Skip to main content

What's in a Name challenge review #5: Alexandria by Nick Bantock

 What's in a Name challenge category: The letter X in the title.

Author: Nick Bantock.
Full title: Alexandria: In Which the Extraordinary Correspondence of Griffin & Sabine Unfolds.
Genre: Fantasy.
Published:2002

Have you read this book? Why not leave a comment to tell me your thoughts about it?

This is going to be somewhat of an unusual review, as the book is the middle volume of a trilogy that tells a single story (and links to another trilogy), and I have not read the previous book. However, I enjoyed it anyway and it fits into the What's in a Name challenge category of a book with the letter X in the title.

The Griffin and Sabine trilogy garnered critical acclaim and praise for originality of presentation, as well as bestseller status when it first came out, and the author went on to write The Morning Star trilogy, which continued the story with new protagonists, followed by a final, 7th book that was published last year. I got my hands on the first trilogy and this book at a charity bookshop several years ago and while I enjoyed the Griffin and Sabine books for the artistic aspect, I found the story they told to be paper-thin and not very original. I decided to put this one aside for a while in the hope that I could get my hands on the first and third books in the trilogy, but I haven't come across them yet at a price I'm willing to pay for them, so I finally gave up and decided to read it.

It is just as colourful and beautiful to look at as the previous books, with illustrated postcards and letters you must pull out of envelopes and unfold in order to read, and like Griffin and Sabine, it tells a mystical story of lovers who correspond with each other. It also contains letters and postcards from Griffin and Sabine to Matthew and Isabella, the trilogy's protagonists, that guide and advice them what to do. I will pass no judgement on the story itself, as I came into the middle of it, but is appears to be a continuation of the mystical events of the Griffin and Sabine trilogy, overlaid with another love story. The artwork is delightful to look at and I will enjoy going over it a second time to unravel the symbolism in the images. Also, I think I will make an effort to acquire the remaining three books of the series, because I want to keep them, if only for the art.

And who knows: I might even reconsider my opinion of the storytelling once I have all the books and can read them as one story.

Links:


Nick Bantock on the end of Griffin and Sabine's epiccorrespondence.

Griffin and Sabine by Nick Bantock: An Extraordinary TaleAbout Art, Beauty, Madness, and Kindred Spirits.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Icelandic folk-tale: The Laughing Merman

Icelanders not only believed in the existence of selkies, but also in mer-people. The mermaids were said to be very beautiful, while the mermen were supposed to be ugly as sin but very wise and able to see things others did not. O nce upon a time a farmer went out fishing and pulled up a merman. He tried to get the merman to talk to him but he would not answer, except to beg him to release him back into the sea, but this the farmer refused to do. The farmer rowed back to land, taking the captive merman with him. When he pulled up the boat on the shore, his wife came to him and greeted him with tenderness and kisses, which he received with pleasure. This made the merman laugh. Then the man’s dog came to him and greeted him tenderly in the way of dogs, by jumping up to him, but the farmer hit the dog. Again the merman laughed. Then the farmer walked up towards his house, but on the way he tripped over a tussock and hurt himself. He got angry and gave the tussock a good kicking. Then...
Post a Comment
Read more

List love: 10 recommended stories with cross-dressing characters

This trope is almost as old as literature, what with Achilles, Hercules and Athena all cross-dressing in the Greek myths, Thor and Odin disguising themselves as women in the Norse myths, and Arjuna doing the same in the Mahabaratha. In modern times it is most common in romance novels, especially historicals in which a heroine often spends part of the book disguised as a boy, the hero sometimes falling for her while thinking she is a boy. Occasionally a hero will cross-dress, using a female disguise to avoid recognition or to gain access to someplace where he would never be able to go as a man. However, the trope isn’t just found in romances, as may be seen in the list below, in which I recommend stories with a variety of cross-dressing characters. Unfortunately I was only able to dredge up from the depths of my memory two book-length stories I had read in which men cross-dress, so this is mostly a list of women dressed as men. Ghost Riders by Sharyn McCrumb. One of the interwove...
Post a Comment
Read more

Bibliophile discusses Van Dine’s rules for writing detective stories

Writers have been putting down advice for wannabe writers for centuries, about everything from how to captivate readers to how to build a story and write believable characters to getting published. The mystery genre has had its fair share, and one of the best known advisory essays is mystery writer’s S.S. Van Dine’s 1928 piece “Twenty rules for writing detective stories.” I mentioned in one of my reviews that I might write about these rules. Well, I finally gave myself the time to do it. First comes the rule (condensed), then what I think about it. Here are the Rules as Van Dine wrote them . (Incidentally, check out the rest of this excellent mystery reader’s resource: Gaslight ) The rules are meant to apply to whodunnit amateur detective fiction, but the main ones can be applied to police and P.I. fiction as well. I will discuss them mostly in this context, but will also mention genres where the rules don’t apply and authors who have successfully and unsuccessfully broken the rules. 1...
9 comments
Read more