quixoticSo let's play the blurb game! You've been asked to blurb an existing book in a way that is honest, accurate, and true to your feelings on the text. Most of these will probably not be used for publication, because when I'm being honest, accurate, and true, there's a lot of swearing.
I'll start:
"This book is like a cozy blanket for my soul. A cozy blanket full of evil clowns and profanity. IT is the most comforting thing I have ever read." —Stephen King's IT.
"Matthew Swift's London crackles with electric fire, neon heartbreak, and all the power and sideways logic of urban sorcery. Kate Griffin is at the top of her game, and she just keeps getting better." —Kate Griffin's Neon Court.
"FUCK YEAH, SEAKING." —Peter Clines's Ex-Heroes.
"It takes a truly great story, and a truly great writer, to make a book about rabbits more true to the human condition than most books about humanity." —Richard Adams's Watership Down.
"Lucy Snyder attacks the page with the raw, manic intensity of an early Sam Raimi. Jessie Shimmer is urban fantasy's answer to Ash from The Evil Dead: ballsy, profane, and too much fun to put down." —Lucy Snyder's Spellbent.
"Hey, look! It's a retelling of 'Tam Lin' that makes me root for Janet! That never happens!" —Pamela Dean's Tam Lin.
"You need to meet the people in this book. They have things to tell you." —Janet Kagan's Hellspark.
"The true power of fairy tale archetypes is the way they let us tell the stories that need to be told while framing them in a veil of the familiar. Jim Hines has created a Cinderella with a future, a Sleeping Beauty with a past, and a Snow White present in more than merely apples. These books are all the stronger for not being 'serious' fiction; by the time you realize that you're learning, it's too late. You've been taught." —Jim Hines's The Stepsister Scheme.
Now it's your turn! BLURB THE WORLD!
March 27 2011, 08:02:27 UTC 6 years ago
I just started it today, and -- wait, what do you mean, I've read it all and have to wait months for the next one? No fair! -- Seanan McGuire's Late Eclipses
With apologies to all of the marvelous books by all of the marvelous authors -- this one was the best book I've read this year -- Karen Lord's Redemption in Indigo
Er, well... maybe except for this one. -- Carla Speed McNeil's Voice
This one made me cry the way I really needed to after my father's funeral. -- Peter Beagle's We Never Talk About My Brother
Okay, so, some day, I'm going to stop pretending I'm not crying when I get to the end of this story. -- Ted Chiang's "Exhalation" (which I have now read aloud about three times)
So, thanks for recommending this one, Seanan -- you were totally right. -- Bill Willingham's Peter and Max
So, your kid's too young for The Orphan's Tales? Start the kid on this one. Plus, it gives adventures to the sorts of people who usually have to stay home. -- Grace Lin's Where the Mountain Meets the Moon
On page one, I was laughing my head off. By the end, I was moved to tears. -- Nancy Springer's Dusssie
You know, if she'd just cut about two hundred pages of Harry Potter and the Blair Witch Endless Camping Trip, there's a lot to like in this book -- J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
All I know is that I went to read one chapter before bed, and suddenly I was in chapter three. -- Gene Wolfe's The Shadow of the Torturer
When I bought this, the bookseller told me, "When you reach the last page, you will laugh so hard!" He was totally right. -- Jack Vance's The Face, fourth of the Demon Princes books.
So, retelling of the Arthurian saga with a present day setting and cast isn't too hard to pull off at least well enough. Doing that with the Grail material? That's trickier. Doing it with the Percival version of the Grail tale? Wow. I wouldn't want to try. But, the author tackles it, taking on the hardest parts of the story, and makes it ring true. -- Catherine Fisher's Corbenik
Wow, I love what you've done with my city! -- The Fisher King, the movie
It's The Wizard of Oz! No, really! -- H. P. Lovecraft's Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath
Oh! This is what White Wolf was aiming for with Changeling: The Dreaming. They missed by a mile. -- Charles de Lint's Jack of Kinrowan
So, imagine a shared world anthology series where folks thought carefully about where it was going, how it would get there, and where the series would end, and then made it so, ending it on precisely the right note. -- The Liavek anthologies
Not every story was to my taste, but there was not a bad story among them. Heck, there was not even a merely okay story among them! -- The SFWA European Hall of Fame
When I read the original trilogy, I was amazed. Apart from some outdated notions of gender roles, it aged pretty well. Then, I read the fourth one, which had just come out in paperback. Except for correcting the outdated notions of gender roles, it was dated. -- Isaac Asimov's Foundation books
I laughed so hard reading this that my brother came running upstairs to my room to make sure I was all right. -- Richard Armour's Twisted Tales from Shakespeare
March 28 2011, 21:04:59 UTC 6 years ago
March 29 2011, 03:22:26 UTC 6 years ago