Waking Beauty

Because it's wrong. It makes it sound like some sort of dull love triangle when really the book is much more than that. It weaves this strange and fascinating topsy turvy world in a way that is rare in most books nowadays. It's delightfully sensual and has unique images.

This book is truly astonishing. Paul Witcover has taken our everyday world, distilled it down to its very essence, and disguised it as the Hierarchate. The book is one immense parable. It covers the cruelty, sexism and unmitigated power of the Christian Church, interweaving Christian mythology with well-known fairy tales and pagan folklore. The symbology in this book is overwhelming - on every page there is something that makes me stop and grab my copy of "The Women's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets" by Barbara G. Walker (which I highly recommend you read before, during or after "Waking Beauty" if you want to fully appreciate its vast multiple layers; also, a Latin dictionary is useful for uncovering the hidden symbology in the names of the saints). Towards the end it becomes difficult to tell if Witcover intends the three Viridis Lacrimatas to represent the Christian Trinity in female garb, or the Triple Goddess (Maiden, Mother and Crone) - however, given his level of awareness about religious-social issues I'm inclined to interpret it as the Goddess. This book is far deeper than it appears on the surface to the idle reader...it is not mere fantasy, it is a living, breathing, scathing commentary on the structure of the world we are forced to live in; and this author is a man I would love to meet and talk to over a long, delicious lunch! Blessed Be.

The most original fantasy of the decade: always two steps to the left of where you expect it to be. A necropolis rose, unfolding layers of corruption to reveal astonishing beauty. There are those who sneer at fantasy as the literature of the familiar, the comfortable, the safe; they have never read this wholly adult, wholly disturbing novel. READ THIS BOOK -- then go out and tell everyone you know to read it, too.

If you must choose only one book to read this whole year, please make it WAKING BEAUTY by Paul Witcover. This is a feast of erotic literary fantasy, a horn of macabre plenty, a burst of truth, exquisite sadness and winged joy, a chord of acute intensity that pulls at you and stays with you always. I am still in awe of it.... And I cannot believe that this is a first novel! Paul Witcover is a true original.

Despite a silly dust jacket summary which has almost nothing to do with the plot of the book itself, "Waking Beauty" is an extraordinary first effort. Bizarre, fantastic, and sometimes grotesque (in the truest sense of the word)this book has a lot in common with gothic writers such as William Beckford, Lord Byron and Clark Ashton Smith. Witcover's rococco writing style is perfectly suited to his sumptuous exploration of the vectors of power, love and sacrifice, qualities which in his world are literally written upon the bodies of his characters. His characterizations are strong and sharp, and, unusual for his genre, the female protagonists take up most of the center stage. The action comes lickety-split, leaving the reader breathless by the novel's end--and hopeful there will be a sequel. "Waking Beauty" is not a facile book. Underneath the glittering prose and byzantine plot, "Waking Beauty" is deeply concerned with the interplay of power and domination, greed and ambition, and perhaps most importantly, love in all its many guises. Witcover is more than up to the challenge of translating these abstract ideologies into an entertaining, imaginative ripping good read. "Waking Beauty" transcends the "fantasy" genre, and sets Witcover in a class with such "literary-fantasy" writers as A.S. Byatt, Angela Carter and C.S. Lewis. Though the action of this novel may be set in the fantastic, the underpinnings of Witcover's world is all too familiar. By far, one the best novels of the year.