Scan barcode
A review by jun_shi
The Virgin's Promise: Writing Stories of Feminine Creative, Spiritual, and Sexual Awakening by Kim Hudson
5.0
I got a lot out of this book. It's more broadly applicable than its title suggests. That is, it applies to male characters as much as female characters, and the author consistently demonstrates that with examples. So if you're thinking, "But my MC is a guy," that's not a reason to skip past this book, which provides a thought-provoking analogue to the hero's journey.
I have a couple issues with the book that made that fifth star flicker on and off in my head while I was reading:
1. It _did_ bog down a bit for me in the middle, when there was a lot of what, at the time, I considered rehashing of the hero's journey. Candidly, I wondered if the author had just run out of new things to say and very nearly put the book on my DNF pile. Persevering through that, however, I found that it was setup for very insightful comparison of the virgin and hero archetypes. I'm not 100% convinced it was all necessary background--I question how many people picking this up are unfamiliar with the hero archetype, but it _would_ be critical for those readers, I suppose, and ultimately, it was harmless (though a "just trust me for this next bit" may have kept me from almost putting it down).
2. I read the Kindle version, so I can't speak to the print version, but wow--the typos. I've never seen so many in a published work. However, I'm not inclined to blame the author. They were all of the same sort, which makes me think there may have been a conversion issue in producing the Kindle file. All of them were of the form: break the correct word into two pieces, or join two correct words into one incorrect one. For example: in _many_ places "a new" was rendered as "anew", "often" was rendered as "of ten", or the amusing "femme fatale" becoming "femme fat ale". This happened at a rate of about every few pages, so it became somewhat distracting. It didn't exclusively produce valid words: for example: "service" sometimes became "ser vice" or "form" became "for m". It has the feel of a machine-produced error rather than a human one, so I'm hopeful that readers of the print version weren't subjected to this distraction.
Those two issues would have been enough to knock my rating down to 4 stars. However, I reserve 5 stars for those books that I believe will have a significant and lasting impact on me, and this book absolutely will, making the issues trivial compared to the benefit I received from reading this book.
I have a couple issues with the book that made that fifth star flicker on and off in my head while I was reading:
1. It _did_ bog down a bit for me in the middle, when there was a lot of what, at the time, I considered rehashing of the hero's journey. Candidly, I wondered if the author had just run out of new things to say and very nearly put the book on my DNF pile. Persevering through that, however, I found that it was setup for very insightful comparison of the virgin and hero archetypes. I'm not 100% convinced it was all necessary background--I question how many people picking this up are unfamiliar with the hero archetype, but it _would_ be critical for those readers, I suppose, and ultimately, it was harmless (though a "just trust me for this next bit" may have kept me from almost putting it down).
2. I read the Kindle version, so I can't speak to the print version, but wow--the typos. I've never seen so many in a published work. However, I'm not inclined to blame the author. They were all of the same sort, which makes me think there may have been a conversion issue in producing the Kindle file. All of them were of the form: break the correct word into two pieces, or join two correct words into one incorrect one. For example: in _many_ places "a new" was rendered as "anew", "often" was rendered as "of ten", or the amusing "femme fatale" becoming "femme fat ale". This happened at a rate of about every few pages, so it became somewhat distracting. It didn't exclusively produce valid words: for example: "service" sometimes became "ser vice" or "form" became "for m". It has the feel of a machine-produced error rather than a human one, so I'm hopeful that readers of the print version weren't subjected to this distraction.
Those two issues would have been enough to knock my rating down to 4 stars. However, I reserve 5 stars for those books that I believe will have a significant and lasting impact on me, and this book absolutely will, making the issues trivial compared to the benefit I received from reading this book.