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A review by brontesaurusrex
Cloud and Ashes: Three Winter's Tales by Greer Gilman
5.0
Process of reading this book--
Me: "Wait, so by wood here, do you mean wood, a forest, madness, or arousal? Does Law mean... well, laws or a hill? Is Jack Daw's Pack a pack of cards, a gang, or something he carries his stuff in?"
Book: "Yes."
Me: "Cool, I guess I'll just take ten minutes to read every page, then."
Cloud and Ashes is a book that my brain doesn't fully get, but my gut does, to the point that I adore it both in spite of and because of its density and brutality. I can really probably only get as precise about my thoughts as those old Victorian reviews of Wuthering Heights going on about its "power." I get the plot, I could tell you the events from beginning to end, but that's really just the beginning of what this book is and hardly does it justice. Equally important is the tangled folk mythology of the world of Cloud--cyclical, circular, overlapping--and the language where one, two, or all possible meanings of a word can be the correct one at once. It's complicated and messy, but it makes perfect sense in a John Barleycorn sort of way.
Nothing about this is easy to read. Even the moments that are relatively simple to digest as far as what's happening are full of suffering, violence, and fatalism. Maybe Annis was onto something stopping time in Moonwise, because the things Ashes--and the girls who become Ashes--have to go through to keep the year turning are terrible.
But for all that, it's also beautiful. It's heartbreakingly beautiful. I've never read a book that feels like it's as old and convoluted as actual folklore that's been passed down through generations by oral storytelling traditions rather than writing. This is the best depiction of the power of lunar symbolism probably ever.
So that's incoherent and unhelpful, but I've gone through this book three times now and by then you start feeling like you need to say something about what brought on multiple reads and why they're probably not enough.
Me: "Wait, so by wood here, do you mean wood, a forest, madness, or arousal? Does Law mean... well, laws or a hill? Is Jack Daw's Pack a pack of cards, a gang, or something he carries his stuff in?"
Book: "Yes."
Me: "Cool, I guess I'll just take ten minutes to read every page, then."
Cloud and Ashes is a book that my brain doesn't fully get, but my gut does, to the point that I adore it both in spite of and because of its density and brutality. I can really probably only get as precise about my thoughts as those old Victorian reviews of Wuthering Heights going on about its "power." I get the plot, I could tell you the events from beginning to end, but that's really just the beginning of what this book is and hardly does it justice. Equally important is the tangled folk mythology of the world of Cloud--cyclical, circular, overlapping--and the language where one, two, or all possible meanings of a word can be the correct one at once. It's complicated and messy, but it makes perfect sense in a John Barleycorn sort of way.
Nothing about this is easy to read. Even the moments that are relatively simple to digest as far as what's happening are full of suffering, violence, and fatalism. Maybe Annis was onto something stopping time in Moonwise, because the things Ashes--and the girls who become Ashes--have to go through to keep the year turning are terrible.
But for all that, it's also beautiful. It's heartbreakingly beautiful. I've never read a book that feels like it's as old and convoluted as actual folklore that's been passed down through generations by oral storytelling traditions rather than writing. This is the best depiction of the power of lunar symbolism probably ever.
So that's incoherent and unhelpful, but I've gone through this book three times now and by then you start feeling like you need to say something about what brought on multiple reads and why they're probably not enough.