Kelly's Reviews > The Enchantress of Florence

This would have been far better served by being a Silk type novella, an incantation that weaves its charms around us for the duration of one sitting- just long enough for the magic to work, not long enough for anyone to even think of wanting to look behind the curtain. The longer it went on, and the more tied to the reality of the world it became, the less it worked. So much of this could have been left to the readers to dream and imagine afterwards. So many subplots about hookers and pages of rhapsodize about the dark power of women’s beauty could have been cut (the second part especially forced me to turn on my “so wtf is going on THERE, then?” brain). This is a story about the power of stories- I get that unraveling it a little is part of the point, but this book needed to trust that its audience got it about 100 pages sooner than it thought we did.

Gorgeous, gorgeous writing that I would like to have been top on my list to talk about and quote at length might then have taken its proper place. But by the end, even that was too much of a good thing.

What a shame, what a world.

Take it from one who reads dozens of phantasmagoric books of a magical-realism bent and actually *wants* your spell to succeed as much as you do: Less is more.