HEART because it WAS.

I feel like this is totally gushing and ridiculous and not making sense, but it's the best I can come up with right now because I have so much GLEE over this book. I swear at one point I HUGGED IT while I was reading, and another time I was flapping my hands anxiously and when it was over I could just kind of HOLD IT and look at it adoringly and I NEED SOMEONE TO READ IT AND GUSH WITH ME. REALLY. If just one of you reads it, you MUST TELL ME. Because this is so going in my list of Favorite Books, along with all of my precious Robin McKinley books and The Last Unicorn. Really.

So. Read it. Please.

(And how unfair is it that this is the author's first book? I WANT MORE. NOW. If anyone gets Scholastic book orders, let me know so I can order an anthology one of her stories set in this world is going to be in, because it is only going to be in those book orders and since I do not have my own classroom or my own children yet, I am sorely out of luck on that front. It makes me SAD.)

Comments

[alphabet26.livejournal.com]

Ooh, thanks for the rec. I just checked and my local library has 2 copies, neither checked out right now. So I may just head down there tomorrow and grab one. :)

Um, if you're looking for more books to read and want someone to gush with when you're done, check out anything by Neal Shusterman or Brandon Sanderson and I will be your gush partner. ;)

[lady-sarai.livejournal.com]

You SHOULD! :D And oooo, I definitely will! Considering our track record for fannish opinions, I am pretty sure I can trust your recs. ;)

[alphabet26.livejournal.com]

Hee, very true.

Since we're talking about Rumpelstiltskin, I'll recommend Neal Shusterman's Dark Fusion series--it's retelling fairy tales/myths with a horror twist. I LOVED them. There's only 3 so far (the gorgon, Little Red Riding Hood, and the Ugly Duckling), but I'm holding out hope for more. They don't have to be read in any particular order.

I know you don't really like horror, and despite my recommending SPN to you, I'm not a huge horror fan, either. ;P These are more thrillers than horror, to me. YMMV, of course. Neal Shusterman writes YA novels, so they're not that graphic or anything. ("Unwind" is about the most horrifying book I've read by him, but that was more the future that was presented that was horrifying, not that it belongs in the horror genre. You know?)

[lady-sarai.livejournal.com]

Ooooh, those sound interesting! I'll definitely have to look for them.

::laughs:: Uh huh, suuuure you're not. ;) But really, for whatever reason I have an easier time reading about that stuff than watching it--I have no clue why that is. But I'm about ten times more likely to read a ghost story than watch one, and that's sort of just how it is. (...Though I have not and will not read Stephen King, which is sacrilegious as a Mainer, I know, but oh well! Stephen King is also not YA!)