The Enchantment Emporium

The Enchantment Emporium by Tanya Huff

Hardcover: 368 pages
Publisher: DAW Hardcover; 1 edition (June 2, 2009)
ISBN-10: 0756405556

From Publishers Weekly

Thoughtful and leisurely, this fresh urban fantasy from Canadian author Huff (Valor's Trial) features an ensemble cast of nuanced characters in Calgary, Alberta. Headstrong young museum research assistant Allie Gale takes over her missing grandmother's titular junk-shop, which is supposedly crucial to the local community. When Allie arrives to find a leprechaun, a monkey's paw and a magic mirror, she realizes her grandmother didn't mean the human community. After spotting low-flying dragons and other UnderRealm creatures in the neighborhood, Allie calls on the help of her powerful family of modern, benevolent Toronto witches, who attempt to visit via a spacetime-spanning Wood until something shadowy begins pushing them out in inconvenient locales like Haiti. Fantasy buffs will find plenty of humor, thrills and original mythology to chew on, along with refreshingly three-dimensional women in an original, fully realized world.

Gads ... If I were an author I wouldn't give me your book to read right now.  I have no idea what my problem is but lately the books I pick up take me forever to read and now, twice in a row, there were times in a book when I wasn't sure what the heck was going on!

This story starts our throwing me for a loop.  (please remember I am horrible ate remembering names of people/characters)  So right away they toss out so many names (main characters and sub characters *all the aunties*) that I am lost, lost, lost.

So when the story really begins, which is when Allie takes over her grandmothers junk-shop, and introduces more characters... well.. I really felt like I didn't know who or even "what" the characters were or where this was going.

Eventually I caught on to the story (which was very good and I felt very original) and my reading picked up a little, but not a whole lot but that's just because my reading has come to a crawl.

So.. to me the bad side was too many characters to remember (and me a character driven person!..so it has to deal with poor memory on my part) and the fact that, either I missed something important, or they never really said what these people were.  I don't want to extend on that in case I missed it in the beginning.

The last third of the book I enjoyed quite a bit so those of you with better memory than mine (and that would be most of you!) would more then likely enjoy the whole book rather then half of the book.  I am sure If I reread the book now, I would enjoy much more of it... but that's for another time.

It would not be like me not to include an small excerpt from the book and for those of you who know me you will immediately see why I chose this one. 

"As Mr Spock said, in what as undeniably the best of the movies..."

"Kay has a Ricardo Mantalban fixation," on the the older aunties interrupted.

"Lovely man," Auntie Kay agreed.  "Amazing pecs.  May his should be at peace." She frowned. "Where was I?"

Graham want to kiss the corner of Allie's mouth where it curled up, fighting a smile.

"The needs of the  many..." Auntie Muriel sighed, waving a knitting needle.

"..outweigh the needs of the one. Of course.  Had you killed the boy, we wouldn't have needed to come to Calgary to save the world."

This completes "The Journey"...

Now on to Quest the First...

Rose Cottage & Feb Wrap

Rose Cottage by Mary Stewart

Mass Market Paperback: 272 pages
Publisher: Ivy Books; 2nd THUS edition (September 28, 1998)
ISBN-10: 0449000613

 

Amazon.com Review

Mary Stewart launched a world full of romance readers, and she invented romantic suspense. In this beautifully written gothic, Kate Herrick, a young widow in war-torn London, returns to her family home of Rose Cottage to retrieve family mementos for her Gran. When Kate arrives, she finds that the mementos have mysteriously disappeared. While looking for answers to age-old family mysteries (her single mother supposedly ran off with gypsies) Kate rekindles friendships with neighbors, kinsman, and old childhood companions. The bittersweet memories that Kate examines help her to redefine herself as a widow and as a young woman with a great need for family ties.

Mary Stewart is such a good writer.  Many know her from her King Arthur trilogy, but she has written many smaller stand alone books.  Rose Cottage is one of them.

It's a short book, but as I said , very well written.  When Kate went back to the house she grew up in she found much had changed, but much had not.  And as she finds out.. there are family secrets that have yet to be discovered.

The book builds very well indeed. And the answers to many questions come in the very last few pages!  But the very ending left a little to be desired.. like maybe there was more to Kate's life that could happen and I wanted to know how things went after the book ended!  *sigh*.

But no matter what, there is no taking away the talent of the author and a very enjoyable book!  I'd like to say more but the book is so short that you'd need not read it if I did!

It would be a great travel book, being small and light to carry and could be read in one or two sittings if so desired.

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Where Did February go?

Oh geez, it's March!  My reading the past few months has been pathetically slow.. I blame it on crocheting but I honestly don't know why I've read so little .  I do know I seem to want to fall asleep within reading a short chapter or two, and when I feel like that my head is foggy and I know I'm not really grasping what I am reading and so I set the book down.  What I have read I've enjoyed.. but it's so slow going it's almost nonexistent!  But here is the pathetic list for February..