Dusk or Dark or Dawn or Day
Registered by 
GoryDetails
of Nashua, New Hampshire USA on 12/2/2019
This Book is Currently in the Wild!
GoryDetails of Nashua, New Hampshire USA on 12/2/2019 This Book is Currently in the Wild!
1 journaler for this copy...
I got this ex-library softcover from Better World Books, delivered in the aftermath of a heavy snowstorm. I've enjoyed many of McGuire's works, both under that name and under her pseudonym "Mira Grant"; this one's a standalone, and looks intriguing.
Later: McGuire excels at world-building, and here she's taken the tropes of ghosts, witches, and afterlife issues and created something new. Protagonist Jenna died as a young girl, not long after the death by suicide of her beloved sister - but in this world, souls have a predetermined lifespan, and if they haven't used up that time at death, the ghosts have to linger on. There are different ways to make up for this time-debt, including an odd-sounding one: they can "take time" from humans, not in the sense of shortening the humans' lives but rather "youthening" them, putting them back a few hours/days/years. Our heroine demonstrates this early on, taking an hour or so from a (human) co-worker to send her back to her not-exhausted-yet self. It's a really unusual way of looking at this kind of time/energy/life-force transfer, and the mechanics of it become central to the story (for good and ill).
Jenna, our ghost, can interact with the human world as long as she's careful about not touching people and not letting them know she doesn't need to eat or sleep or any of that stuff. She works at a suicide hotline, to try and prevent others from taking her sister's way out, but she really, really wants to reach her own end-date so that she can (she hopes) find her sister again. But something's changing in the supernatural community, and she may have to pay a high price to stop it...
While I didn't love this one as much as Every Heart a Doorway, it had some really marvelous concepts, and the ending's perfect.
Later: McGuire excels at world-building, and here she's taken the tropes of ghosts, witches, and afterlife issues and created something new. Protagonist Jenna died as a young girl, not long after the death by suicide of her beloved sister - but in this world, souls have a predetermined lifespan, and if they haven't used up that time at death, the ghosts have to linger on. There are different ways to make up for this time-debt, including an odd-sounding one: they can "take time" from humans, not in the sense of shortening the humans' lives but rather "youthening" them, putting them back a few hours/days/years. Our heroine demonstrates this early on, taking an hour or so from a (human) co-worker to send her back to her not-exhausted-yet self. It's a really unusual way of looking at this kind of time/energy/life-force transfer, and the mechanics of it become central to the story (for good and ill).
Jenna, our ghost, can interact with the human world as long as she's careful about not touching people and not letting them know she doesn't need to eat or sleep or any of that stuff. She works at a suicide hotline, to try and prevent others from taking her sister's way out, but she really, really wants to reach her own end-date so that she can (she hopes) find her sister again. But something's changing in the supernatural community, and she may have to pay a high price to stop it...
While I didn't love this one as much as Every Heart a Doorway, it had some really marvelous concepts, and the ending's perfect.
Journal Entry 2 by GoryDetails at Little Free Library, Sholan Park in Sterling, Massachusetts USA on Thursday, December 12, 2019
GoryDetails at Little Free Library, Sholan Park in Sterling, Massachusetts USA on Thursday, December 12, 2019
Released 4 yrs ago (12/12/2019 UTC) at Little Free Library, Sholan Park in Sterling, Massachusetts USA
WILD RELEASE NOTES:
I wanted to leave this in the Little Free Library, but apparently it's been taken down for the season. So I left the book, bagged against the elements, on a bench near the edge of the pond. Hope the finder enjoys it![See other recent releases in MA here.]
*** Released for the 2019 What's In A Name Release Challenge. ***
*** Released for the 2019 D for December release challenge. ***
