I don't know if there IS a way to delete a book from your Kindle library on Amazon itself.

You can delete docs you send to your kindle, but I am not sure a purchased book you can remove from your acct.

I think one problem with the series is that The Dark Is Rising plays up the importance of the signs so much, and we later learn they are actually a fairly small piece of the Important Things puzzle.

Right?? I got to the end and it was like, oh, so that treasure lack-of-hunt was just part of a larger Treasure Hunt, and, hey, we already found the Grail! More magical objects or whatever!

The other books explore the other pieces (and Will is not the protagonist of all, or even most, of them, though he appears in several), and some do it better than others.

That's good to hear. Honestly, I strongly considered just stopping, but then I saw that the Drew kids are back in the next book, and those kids get shit done. I'm looking forward to seeing them on a more magical adventure.

The Grey King is the best book in the series, and brings some cool Arthurian stuff in, but the whole series is a bit vague about lots of things.

And that's the only book read by a different reader, weirdly enough. I guess I don't mind vagueness, but everything in the The Dark Is Rising seemed to be vague and made up as it went along to suit whatever was going on at the time.

And I think The Dark is Rising has some of the best atmosphere and general "whoa" factor in the series, so if you didn't feel that you may not like the rest.

It's entirely possible. With this book, I couldn't get into it so much that I wasn't paying as much attention to the audiobook, which contributed to my not getting into it as much, and it was a vicious circle. So maybe if I try to pay more attention and get into it, it will grab me more.

But they're not particularly long or hard to read, so at least make it through Greenwitch and The Grey King before you give up.

Yeah, it looks like both the next two books together are as long as this one was. The last book is longer, and I will likely make my way through it because I realized where my LJ friend whose name is silveronthetree got her name.

I also like Over Sea, Under Stone and wonder where it falls in the suggested reading order - I actually read it first when I did it, as I'm a "read it in the order things happen" kind of person.

I read it first and found it kind of boring, but not bad. There's a good case to be made for reading it second, though.

Yeah, if you didn't like The Dark is Rising, I'm not sure I'd suggest reading the rest of them. Unless you want a foundation for the great Will/Bran fanfic out there.

I definitely don't recommend them in audiobook form, by the way. I don't think that would work for me at all. But audiobooks often don't, and they do for you, so maybe that recommendation doesn't make sense.

They are being read by a British guy! They should be working! But they are not very engrossing; I have thought that I might be more into it if I actually read it. But I have no motivation to do that when I can just get through them in my car and say what is the deal with this classic fantasy series, three stars.

Fair enough. I don't think they're quite as mindblowing as they once were. There are a lot more epic YA fantasy series out there now than there used to be.

ETA: I like the Welsh bits.

So, after seeing the discussion here, I checked the online catalog for my local library, then went across the street to check out Smoke & Mirrors, since it's been something like a decade since I read Murder Mysteries.

If you look at the summary of the events in the story, I think it's reasonable to think that it might be gendered violence. However, in the actual context, it doesn't ping me at all.

Some reasons why: If you're talking about love and death and murder and justice (which the story is), then there has to be love and death. There's just no way around it. I find a male narrator for this story to be less problematic than a female one for a host of reasons. Ok, so then his primary victim can either be male or female. Given that the angels are coded male (for all that it's made clear that they're not, really), making his victim male changes the story in very significant ways (for all that it's not fair, homosexual relationships are not seen as universal). Now, the roommate or the kid could have been male without there being a significant change (apart from the thing about women named Tinkerbell name their daughters Susan), but I don't think that's the primary objection.

As for the necrophilia...sometimes Gaiman writes some sick shit, yo. I think the point of that was that it was sick. But also, to emphasize the feeling within the nature of love (as presented in the story) to have and be had entirely, rather than moved on from, or spit in the sink. There are a couple of bits of dialogue that I think are key:

"I love you," she said.
"Thank you."

and

"Susan's upstairs, asleep," said Tink. "She's all I live for. Would you like to see her?"

If one had a fucked-up view of love, one might ask how Tink could love him, but Susan is all she lives for (much as was the case with Saraquel and "Death").

Were I in high school, I would write a literary analysis essay about how Gaiman is proposing that love is a fundamentally flawed concept.

Susan's upstairs, asleep," said Tink. "She's all I live for. Would you like to see her?"

I think that is the point at which he lost it, jealousy of her love for her child. The parallel with the angel story implies that to me.

Okay, now that I'm home and have reread the story...

It can't be both?

It it is certainly possible for a story to be both. Given that this particular story is explicitly about justice and vengeance and jealousy and love and whether anyone but God can really be considered responsible for anything that happens as a result of His Divine and Mysterious plan... I feel like context matters.

Plus I think the ending is fairly ambiguous about retribution. He is narrating it from 10 years later, yes. We don't know where he is. The story he tells us ends with him confined in a small silver room, at peace, waiting for someone to let him out. Which is how Raguel's story began.

I believe his crimes are meant to be a disturbing revelation (so to speak) and to raise questions. I don't know how to address your concerns because I don't understand what they are. I don't mean that dismissively, just... I genuinely don't understand.

Is anyone else following Jennifer Egan's "Black Box" on Twitter @NYerFiction. It's striking me after six tweets that I'm not caught up yet, and I have much less patience with not being caught up than I would on a page.