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Francesca Lia Block's luminous, postmodern fairy tales chronicle the thin line between fear and desire, pain and pleasure, cutting loose and holding on in a world where everyone is vulnerable to the most beautiful and dangerous angel of all: love. -- HarperCollins website
A dippy, hyper-surreal word trip, Francesca Lia Block's Dangerous Angels is an omnibus consisting of the first five Weetzie Bat books: Weetzie Bat, Witch Baby, Cherokee and the Goat Guys, Missing Angel Juan, and Baby Be-Bop. Inaccurately tagged as children's literature, Block's books tackle non-traditional, structured families, homosexuality, AIDS, love and death. At the youngest, it's a YA read masquerading in the eyes of the undiscerning as a kiddie book. But the truth of the matter is this is gorgeous and sophisticated stuff. Block does a beautiful and elegant job of creating a cloud of mystery and magic around Shangri-L.A. (Los Angeles, for the uninitiated), but without sugar coating the seedier side of things. This is a world populated by broken angels and witches, where the characters struggle to deal with the darker sides of reality while bombarded by it.
The characters all have trippy, dippy names: Weetzie, Secret Agent Lover Man (her honey), her best friend Dirk and his lover Duck. Then there are the children Cherokee and Witch Baby. Cherokee's one true love and Witch Baby's soul mate, Angel Juan.
It's a wild, dreamy, mystical journey full of Block's imaginative language and made-up slang. Although delightful, I found Dangerous Angels difficult reading when attempted all in one go. The stylized language really does require your attention and it's easy to zone out to the meaning behind the melodies. Overwhelming as a novel, I read the books individually, interspersing them with other things from my library -- some long, some short, some amazing and some just bloody stupid (hi, Twilight! hi!).
Spanning the gauntlet from jazzy and sweet (Weetzie Bat) to down right menacing (Missing Angel Juan) Block does a sublime job of creating a world not easily forgotten.
A dippy, hyper-surreal word trip, Francesca Lia Block's Dangerous Angels is an omnibus consisting of the first five Weetzie Bat books: Weetzie Bat, Witch Baby, Cherokee and the Goat Guys, Missing Angel Juan, and Baby Be-Bop. Inaccurately tagged as children's literature, Block's books tackle non-traditional, structured families, homosexuality, AIDS, love and death. At the youngest, it's a YA read masquerading in the eyes of the undiscerning as a kiddie book. But the truth of the matter is this is gorgeous and sophisticated stuff. Block does a beautiful and elegant job of creating a cloud of mystery and magic around Shangri-L.A. (Los Angeles, for the uninitiated), but without sugar coating the seedier side of things. This is a world populated by broken angels and witches, where the characters struggle to deal with the darker sides of reality while bombarded by it.
The characters all have trippy, dippy names: Weetzie, Secret Agent Lover Man (her honey), her best friend Dirk and his lover Duck. Then there are the children Cherokee and Witch Baby. Cherokee's one true love and Witch Baby's soul mate, Angel Juan.
It's a wild, dreamy, mystical journey full of Block's imaginative language and made-up slang. Although delightful, I found Dangerous Angels difficult reading when attempted all in one go. The stylized language really does require your attention and it's easy to zone out to the meaning behind the melodies. Overwhelming as a novel, I read the books individually, interspersing them with other things from my library -- some long, some short, some amazing and some just bloody stupid (hi, Twilight! hi!).
Spanning the gauntlet from jazzy and sweet (Weetzie Bat) to down right menacing (Missing Angel Juan) Block does a sublime job of creating a world not easily forgotten.
