incoherent sobbing mini-review The Vinter's Luck

[erastes]

So I just finished The Vintner's Luck and I highly recommend it to anyone who hasn't read and who liked - for example - the Charioteer. It's a lovely read, with a beautiful heart-breaking love story within it, I can't actually say that I could really see what Xas saw in Sobrane, maybe it was just because Sobrane loved him.

The whole religious thing, I have to be honest, went over my head, I'm with Xas in his cynicism about God's creationist ability but I didn't bother pondering over the religious themes.  It was enough that there was the love story which fluttered like feathers in breeze.  Utterly heart breaking, don't read if you can't set yourself up for that, after all, it's the love between an Angel and a human so it ain't going to be all happy endings - the last two lines broke me into bits - still are, in fact *sits here sobbing*.  I could say that it's because I'm more attuned to death or whatever but that's not really true , because immortal - ephemeral love stories have always destroyed me - I've never got over the love between Dora and Lazarus Long (neither has he incidentally)

If I can only make one person feel like I'm feeling now, when they finish Junction X I will die happy.

Comments

[logophilos.livejournal.com]

I couldn't persuade you to post some reviews of your recent reads over here:

http://unique.logophilos.net/public_html/index.php

Could I? We badly need some reviews by people who aren't me :)

[erastes.livejournal.com]

I'd love to! I'm also doing reviews for ERWA and although they are unique to them for a month, after that you can have them and welcome.

[raphinou.livejournal.com]

the only time i felt like bawling my eyes out after reading a novel was when i had finished the brothers bishop (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Brothers-Bishop-Bart-Yates/dp/0758209118) by bart yates (http://www.bartyates.com/).

[erastes.livejournal.com]

What's that one about?

[raphinou.livejournal.com]

well, here's the info from the kensington books website (http://kensingtonbooks.com/):

Tommy and Nathan Bishop are as different as two brothers can be. Carefree and careless, Tommy is the golden boy who takes men into his bed with a seductive smile and turns them out just as quickly. No one can resist him—and no one can control him, either. That salient point certainly isn’t lost on his brother. Nathan is all about control. At thirty-one, he is as dark and complicated as Tommy is light and easy, and he is bitter beyond his years. While Tommy left for the excitement of New York City, Nathan has stayed behind, teaching high school English in their provincial hometown, surrounded by the reminders of their ruined family history and the legacy of anger that runs through him like a scar.

Now, Tommy has come home to the family cottage by the sea for the summer, bringing his unstable, sexual powder keg of an entourage—and the distant echoes of his family’s tumultuous past—with him. Tommy and his lover Philip are teetering on the brink of disaster, while their married friends, Camille and Kyle, perfect their steps in a dance of denial, each partner pulling Nathan deeper into the fray. And when one of Nathan’s troubled students, Simon, begins visiting the house, the slow fuse is lit on a highly combustible mix.

During a heady two-week party filled with drunken revelations, bitter jealousies, caustic jabs, and tender reconciliations, Tommy and Nathan will confront the legacy of their twisted family history—the angry, abusive father and the tragic death of their mother—and finally, to the one secret that has shaped their entire lives. It is a summer that will challenge everything Nathan remembers and unravel Tommy’s carefully constructed facade, drawing them both unwittingly into a drama with echoes of the past…one with unforeseen and very dangerous consequences.

At once both brutally honest and beautifully tender, The Brothers Bishop is a riveting story about the war we wage on those we love best, the cost of forgiveness, and the necessary pain of becoming fully human.

i won't say anymore because i don't want to take away from the full impact of the book. but, i really do recommend it, especially if you love novels that wring the emotions right out of you.

[willa-writes.livejournal.com]

Off to Amazon again... ;-)

[erastes.livejournal.com]

I hope you like it!

[beauty-seeker.livejournal.com]

i adored this book. it's amazing. probably formed the basis for some of my own angel stories. glad you read it!

[erastes.livejournal.com]

I admit that I probably read it too fast and I skipped a lot of the "real life" stuff, because I wanted to get it back to the library. I'll have to buy it now.

[beauty-seeker.livejournal.com]

it's really not the kind of book to read fast. you have to savour it. the language is much too beautiful to skip over; it's not some plot driven pot boiler. like a good wine, it must be sipped.

[msminpdx.livejournal.com]

I loved that book so much I gave the main character of my first novel the surname Sobran. Kind of a shout out to Elizabeth Knox although I doubt she will ever read my stuff. (But who knows, she might?)

[erastes.livejournal.com]

No reason why she shouldn't - she's only a human!

Hey, thanks!

[(Anonymous)]

This is Elizabeth Knox. Thank you for the sobs etc. I thought I'd say thanks instead of lurking in my cloud because people have been telling me to read you and I think I better read you, eh.
Going on amazon. Muttering about exchange rate.
(I only read this now because Google is throwing up all these blogs it hasn't before. It's Niki Caro's film. Which wantonly dispensed with the romance between Xas and Sobran. And is causing a scandal here.)

Re: Hey, thanks!

[erastes.livejournal.com]

Hi Elizabeth, how kind of you to comment! It remains one of my top five gay romance books and I still can't think of the last line without crying. Unbelievable writing. (in a good way.)

my books in no way compare--Transgressions and Standish have amateurish errors but I hope I'm getting better. I'd say start with Speak Its Name or Frost Fair... But thank you so much.

I'm so sorry about the film. I'd heard from friends that they'd done away with the romance which...seems odd...I mean - wasn't that really the POINT? I wonder myself what I'd do if Hollywood offered me wodges of cash to make Standish and then turned the entire thing into a hetero regency. It would be laughable and certainly no different from any regency out there. I'd cry too. It should have been made the way it was meant to be made - ESPECIALLY after BBM for god's sake. Again, I'm really sorry.

And thanks again for dropping by - if you ever want to natter, then don't hesitate to email me on erastes at erastes dot com.

All the best.