Another Kingdom

I enjoyed the premise of jumping between LA and the fantasy world of Galiana, but every time an interaction was described with a woman, I found myself wondering if it was written by someone who has never actually talked with a woman. They are such OBJECTS rather than people in the story.

I honestly had a moment of thinking, “Man, 13 year old me could have come up with this story. And, apparently, had a similar understanding of girls.”

“Jane sat beside me and cleaned my wound, fussing over me with a womanly care that made me yearn up into her blue-green eyes.”

“The door swung open, and out from the darkness walked a woman into the firelight, a woman like no woman I had ever seen before.”

“It was the way she kept her hands clasped beneath her breasts in a position of such modesty and self-containment. Everything about her—it was all just so incredibly...what was the word? Womanly. So incredibly womanly.”

“It occurred to me somewhere in the back of my mind that I had never seen a woman blush like that before—blush because she was speaking about romantic stuff, I mean. I had only read about women doing that in books.”

And on and on and on. That's just within the first 65 pages.

It took some effort to stop being shaken out of the story by the language, but I was finally able to. And, again, I like the premise of bouncing between realities/worlds with each helping the narrator struggle through the other. So, 3.5 stars if Goodreads would let me, but I'll round up since I'd like to read more of this tale to find out what happens next.