Rating: 
Summary: Mister Cat!
Review: Jenny delivers an account of her move to Dorset England after her mother's remarriage to a farming soil expert, which results in her acquaintence of many supernatural creatures such as bogarts, pookas and a billy. She slowly becomes friends with the ghost of their residence, a 300 year old apparition named Tamsin, who can't remember what she has to do to be freed from this earth. Jenny picks up her story in bits and pieces, revealling that the ghostly Wild Hunt passes over frequently.Although the start is slow, the writing is tantalizing -- Jenny, now 19, is writing down the events and talking to herself and the reader as she goes along, and as she tries to set the stage and not get ahead of herself, the reader is hooked, trying to figure out exactly what is going on. This lends a disturbingly realistic feel to the plot, and makes the reader believe that those long ago myths are entirely possible today.
Rating: 
Summary: Beagle Just Keeps Getting Better
Review: The very first fantasy book I ever read was "The Last Unicorn". I still have fond memories of that book, but compared to Beagle's writing style of today it was crude. Over the years he has refined his skills. "Tamsin" is wonderful. That he can write a story from the perspective of a young girl, in a completely believable fashion, shows in itself how skillful he is. The young heroine is a unique person, but full of many of the same insecurities that most of us have experienced during our teens. The story grows slowly, drawing the reader in, allowing the absurd to seem perfectly reasonable. A truly memorable tale. This is worth getting in hardcover.
Rating:
Summary: Amazing Read!!
Review: This is the first book I've read by Beagle. It won't be the last. This story is like a train, starting off slowly...building...building...continually gaining momentum. It is very well written, so even in the beginning before all the action takes place, you don't want to put it down. Beagle sucks you into Jenny's life, and even though the story is so bazaar, you believe it!
This is a mysterious, almost creepy, story. I hated to put it down, and when I had to, I kept thinking about it! It's easy to read, and with his amazing descriptions and interesting characters and twists, it's a great read for anyone over the age of 10.
I highly recommend it for anyone interested in a mysterious ghost story.
Rating:
Summary: Amazing Read!!
Review: This is the first book I've read by Beagle. It won't be the last. This story is like a train, starting off slowly...building...building...continually gaining momentum. It is very well written, so even in the beginning before all the action takes place, you don't want to put it down. Beagle sucks you into Jenny's life, and even though the story is so bazaar, you believe it!
This is a mysterious, almost creepy, story. I hated to put it down, and when I had to, I kept thinking about it! It's easy to read, and with his amazing descriptions and interesting characters and twists, it's a great read for anyone over the age of 10.
I highly recommend it for anyone interested in a mysterious ghost story.
Rating:
Summary: Stunning More or Less Describes it
Review: Wow. Wow. Just, wow.
This book is really a good one, I'd reccomend it to people definitely 12 or up (though it never would've stopped me). This book reads like it's fast paced, and it's only when you look at the size of the text, etc., that you notice how long it is. It's about the protagonist, Jenny, moving to England, and having to face many things, among them her decidedly sulky attitude (partly because of the 6-month loss of her dear, dear friend, Mister Cat, in quarantine). The other part of it is her house. It is HUGE, set on about a hundred (or, at least seventy) acres, with three floors, huge rooms... a real seventeenth-century 'manor'. But, it has not been cared for in a long time, and it seems to practically resist electricity. Soon Jenny meets Tamsin, a ghost who died when she was twenty and can't remember why she is still stuck on earth. It's really hard to put down.
Amazingly, the character descriptions and personalities are right on target. I could perfectly imagine the way every person would act in a real situation, probably because the atmosphere seems so much like real life.
Five stars and a round of applause for Peter S. Beagle!
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