Review: A wordsmith at the top of her game
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 02 10, 2014
Her name is Emma, but it's not her name you'll remember because from the opening lines it's like being released from a sensory deprivation chamber and your senses will reel from an onslaught of images, visions, imaginings so visceral they detonate behind your eyes.He `knots his vice' into her veins, the stranger across the room who is destiny and violation and mist: he is the Frost moon, he says, "I'm Macala," and we think of course you are because Goth girls draw the night and he is the miasma, the darkness.And, oh my dear sweet Auntie Mae, you will wear Emma's skin, first as the slick slip of satin over fragile flesh, or as saw-toothed blades ratcheting, clicking, a half-phase out of sequence in the improbability of denial because Fate has new weight and a champion.This is a novel of beginnings, of capturing the legends, the mythology of Norse gods, their stories and beliefs lost to time and place, but still a vivid muscle memory for some who can see the truth. The canon of mythology is both diverse and strikingly similar in its broad thematic elements. The author does a masterful job of identifying those links of commonality, of bridging gaps in logic and intuition, of taking our `what ifs' and making them `but of course'.Emma has a destiny and the power of metamorphosis, but she does not go into that goodnight a willing supplicant for a god's favors. She has the modern equivalent of emotional baggage, an ancient soul, and a path both physical and psychic to traverse and she lacks the luxury of a child's period of grace to simply become.And it falls to Macala to be her spirit guide, her mentor, her teacher--a task best handled with alacrity and objectivity because danger looms and his kind, the Ravens, risk falling into a blackness of siege from Loki's kin. He will offer her trust and truth and that truth will break her until she accepts, but Emma must first choose and choose wisely. And Macala is anything but objective in his feelings for the acolyte he must foster.Addictive Nightshade is an origins story, a retelling, a reimagining of ancient myths. Emma is the new looking glass through which we rediscover the Norse gods and their sometimes willful self-indulgence and the corruption of the spiritual. That once and future occult devices devolved over time and circumstance into frivolous games whose meanings have faded but the urge to engage remains genetically encoded. It is a reminder of who we were and what we could become.For me, all the best stories are journeys of becoming, travelogues of the mind and soul, and to that end Poppet has broad-stroked a canvas of staggering proportions, populated with larger-than-life characters and cosmos-ending consequences, where choices are sometimes no choice at all. And the matter of free will and the power of the sacred feminine eternally battle with the arrogance of male posturing and protectiveness.Addictive Nightshade touches on so many sacred and spiritual themes that it's worth a reread or two or three to fully appreciate how the author has woven this particular tapestry, using language as violent as a cudgel and as exquisitely refined as a surgeon's scalpel.The story leaves us on a precipice: Emma was as ill-formed clay, unfired and untested and poised to embark on an epic adventure. Perhaps to save the world, perhaps to rebuild tears in the fabric of light, perhaps to learn the costs of destiny and the vagaries of a genetic lottery. With Macala she takes the next steps to embrace both the darkness and the light. With war looming, they seek an intervention, a return to reason, their journey fraught with peril, the outcomes uncertain.This is a love story, make no mistake, but it is also so much more. Poppet's work is indeed a box of chocolates, each morsel an explosion of sensory delight. If you love language, if you crave passion, if you adore mental (and other) stimulation, this book continues a very unique tradition of immersive sensuality and a wordsmith at the top of her game.Bring on book 2. I am not a patient fan.Five stars, but of course.