2013 book 210

Pamela Dean's Tam Lin
This is one of those books people have been recommending to me for YEARS, but man, it is BORING. Seriously, so boring. The fairy tale stuff doesn't get started until like the last ten percent of the book, and before that is just a bunch of 70s college students dealing with a love octagon; most of the dudes are creepy Classics majors (the school has a weird Classics cult) (also they are obviously all fairies/dealing with fairy drama) who keep pretentiously quoting poetry at each other. There's also a very extended scene involving a play they're putting on that I found completely unbearable, because it just goes on FOREVER. Symbolism can be shorter. I really wish the editors of the Fairy Tale Series this is a part of had taken a much firmer hand with this one. The main character, Janet, is likable and proactive enough, but I don't really care about her college classes and essays or her dining hall preferences. And that's ALL the book is. There's also a ghost and some nice roommates, but the fairy tale elements are way underplayed here. If I wanted to read a book about obnoxiously intellectual college students, I'd have done that; I wanted a fairy tale. B-.