Slave girls in a mysterious castle? Missing friends, magical tokens, intrigue and ritual – I was excited by this story from the opening chapter.
Anathema is the first title in Megg Jensen’s Cloud Prophet Trilogy, and the entire time I was reading I could ‘see’ it in my head like a film, so I thought it would be fun have a faux casting for an imaginary movie adaptation.
Our heroine, Reychel, is a slave girl in the King’s castle. She is not allowed to see the sky unless her tyrannical master allows it. Sometimes he summons her to his chambers to tell him stories, but the rest of the time she spends with the other slave girls, doing chores in the castle’s dark kitchen.
To show their slave status the girls must always keep their heads shaved, so you’ll understand why my in-brain movie wanted Natalie Portman for this role. However, I decided instead to sub Keira Knightley. At the start, Reychel is naive and trusting, not used to thinking for herself, and I think Keira does dumb better than Natalie, while still having that wide-eyed look that makes scalp-short hair so sexy.
Click here to see who else I chose.
‘New stage, new Theodora mask, same old strength required. Theodora was 19 years old, sick to death of carrying on, and she carried on…”
Fresh from Salt Publishing’s new genre imprint, Proxima, this is a tentacle-heavy Austen homage for fans of Blackadder-style innuendo and puns that would make the Pope groan. The truth is out there, though it is not yet universally acknowledged.
It’s always interesting when writers write about writers, and that memory of Misery you just had isn’t out of place here. We’re not talking Sarah-Jessica adverts for laptops, or Bukowski’s bourbon product-placement. No, Lee’s author protagonist is not an advert for the literary profession. A few chapters into Roy’s life, and the formulaic thriller hack is not an advert for anything at all.