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Roses and Rot by Kat Howard
Oct. 8th, 2017 04:20 pmRoses and Rot
3/5. Two sisters, a writer and a dancer, are accepted to an exclusive artist’s fellowship. They want to work on their art and they want to escape memories of their abusive mother, but things get complicated when it emerges that the fellowship has entanglements with the fae.
So life is very very complicated right now, and the things I’m reading only ever get a sliver of my attention. But really, how did I not realize until halfway through this book that it’s a Tam Lin story? Good lord.
Other revelations: I am tired of Tam Lin stories. Which is to say my limited interest in them has been satisfied by reading, like, three in the course of my life and now I’m good.
If you are not tired of Tam Lin stories, this is a pretty good one. It has a lot of first novel problems, but there’s a very human messiness at the heart of this book that works. Something that doesn’t work? Having the protagonist be a writer who writes supposedly good stuff, and sticking passages of her extremely on-the-nose Kat-Valente-without-most-of-the-talent stories in the book. I swear, writing about writers and their Art is so treacherous, I don’t know why anyone does it.
3/5. Two sisters, a writer and a dancer, are accepted to an exclusive artist’s fellowship. They want to work on their art and they want to escape memories of their abusive mother, but things get complicated when it emerges that the fellowship has entanglements with the fae.
So life is very very complicated right now, and the things I’m reading only ever get a sliver of my attention. But really, how did I not realize until halfway through this book that it’s a Tam Lin story? Good lord.
Other revelations: I am tired of Tam Lin stories. Which is to say my limited interest in them has been satisfied by reading, like, three in the course of my life and now I’m good.
If you are not tired of Tam Lin stories, this is a pretty good one. It has a lot of first novel problems, but there’s a very human messiness at the heart of this book that works. Something that doesn’t work? Having the protagonist be a writer who writes supposedly good stuff, and sticking passages of her extremely on-the-nose Kat-Valente-without-most-of-the-talent stories in the book. I swear, writing about writers and their Art is so treacherous, I don’t know why anyone does it.
