The Fifty Year Sword
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3.7 • 7 Ratings
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- $16.99
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
This special eBook edition features an animated cover design, animated illustrations and text, sound effects, and original music.
In this story set in East Texas, a local seamstress named Chintana finds herself responsible for five orphans who are not only captivated by a storyteller’s tale of vengeance but by the long black box he sets before them. As midnight approaches, the box is opened, a fateful dare is made, and the children as well as Chintana come face to face with the consequences of a malice retold and now foretold.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This first American edition of Danielewski s novella, published in a different form in the Netherlands in 2005, has the theatrical quality of a children s ghost story, complete with stitched-art illustrations (designed by the author), sweeping themes, and fairy-tale tropes. But the tale told by the Story Teller, hired to entertain the children, is nested in the all-too adult story of Chintana, a seamstress suffering through the aftermath of a painful divorce. The smallest daily rituals opening a can of bitter tea leaves, putting on shoes require terrific force, and she has visions of inflicting violence. At her twin s urging, Chintana attends a Halloween party at an East Texas ranch, where she comes face-to-face with the source of her marriage s destruction and discovers the Story Teller s thirst for revenge. Danielewski (House of Leaves) knows that typographical landscaping can be a narrative tool. With rare exception, he unfurls his tale down one side of the page in quoted speech of different colors representing five orphans whose obscure connection is hinted at in an author s note; text is juxtaposed or shares space with illustrations. Tension builds visually; some scenes slows to a sentence per page (a trick the author s fans will recognize), vertically tearing the white space (readers resistant to textual hijinks may be frustrated). More of a narrative poem than a novella, this would be well suited to an oral reading and may be best thought of as an objet d art that chillingly holds us accountable for our worst thoughts. Illus.
Customer Reviews
Beautiful Adaptation
My first exposure to this story was a bootleg of the initial Halloween performance accompanied by shadows. I’ve also read the hard cover copy, which uses images and typography to increase the depth of the story, as Danielewski is well known for.
This is the first interactive ebook I’ve ever read and it added a new depth to an already well established story. Christopher O’Riley’s voicing on the piano perfectly echoes the dark, strange tone of Danielewski’s words, and the added sound effects intermittently add movement. Further, the movement of the text and images throughout add gravity to the words themselves and help to establish a pacing to the story, by forcing the reader to either slow down or to speed up to catch up with their appearance and disappearance.
I withheld from a five-star review due to an issue I found with a particular section of the story: the valley of salt. This section was practically impossible to read, frustratingly so, as the words appear for only a second, and extremely dimly when they do so. I was a little tired while reading this section, which may have increased my frustration, but since it affected one of my favourite sections of the book, I felt that it was poorly handled.
Overall this was a very interesting reading experience in a whole new way outside of the already incredibly interesting reading experiences of Danielewski’s stories. I will be purchasing more of the enhanced versions of his books as I believe they round out the stories even further.
the fifty year sword
great read
Great concept, yet a total let down
Super weird, fragmented and difficult to read. Nothing like House of Leaves. Pretty disappointed with how little was actually in this book. Seems like an unfinished, unedited idea lacking in craftsmanship.