The Song of Achilles

by Madeline Miller

    I bought The Song of Achilles and Circe by Madeline Miller after thinking about them for a few weeks. I had no clue what they were about, and usually I don't like anything that has to do with Greek Mythology. That genre usually just bored me, but I am so glad I picked this novel up! 

It took me a few minutes to get into to it, but about 50 pages in, I was hooked. I thought it was such a charming story about love, fame, and loss. I liked how it was told from Patroclus's point of view.  If it had been told from Achilles point of view, it would have been a very different story, focused on destiny, and never finding an opponent that gave him a good fight, and growing from scared of being fated as the "greatest warrior who ever lived", to being bored of being the best and wanting to prove himself if every reckless way. 

Instead Patroclus gave us a view of Achilles that made him seem more human. 

At first, Patroclus annoyed me because he was whiny and small as a main character, but then considering what he had been through, it made sense for him, and as his character developed, he became my favorite of the two.

I loved the small moments between him and Achilles, and how they existed together. How Patroclus always went after Achilles, and how honest they were with each other. Usually in a love story like this, one character lies to the other about something, creating a fight when the other finds out the truth, but they were honest the entire time, and it was just neat to see a love story like that.

What lead to the test of their relationship was Achilles, the hero, being selfish and cruel, while Patroclus won the war and saved the men. Achilles refused to fight on account of his pride, and allowed Patroclus to take his place, even after Patroclus begged him. 

I loved the last 50 pages of this story. It was the most unique ending, with having Patroclus's stunt be what sets into motion Achilles death, and how we got to see the story continue from Patroclus as a ghost. 

I highly recommend this love story.

:)

Fairy tale

by Stephen King

A brave man helps. A coward just gives presents.

    First and foremost, happy 2023! I hope this first week has treated you well and that any resolutions you may have set are off to strong starts. There have been a few major changes in my life that I am reflecting on as I write this,  but one thing I want to say is that it has officially been a year since I started this blog page and reviewing books and creating this site. It's been a fun challenge and I know I will continue this page for the foreseeable future and beyond.

That said, let's get to this review!

I had seen this book first on Instagram, a few months before I bought it. I was worried it was going to be a horror story, and those are not what I am about. I didn't do my research like I said I would, but one day, in Kroger, it was there, and 25% off. 

Now, I've completed this story and I am so happy I started off the year in this book. So many good things happened, from plot, to writing styles, and small little tokens that really brought magic into this story. I've seen reviews say this is a "raunchy Happy Potter", and I disagree. While I can see what they mean, theres not enough of either elements from those stories in Fairy tale, and I think they were just using those titles as clickbait. 

Its like the first book in the Harry Potter series, where it starts off as a realistic fiction story, nothing seem out of the ordinary until it was, and yes there are some raunchy jokes, but not enough to bring up in a review, after all, the main character is a 17 year-old boy, what can you expect?

Charlie Reade gives us his account of an adventure he took when he was a young man. An adventure to another world. The key was kindness to an old man whole fell off a ladder while cleaning the gutters.

Charlie makes it his mission to care for this old man, Mr. Bowditch, until he's back on his feet, as a way of fulfilling a promise he keeps close to his heart. A promise to God.

Mr. Bowditch turns out to not be such a crochetey old man but a very interesting one. As Charlie learns more and more about him, he soon learns that the shed in the backyard holds nothing but a ditch. A ditch that turns into a staircase that leads to another world. The world where our fairytales hail from.

What he finds there is right out of the Grimm's stories, but as he spends more time there, he feels himself turning into one of those famous characters children will read about for centuries. 

King added a lot of interesting layers to this story, there are a lot of parallel characters between Charles home world and the one he entered, which gives the idea that those worlds are parallel universes, and some have had the fortune to travel between them. That Charlie might be a high school student in one world, but a prince in another.  Georgiana Womack, with the strawberry birthmark on her check could have been a mute princess that had to eat through a red sore in her check because her mouth was gone. It gave it the idea that maybe a that a neighbor or distant cousin has been a one of those famous adventures and returned. As if that magic portal could be anywhere, just covered by a cement slab or has a house built right on top of it. 

One small joke, or I took it as a joke, was a page where Charlie is expecting this dog to talk back and answer a question, but then says "Well, duh. It wasn't that kind of fairy tale," I found this funny because fairy tales usually have a talking animal, so I thought that was a fun poke at genre expectations. 

The tone starts off in Kings 'good-ole-sourthen-boy" kinda way, and transforms into a more magical tone, where characters spoke all different languages, but magic made them all understand each other, using old words and old nursery rhymes. It went from old-southern-boy, to whatever the Grimm's British tone is. 

The pace was great, it was slow where it needed to be, but since its being told from the main character as a flashback, King could use small pacers like "But then it was", or "Little did I know," things like that to keep the reader interested and excited to see what was coming, or what 'it was" or what Charlie "didn't know" at that time. It is a great tool to keep the plot moving forwards while keeping the reader guessing. 

It was a great tale and a fun read, as any good fairy tale should be. The King does fairytales very well indeed. I highly recommend this book to anyone, it was a great adventure

:)