Dream away with Patricia A. McKillip

Now that I'm done with Jack, I've gone back to Patricia A. McKillip. I was re-reading one of her books before the Jack teen books and now I'm starting on a new one of hers called The Bards of Bone Plain.
What I like about McKillip's books is the feeling of being lost in her fantastical worlds which is like being lost in a dream. I dream a lot and wake up sometimes feeling as if I haven't slept at all; the dreams are so active. Her dreamlike worlds always involve a huge aspect of nature which really appeals to me. Like in Winter Rose or The Book of Atrix Wolfe - upon meeting the Queen of the Wood with a crown of antlers and eyes that you stare into and see nothing or nature scenes, you try to talk or scream and leaves come out of your own mouth. So magical, lyrical. And I like the fact that these woodland people look like animals in disguise and they don't care anything about the mortal world. They're quite indifferent to it. At least, the Queen is. And yet, sometimes they mate with humans and produce offspring that carry the magic that pulls them to discover the realm they don't know about. Interesting...

Jack's got a hold on me...

After my delve into green smoothies and raw food, I started trying to read a couple of travel books. My sister recommended I See by My Outfit by Peter S. Beagle (author of The Last Unicorn). The "special" banter between Beagle and his best friend was annoying and a total turn-off. I consider myself a hippie at heart (at least when it comes to music), but this hippie road trip just wasn't doing it for me. So I tried a recommendation from my supervisor at work called Ghost Train to the Eastern Star by Paul Theroux, after a short discussion of her train trip across Russia to Vladivostok peaked my interest. The places he visited were interesting, as were his comments, but his at times snooty academic tone turned me off enough to just set aside all 496 pages of this ramblings. Guess I just wasn't in travel log mode... I finally settled on re-reading The Book of Atrix Wolfe by Patricia A. McKillip (which is sitting on my shelf). I was enjoying it quite a bit when a bunch of books I'd put a hold on came in. And here I am again reading about Repairman Jack, except this time he's a teenager.

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I read the first teen Jack book last year and now I'm reading Jack: Secret Circles. Although I'm well beyond my teens, I'm enjoying the easy flow of the story. It's like the books I read in my late childhood/early teens. The author's voice is believable as a teen. The characters are familiar yet new because it's a different time in their life. I'm halfway through, then comes Jack: Secret Vengeance and then I'll be officially done with Jack.