Morena > Recent Status Updates

Enjoying the physical descriptions of the key characters and the fact it's not written by someone pandering to modern politics and inane sensibilities.

going to tap out. The whole enemies to lovers trope is based on miscommunication and black and white characterization."

going to tap out. The whole enemies to lovers trope is based on miscommunication and black and white characterization.

SLAYER \m/ Isaiah 34:
He will totally destroy them,
he will give them over to slaughter.
Their slain will be thrown out,
their dead bodies will stink;
the mountains will be soaked with their blood.
All the stars in the sky will be dissolved

convoluted writing, Gary Stu hero witch cringe sidekicks. It's not horrible though, so I'll push on.

When Carters heroine goes from girl boss to a primate:
“She will lay his fearful head on her lap and she will pick out the lice from his pelt and perhaps she will put the lice into her mouth and eat them, as he will bid her, as she would do in a savage marriage ceremony.”

Her huge dark eyes almost broke his heart with their waiflike, lost look; yet he was disturbed, almost repelled, by her extraordinarily fleshy mouth, a mouth with wide, full, prominent lips of a vibrant purplish-crimson, a morbid mouth.

Too many roses bloomed on enormous thickets that lined the path, thickets bristling with thorns, and the flowers themselves were almost too luxuriant, their huge congregations of plush petals somehow obscene in their excess, their whorled, tightly budded cores outrageous in their implications

Isaiah 22:13 Let us eat and drink,” you say,
“for tomorrow we die!

His house is made of sticks and stones and has grown a pelt of yellow lichen. Grass and weeds grow in the mossy roof

Now the stark elders have an anorexic look; there is not much in the autumn wood to make you smile but it is not yet, not quite yet, the saddest time of the year. Only, there is a haunting sense of the imminent cessation of being; the year, in turning, turns in on itself. Introspective weather, a sickroom hush.

I loved the descriptions of bluebeard etc, but as a retelling the first story didn't work for me. I know the original stories can be a bit nonsensical and so is this retelling especially with added feminism which some decry is absent. Well it's here in the form of the victimhood, the brave mother saving the day, and it's here in the form of the nosy, horny, busybody, heroine with zero willpower.

Solomon's Song of Songs always reminds me of Humbert's rhapsodizing of Lolita.

Ugh the FMC is a nosy busy-body on steroids, and suffering of insta-love for a dead guy. I can stomach her swooning over a dead man, but harassing people she's just met with inappropriate questions is too much. I wish Howatch had handled this differently. It's lazy writing.

Ecclesiastes 1 "What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun.
Is there a thing of which it is said, “See, this is new”?
It has been already in the ages before us."

By explaining the images that Sadoko projected, Suzuki ruined the mystery, worse he negated what could have been distilled essence of evil and muddied it with victim. If that is the case that makes the story generic and the american rendition of The Ring actually better.

done with the "praise the Lord, and kill those who don't." psalms.

She was only the territory being fought over, and Tom didn't even know he was involved in a fight.

Maybe you should be learning that wolf-language you mentioned. It might be a real eye-opener to hear what they're saying about you.

Psalm 78: The best description of God:
Then the Lord awoke as from sleep,
like a strong man shouting because of wine.
And he put his adversaries to rout, and made them bring him a sandwich.

His pale eyes flicker and freeze her. Something in that glance penetrates through the daze of shock and scandal, something hits her in the heart and stops it, just for the spell of one cardiac contraction.

"You shouldn't have bailed the bastard."
"Don't be silly, Tom, I had to. He's my brother." She meant, my mother is dead.
Tom gave her the sandwich and tea and a black look. "Yeah, I know. Jesus, Lia, what a family you've got. A bunch of psychopaths. Murderers and perverts."
"Perverts?"
... He stopped and looked back at her, a long cool significant look. "You heard me."

For once the promotional blurb on the backcover isn't just an empty, vacuous praise, but an actual truth.

"It is rare to find a book which affects you sensually and affects your mind."

I cannot even imagine walking into a bookstore and finding a book as good as Inglis's duology.

He uttered a sound, a word. A name, she thought.
Not hers.
It wasn't her he wanted, after all. She was standing in for someone else.

He was avid and rough. She felt like a maiden being sacrificed to some dubious ancient god, the sort who persuaded people to worship him by terrorizing them. Yet she did it herself, the sexual equivalent of falling down to worship him: unzipped his jeans and knelt down to take him into her mouth.

Nick was still sitting there in the semi-darkness, city darkness, nursing a shot of whisky and smoking a cigarette. She could see the smoldering tip, and his face reflected in the glow when he took a drag. The shadows made him look ... not old, but older — older and wiser, older and sadder, eroded by life.

I got chills even from the opening quote:
"In those days there was no king in Israel: every man did that which was right in his own eyes."

Not to sound dramatic, but I fear this may be the last great book I get to read in my lifetime. I hope with all my heart that I am wrong.

Jachim's part is a bit better.