Elizabeth

The reviewing format that audio has set up can be helpful, but in this case makes it difficult to say what I liked and disliked without "spoiling" this book. Because as with the other Jonathan Carroll book I read, "White Apples" I loved the book with reservations. What I loved was the amazing imagination at work here. My favorite sort of speculative fiction is a book that changes one thing about life as we know it, and plays with that concept. This book does that splendidly. I was enthralled. Which was a good thing, because as with "White Apples", I found the egocentric main character and very hard to empathize with. He treats the female characters as useful tools to be used and disgarded, with no real human attachment. Despite this,I would still recommend this book. It was a fascinating read.

Talking about the most memorable moments would risk spoilers

Finding out what Welsh sounds like when I can't travel there was wonderful, and greatly added to the story

A fascinating journey with one of the most memorable of literary young people

Have you read Jo Walton? I just finished "Among Others" and am very excited to find she has written a bunch of other books. "Among Others" is set in South Wales. The main character is fifteen, and a survivor of something horrible in her past, something not explained at the beginning of the book. She also talks to fairies, but the reader is unsure if they are really there or the product of a traumatized mind. Her main character, Mor, is wonderful. She is fifteen, brilliant, troubled, geeky, and obsessed with Science Fiction (Meg from "Wrinkle in Time" combined with Holden Caulfield), and the SF part is wonderful because the story is a frame for lists, discussion, and debate about books that I read during my first love affair with the genre, as the book is set in 1979. I loved this book, but it had something in common with one of my other favorite books, "Swamplandia". I think the author was propelled by her fabulous characters, and fabulous world, and didn't know how to end her story, so the ending was somewhat abrupt, a tad deus ex machina. But I will forgive her that because it was a fabulous journey. I listened to this book, and found the reader, Katherine Kellgren, to be wonderful. I had no idea what a Welsh accent would sound like (my kids were enormously amused by my struggle with the language in "The Dark Is Rising" series) so I was fascinated with the lilt and nuance of the language, but the aural book was also frustrating because I so wanted a written record of all the books mentioned and discussed. I should have used the note taking and bookmarking features, but I was too anxious to find out what happens.

Talented reader reading entertaining story with much sly humor .

Will lady Georgiana survive penury, difficult relatives and friends, dead bodies in the bathtub, and murder attempts or be shipped off to a backwater to be lady in waiting to an aging royal? Time and an entertaining read will tell.

Wonderful voicing of diverse characters

Giggled repeatedly

The wonderful, screwy fabulous Bigtree family.Before circumstances send them spinning out of control, I wanted to be one of them, wrestling alligators, and running wild in the Florida everglades.

Ava Bigtree of course. Precocious, funny, brave, the loss of her mother leaves her untethered and vulnerable to evil.

The narrators vividly capture the voices of Karen Russell's wonderful characters

Unforgetable

This is a wonderful, wonderful book, one of my favorites of all time. Everyone should read it. That said, I thought that Russell didn't know how to end it. I found the last bit of the book weaker than the start, but it is still an a fabulously imagined world with characters that jump off the page, voices that will stay with you for the rest of your life. How can a book be side splittingly funny, and heartbreakingly tragic.

Vivid, enthralling, and entertaining.

Dicken's boys, David Copperfild and Oliver Twist because the heroine is an orphaned waif from the same era, but this book combines them with a penny dreadful novel: plot driven exciting heroic and over the top.

Jackie Faber, of course. Jackie is audacious, fearless, funny, over the top, and a great hearted.

Both.

Oh the reader! She is so very vivid in her reading, and characterization There are probably holes and rough parts to this novel, but who would notice, because we are busy being swept along by her memorable Jackie.

This book's main character would be right at home in a Henning Mankell or Elizabeth George noir detective novel, intense, brooding, and intelligent, it is clear that his work is the focus of his life. The book however, is very different from a classic detective novel because of the wonderful, intensely strange cities in which it is set. Without going into too much detail, which would spoil the lovely sense of discovery the reader experiences as initial confusion changes to awestruck fascination with this amazing imaginary city. The book is literate, exciting, and so amazingly creativeI I was sad to see it come to an end. and I immediately looked for everything else China Mieville has written. The reader, John Lee, also deserves kudos for bringing the book so vividly to life. First rate.