Status Updates From A Sinister Quartet

There are a crapton of little word errors in this book. “Lead” instead of “led”, “knap” instead of “nap”(said of velvet.) Annoying little errors.

I bought this for the first story, Cooney's The Twice-Drowned Saint (because the teaser at the end of Bone Swans was too great to resist), and wow.

I just finished Jessica P. Wick’s An Unkindness. Do you ever see yourself so much in a protagonist, it hurts?

C.S.E. Cooney is a wordsmith in every sense of the word.

"Viridian" was a very cinematic story. Lori, the protagonist, is overwhelmed by grief over the death of her sister and consequently makes a Bad Life Decision regarding a mysterious, wealthy man. **He** suffered a crushing loss too, back a while ago, but his way of dealing could have mortal consequences for Lori. Stories with these particulars are not my thing, but this one was very well done.

"An Unkindness" is crackerjack. Ravenna is a wonderful heroine, both indomitable and self-deprecating (“ I am quite good at lurking at balls. The key is to be in constant motion, always on the periphery"). The fairy realm was one of the most perfectly rendered I've ever read, with strange beings like the art of Remedios Varo. And the underlying themes of sibling love, of tenacity, resourcefulness--just wonderful.

“We don’t need a marvel of the world. We already have interesting things and historical battlefields and a very nice shoreline and just about the loveliest fall anywhere. Besides, artists have created without feeding their hearts to a primpish parade of well-dressed monsters and murdering a unicorn for I dare say centuries! Just say you’ve changed your mind and stop coming here.”

“The last thing I wanted to do was dance, especially in case the owl-woman saw and asked how my oath had been concluded so quickly, and so I lurked. I am quite good at lurking at balls.” --and then follows some excellent descriptions of lurking.

She repeated, “Have you seen my glove? I was sitting here,” and gestured to a cushioned bench I’d been about to stumble over.
“Um, I have not,” I said, with what I’m afraid is my typical level of cleverness when taken very off guard at a ball. “What does it look like?”
“It has four tubes for my fingers and one tube for my thumb. Like this.” The woman held up her still-gloved hand.

“I felt certain I knew the lake was fashioned by a fairy silversmith; that the silversmith had been killed so no other lake would ever be so perfectly clear and smooth; that the fairy silvermith had had masterpieces yet to create; that the weight of their absence haunted the lake.” --Amazing details like this make the fairy land in "An Unkindness" rich and dark.

I've finished The Twice-Drowned Saint--it left me wrecked and rebuilt. Stunning. You have to have the truly awful saints and city--really awful, not just baroquely, entertainingly awful, but disgusting and cruel--to have the resolution of the story be as glorious as it was.

“it is never good for gods or angels or human-kin to forget the world beyond their walls.” AMEN

“I loved sword-fighting, but I adored sentient ships with an agenda.”

--Someone should give Ishtu Ann Leckie's Imperial Radch books

“The urge to empty my backpack and stuff it full of his scripts leapt like flame in me. It itched in my fingers, my palms, the soles of my feet. So rash, so ludicrous was this obnoxious urgency that I almost thought it was the angel Alizar trying to tell me something. But it was only grief.”