"Beauty and Delicious [the cousins about whom the family did not speak] were twins, the only children of Marwis, the Thane's youngest brother who had died some years ago in a plane crash. As Marwis's wife was also long dead, the twins were left parentless. They coped with this bravely, and some years later arrived in London a pair of cheerful, drunken, drug-taking degenerates who had started abusing their bodies when they were young and carried on happily ever since. After accidentally burning down the family home in Scotland they decided it was time to seek new challenges and had moved south to start a band and see what fun they could have. Now twenty-two, the twins spent most of their time in an alcohol-induced haze in their house in Camden in North London, listening to music and practising guitar.
... They flatly refused to move back to Scotland. Much as the Thane and Verasa might like to drag them back to the family estates, there was no way to do this short of kidnapping. The family had considered this."
- Lonely Werewolf Girl, Martin Millar
The whole book is narrated like this, in short, choppy sentences delightfully filling you in on the many details that could have been dropped in here and there throughout the actual story. I'm waiting for it to get good, but nearly 600 pages is too much to suffer through. Perhaps I should have headed the reviews on Amazon.
The Witch of Cologne is a much less quotable book, but infinitely better. One of the few books with an unhappy ending that I actually approve of. I'm just not a real fan of endings. When I reread a book I usually read everything up until the big, dramatic finish, but this one I'm actually planning on rereading all the way through. (Granted, I usually read fantasy books that have something to do with a huge, epic battle that I couldn't care less about--give me my characters dammit! I don't care about the rest of the world as we know it.)
No comments:
Post a Comment