Simona B's Reviews > Written in Red

Buddy read with my wonderful friend Nina. Let's do this! :D

"Of course, if Meg had taken shelter somewhere else instead of stumbling along until she came to the Courtyard, she might not have found them, and he might never have known her. So maybe Namid was wise to make human females do foolish things."

Notice to mariners: I'm still trying to collect myself. Thus, I'm not in the position to guarantee that the following review will contain more than incomprehensible gibberish. I apologise in advance.

I won't say that Written in Red was a surprise for me. I already knew I was likely to appreciate it, thanks to some reviews I had read and, above all, thanks to a couple of friends of mine who claimed this series was a hidden jewel of the urban-fantasy world. So, no, I'm not surprised that the quality of this book is so high; but for sure I am astonished by how much I enjoyed, loved and adored it.

If you have already read some of my reviews, you must know I never provide a short summary of the plot, not even the slightest description of what the book is about, before writing down my opinions. Very probably, more than a few details emerge just the same, given how specific I tend to be when analyzing the different element of the book, but that's all. You will almost never find in my reviews a sentence like "This book tells about". Even more so, you won't find it in this one. I knew literally nothing about the plot when I started reading Written in Red, except that there were werewolves and vampires, and I strongly feel this played a part in my overall enjoyment, which, as you may have guessed, was very, very high.

“It was easier when all we wanted to do was eat them and take their stuff,” he grumbled.
And it had been easier when he hadn’t cared if he made any of them cry.”

• The plot is one of the thing which please me the most. It is well-structured , solid, not too fast-paced nor the opposite. It is exactly the kind of plot a first book in a series needs: action is not neglected, but at the same time the readers have time to get acquainted to the world and the characters, totally at their leisure and without a bit of boredom.
Moreover, this is one of those plots which are not composed of a single narrative thread -what I like to call 'multiplots'. And the thing about these category of plots that makes me fall head over heels is that at the end, in those hectic moments of the final battle, or anyway in that which is the climax of the whole story, it turns out that all these separate storylines converge into one. You already know they are meant to, of course, but every single time I think of it as a little narrative miracle. It's so satisfying. And it's not as wasy as it may seem to 'reduce' the intricacy of such a big multiplot in just one key moment.

• The world-building: fabulous. I do not have any other word. I loved its richness, its impeccably neat complexity, and can only admire and worship Anne Bishop for the coherence, the attention and the work she put in shaping it. A plus.

• The writing is maybe the very first thing that made my heart beat for this book. Anne Bishop uses the third-person, which she surely knows how to employ and thus had me sold completely after only one page (I'll always chose the third-person narrative over the first-person). Besides, she has such an enticing way to write, with her full and well-turned sentences and rich descriptions. She is always precise about what the characters do and how, and this gives her writing a sort of concrete, material quality that I cannot explain. Her style gives the world she lays down for us a texture and a consistency that made it easy for me to attune to the story itself. Anne Bishops writes as if she is shaping something material. Her writing is a sculpture.

• The characters- oh, good god. The blessed characters.
If you love books that feature a respectable but not so much cast of characters, each one unique and adorable (and that's the case to add: downright scary) in his own way, then Written in Red is your book. A prophet, Wolves ("big and scary and so fluffy"), Sanguinati (what did you say? Vampires? Oh, please, only meat- humans! Only humans call them vampires), a girl who's probably Medusa's daughter or anyway a close relative of hers, Crows (really a lot of them), Howls, a Bear, a Coyote, a couple of mice that will be quickly eaten. And I've surely forgotten someone.

Besides, did I mention that one of the Wolves is a pup? His name is Sam and I swear on my heart, you've never met anyone more pretty and cuddly than him.

And did I mention another one of the Wolves is Simon Wolfgard? Like, SIMON WOLFGARD .



He made me melt in a thousand ways.