Rating: 
Summary: Excellent
Review: Nina Kiriki Hoffman tells a darn good yarn. Gypsum is the only one in her family other than her father, who doesn't have special magic acquired during "transition", a transformation everyone else underwent that left them with powers ranging from transfiguration to creating simple enchantments. But one week, when she's 20 (and long after she's given up on getting magic and belonging) the change happens to her and she discovers she has been given the gift of curses. An unexpected and dangerous power to have. Gyp doesn't want to hurt people, but she knows that if she rejects her power, it will kill her. How she will learn to deal with this new part of her without destroying herself and others around her? In a witty, funny and exciting way. You'll love going on a journey with Gyp as she has accidents, victories and experiences bumps along the way to love, acceptance and mastering her power.
Rating:
Summary: Ms K-H. writes like a dream
Review: One of my favourite female fantasy writers this year has got to be Nina Kiriki Hoffman. Her "Matt Black" series was truly amazing, and even more so is "A Fistful of Sky". I started off with "Red Heart of Memories" in March this year, and just couldn't stop. She writes like a dream, and her female characters are very strong, and intriguing. Most definitely addictive - Ms Hoffman comes at you from left of field and doesn't let go until you're left gasping in a heap on the sofa, wondering what kind of wonder-stuff she mixes with her prose! Definitely recommended.
Rating:
Summary: beguiling and magical coming of age tale
Review: The LaZelles are rich, own a beach front estate in California, and are witches and warlocks except for the patriarch who is not descended from a line of mages. The children come into their powers after they reach adolescence, all that is except for Gypsum who at the age of nineteen shows no evidence that she will wield magic. She accepts the fact that she is the odd sibling and just when she thinks her life will be normal she "transitions' into a witch." Gyp's powers are not like her brothers and sisters. Her specialty is curses and she must curse someone or something several times a day or she will get sick. Some of her curses turn out to be funny, some are very scary, but none are ever dull. The longer Gyp practices, the more she refines her gift and something very surprising occurs that shocks not only her but her entire family. A FISTFUL OF SKY is a very beguiling and magical coming of age tale. The heroine goes through some very funny experiences as she comes to grips with her new found powers that will bewitch readers by her looking like a teenage version of Samantha's befuddled aunt. Nina Kiriki Hoffman has a flair for the dramatic and the unusual. Harriet Klausner
Rating:
Summary: Tangible Magic
Review: There's a lovely theme running through all of Nina Kiriki Hoffman's work of making the intangible more real than the material things regular folks deem important. And because magic is tangible in Hoffman's work, you get the fun of manipulating it, whether as the golden gooey stuff envisioned in her Matt Black stories, or the glowing strands and nets Tom Renfield spins in "The Thread that Binds the Bones".
The book is propeled by Gypsum's process of learning to control and manipulate her power, and along the way, resolve relationships within her family. Gypsum learns to control her magical powers in a rational way -- observing, taking notes, finding patterns, making mistakes, experimenting. This is appropriate, because in many ways her power is a physical phenomenon -- initially it is a wraith that stalks her; her lingering curses emit a warm glow; unspent power is a tight tension in her shoulders. There are rules and time limits that govern her curse magic that she must learn. Yet what her curse magic creates is a feast for the senses -- mountains of fragrant bread and gooey brownies, a ballooning grapefruit filling the kitchen until it dents the walls, a way-too-helpful computer growing limbs to cling to its user.
Fantasy readers who demand plot and danger and clashes with evil might be disappointed, but for the rest of us, we'll enjoy it like baking Christmas cookies -- rich ingredients, wonderful smells, and a tasty result you can't wait to share.
Rating:
Summary: Couldn't Put it Down!
Review: This is one of the most imaginative books I have come across in a long time, and I had trouble putting it down! It's one of those gems that engross you, and you will think of it long after you've finished it.
Gypsum LaZelle, the middle child in a family of talented witches, has resigned herself to being normal. Having not undergone transition, she never acquired the powers that her siblings and mother have. So she was surprised, to say the least, when at twenty years old, she underwent her own transition and gained her own power. Her surprise was greater still when, instead of having a positive power like the rest of her family, she had a negative power-the power of curses.
Waking up each morning with power literally spilling out of her, Gypsum HAD to utilize her curses, but more often than not, things went awry. With a perfectionist mother, every failure was blown out of proportion and criticized. Luckily, with the love and support of the rest of her family, Gyp starts to learn how she can use her power for good rather than evil.
Sometimes dangerous, sometimes funny, and always entertaining, Gyp's magical attempts will fascinate the reader. What's great about the main character is that she's not perfect: overweight, naive and a bit squeamish, she is a wholly lovable, believable character. Hoffman did a marvelous job crafting Gyp's emotions, and the characters are extremely endearing. If this is any indication of the writer's talents, I'm going to go out and buy all her works.
Rating:
Summary: Family Dynamics--with a wild-card twist
Review: This latest novel by this award-winning writer arrived by FedEx late yesterday afternoon, and I stayed up till midnight to finish it, unwilling and unable to put it down. A blessing? A curse? No, just a pleasure, a wonder, a glimpse through a brilliant window into an arcanely-twisted world. The LaZelles are just a typical Los Angeles family---big house, lots of kids, elderly relatives, family feuds---except for the fact that its members, sometime in their teens, go through a painful "transition" and become magic-users, their talents blossoming in weird and wonderful ways. In this generation, the middle daughter, Gypsum, is resigned to remaining Ordinary, but finds herself, at 20 years of age, coping with her talented witchy siblings, her opinionated witchy mother, her psychoanalytic father, her college career, her body-image---and with a late, and dangerous, delayed transition, leaving her with the unwelcome and unkind power of cursing, which no one in the family has borne for many years. Follow along as Gyp learns to cope with the parameters of her powers, as the story veers from the absurdly funny to the painfully tragic and back again, continually humming with an edgy, mythic resonance of Other-but-Familiar. I admire Hoffman's writing greatly, and recommend this A Fistful of Sky highly. With just one clever little twist to one of the everyday postulates which we take for granted, the world, in Hoffman's capable hands, becomes a very different place---and what makes it work so well is the depth and honesty of the characterization. However weird this family is, Hoffman makes these people live and breathe, even as they're throwing tantrums, throwing fire, or throwing curses.
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