family has its monsters, . . and some are nothing but, In the woods outside Overdeere, Ontario, there are trees that speak, a village that doesn't appear on any map, and a hill that opens wide, entrapping unwary travellers.
Music drifts up from deep underground, while dreams and nightmares take on solid shape, flitting through the darkness, It's a place most people usually know better than to go, at least locally until tonight, when five bloodlines mired in ancient strife will finally converge once more.
Devize, Glouwer, Rusk, Druir, Roke these are the clans who make up the notorious FiveFamily Coven, Four hundred years ago, this alliance of witches, changelings, and sorcerers sought to ruin and recreate the Earth in their own image, thwarted only by treachery that sent half of them to be burned alive.
Driven apart by rage and hatred, their descendants have continued to feud, intermarry, and breed with each other throughout the centuries, their mutual dislike becoming ever more destructively intimate.
But now, from downtown Toronto to the wilds beyond, where reality's walls grow thin, dark forces are drawing the Coven's last heirs to a final confrontation, Psychics, expossessees, defrocked changeling priests, shamans for hire, bodystealing witches, and monsterslaying nuns the bastard children of a thousand evil angels all are haunted by a ghost beyond any one person's power to exorcize unless they agree to stand together once more at least long enough to wreak vengeance upon themselves! A very good collection!
The Five: A Warning to the Curious is mostly an introduction, kind of written in character.
Landscape with Maps amp Legends: Dead Voices on Air was nice and interesting, I don't tend to like the more sad stories as much,
Black Box was lovely,
History's Crust was interesting, Gemma Files loves the witches, and the nasty type of witches, and I have a hard time with that, Fae I can believe, but the witches tends to hit my suspension of belief pretty hard,
The Narrow World was really interesting, and didn't do anything I thought it was going to do,
Words Written Backwards was also really lovely,
Heart's Hole Time, the Revelator Remix was a pretty lovely story, I liked it a lot,
Pen Umbra was lovely,
Strange Weight was also a really lovely story,
Furious Angels was great,
Helpless pulled it all together, the entire book, It was lovely.
The framework using short stories featuring characters and their descendants from the "FiveFamily Coven" and how they all intertwine made the narrative hard to follow at times.
My favorite parts of the book were the stories about the original witches some of the best and scariest I've ever read and the Fae, Tedious, disconnected, with unlikable protagonists and convoluted time and story lines,
What more can I say
The original story about the Five was quite good, I managed to pull through a few of the short stories on that alone but it got old pretty fast.
The point of giving up on the novel as a whole was during the story of the Asian guy without a shadow, God, he was unbearable.
If it had been a book and not my Kindle, I would had hurdled
it against the wall in frustration,
Do not recommend it, The author does not pull through with the "unrelated stories that make a story as a whole" method, Complimentary copy generously provided by publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review,
I requested this book off of NetGalley a long time ago and kept putting it off, . . and now I'm actually kicking myself for doing so,
Why oh why did I find excuse after excuse to not read this, . . it started out with me being only a "cover whore" and requesting for that alone with the genre,
Then I saw some pretty decent reviews start popping up but I still kept it tucked away on my kindle,
Well, I finally gave in and didn't even realize that they were short stories comprised into a novel!
I was captivated and stayed up late a few nights trying to get these stories in!
Awesome book with plenty of twists and turns! So.
. . I did not finish this book, And not because I didn't enjoy thepages I read, but because my reading license expired before I could get to the end, I'm an awfully slow reader when it comes to reading on the computer average ofpages per month, and sadly that was my only option here, Having said that, I am very likely to get a copy of this book in the future, but I don't know when that will be, And so, I thought of sharing with you my thoughts on the first half of the book,
We Will All Go Down Together is a collection of short stories by Gemma Files that portray snippets of the lives of the descendants of five families: Devize, Glouwer, Rusk, Druir, Roke.
Five families that, in the times of witch hunts in Scotland, wished to change the world, And not quite for the better, Their plans might not have worked out, but their legacy continued, And so, centuries later, these descendants find themselves in modern Toronto, living lives not devoid of the supernatural, Ghosts, shamans, witches, expossesses, vampires, there's a little of everything, and none of it is sweet,
sitelinkread more Witches, Fae, twisted family trees, ancient magic, and old blood abound in this novel from Gemma Files, This collection of connected novelettes is her attempt at creating a distinctly Canadian brand of horror, and she succeeds, for the most part, As always, her prose style is gorgeous and sumptuous, with long, poetic paragraphs reminiscent of Peter Straub, Likewise, her characters are diverse and interesting, and the way she connects them all together feels organic and satisfying, The best thing about this book is its sheer sense of scale and its evocation of an ancient Canada, of secret, dark places where powerful creatures dwell, My hangup with this book is also slightly because of its scale, This thing is dense, with highly literary language and a huge cast of characters that make it difficult to grasp completely, But overall, I enjoyed working for my entertainment, and even when my attention wavered or I was utterly confused I could coast on the lyricism of Gemma's beautiful writing.
.en realidad :c./
Nei boschi fuori Overdeere, in Ontario, ci sono alberi che sussurrano nella notte, un villaggio che non compare su alcuna mappa, luoghi inquietanti che intrappolano i viaggiatori incauti.
Una musica sembra sprigionarsi dal sottosuolo, mentre i sogni e incubi prendono sembianze antropomorfe per serpeggiare nelloscurità,
È un luogo mistico e agghiacciante, ma anche il centro dove le cinque linee di sangue di antiche famiglie potranno finalmente convergere,
Questa la premessa di We Will All Go Down Together, ultimo libro di Gemma Files, che non poteva non catturare la mia attenzione,
Non si tratta di un romanzo vero e proprio, bensì di una serie di storie legate da un unico filo conduttore, ovvero lappartenenza dei vari protagonisti ai clan che compongono il famoso FiveFamily Coven da qui il sottotitolo, ossia i Devize, Glouwer, Rusk, Druir, Roke famiglie di streghe, stregoni, mutaforma, in conflitto tra loro da tempi immemorabili.
Dai tempi della Scozia in cui imperversavano i roghi delle streghe, i discendenti del Coven hanno contratto matrimoni misti e talvolta incestuosi, anche per perseguire una vendetta uno contro laltro, mossi da odio e rabbia.
Ora, dal centro di Toronto fino a lontane terre selvagge, forze oscure stanno in qualche modo colpendo e tentando di radunare gli ultimi eredi delle famiglie, tutti ossessionati da uno spirito di un potere tale che nessuno è in grado di esorcizzare da solo, bensì soltanto unendo le forze unultima volta.
Le storie non seguono un filo temporale lineare, ma raccontano in modo sparso alcune vicende ambientate nellantica Scozia, allorché tutto ebbe inizio, altre negli anni più recenti, mostrandoci i personaggi che rappresentano gli ultimi figli dei clan.
La caratterizzazione di questultimi è alquanto varia e punta a sottolineare sia come ormai questi estremi successori di uneterna faida abbiano perso parte dellantica motivazione, sia come siano preoccupati al loro lato più “umano”, cosa che contrasta alquanto con le loro pulsioni e “doti magiche”, spesso al limite dellorrorifico o davvero mostruose.
Tutti questi ingredienti sono assolutamente interessanti, eppure il libro con me non ha funzionato in pieno,
Il fatto di spezzettare la storia in tanti racconti, spesso variando i personaggi e alternando flashback vecchi e nuovi, non mi ha dato la possibilità di entrare in sintonia con la trama.
Ogni volta che si raggiungeva un climax e un momento di suspense, ecco finire la storia,
Inoltre, ho trovato un po forzato il gusto del macabro in alcuni passaggi, sembrava volutamente calcato per impressionare più che per rendere lidea di mostruosità interiore rispecchiata allesterno e negli atti di certi personaggi.
Così come mettere insieme streghe, stregoni, angeli buoni e cattivi, templari, fantasmi, e chi più ne ha più ne metta, mi è parso davvero un tantino esagerato Una sorta di sfilata esibizionistica di creature sovrannaturali.
Le prime storie sono quelle che ho preferito in particolare il racconto che apre lopera è spettacolare,
Lo stile dellautrice non mi è dispiaciuto, riesce a rendere bene tante scene dense e cupe, descrivendole in modo molto vivido,
In conclusione, una buona idea raccontata in modo diverso non siamo affatto nel paranormal romance o simili, tuttavia con alcuni difetti che non mi hanno fatto apprezzare del tutto il libro.
Ringrazio leditore e Netgalley per avermi dato una copia dellopera necessaria alla stesura di questa recensione I received a free copy of this book from Net Galley in exchange for an honest review.
A mosaic novel whose characters are gifted and semimonstrous people linked by shared blood and a violent common history, a FiveFamily Coven whoseyearlong vendetta with each other is finally coming to a head.
It's Alice Munro meets Clive Barker, with a cast that includes bodystealing witches, timetravelling changelings, monsterkilling nuns and evil angels,
What an amazing book, It is a novel told in loosely connected short stories which, surprisingly works very well,
After finishing the book, I popped over to Gemma's website to find out more about the stories and wasn't surprised to find that some of the stories were older than others:
"The book will therefore package not only for example “The Narrow World,” probably the oldest entry in this roster which first appeared in Queer Fear II and was reprinted in The Worm in Every Heart, but also all the subsequent FiveFamily Covenrelated stories which have appeared in various anthologies, magazines and whathaveyou since then, most of which very few people aside from me have ever seen contextualized in terms of their shared universeafter which I'll add in on top five entirely new pieces, never before published, the latter three of which will hopefully bring closure to various ongoing sagas.
"
At times, the prose is poetic and languid, filling the mind with beautiful descriptions and wonderful language which is a pleasure to sink into, At others, it is a frantic ramble that rushes through the pages atmiles an hour, begging the reader to keep up,
This is a delightful mashup of genres and results in a horrifying and deeply rewarding novel,
Highly recommended!
Paul
ARH
If I could I'd give this book,out of. I liked parts of it, largely for the imaginative elements, but overall I found it a slog to get through, A few of the reviewers here on Goodreads have said they nearly abandoned the book halfway through but hadn't, and yet still gave the book four, Taking comfort in the fact that others felt similarly, I decided to power through and finish it, A part of me is glad I finished it in spite of the fact that I grew to dislike it more and more as I read, but the rest of me wonders why I bothered.
To be fair to the author, publishers, and other readers who DID enjoy the book, it's not a bad book I'm just not the ideal audience for the book.
Perhaps I decided to read it at the wrong time in life, It happens there are books I've read in the past that I either outright disliked or felt indifferent towards while reading it for the first time, and then upon returning to the book later on in life I love it.
Mary Shelley's FRANKENSTEIN, OR THE MODERN PROMETHEUS was one such book, It's now one of my alltime favorites, I sincerely hope this is one of those books,
I don't exactly know what it is about the novel that I disliked so much, or why I found it a slog, There are a number of complaints I have with it that, upon reading it a second time and knowing what to expect, may be more palatable to me when and if I decide to return.
I'll briefly discuss them, if for no other reason than to vent my negative feelings,
First and probably foremost: the prose is quite dense throughout, While that's not necessarily a bad thing, it's not conducive to my enjoyment of the book when I'm reading it for fun, Furthermore, it felt as though the prose was dense for its own sake, not for any artistic or experimental purpose, Maybe I'm wrong either way it annoyed the shit out of me, Additionally, I loathed the dialects in which some of the of the characters spoke, I get it, it's "authentic" and "realistic," but I hated it, I'm not going to try justifying that, I just hated it, plain and simple,
Second: Although I wanted to like the experimental form of "short story collection turned novel", it drove me crazy because it made the entire "novel" seem disjointed and awkward.
It also meant that there were so many narrative threads developing throughout the book, I found it difficult to keep track of who's who and what's what throughout.
Which leads me to my next complaint:
Third, I felt very little connection to the vast majority of the characters, I just didn't care about most of them, or their problems, There were a few characters who I liked Carra Device, Mac Roke, and Sister Blandina among them, The rest well I just didn't know them, or care about them, I kept getting confused about who was a part of what family in the Five Family Coven and how they related to the rest, blah blah blah, The family histories as with much of the overall narrative was too convoluted to hold my interest,
All that being said, there was enough that I liked about the book a few of the isolated stories were pretty good that I don't feel justified giving it a score ofstars, or evenfor that matter.
I may return to this book someday in the future when I've had a chance to let it pass from my mind, and hopefully I will like it more the next time around.
I have a feeling that now I know what to expect, my experience will be different at the very least, if not better the second time around, .