In My Mailbox #4 Author Special: Rhiannon Lassiter's Hex Trilogy

In my Mailbox is a weekly meme started by The Story Siren which gives bloggers a chance to showcase all the books they have received in the previous week (for review, bought, borrowed, ect...) but for which they sometimes have no space to showcase in detail on their blog.

Bought:

US Paperback 2001

Hex by Rhiannon Lassiter

This is the book - or rather an edition of the book - that started my obsession with English books.
But let me start this story at the beginning. It's 1998 and I am in school in Germany. My German teacher had the brilliant idea to start a reading circle and so the whole class did. One of the boys brought "2367 Experiment Hex", the German hardback version of this, and what he said about the book seemed exactly up my alley so I asked him to borrow that book.
To say that I loved the book would be a mild understatement. Raven, the main character, was exactly how I wanted to be - from her independence to her taste in music.
It was also the moment in which I decided that I wanted to be a writer, too. Hex got accepted for publication when Rhiannon was nineteen and I wanted the same. Now I've got a growing stack of manuscripts that are nowhere near publishing-worthy but I still enjoy writing and the days you find me without pen and a notebook are rare.

UK Paperback/ GER Hardback/ GER Paperback/ US Paperback

In 2000 I came across the German paperback of Hex, bought it and read that book more often since then than I can count. A little later I found out that there were more books and the series had grown into a trilogy. I was impatiently waiting for a German publisher to pick them up but they never were and my English was getting better so I ordered Shadows and Ghosts in their native language. The first English books that I picked for myself. That was also the moment when I realised that some books just didn't get translated and buying them in their native language got me the story much quicker anyway.

US Paperbacks Hex, Shadows, Ghosts

Since then I have bought the English editions of most of my books. It took me a while to figure out that there were different editions for the UK and USA and that I had gotten the US versions of Shadows and Ghosts (quite a shame because Rhiannon Lassiter is a British writer) but this trilogy will always be the one that got me into English books.

And my collection of Rhiannon Lassiter books has grown, too. But I never thought about replacing my German paperback Hex with the US version. So apparently I have never read the English version of Hex. 

A few weeks ago I posted a picture of my packed bookshelf with all my favourite books and Rhiannon kindly pointed out that Hex was missing. Yeah, I suddenly felt bad about that. And here the story comes full cycle for I now have bought the US paperback to match the other two.

US Paperback 2011

To be honest it wasn't quite so easy to come by a copy because sadly by now they are out of print. Took me a good while to locate a matching copy in ok quality that wasn't sold by a totally dodgy person. Funny thing is, at pretty much the same time that I located my copy Rhiannon announced on her facebook page that there would be a re-issue of Hex, Shadows and Ghosts bound together into one book called VOID, which will come out in the US November 15th 2011 and which is now very high up on my wish-list.

I hope that somehow my moving little story about how Hex changed my reading habits has convinced you that these books are totally worth checking out and you are going to pre-order VOID. And if I really impressed you, you should consider checking out Rhiannon Lassiter's other books.

This IMM has been a bit different than the usual ones, but I hope you liked it anyway.
With love, The Book Shop Assistant