Tag: Fantasy fiction

Two future scholars argue over a sacred verse. One decides a city named Lenape proves their prophet set a table before his enemies, because the word resembles the French for tablecloth. The other calls him a fool and offers something equally daft. This is the joke the third book opens with, and the argument it spends five hundred pages making.

A boy kneels in an empty chapel and begs the artificial intelligence that raised him for a sign that it hasn't forgotten him. It answers by shutting off the lights of an entire city for 1.3 seconds. He never sees it, because his eyes are squeezed shut. That is the sequel in one image.

A man in an ivory robe knocks on the door, compliments the baked ziti, and eats dinner with a family who cannot ask him to leave. He is not there for any of them. He is waiting for the neighbour to get home. That is the first chapter, and it tells you exactly what kind of book this is.

A woman reads the right-hand half of a name badge and spends ten minutes certain the hospital has sent a man to assault her. The badge says occupational therapist. Freida McFadden's early novel is written from inside a brain that cannot perceive its own left side, and the thing it cannot perceive is the thing that was done to it.