Ed: K is for Kingfisher

K is for T. Kingfisher, because we agreed to go by the name on the spine. T. Kingfisher is a pseudonym for Ursula Vernon, and I think of it as an Ursula Vernon book, but it’s not a V, it’s a K, because that’s the rule.

It’s the name on the metaphorical spine, though, because I bought it as a file and read it on my telephone. No spine. No pages, so no title page. Still.

I purchased Seven Brides specifically to read on an airplane, and then didn’t read it on the airplane. Partly because I was still reading Rose in Bloom on my telephone, and partly because I didn’t wind up reading that much. I have grown accustomed, a bit, to reading on the device, but I am more likely to grab hold of a physical book, when I get a chance. Which I largely did, even on the airplane.

Still, there it was on the phone, and eventually it was the book on the phone I hadn’t read yet. And then it was the book on the phone I was in the middle of, and then, surprisingly quickly, it was the book on the phone I had finished. It’s that sort of book. You read a bit, and then a bit more, and then just a little more, and then you find you’ve swallowed the whole thing in a gulp.

It’s not so much because of the plot. There’s a plot, and if it’s enough of a plot to satisfy me it’s got to be a fairly substantial one, but it doesn’t so much twist as unravel. No, what was so engrossing was the feel of the book, the finely evoked spookiness that didn’t descend into gore. It kept up a nightmare horror, coming back to the prosaic to ground itself as a book, much the way that our protagonist comes back to the kitchen to ground herself before another night’s horrible quest. It’s not that I didn’t want to leave the world of the book, either—it’s not a world anyone would want to stay in. It’s just that the book works, in a way that books ought to.

Thanks,
-E.