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The Book of Shadows (Herculine #1)

James Reese

Paperback | Pages: 624 pages

Rating: 3.3 | 1198 Users | 150 Reviews

Present Books In Pursuance Of The Book of Shadows (Herculine #1)

Original Title:	The Book of Shadows
ISBN:	0061031844 (ISBN13: 9780061031847)
Edition Language:	English URL http://www.jamesreesebooks.com/excerpt_shadows.html
Series:	Herculine #1

Narrative To Books The Book of Shadows (Herculine #1)

Herculine is only six-years-old when she watches her mother die horribly and inexplicably. A child alone in the nineteenth-century French countryside, she makes her way to the secluded convent, where she is taken in as a foundling orphan and raised by nuns who teach the children of the privileged to fear a wrathful God. But shy, unworldly Herculine is not like the others in this cold, forebidding place. And when she is led down a dark path by a rebellious fellow student, she soon finds herself convicted of crimes unimaginable.

But death at the hands of the ignorant and falsely pious is not to be Herculine's lot. Held captive in the convent library, she is visited by four unexpected saviors with timeless needs of their own: the incubus priest Father Louis; the tragic, damned beauty Madeleine; the demonic Asmodei; and Sebastiana d'Azur, a witch. By dawn, Herculine is free yet forever changed as she follows her liberators into a world of sensuous pleasures and great mysteries both wondrous and strange.

Secreted away in Sebastiana's once-grand manor high above the Breton sands, Herculine sets out to find out why she has been "chosen" and for what purpose. Her quest - ripe with erotic discovery, dark magic, heresy, and blood - propels her headlong through the perils of the age, across borders between the living and the dead, and back through a time when hysteria and madness reigned, when noble heads were impaled and paraded through the streets of Paris. For only when her mysterious mission is completed - and the terrible, otherworldly roots of a gruesome Revolution are finally revealed - can she understand who and what she truly is. Until then, she must simply trust...and learn.

Declare Out Of Books The Book of Shadows (Herculine #1)

Title	:	The Book of Shadows (Herculine #1)
Author	:	James Reese
Book Format	:	Paperback
Book Edition	:	Anniversary Edition
Pages	:	Pages: 624 pages
Published	:	December 3rd 2002 by HarperTorch (first published January 1st 2002)
Categories	:	Fantasy. Fiction. Horror. Paranormal. Historical. Historical Fiction. Witches. Gothic

Rating Out Of Books The Book of Shadows (Herculine #1)

Ratings: 3.3 From 1198 Users | 150 Reviews

Rate Out Of Books The Book of Shadows (Herculine #1)

Finally finished this one! I can sum this book up in three words ... bore, snore, chore.The first hundred pages or so were pretty good but then it just derailed itself, turned into a travelogue, and droned on and on and on about not much of anything for hundreds and hundreds of pages.My advice is to read through the other reviews before diving into this book, it seems that most readers have not enjoyed this book anymore than I did.

It's an incredible story, the entire trilogy. This first instalment may be lengthy but it lays the foundation for what is a really lush, enthralling, and very meta narrative. There are very few Epics of consistent narrative out there that are as original as this. Every little bit of detail was careful not to be overlooked as they were brought together, woven into every chapter. Care was taken to ensure every sentence emulated what the author had designed and was not open to interpretation. It's

I respect anyone that works hard. And I have no doubt that good Mr. Reese worked very, very hard on this novel. However, he worked too hard. There is quite a difference in prose that is lush and opens up to the reader as if he or she comes through a thicket to find an verdant magical glade and the sort that becomes obsessed with itself and stumbles haphazardly over its own love of the thesaurus. James Reese lapses into the later of these two quite often. His love of eloquent language is

Like Rice's Interview with the Vampire, this is sensual and sexual and interweaves a subject of the horror genre--in this case witches--with well-crafted historical fiction. Set in the France of around 1830, this is mostly the first person narrative of Herculine--the very name was a hint of her nature given the famous French hermaphrodite Herculine Barbin. She is a man, a woman--and a witch. I found this novel a page turner--the details are lush and vivid without being flowery or overdone,

The premise of the book seemed very promising and interesting; set in historical France it centers around Herculine at a convent. We get hints of how Herculine is "different" from the other girls, but nothing concrete until midway-ish through the book.Truthfully I could not finish this book as I found the writing a little too awkward (perhaps suitable for the narrative, first-person style, but suffocating) and too flowery. While there are erotic scenes in the book - I admit to flipping through -

You know those trainwreck movies that are bad, but so amusingly bad, you stick with them until the end? This book is like that - in terrible want of an editor, both for redundant and contradictory content and for length (nearly 500 pages) - it's just awful and yet I couldn't walk away. Some points won for an interesting revisioning of Paris before, during, and after the Revolution. Some points docked for overly gruesome accounts of witch trials, tortures, burnings, and beheadings. I'm

Enjoyable, but not wholly satisfying. Left too many unanswered questions and plot holes that needed to be flushed out more. And the ending? Hello Titanic...NO. I know this is supposed to be fantastical, but come on...let's add a little reality, huh?