Witches of Worm, Zilpha Keatley Snyder
Witches of Worm, Zilpha Keatley Snyder
Book: 2
Title: Witches of Worm
Author: Zilpha Keatley Snyder
Genre: YA/"independent reader"
One-sentence summary: The protagonist whose name I have also forgotten is a smart, prickly, very lonely girl who finds herself starting to act out in rather nasty ways. Unable to understand the bitter impulses she has to disrupt other people's lives, she blames a stray cat that she adopted ("Worm"), calling him a witch's cat.
Why did you get this book? I needed something that would definitely be good in order to clear my palate after Forged by Fire, and Zilpha Keatley Snyder has never let me down yet.
Do you like the cover? I don’t remember it very well, so I guess it was probably okay.
Did you enjoy the book? Yeah, ZKS definitely knows what she's doing. It's funny, her characterization is... you know, it's not like you carry away from her books this sense of a living human being with all sorts of quirks and foibles and a distinct way of speaking, or whatever. I'm not quite sure how to explain it -- I often feel a little distanced from her characters, like I'm observing them rather than living alongside them. But she has this skill that I find very infrequently in YA lit -- or at least, she has it to a degree that I find very infrequently in YA lit -- and it's a talent for getting inside the way kids really think. She's particularly good at protags like this one -- smart, manipulative, not-particularly-nice-but-you-can-empath
Was the author new to you and would you read something by this author again? No. Yes.
Are you keeping it or passing it on? Keeping.
Anything else? In the edition I got, the preface to the book, written by Snyder herself, spoils not only the ending but the entire point of the book. Like, she goes, "Here's what this book is about including the whole ending, and here is what I was trying to do with this book, and why!" So if you get the most recent edition (I don't know the exact specs but I can tell you the publisher's imprint is a bucking horse, and their design is superimposed over the back cover blurb), skip the preface until after you've read the book if you're spoiler-averse.
Scale of 1 to 10: 8/9
Book: 2
Title: Witches of Worm
Author: Zilpha Keatley Snyder
Genre: YA/"independent reader"
One-sentence summary: The protagonist whose name I have also forgotten is a smart, prickly, very lonely girl who finds herself starting to act out in rather nasty ways. Unable to understand the bitter impulses she has to disrupt other people's lives, she blames a stray cat that she adopted ("Worm"), calling him a witch's cat.
Why did you get this book? I needed something that would definitely be good in order to clear my palate after Forged by Fire, and Zilpha Keatley Snyder has never let me down yet.
Do you like the cover? I don’t remember it very well, so I guess it was probably okay.
Did you enjoy the book? Yeah, ZKS definitely knows what she's doing. It's funny, her characterization is... you know, it's not like you carry away from her books this sense of a living human being with all sorts of quirks and foibles and a distinct way of speaking, or whatever. I'm not quite sure how to explain it -- I often feel a little distanced from her characters, like I'm observing them rather than living alongside them. But she has this skill that I find very infrequently in YA lit -- or at least, she has it to a degree that I find very infrequently in YA lit -- and it's a talent for getting inside the way kids really think. She's particularly good at protags like this one -- smart, manipulative, not-particularly-nice-but-you-can-empath
Was the author new to you and would you read something by this author again? No. Yes.
Are you keeping it or passing it on? Keeping.
Anything else? In the edition I got, the preface to the book, written by Snyder herself, spoils not only the ending but the entire point of the book. Like, she goes, "Here's what this book is about including the whole ending, and here is what I was trying to do with this book, and why!" So if you get the most recent edition (I don't know the exact specs but I can tell you the publisher's imprint is a bucking horse, and their design is superimposed over the back cover blurb), skip the preface until after you've read the book if you're spoiler-averse.
Scale of 1 to 10: 8/9
