4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Masterful story telling, November 10, 2011
This review is from: The Rule Book & Calendar of Kittery Embers (Kindle Edition)
I discovered Sherwin after hearing a song of his on the Ron & Fez show. This led me to his website and the discovery of Atoms, Motion & The Void. Little did I know what sort of ride I was about to embark on. Sherwin is a master of crafting a story, you get completely engulfed in his universe.
When he started releasing the audio versions of Kittery Embers, I was almost a little nervous starting thinking that they could never live up to the magic of AMV. I couldn't have been more wrong. I found myself anxiously waiting for each upcoming installment.
When I learned that Sherwin was releasing Kittery as a Kindle version Ebook, I was thrilled. I couldn't wait to read the chapters that I had already heard him tell in audio format. Again though, I wondered if there would be any level of let down not having Sherwin's distinctive voice telling me the story. Again, there was nothing at all to worry about. Kittery is a very comfortable read that has me completely immersed in her universe, story telling at it's best.
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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Inspiring Dark Magic from the Collective Preconscious, November 2, 2011
This review is from: The Rule Book & Calendar of Kittery Embers (Kindle Edition)
I am a friend of both Sherwin Sleeves and Sean Hurley, although we have never met in person. I came to their work through the Atoms, Motion and the Void podcast. Listening to the series I immediately knew I was enjoying the work of a tremendously gifted storyteller, experiencing pure improvised storytelling, gradually delineating an increasingly structured story but with explosive twists and surprises along the way. That series takes its cues from an earlier era, while still referencing the wrenching dislocations of technology and conspiracy theories of the modern world; I felt as if I were sitting around a campfire with a brilliant and slightly demented village elder telling his life story, and making it impossible to determine just where reality ends and fantasy begins.
The Kittery Embers story is his young adult novel. If I had to assign it a genre I'd call it fantasy, although it does not slot neatly into one of the modern genre slots like "teen supernatural romance." It is here and there inspired by the Harry Potter books, but it _feels_ as if it is older, with deeper roots into the bedrock of our storytelling subconscious. In fact, it takes many cues from our common Greek myths, and I'm also reminded of Russian fantasists like Bulgakov and Gogol.
The basic structure is as old as storytelling itself: our young heroine is separated from her home and parents, in two distressingly horrific and stunningly beautiful twists of fate. She has some very unusual resources to draw on, most intriguingly her "rule book and calendar," which is a sort of page-a-day calendar that dispenses humorous advice and tells the future. She has some very odd animal friends, and some kindly and grotesque adults, who do not seem terribly trustworthy and seem that they can't be counted on to have Kittery's best interests at heart.
It is utterly subversive in the best sense, in the way that the unexpurgated Grimm's fairy tales are subversive: that is, they are designed to prepare a child to confront a world that is not actually a fuzzy, kind and gentle one, in which time and space twist and fold in on themselves, there are hidden agendas everywhere, and reality itself seems to be decaying into dust or going up in smoke. Kittery's world is both familiar and exceedingly strange, and one has the constant sense that there is a story behind the story that Kittery is only dimly aware of.
As in Rowling's work there is plenty in here to please adult readers, and in fact the events and images may be a bit nightmare-inducing for young children, so I'd say it is probably suitable for young readers ten and up.
I believe Sean will eventually be recognized as one of my generation's finest storytellers. I fully expect to see his work on the silver screen, directed by Guillermo del Toro. I've described him as "Garrison Keillor on mescaline" because of the way his writing veers between compassionate, minute details of human emotions and mind-bending twists as he molds reality into something both familiar and startling. But above all, Sean/Sherwin has a gleeful love of the English language and a passion for what words can do. He is not yet well known. Get to know him.
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Sherwin Does It Again, November 11, 2011
This review is from: The Rule Book & Calendar of Kittery Embers (Kindle Edition)
After becoming enthralled with Sherwin Sleeves (Sean Hurley) and his life as portrayed in Atoms, Motion and the Void, I was delighted to discover another side of this storyteller. Kittery Embers is a great read (and the audio component adds another great dimension). A charming story that both adults and children will enjoy.
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