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stephbookshine 's review for:
Honeycomb
by Joanne M. Harris
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