I can tell, even before I've finished typing one sentence into this dialogue box, that this is going to be a very long review. Why? Because I really liked the first two-thirds of this book. Loved it even, for the sensual, pungent writing, the overwrought but undeniably effective atmospherics, the genderbending, the rampant bisexuality of the ensemble cast, the references to UC Berkeley, the evocation of a very specific kind of college-aged lethary & alienation, the violence of feeling that is al...

Rather an amazing combination of horror, fantasy, mythos and suspense. From the beginning when a main character takes an ancient, crescent-shaped blade and...well, let me just say I was riveted to the story from the start. The title caught my eye in a bookstore. A lucky find! The book is one of my favorites now and I have read other works by Hand.******************************************** I wrote the above in the mid 1990s when Waking the Moon was published. I just now read a review someone wr...

Waking the Moon is entitled to its 5 stars, if only because Hand introduced me to the melancholic Greek poet C.P Cavafy. Fortunately, this was such a captivating read as well. Partly because I first discovered Waking the Moon when I was living the college life myself, flirting with the occult and occasionally attending goth parties in abandoned churches. The parallels I (thought I) found were the sprinkles on top of this book and its successor Black Light. Hand masterly crafts a story that often...

This is my second time through Waking the Moon, and it is just such a PLEASURABLE book, lush and spooky and expansive. On first read I expected a horror novel, and was a little disappointed, but taken as a feverishly overwritten dark fantasy, it can't be beat. It reminds me a lot of Neil Gaiman's American Gods, but I suppose this is American Goddesses, as narrator Sweeney finds her college friend becoming some sort of moon deity who just might destroy the Earth. I love that Hand has not weighted...

I tried - I don't like angels. The early college scenes were great - but I didn't like the characters very much. Loved the description of Seventies clothing. Then I made a huge mistake and skipped ahead and stumbled into that whole Pasiphae thing - reminded me of that time I was reading one of Anne Rice's vampire books and the main character sucked menstrual blood from a used tampon - and I was just done. No rating.

I found this novel frustrating, as the main character rarely actually does anything -- events happen to her, and around her, and she drifts on through them, emoting about them but never taking any decisive action. I also find it bemusing that so many people tout it as a feminist work; (view spoiler)[ any novel that suggests that we owe all the technologies our civilisation is based upon to men and that a female divine power would destroy the world is hardly feminist. I have read an interview wit...

The college parts were SO GOOD, and then the rest was so... yikes

Here is my one run-on sentence review: I hated the pretentious goth bohemian intellectual stab-me-in-the-face characters that I can't stand in real life (GOD. HATE. HATE SO MUCH) but I really enjoyed Elizabeth Hand's integration of mythology into her world-building, as well as her lovely prose which is why I give this three stars and not negative eleventybillion because of the irritating fucktardness of her characters.

I found the story boring. The characters are narrow and stereotypes of archetypal myth figures but not as well done as the classic myths. Tries to use sex scenes to tantalize and stimulate but they aren't new or original.It doesn't really move along. First the main character is in college then it's 20 years later. She's an ostrich with her head in the sand, so self absorbed and uninterested in her 'friends'. Even the end is just about her own wants to have her first love returned and saved for h...

I don't normally go back and write reviews of books I read years before, but upon seeing a reference to Elizabeth Hand, I realized that "Waking the Moon" is one of those books that hovers in my mind, for years afterwards. Which doesn't necessarily mean that I loved it, but it does mean it deserves a review.The basic plot can be summarized as:1) young lady (Sweeney Cassidy) goes to college2) ...and discovers a new group of friends, one or two of whom (Angelica, Oliver) are especially enchanting t...

I can't remember exactly when I stumbled upon this book at the library, but judging from the publication date (1994)... in 1994 I was in high school, and I probably picked this up somewhere close to graduation. I was looking forward to college, so this book appealed to me on that level, and I was messing around with funny things like tarot and runes and moon phases and stuff. I loved everything about this book, from Angelica's peacock blue pen and her scent of sandalwood and oranges, to Oliver's...

I am partial to coming of age stories involving college students and supernatural/magical professors! For this reason this book reminds me a little of Tam Lin and Memory and DreamAll three books take place in the 70s and start with the protagonist as a university freshman. I am struck in particular by the similarities with Memory and Dream. Although De Lint's book has a different kind of magic, the fantastic element in both books is somehow inspired by Greek mythology. However the most obvious s...

Not badly done. Definitely heavily influenced by 1990s grad school feminism, but not fatally so. A college novel, and as usual with college novels of this type (see also The Secret History, the Rule of Four and many others), the college experience is romanticized beyond all recognition. But Hand's romanticization doesn't bury or distort (too much) the more pedestrian adolescent crises real people experience at college. Rather it heightens them and gives them a compelling context in which to play...

There's this quite famous New Zealand photographer, whose work moves me, physically and emotionally. She has often taken sexuality as her theme, and in one series turned her lens on men - a man ejaculating, a naked man's bum peppered with little paper cut-out cupids, a man in a fencing mask; all men who she dressed up, framed up, and presented up.One photo in particular I love, think to be one of the sexiest and most dangerous artworks New Zealand has yet produced. It shows a woman's (at least,

It is a lie that I finished this, because around page 250 I was getting very bored with it and just decided to skim through the rest to find out the broad strokes of what happened (and it was exactly what I thought would happen). Anyway, I liked this novel to begin with, always a fan of strange gothic universities with statues of angels and secret societies etc., but this book was published in the early 90's and well.... It has a VERY 90's flavour of new age/witchiness/sacrificial magic to it an...

Part fantasy, part gothic horror, part mythology, part twisted love story. It's dark, lush, sensual, and quite creepy in places. "I'll love you next time, I promise" just about broke my heart.The first third is a bit slow but once you get to the weekend retreat, the pace picks up a lot. There were quite a few parts where I couldn't look away, let alone put the book down.I was all set to give it 5 stars up until the climax (view spoiler)[when Oliver is revealed to be the mysterious "woman". Up un...

A novel that is as messy as the Goddess it portrays. It's the end of the world, as we know it. Patriarchy has been in the driver's seat for over 3,000 years. The Benandanti, an ancient order of dudes, have been suppressing the goddess ever since. But now the Goddess is back with a vengeance and Kate Sweeney Cassidy is in the middle of a mystic triangle between the two chosen ones who have been bred to combat the coming threat: Oliver Wilde Crawford (an eccentrically brilliant pretty boy) and Ang...

It was my first book by Elizabeth Hand and I can say that she's the author worth keeping my eye on. Though I didn't like everything in this novel there was a lot of things that captivated me. Firstly, I think it had an amazing atmosphere of dread and danger that kept lurking from the shadows and made me sometimes feel afraid. I also liked the theme of cults and god and goddessess.But a plot was in places too weird even for me. Also I somehow couldn't relate to characters. I didn't care about Swe...

During her first week as a student at The University of the Archangels and St. John The Divine, Sweeney Cassady becomes friends with Angela and Oliver, a pair of charismatic and beautiful young people who have been chosen for great things by the Goddess, and soon her destiny reveals itself to be mysteriously bound up with theirs. Opposing the Great Mother is an ancient brotherhood of mages known as the Benandanti, who have watched throughout the centuries for signs of a new advent of the ancient...

This had been my favorite book for years. Despite, or maybe because of, the dark adventures our heroine, Sweeney, witnesses and partakes of, this book really spoke to me and reminded me very strongly of my own younger adventures. Also, this book introduced me to C.P. Kavafy, and I'm forever indebted to that. Even sitting here writing this review, some of that magic comes rolling back into me, reminding me of that time of my life. And Oliver, god, Oliver. Haven't read the book in about four years...