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lightreads ([personal profile] lightreads) wrote2018-11-23 09:14 pm

Plain Kate by Erin Bow

Plain Kate

3/5. Kate is a carver's daughter who, in hard times, trades her shadow away. Then she and her talking cat companion must discover what the magician who bought it plans to do.

I was reading this back in September, but had to put it down when the universe decided to kick me for a while. This book is raw and sad and saturated in loss, and it took me a while to want to finish it. It's good – it isn't The Scorpion Rules brilliant, but you can draw a line from here to there. This book is about the loss of self that follows the loss of community and family, so yeah, good writing about that will be hard. I nodded to myself, sad but not surprised, at Bow's endnote which talks about her sister's death. A book like this would come from a place like that, yeah.

Content notes: Animal harm, violence, grief, loss.

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