Book review: Seven Wild Sisters

[tigertoy]

Today's second book review is Seven Wild Sisters by Charles de Lint.

After wading through Freedom and Necessity, I was looking for something quick and light, and even after knocking off Outward Bound I still wasn't ready to dive into anything deep.  So I thought this special edition of Seven Wild Sisters, with illustrations by Charles Vess, would be good.  It's a short novel; in fact, it's just a part of a collection of stories in the regular edition, but I'd picked up this special edition a couple of years ago, I think when de Lint was the GoH at Windycon.

This is a delightful little story.  It is the kind of story that might be marketed as YA, but only because it's a nice little story that isn't inappropriate for younger readers, not at all because it's not good enough for adults.  It's a modern-day fairy tale, really, but it's a fairy tale with a bit of meat to it, so that it appeals to me more than most fairy tales, while still being the kind of innocent story that can be called a fairy tale.  You might have trouble finding it as a standalone book, but if you have to get the rest of the collection -- I think it's in Memory and Dream -- that's not such a bad thing.

9 out of 10.

Comments

[folkmew.livejournal.com]

It is the kind of story that might be marketed as YA, but only because it's a nice little story that isn't inappropriate for younger readers, not at all because it's not good enough for adults.

And of course, children's lit major that I was I simply must point out that any good children's or YA lit should be "good lit" first and foremost. The only difference is that it may be targeted at a certain developmental stage (ish).

Having said that (so they wouldn't take away my union card ;-) I loved it. I like Vess' illustrations and I love DeLint's writing. He's among my very favorite authors.

[tigertoy.livejournal.com]

Good YA books are good books, period, and their authors and publishers have nothing to apologize for. But there are all too many of the other sort of YA books, where an otherwise good author is apparently using the YA label as an excuse for crud -- like the last review I posted. I always try to clarify which kind of YA book it is when I review one.