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ClareR (6037 KP) rated Sycorax in Books

Nov 16, 2025 (Updated Nov 16, 2025)  
Sycorax
Sycorax
Nydia Hetherington | 2025 | Fiction & Poetry, Paranormal, Science Fiction/Fantasy
9
9.0 (1 Ratings)
Book Rating
I've seen The Tempest, and so I was interested to see an origin story for Sycorax - the most powerful witch of Algiers. Except she isn't the evil monster that Shakespeare has written about. In this story, she is a child, a girl and a young woman. A young woman who knows too much and is too different to the others in her village, protected by her parents up until the point where they are no longer able to protect her.
I love the way in this is written - it's lyrical with a nod to the style of Shakespeare, Nydia Hetherington gives a reason for Sycorax's differences: her physical difference is due to illness and injury, her witch qualities are due to the fact that she simply knows too much for a woman in a time where women shouldn't have known anything beyond childbirth, motherhood and housework.
And then there's the element of magic that runs throughout the novel - which is always a winner as far as I'm concerned. A really enjoyable novel.
  
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Erika (17789 KP) rated My Lady Jane in Books

Nov 19, 2017  
My Lady Jane
My Lady Jane
Jodi Meadows, Cynthia Hand, Brodi Ashton | 2016 | Fiction & Poetry, Young Adult (YA)
9
7.4 (5 Ratings)
Book Rating
I wasn't expecting to like this book at all. I chose it on the fly to listen to as an audiobook. I was not disappointed. It was completely humorous. The novel rotated through three points of view, Edward VI, Lady Jane Grey, and Gifford Dudley. It definitely borrowed from the likes of the Princess Bride, Shakespeare, and Monty Python. There were some irritating parts, like when it quoted too much from those sources. In the end, I did really like it.
  
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Caitlin Ann Cherniak (85 KP) rated Sold in Books

Oct 21, 2018  
Sold
Sold
Patricia McCormick | 2006 | Fiction & Poetry, Philosophy, Psychology & Social Sciences, Young Adult (YA)
9
7.3 (4 Ratings)
Book Rating
I almost couldn't finish this book, not that it wasn't good. It's a masterpiece, but the topic that McCormick tackles gave me complete shudders, and I swore that I was about to puke at times. The things that happen to these girls because people are greedy, selfish, and cruel. If this book from 2006 is still not relevant today, I don't know what would be. That would be the same thing as saying that Shakespeare meant nothing to the world.
  
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Dick Cavett recommended Children of Paradise (1945) in Movies (curated)

 
Children of Paradise (1945)
Children of Paradise (1945)
1945 |
(0 Ratings)
Movie Favorite

"The brilliant teacher I had for a Shakespeare seminar at Yale (Joel Dorius) asked us one day if we had an idea of what heaven, for us, would consist of. What you’d hope it would be. His own answer: “Just to sit in a screening room, watching Marcel Carné’s Children of Paradise projected repeatedly and endlessly throughout eternity.” Hard to argue with that when you see and resee this classic. Dorius’s version of heaven beats hell out of harps and angels."

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