Enjoying a Sunday evening...the last of the semester.
Cranking out pages of writing to cram every last second with stress and proper citation format.

Just finished FINALLY finding my inspiration and motivation for my Craft Essay.

One thing I love about P.C. Cast, at least in the Divine series (Divine by Mistake, Divine by Choice, Divine by Blood) is that she not only doesn't use the stereotypical "fantasy language" (archaic diction and syntax, etc.), she actually makes FUN of it.

Her heroine Shannon, who narrates the first two books, is an Okie English teacher (much like Ms. Cast), and thus throws around language like a chew toy, in a style of speech and writ to make a college Composition professor turn into a pillar of salt.

It's hard to describe to people who haven't read it why Divine by Mistake is one of my favorite novels of all time.
I grew up saturated with fantasy.
One of the first books my dad read to me was Tolkien's The Hobbit, and later I became addicted to Middle-Earth, as well as Lewis' Narnia and adventures of Dr. Ransom.
And as amazing as all that is, it maintains a certain British quality in its wording, not simply because of the authors' origins, but because they wish to convey a certain style of speech and narration.

Ms. Cast's writing throws all fantastical pretense out the window, throwing Okie slang and an amazing mythical world in a blender and hitting Liquefy.
What results probably won't turn any heads in the uppity, prudish world of "literary criticism," but it definitely has a permanent reserved parking space on my shelf.