You're Amazing Gail!! ❤️

I don't leave enough reviews, but your books are always amazing. This nonfiction book has taught me so much about why I like certain shows, movies, and books. It also explained why some movies, characters...etc make me cringe or honestly seem to hurt my soul. I especially loved your explanations of how storytellers shape culture. I am so excited to be armed with all this knowledge literally no one has EVER explained to me before! I had never heard of the Heroines journey before this 💔 Finally, although the intention may not have been to inspire readers to live the life of a Heroine, I am none the less inspired to do so ❤️. Thank you!!

4 people found this helpful

Excellent and informative

This book brilliantly explains the Heroine’s Journey, in both mythology and modern stories like the Harry Potter and Twilight series, with a focus on how writers can use the Heroine’s Journey’s narrative structure in their own fiction. It also contrasts the Heroine’s Journey with the Hero’s Journey, and explains the latter so well that I finished the book understanding it better than when I read books dedicated to the topic.

If you’re looking for books on alternate story structures to the typical Hollywood action movie about a lone hero who triumphs through one-on-one violence, I highly recommend this book. It will be especially helpful to writers of romance and comedy, books featuring found families and strength through community and close character relationships, and books meant to bring happiness and comfort to their readers. I wish there were more books like this one on alternate story structures to the Hero’s Journey, which is so lauded in the western world but not the end all and be all.

I shared what I was learning in this book with friends yesterday and both were fascinated and excited to learn more. I played Carriger’s early summary of the Heroine’s Journey for a friend last night, and she enjoyed it so much she bought a hard copy this morning.

A warning: She bought a hard copy specifically because the narrator is difficult to listen to. She reads very slowly, and her enunciation is so perfect it sounds unnatural. In my opinion, this book is worth listening to anyway. That said, I bought a kindle copy with the audiobook and plan to get a hard copy as well. This book is brilliant and I want to be able to mark pages and write notes I can refer back to.

1 person found this helpful

The title put me off, but having read the book I now like not only the book, but the title as well.

When I first heard about this book I was automatically opposed to/offended by it, as I didn’t like what I interpreted as the implication that a female person would by necessity have a separate and distinct journey from that of a male hero. Having now read the book, I am delighted to say that I could not possibly have been more wrong!
It’s not about the sex or gender of the protagonist as we are used to thinking about it. It is instead about the lore, history, and writing and acknowledgment of my favorite kind of story.
A story chassis that can be gloriously Applied to a character of any gender, to create the sort of warm, good feelings stories that are the majority, although not the sum total. of the books that I want to read and enjoy, over and over again, on an ongoing basis in my life.

Thank you Gail Carriger. For not only writing many of my favorite fictional stories and characters, but also giving me one of the best lessons on how to write that I have ever had the pleasure of experiencing!

1 person found this helpful

Very informative and useful

Gail illuminates a whole new perspective on storytelling, the suppressed yet extremely popular and secretly ancient Heroine's Journey. As a reader and author both, I found the book interesting and extremely useful, and will listen to it again for certain.

1 person found this helpful

this book actually changed my life.

this book has given me the words, to put into actuality the vague thoughts and feelings that I have been chewing on for *years*

my life is changed. and I am going to stop feeling ashamed for preferring "trashy" romance novels.

1 person found this helpful

Great Content with unsatisfactory narration

After hearing an interview with Gail Carriger about her book, The Heroine's Journey, I was very excited to purchase and listen to the audio version during my work commute. However, I was deeply disappointed by the slow, text-to-speech app sound of the narrator. Even when I set the speed to play the book at a faster speed, I found the voice performance unbearable. Ms. Carriger's book is excellent, and I suggest you buy a print version. I returned the book.

1 person found this helpful

Read at x4 speed good but felt drawn out and Academic

So for about two years now I’ve been trying to write a book and I couldn’t figure out why the story wasn’t working with the heroes journey and as I read this book I realized it’s because my main character was on the heroines journey not the hero’s!! It did take me a couple days to get through this book when normally I can read stuff like this in one sitting mostly just because I felt like there were a lot of examples that I had never heard of before and we’re very outdated and old‘s lol no offense but it would’ve been a lot better with more modern day examples and There were a lot of citing of where she got books and articles and stuff and honestly I couldn’t care less about any of that and I felt like almost half of it was just her telling you where she got her facts from but overall I did finish it and I probably will read it again later as I work through my book and I need to go over the different trials they need to go through and the different character types that before this book I’ve never really heard of although thinking back I have seen a lot of them in movies and books it just never occurred to me what they were!!

Sokath, his eyes uncovered

This is a must read for any aspiring authors. Not only does this book reveal the inner workings of most of my favorite fiction, it gives the most succinct and useful explanation of the Hero's Journey as a bonus. As my hand cramped from trying to take too many notes, I gave up and ordered the printed book. I will be studying this master work for years.

Powerful Read

If you're an author, or you're not, this book is well worth your time. The breakdown of this important narrative type makes sense of many popular works. Beats and archetypes are laid out well and form a ready to use toolbox for either understanding popular stories, or writing your own.

Great book, unfortunate voice performance

I love this book, but the audio narration was so stilted I thought it was a voice synthesizer. When I confirmed it was an actual person, I wondered why on earth she was imitating an voice synthesizer. The weird robot voice got in the way big time - it was an especially bad fit for this topic - but I got through it because the content was so good.