...you're reading something you really like, and you're getting into the world of those characters and enjoying their company as if they were old friends, and then by total accident you stumble upon websites with spoilers and you read about all the TERRIBLE things that are going to happen to those characters, and you feel really depressed.

Ok, maybe that only happens to me, but what the hell. It's so distressing.

Spoilers for some of Maguire works from here on.

To make a not so long story even shorter, a few months ago I bought a copy of Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister. I had been meaning to read if for years but it went out-of-print for a long time so I had to wait for the new edition (which comes with a very cool cover btw). Anyway, I devoured it. Really, I'm a slow reader, but I couldn't keep it down. I usually consider crude writing associated with commonly known fairytales to be rather gimmicky (oh look, I can write about bodily fluids AND Cinderella at the same time!), but this was different. Maguire creates a very special atmosphere, with great insights about the nature of art and beauty, and the general crudeness of the book is actually vital - it makes the book somehow archaic and earth-bound, and yet not vulgar at all.

So, I decided to venture in some more of his books and of course I bought Wicked (and Son of a Witch). Now, I'm only familiar with some of the songs from the musical but I've never actually seen it. It sounds a little too sappy for my taste. But the book, it's good. Really good. I'm halfway through it, and once again Maguire doesn't shy away from drool and cum and everything inbetween XD Like, I just finished reading a chapter that climaxed in an interspecies orgy (LOL I want to see the musical if THAT is in it, though I doubt it). But there's something special about the way he writes his unusual heroines (Elphaba as well as Iris the stepsister, and even Glinda and Clara/Cinderella), they're wonderfully real, and he also writes amusing, endearing minor characters with very little effort, in wide strokes that still give away so much about the characters. And that leads me to the point of all this. I LOVE the sense of comraderie that is slowly built among the teenage characters in the first half of the book. I love how little characters like Fiyero, Crope, Avaric, Tibbett and Glinda's friends and nanny are brought to life with virtually next to nothing in terms of development, but they're still so nice, so essential. And now Maguire already killed off the nanny, and I accidentally read some of the things that will happen to the group. Like, comraderie gone bad. I'm much too sensitive for that, damn. I get really upset if I know beforehand that characters I like are going to end up badly. It's one thing if it happens in, you know, the flow of reading, when you're into their world and things just have to happen. But knowing it before, it almost makes me want to stop reading (which I won't do, but...I'm tempted).

Sooo...that was longer than intended. Since this IS DA I also wanted to announce a couple of works inspired by Maguire's books, of course. I already sketched a Clara.