Guilty Pleasures

(Free Poetry Publishing Advice got moved over here when my blog got scrambled.)

Reading Guilty Pleasures, a novel about Anita Blake, vampire hunter. A friend gave it to me -- possibly because I love that baroque Southern spiritualist stuff: Flannery O'Connor is my favourite, Walker Percy not far behind. Of course, this is to that as Kentucky Fried Chicken is to Eudora Welty. Not for me.

On the other hand, she also sent me Gareth Nix's Lirael and its sequel Abhorsen, which I've been looking forward to for months. A different kind of undead novel entirely, a clinging damp terror of a novel. Naturally it's for kids -- horror for the Harry Potter set -- since kid's lit is one of the few places left to tell lots and lots of story. Nix uses too many adverbs (those leeches hungry for the life force of the verb) but is still hard to put down. I'm about half way through re-reading Lirael and enjoying it again.

(Later) Can't ultimately recommend Lirael and Abhorsen -- the set-up is much better than the pay-off. But try the first book, Sabriel, and ignore the unnecessary sequels.