Saturday, July 25, 2009

Weekly Geeks: Seraphic Mandrake by Kate L. Stone

I received Seraphic Mandrake by Kate L. Stone from the publicist. I liked the title and the premise. This is debut novel by Kate L. Stone and is pegged as fantasy+noir fiction. Whatever that means. In the present times there are so many genres that a reader is kind of confused. I think some genres are pure hypothesis.

Coming back to the book, I liked the protagonist, who is part magician and part something which no one is aware of until the end. He is out there to save the world, at the expense of himself. He can't trust anyone other than a nymph, who has a dark past. With the help of weird creatures like snaky lions, tigerish tortoises, wolfish sparrow, our hero is very enterprising and never alone. With biting, pungent humour, this book moves forward in a real good pace. I felt bad when I finally finished it. Even though I loved the novel, I find it difficult to review it. It is one of those books which defies descriptions.

I found the following sentences, interesting:

The mouth bows against continent

When one reads it in the context of the story, the mouthy bit makes a lot of sense.

Another whopper is:

Any star exaggerates an imaginative triangle.

Now tell me, which mathematician wouldn't appreciate that?

Lastly, I gotta say this:

A choice decides

I give it 5 stars and recommend for all to read this book.

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11 comments:

Ali said...

You did a great job with this! Sounds like a fascinating story--I definitely want to read it. If it's not real, I think someone should write it. And I'm going to guess....real book. The random words are wolfish, mathemetician, and mouthy.

Anonymous said...

Love the lines you included from the book. A very fine recommendation!

Emily said...

Wow, you made it hard to guess your randomly-generated words/phrases by including so many! A strategy that never occurred to me; well played. I'm guessing...continent, exaggerates, and imaginative? And what a great title. Hmm, I guess overall I'll guess it's fake, although I'm really not sure!

Unknown said...

Since I just reviewed a fantasy/noir book I thought this was a real post. Cleverly done, whether the book is real or not.

I love your belief that "genres are pure hypothesis." That's a good way to describe what's going on in fiction these days.

Kerrie said...

I think this is not a real book book, but you have written a very clever review. I think your Random phrase was Seraphic Mandrake. words - hypothesis, pungent, nymph. But I am probably totally wrong

Unknown said...

I guess that it is a fake and that your sentence was:
The mouth bows against continent
Your words were sparrow, triangle and biting.
Great review!

Anonymous said...

I'll go with fake! The random sentence:

The mouth bows against the continent.

Random words: triangle, sparrow, pungent?

If it's a fake, great job! If not, my curiosity's aroused.

Kristen said...

Oooh, yours is a tough one, I'm going to say this is a real book, but you've put a lot of fake stuff in it. The phrase clips you pulled out are (I'm guessing) randomly generated.

Amat Libris said...

I think it's fake . . . maybe. Either way, fantasy + noir sounds cool. And I couldn't possible guess the random words and sentence!

Lahni said...

I think it's a real book. I guess your random words are hypothesis, nymph and pungent. I have no idea what the random sentence is!

Serena said...

sounds like an interesting book and a main character that is a magician...interesting.