Teaser Tuesday: Stardust

Like the race cars at the Coca-Cola 500, the Wheel of Time has come ’round to Teaser Tuesday.

Just in case you don’t know, Teaser Tuesday is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by Books and a Beat. Anyone can play along! All you have to do is grab the book you’re currently reading, open to a random page and share a few sentences from that page. But make sure you don’t share any spoilers!*

*I wish I could take credit for this introduction, but I shamelessly stole it from Heather over at bitsnbooks. To help me make amends, you should go check out her blog.

This week I’m reading Stardust by Neil Gaiman. I’ve read some of his short fiction, greatly enjoyed American Gods and Anansi Boys, and loved his collaboration with Terry Pratchett on Good Omens, so when I found a used copy of Stardust at my newly-reopened independent secondhand bookseller, I just couldn’t pass it up.

The Truly Random Number Generator sends us to page 214:

The wine was steaming and bubbling, and it came to Tristan then - the information surfacing from some long-forgotten fairy tale or piece of children's lore - that a unicorn's horn was proof against . . .

"Poison?" he whispered, and the unicorn raised it's head, and stared into Tristan's eyes, and Tristan knew that it was the truth. His heart was pounding hard in his chest. Around the inn the wind was screaming like a witch in her madness. 

In Retrospect:

I haven’t yet finished Symphony for the City of the Dead; it’s a good read, but there’s only so much brutality one can take before being driven to more pleasant themes. I’ve read some violent stuff before, but knowing that this is real and actually happened makes it worse. At this exact moment, I’d give it four stars, but I’m going to see it through to the end.