Inventing Memory

Rating:
Summary: I can't remember the last time...
Review: ...a book held me this enthralled. No, actually, I can. It was Kushiel's Avatar, and it was more than a year ago. This is possibly the best work of fiction I've read this year so far; certainly it's the most unputdownable.

The novel contains two parallel storylines. One is about Shula, a slave in ancient Sumer, who has visions that lead her to the service of the goddess Inanna. However, even as Inanna makes greater and greater demands upon her, Shula loses her heart to a different goddess, Belili, Inanna's wilder rival. And in the modern day, a nerdy girl named Wendy grows up, has a vision of Belili herself, and begins to dream of a life better than her social-outcast existence. She searches for goddess religion and matriarchy and eventually becomes a scholar of ancient literature, but meanwhile the tension is building in her romantic relationship with her boyfriend Ray. A weird science-fiction twist brings the two storylines together, and I won't spoil anything else.

But this is a great story, filled with haunting myths and equally haunting depictions of life as a teenage misfit, beautiful scenes of love and friendship, thoughtful discourse about ancient matriarchies and whether they existed, lovely prose, and all sorts of other good stuff. My only issue with it is that the science fiction device seemed a bit far-fetched to me. This is a minor quibble--it's science fiction after all! Read it if you're into mythic fiction or time-travel storylines.

Rating:
Summary: has potential but falls short.
Review: This book was very readable for me and the first few chapters were enough to hold my interest which was very pleasing. My problem with this book was that there were many things that were not clarified like what the goddess was exactly. It was confusing how Shula talked to Inama for me and what type of entity the snake was.

There were some very good lines and Shula's adventure in the underworld was wonderful. I wish there was more of that. But some of the descriptions were really confusing. I'm not sure if they were translated from some mythical language or whatnot but lines like "Her eyes were wide and dark, and as the guards dragged her away, Shula thought, If only I could hide in them" were really perplexing. Hide in her eyes? I can't see how that is possible on any level.

The names in the book were very creative. I loved the names. But otherwise I found the descriptions rather lukewarm and boring. The ending was dissapointing and contrived. Maybe I just don't like fantasy and reality cross over stories but I felt the ending was dissapointing.