Tina Connolly

Honestly, I was really into this book until the part where everything is supposed to come together in the end, and then it didn't work for me. Too easy? Too predictable? Something. I love the concept: steampunk Jane Eyre, where Jane has rage issues (yes!) and is a veteran from the fae wars. Great concept, and like I said, started well. I love the fairy tale touches throughout as well. I think I just don't buy her sudden superpowers, or really believe in the fae plot. Your mileage may vary, show more don't let me put you off. show less

Taste, and its sensory twin, smell, can conjure long-forgotten memories more mysteriously and profoundly than sights, sounds, and touch can, yet flavours and aromas are harder to describe (unless you’re a sommelier or parfumier). Or maybe they’re so powerful because they’re so hard to describe.

This delicious fable feels like a folktale.
(What do folktales taste of, I wonder?)

The menu includes:
• Rosemary Crostini of Delightfully Misspent Youth
• Fennel Flatbread of Sunlit Days Gone show more By
• Rose-Pepper Shortbread of Sweetness Lost
• Lemon Tart of Profound Regret
• Bitter Chocolate of Agony Observed

For those who eat them, these carefully-crafted “Temporal Confections” kindle memories, smuggle a message, and trigger a journey - a more profound and potentially vengeful one than from Hansel and Gretel’s crumbs.

“A memory can be directed, a little, if the eater has practice… that moment trapped in time like a fly in amber.”

Image: Fossilised fly in Baltic amber (Source)

“Not all customers can be helped with a fennel-bright flatbread, a happy moment. There are many who need a more profound searching into their past.”
And not everyone deserves to relive their best moments.

You can read the story HERE. And you should.

The taste of my memories

Three memories rolled around my palette as, and just after, I read:

• A favourite tale of my child’s was Sanji and the Baker. I recalled the warmth of freshly-baked bread and of a toddler on my lap, as well as Korky Paul’s swirling art. See my illustrated review HERE.

• Eating “dans le noir”: a pitch-black restaurant, where it’s remarkably hard to identify food by flavour and smell alone. See my review of Jeanette Winterson’s The Passion, HERE.

• My mother is a good cook, except mince (minced/ground beef). Tonight, she mentioned she’s “enjoying experimenting with mince”. I shuddered, laughed, and texted my brother, who replied, “Gosh, that sounds alarming!”. He remembers, and like me, he can probably taste it again.

Image: These floral cupcakes, with different flavours for different people and moods, conjure very special memories for me.

Sometimes there’s no need for codes, keys, passwords, transcription, or symbols to send a message that awakens a memory: food can do it. show less

Forget about the vulnerable and righteous heroine of the stage musical Wicked. Think back to your childhood and the malevolent women of The Wizard of Oz, Disney’s Snow White, Baba Yaga, or Hansel and Gretel. Yes, that kind of witch. Now imagine she’s your adoptive mom. That’s the situation of Camellia “Cam” Hendrix, a 15-year-old high-school sophomore, in Tina Connolly’s Seriously Wicked.

Connolly has updated Anna Elizabeth Bennett’s Little Witch into a delightful tale for teen show more audiences — but with a fabulous twist. When Cam’s adoptive mother, Sarmine Scarabouche, summons the demon Estahoth, the demon ends up taking over the body of the new boy in town, Devon, a young man the smitten Cam describes as having band-boy blond hair and good looks. Her life already includes a werewolf cub, a dragon and spells that involve goat blood, but it suddenly gets even crazier. How can Cam free Devon? And how to send Estahoth back to the earth’s core where he came from?

I loved Connolly’s take on Cam’s life, a life full of extreme variants of every teen’s life: trying to hide any differences, uneasily navigating the whole boy-girl thing; ashamed of parents and determined to never be anything like them; discovering the importance of clever, strong, and reliable friends; finding your own place in a crazy, mixed-up world, realizing that Algebra II and magic have a lot in common (OK, maybe not that one). And maybe learning that, once in a while, your mom might have a decent idea or two. And that ending! So thrilling!

Readers, whether teens or not, will devour this book — well, like the werewolf cub devours those desiccated pet-shop pig’s ears. If you’ll pardon the pun, Cam will cast a real spell on you. I’m hoping Connolly is already working her magic on a sequel.

In the interest of full disclosure, I received this book from NetGalley and Macmillan-Tor/Forge in exchange for an honest review. show less

Summer 2019 (Hugo Award Nominee 2019 - Novelette);

An invitation to a Temporal Confections dinner is equally coveted and feared, but never declined.

(4.5 Stars)

Dark, deep, and decadent, is how you will find this piece. There is the endless sumptuousness of the food itself, delectable enough to tease the tongue of any reading with its gorgeous descriptions, and yet it promises (and delivers on) so much more. The stage is set as the Duke's Banquet of Temporal Confections, and though we don't show more yet know why the title calls it the last, the story, and our narrator, the Duke's TasteTester and the Baker's Wife, draw us slowly, delicately through this intrigue of both dinner and a land under siege.

The idea of the temporal confections, all of which bring up specific memories, sometimes linked and sometimes now, is wonderful. I love the idea of pastries, and breads, and sweets that would bring you back to the best and the worst of times, that would make you revisit your past to change and to bolster you with goodness, pride, and peace when you need it as well. Bravi. show less