A review by valhecka
The Big Meow, by Diane Duane
5.0
I DON'T CARE I DOn'T CARE CAT WIZARDS VERSUS BETTER-CTHULHU IN POSTWAR HOLLYWOOD ENGRAVE EVERY WORD OF THIS ONTO THE INSIDE OF MY SKULL.
No but seriously this is among the best historical fantasy/sf adventure novels I've read. I think only about half of that is my degree of attachment to Duane's conception of wizardry and cosmogony. Yes, it's from the perspective of a cat, and that seems twee, but this cat is a cranky 30-something NASA-level project manager with coworker conflicts and adolescent trainees to jerk into shape and she's just so extremely relatable, Rhiow, to me, a tired millennial who is 32 and ill and reading about cat wizards so I can have a positive feeling.
Plus: Damon Runyon, Walter Winchell, late-Golden Age starlet/studio jockeying, absolute parades of cats, Ith the pastrami-loving not-quite-dinosaur, blending of Mayan and Aztec cosmogonies, the astounding sense of place Duane conveys, and the way her dialogue leaps right into your ears.
Masterful.
[I love cats. I love every kind of cat. I just want to hug all of them but I can't hug every cat]
No but seriously this is among the best historical fantasy/sf adventure novels I've read. I think only about half of that is my degree of attachment to Duane's conception of wizardry and cosmogony. Yes, it's from the perspective of a cat, and that seems twee, but this cat is a cranky 30-something NASA-level project manager with coworker conflicts and adolescent trainees to jerk into shape and she's just so extremely relatable, Rhiow, to me, a tired millennial who is 32 and ill and reading about cat wizards so I can have a positive feeling.
Plus: Damon Runyon, Walter Winchell, late-Golden Age starlet/studio jockeying, absolute parades of cats, Ith the pastrami-loving not-quite-dinosaur, blending of Mayan and Aztec cosmogonies, the astounding sense of place Duane conveys, and the way her dialogue leaps right into your ears.
Masterful.
[I love cats. I love every kind of cat. I just want to hug all of them but I can't hug every cat]