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4.17 AVERAGE
4.17 AVERAGE
adventurous
hopeful
lighthearted
relaxing
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
An enchanting tapestry of stories -- all separate short stories at the beginning of the book, and many woven together by the end. It reads like a love letter to stories and fables.
adventurous
hopeful
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
adventurous
lighthearted
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
It feels like a book that Zachary and Dorian may have found in The Starless Sea, which has recently become a favorite of mine.
Haunting. Breath-taking. Spellbinding. I’m struggling to find the words to do justice to this beautiful volume (inside and out), so please bear with me!
Honeycomb is a series of very short stories, held together by the worldbuilding wax of the Silken Folk’s world (as opposed to the clumsy oversized world of us Sightless Folk) to form an intricate wider pattern full of stories within stories and insects, lots of insects, especially bees.
I utterly refuse to believe that these stories haven’t always been out there – familiar, classic folktales handed down through the generations to warn us of the perils of accepting gifts from beautiful strangers, or wandering alone in the dark – and yet there is something completely fresh, strange… almost alien… about the world Joanne Harris has created here and the characters that populate it.
Certain characters reoccur – the Lacewing King, the Harlequin, the Spider Queen, the Barefoot Princess – as do certain settings, like the farm. Other stories are as individual and fleeting as dewdrops on spiderwebs. Each is so, so perfectly imagined and expressed.
Within and throughout, you will find love and kindness, cruelty and spite, sacrifice, revenge and redemption. I could go with the obvious simile and say this book is as sweet as honey, but also carries a few stings, which would be true, but doesn’t really do it justice.
This book is exquisitely written and imagined, and I am still captured by emanations from its world now, months after first reading it. I have never looked at insects, or fairytales, in the same way since.
Review by Steph Warren of Bookshine and Readbows blog
Honeycomb is a series of very short stories, held together by the worldbuilding wax of the Silken Folk’s world (as opposed to the clumsy oversized world of us Sightless Folk) to form an intricate wider pattern full of stories within stories and insects, lots of insects, especially bees.
I utterly refuse to believe that these stories haven’t always been out there – familiar, classic folktales handed down through the generations to warn us of the perils of accepting gifts from beautiful strangers, or wandering alone in the dark – and yet there is something completely fresh, strange… almost alien… about the world Joanne Harris has created here and the characters that populate it.
Certain characters reoccur – the Lacewing King, the Harlequin, the Spider Queen, the Barefoot Princess – as do certain settings, like the farm. Other stories are as individual and fleeting as dewdrops on spiderwebs. Each is so, so perfectly imagined and expressed.
Within and throughout, you will find love and kindness, cruelty and spite, sacrifice, revenge and redemption. I could go with the obvious simile and say this book is as sweet as honey, but also carries a few stings, which would be true, but doesn’t really do it justice.
This book is exquisitely written and imagined, and I am still captured by emanations from its world now, months after first reading it. I have never looked at insects, or fairytales, in the same way since.
Review by Steph Warren of Bookshine and Readbows blog
adventurous
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
There is a tale the bees tell.... A fairytale novel built of interconnected stories. A magical adventure through the nine worlds connected by the river Dream. Some of the stories read like fables. The prose and the storytelling have the feeling of very old fairy tales with a few modern tweaks here and there to characters and tropes. The Fae (or Silken Folk in this book) are full of nature magic and trickery. Like the old stories, there is violence and death. As some characters keep coming back, we get character development for several key characters. The author weaves an intricate story web and I was caught up in it. There are beautiful illustrations (black and white as well as some color). In a word, enchanting.
I like the dark, fable-like fairy tales of the book, and it's both written and illustrated gorgeously. However, after the first half, I found the mix of overarching odyssey-esque tale interspersed with often less-than-subtle moral-tastic modern fables stopped working quite so well for me.
Full review is up on my blog.
Full review is up on my blog.
adventurous
challenging
funny
mysterious
medium-paced
It was hard to follow the story arc of the Lacewing King when there was a random farm story set in between. It just seemed like the stories were randomly intertwined and I would have rather had the story types set out separately in sections. I might have also been happy with a novella length collection that was just the Lacewing King and didn't have all the other peripheral stuff.
adventurous
dark
emotional
hopeful
inspiring
lighthearted
mysterious
reflective
relaxing
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix