September 17, 2004

"The Venetian's Wife" by Nick Bantock

The Venetian's Wife Rating: 5

Description: Sara, a woman trained in art restoration, is hired by a mysterious man who reveals himself to be the ghost of an art collector from ages ago to help him finish locating his old collection of Eastern-Asian statues. Sara somewhat reluctantly accepts the job offer, and ends up traveling quite a ways to reclaim the last few of these statues, all the while feeling a supernatural pull by them which she cannot explain, only hoping to complete the collection and fulfill an ancient prophecy to let Nick Contti rest in peace.

Review: This relatively medium-sized book, following in the same design as Bantock's "Griffin and Sabine" trilogy, takes place almost completely in either journal entries by Sara or e-mail correspondences between Sara and Nick Contti, the ghost-man she works for, and it is done flawlessly. This book has some interesting Eastern-religion overtones to it, which adds to a sense of natural mystery. There is a romance between Sara and another character which at first seems a bit cliché, but Bantock does make it original by the end of the book. And the end of this, like Bantock’s trilogy, is definitely something worth reading up to.

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Category: Fantasy , General
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