Creepy possum/baby hybrid. Review of Slewfoot.

 I found much of this book original and colorful. I have a family of possums living under my house and if they're anything like the baby-faced possum in Slewfoot, I'd better watch my step.

The nature god and/or devil who wasn't sure who-what-or where he was was intriguing. For awhile I thought he was just too confused, that he'd never amount to anything, but he pulled through with the help of the strange hybrid baby/wildlife creatures. Some of the abuse of the women accused of witchcraft or harboring witches went on so long that it started to seem like torture porn. But, that is the nature of much horror writing and I shouldn't be surprised by it.

By and large I liked the book with Slewfoot's realization being particularly satisfying. There was one spot where the women, Abita, who was accused of witchcraft, was offered the chance to die quickly or die slowly. The magistrate said hanging would be quick because it would snap her neck. I'd like to point out that a quick drop hadn't been discovered yet. Read about the poor women and men hanged at Salem. They stepped off a ladder, and seized and kicked until they suffocated. Sometimes a man would hang on to their body in an attempt to make them die quicker.  And yes, the correct word is hanged. Laundry is hung. People are hanged. See the exceptional book: Dreyer's English: An Utterly Correct Guide to Clarity and Style. 

Although I like the story and the idea of the story, I'm begging on my poor aching knees that characters quit smirking, biting their lips and rolling their eyes. I want to crawl on my poor aching knees and beg editors to mark out smirking, lip biting, and eyeball rolling. My smirk-o-meter went off the charts in Slewfoot. It's like there is a guidebook that says 2/3 of the characters have to smirk, everybody bites their lips at some point, and halfway through someone will bite their lip until they taste blood. I swear, these things are in almost all of the books I've read recently. Why come up with an original idea and then make it sound like all other books? Slewfoot had a lot of smirking, lip biting, and an overabundance of hissing.  But, I thought, "Thank God, nobody has rolled their eyes. Then 91% of the way in, BANG, a character rolled her eyeballs.  Geez.

At least reward us after reading all the smirking and lip-biting by bringing the cat back to life. Is that too much to ask? I liked the book but damn, stop all the lip abuse. All the smirking and biting has to be tiring.

                       Nice cover, although she was riding with a goatish beasty thingy in the book.. 

                         Thank you to Netgalley and Nightfire for allowing me to read this ARC.