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3.92 AVERAGE
3.92 AVERAGE
This is no Daughter of Smoke and Bone (which I loved) but this book is still fantastic. I personally loved the third story the most.. I would've loved to read that story as a full fledged book :)
Tl;dr |✭✭✭✭✩| Overall, these were rather enjoyable stories. My favorite was Spicy Little Curses, and the other two were good, but in my opinion not as good. Hatchling was a little odd, and felt a little too long to me. And Goblin Fruit was kind of your typical, girl thinks she's ugly and attracts the hot dude story, with a fantasy twist.
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Description Laini Taylor weaves three stories about the magic and wonder of kissing, and the romance with it. From Goodreads: Goblin Fruit
In Victorian times, goblin men had only to offer young girls sumptuous fruits to tempt them to sell their souls. But what does it take to tempt today's savvy girls?
Spicy Little Curses
A demon and the ambassador to Hell tussle over the soul of a beautiful English girl in India. Matters become complicated when she falls in love and decides to test her curse.
Hatchling
Six days before Esme's fourteenth birthday, her left eye turns from brown to blue. She little suspects what the change heralds, but her small safe life begins to unravel at once. What does the beautiful, fanged man want with her, and how is her fate connected to a mysterious race of demons?
So, these stories! I was a little unsure at first... what with them being YA romance short stories. I've never really read many short stories.... so I just really didn't know what I was getting into. And the first story, Goblin Fruit, was ok. It felt too stereotypical to me though. It boils down to outcast weird girl with a weird family longs for a relationship, meets a new transfer hot dude who shows interest, flirtations ensue.
Her family sounds crazy, heaven knows I wouldn't want to have to chop off the head of a swan for some burial ritual. But her grandma is awesome, even though we only get her through memories. But yeah, this story was ok but it wasn't really memorable, and I don't know that I'd ever read a full length version of it.
Now, the story Spicy Little Curses was everything I could want in a short story. It had such a fantastic plot, and I would most definitely want to read it as a full length novel, maybe even a series of books. Thats how much a i liked this story.
The old woman who acts as an ambassador to the afterworld is amazing. She's feisty and awesome, and I love that she isn't content to let the demon take all the innocent lives he wants. So when the curse has to be delivered to the newborn English baby (this book is set in India, sorry I forgot to mention that detail), she does so with a heavy heart. Fast forward 18 years, and the cursed young lady has never once wanted to test her curse (of which she is fully aware). And then she meets a dashing young man, newly come to town. And for the first time in her life, she is tempted to see if her curse is real or not. Gosh, I just can't get over how much I loved this story.
And the final story, Hatchling. This one... if I were to rate this one story with stars, it would have gotten 2 stars. A young girl and her mother, both with vibrant red hair, must flee for their lives when the daughter wakes up in the middle of the night hearing wolves howling. The daughter knows nothing about her mother's mysterious life before she was born, and it isn't until they come across a dark stranger that her mother seems to know that the truth finally comes out.
This story just didn't resound with me. It felt too long to me, and it was rather dark. Dark stories are fine and all, but... I don't know. I didn't care for any of the characters, though I did pity the mother. I don't know how I felt about the shape shifters, especially the the rouge dude. I just don't know. And I guess that kind of sums up the story for me.... it didn't feel like it belonged with the other two, and I couldn't connect with it.
Laini Taylor's writing style is great throughout, though. I will always love her story telling. Even if I don't particularly like the story, I will always appreciate the way she has the story unfold, the language she uses, the way she sets up the characters.
Overall, I'd recommend this book to someone who is looking for some different short stories!
7/11/2015 4.5Let me just say that I LOVED THIS BOOK. The stories were so masterfully crafted. The Indian one did make me wince a little bit, but Laini Taylors writing is the absolute best.
Story 1: Goblin Fruit
This was probably my least favourite story, to be honest. I didn’t really like Kizzy. I know that short stories aren’t meant to be about character development, really, but she just irritated me. And with her family and history, it could have gone so much more in depth. But I still loved the concept, and I think that the introduction worked really well with the story she told. And of course the writing was beautiful, which made me happy.
Story 2: Spicy Little Curses Such as These.
I think Taylor didn’t quite use the Hindu idea of Hell as I understand it (and I’ve lived in India for nine years)- I see the Indian place of hell as more like where demons hang out (not necessarily Yama though) and if you are bad, you’re reincarnated in a lower body or caste. And when it said that Anamique knew all the names of the Hindu gods- well, that’s impossible. Still, though, the story was awesome. I adore the British Raj (at least the history, if not the policies it enacted) and I loved the sense of place in the tale. The concept was a unique one, and the way she contrasted the two kisses was excellent. There was also the idea of the power of silence, which is really interesting, and added to Anamique’s character. And of course Estelle & her cohort were very fun to read about.
Story/ Novella 3: Hatchling
I can say quite safely that this was the most bizarre story. It was really well written though. The characters developed quite a lot more, and the idea of Queens and wolfs and speaking magic and the trust of transformation were amazing. It was shocking, but beautiful. And the image of patchwork compassion from a patchwork soul stayed with me. It does go into quite a bit of backstory, and that’s awkward, like it was in DoSaB . Still, I thought the characters were really interesting to read about, and I appreciated the way that Esme began to see herself, and Mab’s fierce motherhood, and the delightful creepiness, and the themes of compassion and humility. I also loved the language- that smattering of words added such power to the story.
The Kisses
The kisses are really the uniting feature of this collection, and if you read the introductions on their own they word really well together. The epigraph-souls meet on lovers lips- is a really interesting idea that’s explored, and the emotional as well as spiritual/magical element of kisses is an interesting thing to consider. Of course, the plot of each story hangs on a kiss-but each tale offers more than that too, which I love.
In conclusion: READ LIPS TOUCH IT’S SO BEAUTIFUL.
One of my biggest complaints with other short story collections is that I want more, that the stories don't give me enough story, you don't have this issue with Lips Touch. There are just three stories to the collection, they are rather in depth, the first is quick and short, a taster of whats to come. And then you get two morw multichapter ventures. One thing I must say to you is if you want nice happily ever afters, this is not the collection for you. These stories are dark, there is no good and bad, just black and white andbad choices or worse ones. The characters can be selfish and they can do the wrong thing and they are human.
After reading the DoSaB trilogy by Taylor you come to expect that nothing is going to be happy and bright, good is not clear, nor is bad. The same is true from these collections, people are just doing the best with what they are given in the stories, and you understand when people act stupidly because people are flawed.
I think my favourite part of these stories is that the explore so many different things, there are folktale elements to the stories, and look at ancient religions and there is a whole world of mythology being used in them. Taylor even acknowledges how she has taken various elements of different religions and manipulated them to how she wished to use them. Whilst it may not all be accurate, it sure makes interesting and unique storytelling.
I really enjoyed the collection, but it certianly isn't what you expect, and that can sometimes be the best thing for books. I would recommend it to anyone that enjoys mythology and folktales because you get the best of both in these three stories.
I read lots of good things about this book before finally giving this book a go. Many reviewers said how wonderful the writing is and how beautiful the stories are. But I have to say that I'm a bit disappointed. As a whole, I definitely don't hate it, but I have varying problems with each of the stories and a pretty big problem with the writing. Let me explain.
The writing: Overall, there is just way too much exposition. Particularly in the last story, I found myself reading and reading not because I was especially engrossed in the story but because I was waiting for the actual story to continue and for the payoff at the end. At times, we could be in the middle of a scene, and a character would start to reminisce about things that happened in the past, and then suddenly we're launched into this whole other story before eventually returning to the original scene. And I also often found that the story itself was told in a way that felt kind of distant, by which I mean that, instead of being specific and detailed and present in a scene, we would get instead more like a glossed over description of what happened. I think saying that I rarely felt present in the story is the best way to describe it, and this feeling is pretty consistent between all three of the stories in the book.
The second story: This story saved it for me. I loved the character of Estella. She was just so tragic. I mean, she spends the majority of her life grieving for her husband and love of her life, whose time with her was far too short. She LITERALLY goes to Hell to bring him back, but instead ends up with the job of bartering for the lives of children with a demon whose greatest desire is to kill as many as he can in as brutal a manner as he can. On top of this, she's known throughout the town as "the old bitch" when she spends her days saving the lives of their children. And in the end, she even gives her life for them as well as for the girl she always regretted cursing so that the girl might be with the one she loves, just like Estella couldn't. It's so wonderfully tragic. My problem with this story was said girl. She knows she's cursed to bring death to anyone who hears her voice, so she spends her entire life silent despite the heckling of her family and her own doubts. And then it's the work of a couple seconds' fear on the part of the guy she loves to send her running around like an emotional wreck, singing an opera at the top of her lungs and killing everyone in the vicinity.... Really? It was at this point that I began to despair of any girl in these stories having any common sense at all... But the ending was satisfying, and it seems she grows up into a stronger woman. Plus, I liked the other characters and the plot well enough to overcome her annoying lack of sense.
The third story: This story is the longest, and while it is interesting and I really enjoyed the mythology of it, I definitely don't think it needs to be so long. There is SO MUCH exposition in this story, it's ridiculous. It makes the story feel long and labored, glossing over potentially interesting scenes and explaining without showing. But the story at its core is fantastic. There is so much richness to it, so much history and importance to it. Oddly, even though I feel like it was too long, I also feel like it should have been an entire book unto itself. It makes me want to go back and rewrite it, restructuring it, removing all the exposition and replacing it with real substance, and exploring the depths of some of the other characters. It just could have been so much better, and this frustrates me.
