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December 29, 2017 , Fri | Reviews | 0 or add you thoughts!

“Drosselmeier’s more delicate and individualized figures were reserved as gifts for Klara. A Russian princess in a painted wooden cloak. A Cleopatra in Egyptian blue. A charming family of pigs in graduated heights that stood on hind legs and wore nothing but pince-nezs, all of them, except the very smallest, who with a potbelly and a sour expression stood looking down and sucking her cloven hoof.”

Themes:

  • Creation, in so many forms
  • The influence dreams can have on real life
  • What we lose and/or forget the further we get from childhood

This “tale of the once and future nutcracker” is fantastic! Much darker than I expected, Hiddensee actually focuses on the life of Drosselmeier, not the nutcracker. However, I loved this. Exploring the story of the legendary toymaker, known throughout this novel as simply Dirk, was a joy for this lifelong nutcracker fan.

I’ve never read something by Maguire before, so his style of writing—quite formal, somewhat blunt—took me a few chapters to get used to. I’ll admit that as I started this, I wasn’t sure if it would live up to my hopes and expectations. Once I grew accustomed to the voice, I found myself immersed in the world Maguire so masterfully builds and enjoying the language. read more

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October 29, 2017 , Sun | Reviews | 0 or add you thoughts!

“The second thing I thought was that I knew everything. Lettie Hempstock’s ocean flowed inside me, and it filled the entire universe, from Egg to Rose. I knew that. I knew what Egg was—where the universe began, to the sound of uncreated voices singing in the void—and I knew where Rose was—the peculiar crinkling of space on space into dimensions that fold like origami and blossom like strange orchids, and which would mark the last good time before the eventual end of everything and the next Big Bang, which would be, I knew now, nothing of the kind.”

Themes:

  • Unreliable memory and the fluidity of time
  • The idea that good and evil work on a scale
  • The individuality of wisdom and knowledge

Seriously, I am blown away. I bought this several years ago at Miami Book Fair. It’s a signed copy Books & Books (the primary independent bookstore in South Florida) had in its back stock. It has been sitting on my tbr since then. It has come along with me all four of the times I’ve moved house since purchasing it. All because it was Gaiman, so I knew it was good. I just had to, at some point, be in the right mood and pick it up. That happened recently, and it’s now on my list of all-time favorites. read more

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