My Next Top Five Literary Crushes
Continuing on my theme of supremely awesome moments in fiction, here are five more bits of books that I really fell in love with.
The moment when the signaller Rafe in Pavane endures a brutal test, and at the very end signals GOD SAVE THE QUEEN and passes out. It is the semaphore equivalent of dropping the mike. It's awesome. It also makes you love him, which makes the end of his story a million times more gripping. (Pavane)
The moment when Virginia Gamely sits down to lunch with a table full of New York literati and innocently schools them regarding the folk etymology of the Lake of the Coheeries. How could anyone not immediately fall in love with a single mother who tosses off the line: "But don't be fooled by Old Norse cognates! They're as deceptive as Frisian!" Virginia, you minx. (Winters Tale)
The moment when "the rabbit was, unquestionably, dead." There are a few pages before that line in Sabriel, but as soon as the Sixth Form schoolgirl resurrects a pet bunny and worries about the morality of it is when I got on board, no matter where Sabriel was going. Fortunately, she headed to the Old Kingdom, a fantasy world that felt entirely new and uniquely terrifying. (Sabriel)
The moment when Tiffany Aching thwaps Jenny Green-teeth with a frying pan. This is the girl who's going to take on the realm of faerie...because no one else can step up, on account of there's sheep shearing to do. And her cold iron is a frying pan. And she has awkwardly huge boots. And she makes friends with pictsies. Win! (The Wee Free Men)
The moment in The Dark Is Rising, when the protagonist Will's friendly neighbor suddenly whips out this line: "This night will be bad, and tomorrow will be beyond imagining." What. It's the kind of easily muttered, jaw-dropping statements that the Old Ones are inclined to make, because they're too busy saving the world to dream up fancy-pants soliloquies. (Dark Is Rising)
This concludes my top literary crushes. If you haven't read these books yet, you should get on that.