欧宝娱乐

First of all, a shout out of thanks to Ceridwen who, in reviewing this book on 欧宝娱乐, introduced it to me. It was a great review BTW and you should read it too.

We don鈥檛 often talk of the minor characters in novels: the walk-on parts with a few lines and no names. I think for this review, I just want to focus on two side characters. They are not terribly important, but their stories and the different trajectories they take lend added resonance to the main story. Julie Cao is a researcher and librarian. She comes into the story when Tom Schwoerin shows up in her library to conduct further research on the phenomenon of Eilfelheim. Theresia Gresch is a herb woman and healer who lived in the village of Eilfelheim when it was still known as Oberhochwald some 600 years before Julie.

Both meet the aliens, the Kranken. Theresia meets them in the flesh; Julie only via documents and the stories told in them. Although perhaps it would be closer to the truth to say that Julie is the one who truly meets the aliens through her empathy and her imagination as Theresia never really sees them at all. All she sees, all she can see, are the images of devils in her head, put there by her religious beliefs and the rape she suffered as a child.

That Michael Flynn so thoroughly fills out the inner lives of these two side characters is testimony to one reason why I loved this book. That their divergent stories so heartbreakingly echo the story鈥檚 theme of the need to reach out with empathy, to try to connect regardless of how cracked a glass it is that we look through, that was the other reason.