3 out of 4 stars
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The book Hidden Animals, by Anca Rotar, is a small collection of poems and short stories with an animal theme. Rotar divides the book into three parts: Part I - The Birds, Part II - The Beasts, and Part III - The Spirits, with each section obviously more devoted to those particular types of creatures. This was a quick read, I got through the book in about an hour and a half, but it was filled with strong and delightful imagery and descriptions all throughout the book- poems and short stories alike. I will select a few of my favorites from each part to review.
The Birds section was probably my personal favorite. One of the first poems in the book being “Caladrius”, a lovely but sad poem about having to move on in a world where someone no longer wants you and the bird representing that one who has flown away from you. My favorite short story in the whole book was “The Bird Room” and I don’t want to spoil it by telling what you figure out by the end, but it’s a wonderful story about new beginnings and new life brought to the young main character after she meets a dying bird.
Like you might expect, most of the stories fell into The Beasts section of the book. While the stories were interesting, I wasn’t always sure the point of them. Take “The Gryphon” for example (if you don’t know, a gryphon is a mythical creature with the head of an eagle, body of a lion, and large wings). There are these gryphons that take travellers where they need to be in life, whether they know it or not, but it kind of abruptly ended without telling you what the character learned or became but maybe it’s supposed to be up to the imagination. There was also the story of “The White Wolf” that was probably the longest story in the book. It tells of a girl who is transformed into a great white wolf who roams the forest for centuries, never getting old, but periodically inspires a hunt from the nobles of a nearby village. The story mainly follows one such noble and his quest to find himself.
In The Spirits sections, all of the poems and stories were kind of mystical, flights of fancy types, and a bit obscure, kind of like spirits are supposed to be. Rotar neatly used her beautiful imagery skills to illustrate this point in her writing. The poem “The Wish Gone Wrong” was an especially fun, catchy, supernatural Halloween-type that was the only poem in the book to rhyme.
Imagery was this book’s strongest feature so anyone looking for a quick, but descriptive read would probably enjoy it. Overall I would give Hidden Animals a 3 out of 4 stars.
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Hidden Animals
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