this book is astonishingly good.

this is the book i should have been handed when i first expressed an interest in exploring the world of the fantasy novel. never mind that isn't not going to be published for three more months (thank you to the girl with BEA access for getting this for me), it should have happened somehow.

this is the most pure example of fantasy that i have seen so far.
and it is nearly perfect.

once upon a time, an angel and a devil fell in love. it did not end well.

a fantastic opening to a book. and it really takes off from there, revealing its secrets slowly, and deliciously and only occasionally predictably.

i appreciate a sad love story, and this one really delivers. this is a fairy-tale fantasy that has its roots in the traditional fairy tale rather than the sweet disneyland versions where everyone is a-ok in the end. (or is it just the beginning...?)

there is a great deal of struggle in this book. internal struggles involving the pain of separation from "family", from new love, from friends - the distance of secrets and the necessity of this distance. as in most fairy tales, there is subtext out the wazoo here. and she manages to just spread it on there like delicious jam and you are like "hmmm what kind of fruit is this jam? it tastes a little bitter but i cannot stop eating it,"and then you're dead, because it is one of those delicious poisons that nature puts out there to ensnare you. lainie taylor, i am on to you. but i am still addicted to you.and that's just what you wanted, dammit.

for a month of stolen nights and the occasional sun-drenched afternoon when madrigal could get away from loramendi by day, they cupped their wings around their happiness and called it a world, though they both knew it was not a world, only a hiding place, which is a very different thing.

yeah, yeah, i get it: you can write.

and i was so resistant to her because of the name/cover of lips touch three times, but when i was forced (again, thanks to tommy) to actually read it, i realized that lainie taylor is the real deal. and this book just solidifies that opinion.

and my only quibble - the only thing that is keeping this from being "best book ever" is so stupid, but i just felt that the pacing was a little bit skewed. these was so much in the first half, so much slowly spooled out story of "mysterious girl in prague" and then by the end, it was so rapidly told: angels, demons, war, love, betrayal,blam blam blammo!! it left me a little breathless.

which was probably just what she wanted, but i'm no spring chicken: "i can't take any more scares!!" or rapid changes in pacing. but i feel like a jerk for even finding something to whine about, because this is pretty much as good as it gets, book-wise.

september, my kittens...