Monday, December 31, 2007

Gargoyles!

Great Moments from last night's reading
Book: Heart of Stone
Author: C. E. Murphy
Spoiler level: low

You walk by a big old building and look up at a gargoyle and think, what if that thing came alive and flew around at night? What if it only just now froze and pretended to be a statue, but as soon as I look away, it will fly somewhere? That's the situation in Heart of Stone, where author C.E. Murphy has created a wonderful shadow world of 'Old Races,' and gargoyles are one of them. Alban, the gargoyle hero here, gets the prize for the coolest shifted form, as well as for being incredibly nice.

I love the moments where people are first putting things together, where the paranormal bleeds into the normal. My great moment from last night's reading was when our heroine, Margrit, is with this not-yet-believing fellow, and they're looking out the window and they see a gargoyle on a high ledge, and she's like, was there a gargoyle there before? He thinks surely there was. But then later, there isn't one there at all. Ooops.

There are five Old Races - dragons, djinn, vampires, gargoyles and the weird selkies, sort of like sea lion people. Actually, all five of the categories spend much of their time in human form. And in the case of the dragon and the djinn, they spend time in human forms that have a bit of the batman villain in them, and I mean that in the most positive sense possible.

5 comments:

Wendy said...

I've wanted to read this book for ages! there's not a lot of books about gargoyles and this one sounds very good.

LesleyW said...

I really liked this one. And am looking forward to the next books.

BTW your opening paragraph makes me think of the Dr.Who episode Blink. Which if you haven't seen it, is possibly one of the creepiest things to be on television lately.

writtenwyrdd said...

I did like this one, but I didn't love it to death. C.E. Murphy's other books were good to read, but had the flaw of a whiny main character who repeatedly bemoans certain aspects of her life.

Sarai said...

I just started this book and wow is it ever big! Anywho that was a sidenote I am loving it so far but that doesn't say much considering I haven't gotten far with it!

bettie said...

ooh. I just picked this up at the library. Can't wait to read it. I got Heart of Stone and Kat Richardson's Poltergeist (Greywalker, book 2). Some shining angel has been donating a ton of good urban fantasy to the New Book shelf, I am in heaven.