Published: January 10, 2017 by Del Rey
Genres: Fantasy, Historical Fiction, YA, Mythology
Pages: 319
Format: Paperback, bought
While reading the last part of the book, I was transported back in time. But no, it wasn't back in time. It's that space, that energy, that KNOWING, that we all have in us, always.
We like to say we lose it after childhood, that only children are capable of feeling that fairytale energy, that *something* just beneath the surface. It does make it bitter sweet, as an adult, to find it again. Because you only realize you've lost that...magic...when you find it AGAIN.
And its found in certain books, the kind you rate 5 stars, when you usually only give books at the most 4 stars, and if it was a REALLY good book, 4.5 You find it in the depths of the Forest, when you realize you are slightly farther away from the path than you intended. But yet, you're HOME.
Some people say that it's a feeling you can find with being high, with certain drug use. But no... The thing is, we are ALWAYS searching for that feeling. That childhood feeling. It's like a drug, like chasing the dragon. And like the dragon, it's illusory. It will never be caught. Because you can't feel it by CHASING it.
"It cannot be found by searching," said Solovey. "You must look away just a little."
It's that word that's just at the tip of your tongue. It's that niggling feeling just at the corner of your brain. It's that SOMETHING, that you can't quite remember; you remember just enough to know there's something TO remember, but that's all.
It's that time in between waking and dreaming, when you're full of knowing, full of the quality of the dream state. And you try to focus your attention, and you're mind just can't quite comprehend what it's focusing ON.
Because it's a vastness. It's nothingness and everything, all at once.
It's that truth, right beneath the societal conditioning that we have to cloak ourselves with to live in a society.
But we all have it.
And this book embodies all of this.
I rated this book 5 stars because of this.
"You Are too attached to things as they are. You must allow things to be what best suits your purpose. And then they will."
"You can't CHANGE it to a brush. Because that would be to believe it is now straw. Just allow it, now, to BE a brush."
"Nothing changes, Vasya. Things are, or they are not. Magic is forgetting that something ever was other than as you willed it."
"I do not understand DAMNED. You ARE. And because you are, you can walk where you will, into peace, into oblivion, or pits of fire, but you will always choose."
