The Island of Excess Love
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
This companion to Love in the Time of Global Warming follows Pen as she searches for love among the ruins, this time using Virgil's epic Aeneid as her guide. A powerful and stunning book filled with Francesca Lia Block's beautiful language and inspiring characters.
In The Island of Excess Love, Pen has lost her parents. She's lost her eye. But she has fought Kronen; she has won back her fragile friends and her beloved brother. Now Pen, Hex, Ash, Ez, and Venice are living in the pink house by the sea, getting by on hard work, companionship, and dreams. Until the day a foreboding ship appears in the harbor across from their home. As soon as the ship arrives, they all start having strange visions of destruction and violence. Trance-like, they head for the ship and their new battles begin.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Though filled with Block's characteristically lush language and gorgeous imagery, this follow-up to Love in the Time of Global Warming lacks the adrenaline-charged urgency of its predecessor. Whereas the previous book drew inspiration from the Odyssey, this story is loosely based on Virgil's Aeneid, opening with a murky series of hallucinations and events that drive Pen, her lover Hex, her younger brother Venice, and their friends away from their home and onto an abandoned ship that has appeared out of nowhere. A shipwreck lands the group on a paradisiacal island ruled by an antlered king. Despite Pen's best intentions, she is drawn to the king and is eventually unfaithful to Hex. This act shatters the island's illusions and propels Pen on a journey to seek redemption. Stirring as these events may sound, the net result is muffled. Because so much of the story revolves around Pen's visions and dreams, the plot loses momentum, and the classical allusions and parallels feel comparatively forced this time around. Ages 14 up.
