I was fated to read this book. We were at Barnes and Noble and I had forgotten my book list. And I'm kinda in a dry spell right now anyway. I need to find some good books. I decided to just wander up and down the isles in the fiction arena. As I was just starting down the fantasy isle a book with a stark black and white cover caught my eye.
When I got cloer the book, perched face outward on the shelf, fell into the isle at my feet. Fate? or over stocked shelves? And aren't the two really the same thing anyway?
Raisins are graps, pickles are cucumbers and fate is jsut an over stocked shelf....
So I bought the book.
Here's the publishers blurb.
"Beneath every beloved legend there is a deeper legend still, etched in
ancient stone. The Dragon and the Unicorn begins before the beginning
of Time, as light first cools to matter, bearing within it the electron
glow of lost Heaven. Attanasio's epic tale of a quest for immortality
spans all history, human and demihuman, from the dung fires on the
steppes to the snows of the Himalayas, from the mudhut cities on
the Euphrates to the glass and steel towers of tomorrow, from the
hunt for the Unicorn's horn to the ceaseless wars of elf and dragon,
Celt and Roman. It is a quest that ends - and begins - in a
legend-heavy place at the edge of the Western Sea, with the first
cry of a King new born. A place called Tintagel. A King, the heir
Pendragon, called Eagle of Thor, or...Arthur."
2 comments:
Aaarg.... Unless this book does a 180 it's going to be another let down.
I couldn't do it. About 150 pages in I gave up. Not so much gave up, as gurgled in frustration and chucked it across the room. It was still laying there this morning, glaring at me. And you know what? The premise was great. It was such an original fresh idea. And such a grand goal, the retelling of old legends through this fresh vision. But I just couldn't take it. The story wasn't moving. I kept telling myself to keep reading, that it might take off on the next page. And who knows, maybe I quite a page too early. But I just couldn't take it anymore.
I think I've come to a place where I expect a little more from my sci-fi fantasy. And this just didn't deliver. I believe that you can combine a fresh approach, good story telling, interesting characters and leave the elves and faeries out of it and still call it fantasy.
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