MYTHOLOGY LAND: 12 classic legends reimagined, beautiful Yule gift!

MYTHOLOGY LAND: 12 classic legends reimagined
CLAIRE COCK-STARKEY (Illus. Pham Quang Phuc)
Frances Lincoln Children's Books (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$35.00 all editions, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Mythology Land is a large-format gift book filled with classic myths and exquisitely illustrated maps for children to pore over.

Mythology Land opens the gates to the magical lands of all the characters and creatures of myth.

These expertly retold stories are perfect for bedtime, and each tale is followed by an exquisitely illustrated map of its world. You can drop into Midgard and explore the land of the giants with Thor, run from Baba Yaga in the Deep Dark Forest, and follow the Yangtze river to see which animal will win the great race. What wonderful things will you find along the way?

Beautiful, stylish, and vibrant illustrations adorn each page, as the text transports readers to faraway lands of mystery, fantasy, and magic—and the level of detail in the maps of these lands means this title will be lovingly pored over time and time again.

The stories include:

Rama & Sita (Hindu)

The Great Race (Chinese)

The Trojan Horse (Greek)

Quetzalcoatl Brings Food to the World (Aztec)

The Great Maui (Polynesian)

Thor and the Land of the Giants (Norse)

The Tale of Blodeuwedd (Welsh)

Baba Yaga (Slavic)

Anansi and the Sky God (Ghanaian)

The Story of Isis and Osiris (Egyptian)

The Grateful Crane (Japanese)

The Legend of Sedna (Inuit)

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: A beautiful exercise in retelling a variety of cultures' myths. I felt drawn in to these retellings, and greatly appreciated the artwork. It's another case of how much you spend versus how much you get...it's a bit more than most but it really looks it.

A few spreads as examples:

Luxe items like this book are excellent gifts because they look more expensive than their actual cost. I'd choose the tree book because it's guaranteed to look lovely, where the tablet the book is viewed on will make a huge difference.

BLUE-SKINNED GODS, one of my favorite 2021 demonstrations of social progress

BLUE-SKINNED GODS
S.J. SINDU
Soho Press
$26.00 hardcover, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

FINALIST FOR THE 34th Lambda Literary Award—BEST BISEXUAL FICTION! Winners announced 11 June 2022.
GBH's virtual book club, BEYOND THE PAGE, features Author Sindu discussing this story and answering audience questions FREE Register at the link for tonight's 7p EST event!

The Publisher Says: From the award-winning author of Marriage of a Thousand Lies comes a brilliantly written, globe-spanning novel about identity, faith, family, and sexuality.

In Tamil Nadu, India, a boy is born with blue skin. His father sets up an ashram, and the family makes a living off of the pilgrims who seek the child’s blessings and miracles, believing young Kalki to be the tenth human incarnation of the Hindu god Vishnu. In Kalki’s tenth year, he is confronted with three trials that will test his power and prove his divine status and, his father tells him, spread his fame worldwide. While he seems to pass them, Kalki begins to question his divinity.

Over the next decade, his family unravels, and every relationship he relied on—father, mother, aunt, uncle, cousin—starts falling apart. Traveling from India to the underground rock scene of New York City, Blue-Skinned Gods explores ethnic, gender, and sexual identities, and spans continents and faiths, in an expansive and heartfelt look at the need for belief in our globally interconnected world.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: A child is fed a diet of lies by his parents and all the adults around him. They seek many things from their lies, and he seeks only his truth.

Come for the writing, stay for the story...the sentences are lovely things, shining and glowing with the light of inspiration. The story's the one we all need to hear at this juncture, the one about the abuse of religion in service of religiosity and greed. The cost to this genuinely beautiful soul, Kalki, is so huge...the relationships he can not save are all built on the sand of lies.

What makes this story so extraordinarily resonant is that we're all surrounded by lies all day every day. Yes, it's true, Kalki's lies are costly to those he's lying to...not being a god and still trying to heal people is wrong...but he told the truth he had been sold all his life by the liars he was raised by and among. Kalki, unlike all the rest of us, has the weight of the literal world on him, has expectations of miracles mounded on him. That's his excuse for buying into the lies he's surrounded by. What's yours? What's mine?

The questions that this brutally honest look in the mirror of a story raises are urgently in need of everyone's answers, delivered with the honesty and the anger that Kalki uses as he does the absolutely unthinkable, the unbelievably god-like thing and takes control of his life: He forgives.

Being able to forgive is, I honestly believe, the single most important quality in a healthy person's happiness. I see it in stark relief as this novel winds its coils around my heart. Kalki, wronged on every level, betrayed and abandoned on every side, used and abused and ripped off...he forgives. And that is the most beautiful thing available for a mortal to do, to give. Come and be healed: Read BLUE-SKINNED GODS.

THE PALACE OF ILLUSIONS, a foundational myth in Bharati society

THE PALACE OF ILLUSIONS
CHITRA BANERJEE DIVAKARUNI
Doubleday
$16.95 trade paper, available now

KINDLE EDITION ON SALE FOR $1.99!

Rating: 5* of five

The Publisher Says: A reimagining of the world-famous Indian epic, the Mahabharat—told from the point of view of an amazing woman.

Relevant to today’s war-torn world, The Palace of Illusions takes us back to a time that is half history, half myth, and wholly magical. Narrated by Panchaali, the wife of the legendary Pandavas brothers in the Mahabharat, the novel gives us a new interpretation of this ancient tale.

The novel traces the princess Panchaali's life, beginning with her birth in fire and following her spirited balancing act as a woman with five husbands who have been cheated out of their father’s kingdom. Panchaali is swept into their quest to reclaim their birthright, remaining at their side through years of exile and a terrible civil war involving all the important kings of India. Meanwhile, we never lose sight of her strategic duels with her mother-in-law, her complicated friendship with the enigmatic Krishna, or her secret attraction to the mysterious man who is her husbands' most dangerous enemy. Panchaali is a fiery female redefining for us a world of warriors, gods, and the ever-manipulating hands of fate.

My Review: I'd give it six stars if I could.

Peak reading experiences come all too seldom in life. I think one knows it's a peak when it's almost too painful to endure that the book is ending, but almost too painful to endure to put it down and turn out the light. Then the book comes to you in your dreams, the characters and the situations work their magical way into your receptive dream-mind, and make not only waking hours painfully happy with the reading or anticipation of reading but the sleeping hours more vivid and more real and more alive than ever.

That's what happened to me as I read The Palace of Illusions. I've dreamed of its characters, I've lived vicariously its plot and its many eventful twists for a month of nights, and I truly can't express to you how much pleasure it's given me to do so. I wish for everyone that experience, if not with this book then with another, and soon. It makes a whole new level of appreciation come, or come back, to you when you come across one of these books.

I have had the life-changing experience twice before, and I still treasure those memories. I will treasure this one equally. I suppose the idea of the book, retelling a classic Indian foundational myth called Mahabharat from the point-of-view of a female character, is in keeping with today's popular trend of reimagining myths from all angles and stances. I certainly am aware that telling any Indian myth from a female point of view is a departure from the cultural norms of that society, and to be applauded for that reason alone; but what Divakaruni wrought in doing this is nothing short of creating a new foundation myth on the stones of the old one.

I think a woman who has five husbands wished on her as she comes into this world from a fiery column is worth hearing more about; so did Divakaruni; and thus the tale told here. The myth mentions her, but there is much room for more development. A little like Eve's untold story in Christian myth, and the odd absence of Hera stories as separate from Zeus and his philandering. Extraordinary men need extraordinary women, and simply not telling me-the-reader about them doesn't make them not exist; it merely hides them in deep and scary shadows until a woman with the right eyes comes along, sees the real story, and sets about telling it.

We are all of us readers the richer for Divakaruni's gift of this book to us. I do not, however, recommend it to all readers; I don't think its power is in its broad appeal but in its complete appeal. I suspect that some whose reading preferences are more aimed at comfort and at the satisfactions of reinforcement and reassurance would find this an unpleasant book to read. But I truly wish for each of you that you give it a try, let it at least make a start on working its beautiful enchantment on you. I hope it will be able to speak its way into your dreams the way it did mine.