Travels With My Aunt
Book
Henry Pulling, a retired bank manager, meets his septuagenarian Aunt Augusta for the first time in...
Hold Your Breath (2018)
6.0
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Movie
Hold Your Breath (2018) A couple lives in Paris with their daughter, who suffers from an...
Vampire Flappers (Samantha Carter #1.5)
10.0
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Book
What happens in Paris . . . Since returning home, Sammy's been struggling desperately to remember...
Lost Property
9.0
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Book
Dot Watson has lost her way. Twelve years ago her life veered off course, and the guilt over what...
Le Silence de la mer (1949)
Movie
Le Silence de la mer (English: The Silence of the Sea) is a 1949 film by Jean-Pierre Melville. It...
Bad Marie
Book
“Reading Marcy Dermansky’s Bad Marie is like spending a rainy afternoon in a smaller, older...
Death on the Installment Plan
Book
Death on the Installment Plan is a companion volume to Louis-Ferdinand Céline's earlier novel,...
Cyrano, My Love (2018)
Movie Watch
December 1897, Paris. Edmond Rostand is not yet thirty but already two children and a lot of...
LeftSideCut (3776 KP) rated House of Wax (2005) in Movies
Sep 3, 2021
It's full of constant nu-metal needle drops, awful dialogue, and very on-the-nose visual moments (looking at you, villain slicing through a conjoined-twin wax sculpture) but to its credit, it has an ambitious premise that's pulled off well, some solid and imaginative gory moments, and a pretty creepy boogeyman, and all this combined makes for a film that deserves more than just "is that the one with Paris Hilton in it?"
Give House of Wax another chance. It's dumb, but fun.
Goddess in the Stacks (553 KP) rated Bright Smoke, Cold Fire in Books
Apr 15, 2018
Hodge has written a few other books - Cruel Beauty, a retelling of Beauty and the Beast, and Crimson Bound, a retelling of Little Red Riding Hood. (She also has a novella that spins Cinderella.) You all know how much I like my redone Fairy Tales! Bright Smoke, Cold Fire, is a little different in that it's a Shakespeare play, instead of a fairy tale. I recently read and reviewed Miranda and Caliban, another Shakespeare reskin, but this, I think, is much better.
The Capulets have become the Catresou, and the Montagues the Mahyanai in this dark fantasy. The Ruining has killed every human outside the city of Viyara/Verona - only stopped by the mystical walls put up by a long-dead priestess and maintained by a mysterious cult of nuns.
My favorite characters in this book - and arguably the main characters - are Runajo (Rosaline) and Paris, rather than Romeo and the Juliet. (It's a title, not a name - her name was stripped from her as an infant when the magic was worked to make her "the Juliet.") The original play doesn't give either of them much time, and they are both fascinating characters in this novel - Runajo a little more than Paris, in my opinion. Runajo is a member of the Sisters of Thorns - the cult of nuns keeping the walls of Viyara up against The Ruining. When she accidentally brings the Juliet back from death, she becomes - or at least thinks she becomes - that which she and the city fear the most. A necromancer. Runajo and the Juliet both believe they will (and should) die for this crime, but still use the time they have left to try and save the city from the necromancers operating within.
Meanwhile, Paris and Romeo have found themselves bound by the magic that should have bound Romeo and Juliet, had it not gone terribly wrong. They can feel each other's emotions, see each other's memories, hear each other's thoughts. This is understandably awkward for Paris as he feels Romeo's grief for the Juliet's supposed death, and occasionally catches flashes of more intimate moments between the two. They decide to take on the city's necromancers in memory of the Juliet.
I liked how, similar to the play, Romeo and Juliet both operate for the entirety of the book under the assumption that the other one is dead. They both take risks and agree to things they would not have done if they didn't each welcome death in their own way.
I also very much enjoyed a side, non-binary character who I really want to see more of!
The book ended on an upsetting cliffhanger, which is really my only problem with it. The sequel is due out this summer (Endless Water, Starless Sky) and I will definitely be picking it up.
Great book, but you may want to wait a few months so you can immediately follow it with the sequel!
You can find all my reviews at http://goddessinthestacks.wordpress.com