High praise

I am notoriously easy to flatter. Compliments go to my head like a good haircut, I can't stop glancing in mirrors. (This literary figure is complicated by the fact that I shave my balding head and haven't in fact had a haircut, good or otherwise, for longer than a decade; but you know what I mean.)

Anyway: I can live for a week off a good review. When it comes from a good friend, I like it better yet. When that good friend is herself a marvellous writer - well. You work it out.

Manda Scott's Boudica books sit amazingly close to my heart; they are extraordinary novels, full of grief and wonder. Manda herself sits as close to my heart as someone can who lives the other side of the country, but that is another matter.

Manda has been reading the Daniel Fox books. She says she wants a jade tiger now. Like, now. But more than that, she enthused about the first two to such effect that I sent her an ARC of Hidden Cities. Of that she says, inter alia:

"With Hidden Cities, Daniel Fox has once again shown himself to be at the forefront of modern literary fiction. You may choose to call it fantasy fiction, but the magical realism of a world where dragons fight gods, where men gradually turn to stone, where women tame jade tigers.... this is a world that is closer to our own than fantasy, and is written in the lucid, luxuriant prose of the best literary writers. The characters are complex and real, the plots twist faster than a hunting tiger and yet the central thrust is clear and strong. You couldn't ask for more in the third book in this majestic series. We can only hope there are many more."

Isn't that nice? *basks*