Meredith Blevins

This was a fun book! Light and airy, with lots of humor, great central women leading the plot, and the kind of extended cast (many of them related) that I really love.

The humor is great and never lets you down (as long as you like a bit of sardonic wit), the plot chugs along without stalling, and the characters are delightfully larger than life. Yeah, you've probably seen the likes of Madame Mina before, but I bet you haven't seen the kooky old grandmother also appearing as a love interest. The fact that this book doesn't center around twenty-/thirty-somethings but the characters still have active and interesting relationships and love lives is refreshing. Admittedly, I do tend to read books centered around young people, so this may just be coming from my skewed perspective.

I am a little bummed that there wasn't more actual magic in here. Picking up a book from Forge, I was hoping that the Hummingbird Wizard was more of, well, a wizard. I was also a bit disappointed with how Americanized all the "gypsies" were--I would have liked a bit more culture and lore from the older characters, like the wonderful Madame Mina and her only legal husband Pinky, who came to the US from Europe. I wouldn't have known that about them if it wasn't explicitly stated in the text...which is a big part of why I'm not putting this book on the diversity shelf. The Romani culture was treated more like family eccentricities than an full heritage in its own right.

While I'm hanging out the dirty laundry, a woman points out that sex when she was unable to consent is rape, but she's talked into taking responsibility for acting like she wanted it and letting the guy off the hook--so much so that she falls for him. Ew. It's shockingly unfeminist compared to the most of the rest of the book. Also wince-inducing is the casual way that a woman whose serious drinking problem is just accepted as part of her character--though by the end the cast have seen the error of their ways.

So this was a fun book, if not a ground breaking one, with no exceptionally egregious crimes against humanity. If you like stories about big quirky families, over-the-top personalities, and people trying to figure out how to take care of each other, this'll be a great book for you.


Quote Roundup

74) Feeling responsible for events we've had nothing to do with is one of the most common human failings. The Great Unearned Guilt Syndrome.

163)
--"What are you doing here? I asked you to leave"
--"I was leaving until you grabbed me."
--"I meant leave this whole mess."
What was wrong with this guy? I would have missed the most important parts of my life if I'd avoided every mess that came along.

239)
--"Do you worry about a bird when it flies?"
--"I worry about a woman walking on an old wire. One who's upset and not thinking straight."
--"She's an artist. This is the place she goes to leave the upset part behind. She's fine."

261) He'd buy it from you for a song and sell it to the city for an entire Broadway musical.

270) He scratched his head. "Is that stuffed horse of your dad's still out there?"
--"Yep."
--"Still got all its hair?"
--"Yep."
--"I'll be damned. He's doing better than me."

277) "You're my kid," Mina said to him. "I love you, but I don't want your words."

375) "Mina is mine. You can ask her that yourself."
... She exploded in indignation. "Listen how you talk about me. I'm with who I want to be, when I want to be. Right now it's neither of you. I've loved you both, but you do not shape my life. Ever."… (més)