Uprooted

What a treat!  Picked up because it is the 2016 Nebula Award Best Novel recipient, I was pleasantly surprised.  Surprised because lately the award winners I have been reading have been somewhat yucky (yep I think I will stick to that...they were yucky!).  Yucky because these award winners were ugly, corrupt, violent, coarse, and full of bad people.  Uprooted had the same kind of characters and events in it but wasn't yucky.  There was ugliness, corruption, violence and bad people, yet the difference for me, I suppose, is that the coarseness was absent, and of course this isn't realistic fiction in any way.   
Uprooted drew me in immediately, and was an engrossing read all of the way through.  The story was fresh and new (though it was liberally steeped in folklore of the Slavic persuasion).  It was wonderful, exciting and a little romantic (the 'happily ever after' of this new folktale).
I am excited over the resurgence of these kinds of books.   I have students who don't really believe me when I tell a group that the original folktales were not meant for children, and then try to explain why (without traumatizing them with some truly gruesome, or should I say Grimm,  examples).  I love Uprooted, it is like the standard folktale, but with new twists, making what was old, new and fantastic again, giving life to while paying homage to the old... and this time, giving it back to the grown ups!

Burning Girls

                       Tor.com advertised on their Facebook page this week two novellas (Tor Originals) that are Nebula nominees, which are free to download.  Naturally I could not pass those up so (happily! joyfully!) they were downloaded with rapid dispatch to my Kindle app.       
Burning Girls by Veronica Schanoes   
I loved this story!  Cast in the early 1900's it was, from the very beginning, an immediately captivating tale.  As with all books (especially if you do not spoil things by doing a little research first), there were questions, and the more I read into it the more questions I had...it began so strongly as something that I could (but probably shouldn't) say was "Grimmesque", but much better than that. Of course, with a novella everything has to be more compact, but this story magically excels in it's ability to lure you into it's web. Exciting connections were made in it to other literature (The Brothers Grimm) and historical events and some of my questions were answered.  I haven't read a lot of Jewish folklore, I don't know much about the religion and lifestyle but this was fascinating, as well as familiar to what I have read, and rich with the traditions and lore of the past.   A fairy tale for grown-ups.  I will be looking for more by this author.
On top of all that nostaligic, folkloric awesomeness is the relationships involved, the strengths of the characters, the love and friendships between women and the artwork is lovely too.  It is, all together, an lovely attractive bundle and I hope might be available in book form someday.

The Once and Future King

Since I was a kid I have loved the story of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table.  It was one of those books that I re-read a couple of times, but never re-visited when I was an adult until I got a hold of a two volume set by Sir Thomas Malory, Le Morte D'Arthur, even then I only glanced at it, and it has sat on my shelf ever since, neglected.  Not for much longer!  The Once and Future King has re-birthed my keenness for the original story again, making me feel sentimental for the story I once knew.   This epic was written so beautifully, so true to the original, that I was just awestruck at how wonderful it truly was.  It is like an essay, a very long one, making an argument for the original tale, looking at it in a different light, which helped me to get through the harder parts, and there are a lot of hard parts to the story.  White’s brilliance is obvious, revered and worshipped by me, and I have sought out whatever else I can read by him, because I want more.  Some of his arguments touched a personal pain in me,  and his conclusions were a comfort for me, winning me over as a steadfast, awestruck fan of his work, forever.