Book Review
Nov. 24th, 2009 12:01 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kenjariWaking the Moon
by Elizabeth Hand
This modern fantasy book is centered around Sweeney Cassidy. She enters university in the late 1970s and quickly develops an intense friendship with classmates Angelica and Oliver. The three of them get caught up in the machinations of the Benandanti, a secret occult society, and an arcane and dangerous attempt to awaken an ancient goddess and her cult. Events that occurred in a very short period of their college years have profound effects on the shape and path of each of their lives and self-images.
Hand pulls it off without being cheesy or resorting to cheap and lazy thrills and action. She maintains an atmosphere of mystery and awe where the magick and metaphysics are concerned while also keeping the characters and their lives believable and sympathetic. Hand also has a wonderful talent for portraying people and events with a great eye for detail and a perfect sense for emotional resonance. The first chapters in particular are such a beautiful evocation of the beginning of college that reading them dredged up vivid memories of my own first weeks at Wesleyan mingled with a slight ache of nostalgia. The rest of the book lived up to the promise of those early chapters, too, with beautiful language and a compelling plot.
by Elizabeth Hand
This modern fantasy book is centered around Sweeney Cassidy. She enters university in the late 1970s and quickly develops an intense friendship with classmates Angelica and Oliver. The three of them get caught up in the machinations of the Benandanti, a secret occult society, and an arcane and dangerous attempt to awaken an ancient goddess and her cult. Events that occurred in a very short period of their college years have profound effects on the shape and path of each of their lives and self-images.
Hand pulls it off without being cheesy or resorting to cheap and lazy thrills and action. She maintains an atmosphere of mystery and awe where the magick and metaphysics are concerned while also keeping the characters and their lives believable and sympathetic. Hand also has a wonderful talent for portraying people and events with a great eye for detail and a perfect sense for emotional resonance. The first chapters in particular are such a beautiful evocation of the beginning of college that reading them dredged up vivid memories of my own first weeks at Wesleyan mingled with a slight ache of nostalgia. The rest of the book lived up to the promise of those early chapters, too, with beautiful language and a compelling plot.
