Only love is real. A noble sentiment. But what, exactly, are its implications? Does it mean that all else is unreal, as in fake? As in fraudulent, as in a lie? Or
unreal
as in truly intolerable, unlivable, tragic, horrifying? Or is it only surreal, the world a simulacrum of feeling, sentimental and cloying? Or could it be hyper-real, like parents loving their children too much, children unable to love as a result? What
is
the reality of human love?
Finding herself set down amid the manifold sentiments of the human heart, fifteen-year-old Guinevere Daniels is about to find out.
"One would think that the Arthurian cast could contain no more creative fuel, but in portraying them as realistic residents of a pre-Christian worldview, with all of its savage honor and vicarious vengeance, Loewen's innovative hybrid YA novel, the first of a trilogy, does in fact strike one as uniquely original, and is at once as horrifying and as enlightening as readers now expect of the philosophical author. His heroine is also both of these embodied, alternating between grotesque violence made all the more disconcerting in its justification, and a super-human compassion for victims of all kinds, especially the young, which also finds itself partially sabotaged by her own desires. Or is it we who are so limited as to imagine that love is always good, always beautiful, and indeed, always only human?"
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Avinash Pillay, COO of Insightful Ethical Communications, Ltd.