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19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Breathtakingly, achingly beautiful, February 19, 2003
This review is from: The Thorn Boy & Other Dreams of Dark Desire (Paperback)
An elaboration of a historical event mentioned in Crown of Silence, the second book of Storm Constantine's Magravandias trilogy, Thorn Boy is a tragic love story with elements that are rare -- chiefly its focus on kings and their boy lovers, lovers who are not only willing but devoted...these boys have not been emasculated but are whole beings with their own masculine will and passion, albeit tempered by fate. Storm's rich, seductive imagery is here in full force and there are wonderfully evocative passages of love and sex as well as grief and pain. An exquisite novel, splendid from beginning to end. As for the additional Magravandias stories it's been bundled with, Storm offers up original, twisted, dark versions of fairy tales, my favorite being "The True Destiny of the Heir to Emiraldra," a male (gay) Cinderella story. Even though it used the familiar story, I was still surprised by the ending! "My Lady of the Hearth" is also interesting; in it a man wishes his cat were a woman and finds out you should be careful what you wish for. "The Face of Sekt," told from the point of view of a living goddess who realizes she's only been "going through the motions" and has to actually use her powers, is another typical Constantine mindbender. There are five other stories as well.
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9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Exquisite love angst, March 9, 2003
This review is from: The Thorn Boy & Other Dreams of Dark Desire (Paperback)
A bizarre imaginary world, whit the vagaries of love and sexual desire in the royal courts of two warring nations similar to China and Egypt. All the strange, tragic story of love full of misunderstandings and delusions is wieved through the eyes of the victor King's first concubine, torn between the fear than a wonderful achingly beautiful prisoner of war will displace him from his position and an unquehenchable love and lust for that same person. An encounter in a temple will seal enigmatically the fate of their relation. It's like an exquisite tale from Arabian nights.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A very entertaining book, January 8, 2005
This review is from: The Thorn Boy & Other Dreams of Dark Desire (Paperback)
I liked the major story in this edition ("The Thorn Boy") a lot. The plot and storytelling are fresh and entertaining, conveying the tragedy of the lost love and the everlasting hope for the new one. The only drawback is that the story is painfully short (about 66 pages of the total 231), and, thus, it just REQUIRES a sequel. By the way, Storm briefly mentioned that she might come back and write the one... I look forward to it very much! The very ending of "The Thorn Boy" simply cries for the sequel: one of the major characters, Darien, frustrated and bitter with the lost love, meets an unknown man he has had an overwhelming night with at the temple of the Goddess. Moreover, the very recollection of that night was the driving force behind Darien's previous love for another king's favorite, Akaten, of whose true character we learn very little (did he actually ever love Darien? did he ever love any of the kings? or is it just through Darien's loving eyes we are capable of seeing him as the martyr and a worthy person?). Spring after Winter. A Complete Cycle and Change of the Seasons.
Other decent and very entertaining stories in the book are "Spinning for Gold", "The Nothing Child" and "Living with the Angel" (all three stories are combined with the same storyline and related set of characters). These stories are adult versions of well-known fairy tales (mostly of Anglo-German origin, they remind me those of Brothers Grimm). However, though the idea behind writing such stories resembles Angela Carter's "The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories", the worlds and heroes Storm Constantine creates are original and truly hers, the stories being also very erotic and sweetly "perverse" rather than just simply ironic and witty.
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EDIT / October 2010: THERE IS A NEW EDITION OF THIS BOOK, see The Thorn Boy and Other Tales of Dark Desire. It features a much more pleasing-to-an-eye cover, and two extra stories / more content. And it's reasonably priced / in-print!
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