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I was so engrossed in a book last night that I stayed up until 3:45 reading. (No, I didn’t finish it, I’m still only only 40% in according to my trusty Kindle.)
While I do read before bed every night, I had adopted a strategy of reading a collection of short stories but that ended and I haven’t found a new collection to read. With a short story, it’s easy to leave off reading because it’s over and there is no need to see what happens next. But an intriguing novel always has the capacity to derail my sleep for the night. And I’m already prone to go to bed late due to my life-long night-owlishness.
What book is so enticing to me right now? Juliet Mariller’s Tower of Thorns, which is the second in her Blackthorn & Grim series. I had read the first one, Dreamer’s Pool, a few years ago, and it has stayed with me. The story has many of the components that draw me in. It’s fantasy (fairy-tale style, not sci-fi style), there are mysteries in the main characters’ pasts, fey people, towers, intrigue, dungeons, kings and queens, plots and counterplots.
I really like the character of Blackthorn. She has a very broken past but has people who believe in her and help her in her life. She is a wise woman and healer and has a brusque way about her but is very vulnerable due to her hurts.
Since reading George MacDonald’s The Princess and the Goblin as a child, I’ve been fascinated by Wise Woman lore. Living with a mother fascinated by herbs may have helped a little with that, too. Have you found that childhood reading still influences you?
