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A review by rodneywilhite
The Raising: Novel by Laura Kasischke
4.0
Somewhere between three and four stars. It started out so mysteriously, but gradually became a conventional mystery novel with all the requisite plausibility issues of conventional mystery novels.
I really don't care for tidy plots, so when all the threads started coming together into a resolution I started resisting and resisting. I don't wanna spoil anything, but :[
Oh, but when it was working, it was working so so well. There is a moonlit aura about the first 250 pages or so that was pure magic, where you couldn't tell who was dead, who was alive, who was a ghost, who was a succubus--or even if it actually mattered. I missed that weird poetry once it was gone.
Recommended? Yeah, sure, it's about the same quality as a really solid netflix series, and occasionally transcends its form. If you like conventional plots, go all in on this one. It's a master class in weaving disparate threads and having them cohere into a whole. If you're more like me and you like loose-ended, open, airy (non-)plots with bizarre ambivalences and a lot of genre confusion, you'll probably still like it, because it kind of is that too.
I really don't care for tidy plots, so when all the threads started coming together into a resolution I started resisting and resisting. I don't wanna spoil anything, but :[
Oh, but when it was working, it was working so so well. There is a moonlit aura about the first 250 pages or so that was pure magic, where you couldn't tell who was dead, who was alive, who was a ghost, who was a succubus--or even if it actually mattered. I missed that weird poetry once it was gone.
Recommended? Yeah, sure, it's about the same quality as a really solid netflix series, and occasionally transcends its form. If you like conventional plots, go all in on this one. It's a master class in weaving disparate threads and having them cohere into a whole. If you're more like me and you like loose-ended, open, airy (non-)plots with bizarre ambivalences and a lot of genre confusion, you'll probably still like it, because it kind of is that too.