Book Review: The King of Elfland's Daughter, Lord Dunsany

Title: The King of Elfland's Daughter
Author: Lord Dunsany
Published: 1924
Rating: 4.5 of 5
Page Count: 240
Total Page Count: 523,375
Text Number: 1903
Read Because: reviewed by The Fancy Hat Lady Reads!, ebook from Project Gutenberg
Review: The chief citizens of an obscure village petition their king to put them on the map by sending the prince to fairyland, there to win the hand of a fairy princess and bring magic to the world. In a word, magical—which of course is the point, but magic is hard to write, magic which feels truly more-than-mundane, truly other. And this manages, primarily by inhabiting liminal spaces, boundaries crossed, worlds intermixing: bringing the alien beauty of fairyland into the fields we know is as crucial as the journey the other way, the vivacity and changeability of the moral world a necessary counterpoint to the danger and still beauty of fairyland. The plot rambles, wandering that borderland as it follows its two and a half plot threads, but it's as accessible as any modern mythic fiction/mythpunk. Transporting, funny, beautiful; more about premise than characters, but with memorable characters. This is on my reread list, bookmarked for spring or autumn or even winter: it has an indulgent, evocative voice that lends well to any seasonal setting and evokes many.

Book Review: At the Dark End of the Street, Danielle L. McGuire, narr. Robin Miles

Title: At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape, and Resistance—A New History of the Civil Rights Movement from Rosa Parks to the Rise of Black Power
Author: Danielle L. McGuire
Narrator: Robin Miles
Published: Books on Tape, 2019 (2010)
Rating: 5 of 5
Page Count: 365
Total Page Count: 523,740
Text Number: 1904
Read Because: I think I found this by browsing chthonic_cassandra's Goodreads, audiobook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: This is one of the most difficult books I've read, emotionally; and I've read a fair bit of true crime which intentionally places specific cases within the cultural context that birthed them; but this is many cases, spanning decades, and it's a brutal read. Like much academic writing, there's an excess of signposting and repetition; and, because the message is so emphatic, the repetition can make it feel preachy. But who cares. This is a crucial reframing of the historical narrative, centering the ubiquity of black women's experiences with sexual violence, using it to chart the changing tides of the civil rights movement and to uncover the formative role women played in building it—a necessary reclamation.

Book Review: Natural Beauty, Ling Ling Huang

Title: Natural Beauty
Author: Ling Ling Huang
Published: Penguin Publishing Group, 2023
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 270
Total Page Count: 524,010
Text Number: 1905
Read Because: my TBR notes say "queer UIR/horror, jank but cannibalism" but don't note a heard-of-this-from source and I think it was Goodread's also-liked feature, but wow I wish those notes were as accurate in tone as they are in a list of vague impressions from other reviews, because: yes! all those things are true! but almost not at all in a sexy way; anyway, ebook borrowed from the Multnomah County Library
Review: I didn't love this when it felt like a hyperbolic satire of the beauty industry, but that was mostly a personal disconnect between tone and reader; I liked this less when it developed a speculative plot, which exchanges the oversized strangeness for overexplained answers. It's still fine. The focus on race elevates it, providing what character and depth of commentary there is. But this is a debut and feels like it: interesting style, but clumsy execution.