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annathepiperThe idea is raised in Gina Farago's Ivy Cole and the Moon tha a girl born south of the Mason-Dixon line is always a part of the South. My parts of Kentucky are more Midwest than Southern--yet they're close enough that I suspect something of that very idea may draw me to novels set there. Especially fantasy novels, or in this particular case, horror.
Ivy Cole and the Moon is not a particularly fast-paced work. But then, it doesn't need to be; instead, like a summer night in the South, it is heavy and redolent with atmosphere. It slowly builds until, as if with the inevitable Midwest or Southern thunderstorm, the tension blows over at last. Farago knows the pace she needs to set and sets it well, handing out careful pieces of her werewolf heroine's backstory while she hunts another of her kind--who, unlike her, is taking innocent prey. While her style occasionally struck me as a little too cumbersome, there was also a refreshing lack of dialect tricks in her rendering of her Southern accents; where many authors might have taken shortcuts, dropping g's and writing out pronuncuations phonetically, her dialogue was wonderfully clear. There's not quite enough suspense here to make the plot truly surprising... but then, thunderstorms in the South rarely are. And sometimes, a good storm is refreshing indeed. I'll give this one three stars.
Ivy Cole and the Moon is not a particularly fast-paced work. But then, it doesn't need to be; instead, like a summer night in the South, it is heavy and redolent with atmosphere. It slowly builds until, as if with the inevitable Midwest or Southern thunderstorm, the tension blows over at last. Farago knows the pace she needs to set and sets it well, handing out careful pieces of her werewolf heroine's backstory while she hunts another of her kind--who, unlike her, is taking innocent prey. While her style occasionally struck me as a little too cumbersome, there was also a refreshing lack of dialect tricks in her rendering of her Southern accents; where many authors might have taken shortcuts, dropping g's and writing out pronuncuations phonetically, her dialogue was wonderfully clear. There's not quite enough suspense here to make the plot truly surprising... but then, thunderstorms in the South rarely are. And sometimes, a good storm is refreshing indeed. I'll give this one three stars.
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Date: 2007-08-31 05:46 am (UTC)Just a note to say Hi. and to say I'm glad we're friends.
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Date: 2007-09-02 11:44 pm (UTC)