6/10/11

Out of the dark woods...

Hello!  This last semester was...ah...intensive.  The lack of updates here reflected that.  oops.

Anyway!  To celebrate the fact that I have free time again (oh, hey summer full of events and cons and ohgodneedtocatchupongodseeker) ok I lied.  I still don't have free time.  But!  I read some things!  YOU SHOULD READ THEM TOO.


Seriously fairy tale fans.  If you have not picked up one or both of the books I will be reviewing in the next few weeks, I judge you.


They are both by the same person: the lovely Catherine Valente.  She is awesome and reads her stuff awesome and will be in MN in less than three weeks and I will have to make sure I don't embarrass myself by fansqueeing all over her.

*cough* like i almost did at WisCon where I couldn't think of anything to say except "you write words good!" *cough*

First Review!

The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland 
in a Ship of Her Own Making
Look at this book!  Its SO PRETTY!

 See that book?  Yeah.  I thought so.  This book is a really good book.  Also!  It is a really well crafted fairytale.  

This makes two things that I love, and they are all in one book.  


I bet you want to hear what about it makes it so good.  You want me to prove my assertions, don't you?

I can do this thing.  You see, the main character, September, is a little girl who is (like any good fairytale hero/ine) a bit bored by her life.  She doesn't care about washing tea cups and her parents aren't there--her father is off fighting in WWII and her mother works in a factory building planes.  September herself is "ill-tempered and irascible" and gets herself whisked off to fairyland by the Green Wind and a flying Leopard.  Fairyland is ruled by a Marquess who is terrible, but has a very fine hat.

September befriends a Wyvern who is half library on his father's side (named A through L), and he is awesome.  September will have adventures, lose her heart, save fairyland, confront death, fall in love and break the rules.

It is also a book about love and obsession and heart break.  It is a book about your heart's desire and being bound by rules and oaths and pain, but also joy and love and pleasure.  It is a book about loyalty and betrayal, and what you leave behind.  it is a book that allows itself to re-examine modern bureaucracy and how imagination gets left behind under rules and doubts.

Fairyland (and everything Valente has written that I've read, if I'm being honest) is beautifully written and at times it approaches lyrical prose.  I'll admit to being a bit wary of this sort of thing usually--the reader can end up feeling cheated by the world suddenly acting out of character or magic being introduced in such a way that makes the reader question what is real and what is not real and if the magic is supposed to be metaphorical or not and getting distracted by how the world works and why the author can't just come out and say what the hell is going on.  Or the lyrical prose ends up being pretty, but distracts from the story and gives the impression that the words and the author are the main attractions to the book instead of the plot and the characters and the story.  (Don't get me wrong, I can totally enjoy books like that--but if I'm reading for the story, I'd better not get the impression that the author cares more about sounding pretty then giving me a good tale, and I certainly don't much care for being surprised by it.)

Fairyland, I'm glad to say, does not fall into that trap.  It adheres to the fairytale logic and the rich world firmly (and consistently!), so the reader never feels like the book is cheating.  The narrator is allowed to be a character and the lyrical nature of the work adds to, rather than distracts from, the plot and the story.  The style is playful but takes the book and the dangers seriously, and feels like a mysterious stranger telling you a tale around a campfire in the dark woods.  I really want the audio book of this one, and failing that, I want to read it out loud.

There are references to other works--fairytales from all over the world, modern genre fantasy, Rushdie's Haroun and the Sea of Stories (another book you need to read!), Alice in Wonderland, the Oz books, and probably many, many others I didn't catch on my first read through.  Valente's Fairyland is dark, misleading, a shattered mirror image of our own, and full of wonderful lies and truths and logic and illogic.  Its funny and heart-wrenching and thrilling and YOU SHOULD READ IT NOW.

Ah.  I'm back to the fansqueeing, aren't I?

I'm sorry.  No, not really.  I want you to read it and then come back and talk to me about it so that we can go "and I loved that part!"  "and when she did that thing?!"  and "did you see what Valente did with the shoe bit?"  and then we will flail and devolve into quoting and you will want to hear it out loud like me.


So, fairytale fans, Alice fans, Oz fans, Rushdie fans: READ THIS BOOK, no buts, ifs or anything.  I do not think you will be disappointed.



Next Review will be Deathless by Catherine Valente.

A hint:  This book is the Koschei Tale set in communist Russia.  It has Baba Yaga.

I think you can guess how I felt about that book.  If you think I was incoherent with joy at this one you should have heard me reading Deathless.  I will try to make the next post more then BABA YAGA! KOSCHEI!  EEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!  *flail until falling over like Foaming-at-the-mouth-guy from Avatar the Last Airbender (TV show, NOT THE HORRIBLE MOVIE)* 

Edited to add: This Guy:

But no promises.  You have been warned.