InkMind

• January: When the Moon Hathced – Sarah A. Parker
• February: Tales of Mystery & the Macabre – Elisabeth Gaskell
• March: The Luminaries – Eleanor Catton
• April: To be announced…

Book title: When the Moon Hatched
Author: Sarah A. Parker
Published: 2024
Edition: Harper Voyager – Hardcover
InkMind Goodreads Rating: ★★☆☆☆

As I wrote in the short Goodreads review, I didn’t enjoy this book. The main reason for this was the writing style. The constant one-line repetition of thoughts was annoying and jarring. It was not enjoyable to be inside Raeve’s (the main character) head.

Reading the summary, I was expecting “a unique magic system”, “mysterious creatures”, and most importantly, dragons. Instead, I found a magic system like any other elemental magic system, cool-sounding creatures that had no effect on the story or the world, and two dragons, one of which is dead.

The prologue attempts to establish a “unique” magic system, but what we actually get is a mediocre fantasy version of basic Greek gods and elemental powers. The names of the 5 gods are frankly ridiculous. Not because they are bad name choices for elemental Greek gods (in my own play, Deu Ignoto, the gods have similar names), but because there is nothing unique about them. The god of fire is Igno, god of aether Caelis, god of ground Bulder, goddess of air Clode, and worst of all, goddess of water Rayne. As I said, the problem with these names is not that they are inherently bad. The problem is that they could be ‘meaning names’ where the name of the god or goddess refers to something relating to them. To do this, she could have chosen ancient Greek or Latin and checked the synonyms of fire, air, ground, etc., and turned these words into names. She could have made up names from scratch. But instead, we get a stumbling tryout for making something unique that doesn’t need to be. Also, these names as so simple, it feels like the author assumes the reader isn’t smart enough to figure out the gods and what they represent unless their names are so obvious. It is especially frustrating to see these names when the rest of the characters have truly unique and good-sounding names.

After the prologue’s lackluster world-building attempt, I was expecting something more. I was hoping that more interlude chapters would be included, where I get to read about the gods and the magic system, and the world, nations, etc. However, that didn’t happen. The next bit about the world and its people was the “female” and “male” thing… Apparently, fae (for a while I didn’t even realise that everyone is fae) refer to each other exclusively by incel keywords. First, it was weird, then it became obnoxious, and together with the many adjectives in this book, I quickly ignored it.

Returning to the question of names, another confusing choice is “dae” and “slumber”. Once again, Parker can be great at fantasy names and fantasy concepts, and she can royally mess up. We get stuff like “Woetoe”, “Velvet Trogg”, and then she chooses to name the days “dae” and the nights “slumber”. This problem with fantasy names and concepts seeps through to the point where, often, characters use words and phrases that don’t fit the setting. This point is mentioned in many reviews on Goodreads. People noted that these authenticity issues with the writing stand out enough that the immersion is ruined.

Speaking of day and night, this was the first time, around chapter 11, that I had to go to the glossary. I couldn’t understand how the passage of time works, and to be honest, even after reading the glossary, I wasn’t sure. The description of time measurement in this universe isn’t complicated, but it is confusing. Instead of needing the glossary to understand time it would have been nice to see the passage of time in the story in a natural way. But this idea is true for other elements too, for example, the creatures. While I appreciate that we get Raeve’s thoughts and some understanding of what the creatures are and what they do, they all seemed like set pieces instead of meaningful additions to the world. Another worthy mention about the glossary is that I wish it were at the start of the book. Not only because there is a pronunciation guide, but also trigger warnings are also at the end. Instead of the “About the book” page at the beginning, the glossary should be just there.

Continuing with the story, in later chapters, it gets more confusing. I noted chapter 13 as being particularly confusing. Mostly because previously there were interlude chapters of the past, but this was the first chapter where we enter the past and experience a scene in the present tense. This was also the chapter that made me stop and think about the passage of time again. I was confused because I didn’t know that all the characters are fae (because it was never told), so I stopped when I realised that Kyzari is supposedly about 98. By this chapter, it was very obvious that Raeve is Elluin, but I also had to start thinking about how old Raeve is and how much time passed between the flashbacks and now.

This was the point in the book where I noted that it isn’t fun to be in Raeve’s head. 13 chapters in and I still don’t know anything about the main character, other than that she is a cliche assasin amnesia princess who likes the word cock. I felt like I was reading a teenage girl’s diary. The only other info I got about Raeve is that she can’t make up her damn mind about Kaan. Literally sentence by sentence is changes between Raeve raving about Kaan’s scent or Raeve fantasising about killing him. And I didn’t understand why she wants to kill him so much. I would understand dislike and distrust, but Kaan has done nothing to warrant Raeve’s wrath. I concluded that Raeve’s thoughts are like this, because somehow there must be “enemies” if we want to get to the lovering. The enemies were forced. If this story was true enemies to lovers, then Raeve would have fallen in love with Rekk Zharos.

Speaking of Rekk Zharos, Raeve is on abut kiling him, because he is the main ad guy number one. Up until chapter 50, where Raeve does a complete 180 and instead of trying to escape from Kaan and continue her pursuit of Rekk, she just decides to have a little holiday in Kaan’s kingdom. Oh yeah, but before they get to Kaan’ kingdom, there is a completely senseless part where Raeve runs away from Kaan, after a failed attempt of sex, she gets captured by a stereotypical underdeveloped tribe who live in caves – obviously they immediately worship her and want her to have many magical babies, but thank the cringe gods Kaan saves her by being a hunk of muscle.

After chapter 50, Raeve doesn’t make sense at all, to be fair, nor do the other characters. Kaan’s sister is quickly out of the picture, his friends are set pieces, and thankfully, the book is over even though the plot didn’t plot and no moon hatched.

Maybe the plot will plot, and the adjectives will die, but I surely won’t be there to read it.

InkMind

Book title: Tales of Mystery and the Macabre
Author: Elisabeth Gaskell
Published: 2008
Edition: Wordsworth Editions – Paperback
InkMind Goodreads Rating: ★★★☆☆

This book really was a mixed bag. Or maybe more of a mystery bag. Nothing can be assumed based on the title of the story I was about to read. The stories vary in intensity, gruesomeness, and mystery level. But out of all the stories, only the final one, ‘Disappearances,’ was truly disappointing.

I found it interesting that the ‘macabre’ part of the title seems to refer to the macabre nature of the people, rather than the stories themselves. It was refreshing and interesting to see men succumb to madness and superstition, and it also showed an interesting societal pathology, sort of a twisted mirror where the reader gets to see the experience of the true ‘mad man’ of the times. The overall tone and characterisation were really good. People acted and thought accurately in the time and setting of each story. That said, ‘The squire’s story’ stood out for how confusing it was for me. I found it difficult to follow who is who, because of the style of description of family relations.

While reading ‘The Poor Clare’, I noted that Gaskell’s writing is better when the story is longer and has room to breathe. I often got lost in the details, which seemed quite unnecessary when it came to the shorter stories, and I felt that Gaskell tried to compress a complete story into a short tale and failed. This issue with compressing stories is most notable in ‘The Doom of the Griffiths’ and ‘Disappearances’. The first of these is a typical prophecy story, but the conclusion is rushed, and the latter seems like a story that was supposed to be something else, something more. I didn’t really understand why ‘Disappearances’ is a story in this collection. It was quite disappointing to close the book with the weakest story.

On the other hand, the first story, ‘The nurse’s tale’, is the perfect opening story for this collection. It sets the tone for the rest of the book, but also subverts some expectations for the outstanding stories, for example ‘Lois the Witch’ and ‘The Grey Woman’. The latter was particularly my favourite, although it was hard to decide between these two. Although the reason why I chose ‘The Grey Woman’ as my favourite instead of ‘Lois the Witch’ is down to the last part of that story. I noted during reading that ‘Lois the Witch’ should have ended with “and lived a bachelor all his life long for her sake.”

Overall, I enjoyed this book, and some of the stories stood out sufficiently that I would definitely recommend them, but I would not recommend the whole book because of the weaker stories.