Reviews For Writers by redick. Most reviews are for readers. These are for writers looking for commentary on technique. Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses (Book) When I read the book, I was hit with the author's opulent use of metaphor and fantastic content. The rapid gear shifting of time and space was like being in the passenger seat next to a maniacal Mr. Toad at the wheel. I enjoyed it. However, when I was doing the prep for this review, I read that the critics slapped the label of "Magic Realism" on this genre of work. "What? What does that mean?" To me it was just a fantasy. Not swords and sorcery but a modern fantasy. To me the content reminds me of Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere or his Stardust, N.K. Jiemanson's The City We Became or even Joe Hill's NOS4A2. I think this label of "Magic Realism" is a case of critics and academics needing a handle for talking about minute differences of style rather than content. Or perhaps tone. Or degrees of separation. How far down the rabbit hole does the novel go? To me, the only difference between Rushdie's work and those other excellent authors is one of style. Which I will try to recreate... You enter the house and your host welcomes you with descriptions of the rich and vibrant dinner that will be served. As he speaks the feast forms. Bubbling up out of the floor, dripping downward from the ceiling, oozing out of the walls. All flowing together into the confluence of table, linen and platters. All the words of meats, pastries, fruit and dishes. Exotic names. Candied metaphors. Succulent similes. Chocolate syntax. Lush lexicon. Reaching out towards a puffed analogy, you knock over a porcelain pitcher of cream. The tentacles of cream, stretch, reaching out towards a bronze brazier. Closer the albino vines creep. They coagulate into a veiny arm, death white. It grasps the brazier. You grasp the brazier. The arm is your arm, withering with age. Raising the brazier above your head, as a torch, you make your way through the darkness to the bathroom. Once there you stare pass the mirror into the future. Uneasy that the horizon is so near. There's booming, bellowing knocking at the door. It is the strick sergeant with his arrest warrant. "Go away, I have no need of you." "Your late with the rent.", comes the reply of the strick landlord, "Open up." You fling open the door, ready to give the landlord an earful. Instead you walk straight through, waving aside the pungent wisps of vapor that had once been the landlord and straight on to the horizon. I hope that captures the music of the prose.