Juvenile Fantasy: The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of her Own Making, Catherynne Valente

The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of her Own Making
Catherynne Valente
ISBN: 9780312649616
Re-Read, finished September 24, 2014


This book, y'all.

I first read this book back in 2012, when I wasn't keeping as scrupulous a review record of what I was reading.  I didn't review it then, because I couldn't ever think of anything to say other than how much I liked it.  Strangely enough, the more a book has touched me, or the more I feel like it fits, the less I find I can coherently say about it directly.  It's a challenge.

This book is a beautiful and illusion-shattering psychology manual on the topics of humanity and growing up, dolled up in a fancy-dress-party disguise as a romp through Fairyland by a little human girl named September, and the friends and enemies she makes as she quests.

It is amazing.  It made me cry, and made my heart ache, and made me wish that I had even a clock with my name on it.  I want a library to be my ancestor, and for a trio of married witches to tell my future in moldy soup, but I also want to scoop just about all the characters up into a great big neverending hug and lie through my teeth that everything will be all right, and not to worry about such big terrible things as life and betrayal and fairness.

I discovered recently that there were a couple of sequels: The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There, and The Girl Who Soared Over Fairyland and Cut the Moon in Two.  I hate reading sequels after there's been a long break between reading the first, so naturally I had to go back to this one, and oh god, it hurts just as badly as it did on the first read.  It's painfully beautiful and true and wild and good.

I will leave you with a much more excellent (although not much more on-topic) review of this book from one of my favorite authors and people; Patrick Rothfuss, from over on Goodreads.

Short Story: The Lightning Tree, Patrick Rothfuss

Rogues
GRR Martin & Gardner Dozois, editors

ISBN: 9780345537263

Short Story Collection, only read The Lightning Tree by Patrick Rothfuss

Read Sept 4, 2014.

Dear Mr. Rothfuss,

I only just now got around to reading your short story.  Please write about Bast and children and secrets and favors and lies and satyrs forever.  

Yours truly, 

Shisho.

PS - Oh this story was so damn amazing.  Your language makes me cry.  Your craft makes me green with envy.  Your storytelling makes me gape like a child.  Your understanding of humanity draws me in like a crackling bonfire on a dark cold night.  My face burns from sitting so close, but it's worth it to feel like I'm part of the fire, at least for as long as I can stand the pain.  

  

Never stop burning.

Foiled, and Curses, Foiled Again, Jane Yolen & Mike Cavallaro

Foiled
Jane Yolen, illustrated by Mike Cavallaro
Middle-Grade Graphic Novel
ISBN: 9781596432796
Re-read March 26, 2014

Curses, Foiled Again
Jane Yolen, illustrated by Mike Cavallaro
Middle-Grade Graphic Novel, sequel
ISBN: 9781596436190
Read March 26, 2014

Pretty sure I reviewed Foiled before, but I got hold of the sequel, so wanted to hit it up again to be sure where I stood.  It holds up well to a re-read, although I was much more aware of the forbodingly looming birds showing up everywhere this time around.  Still think Aliera is a fantastic name.

Curses, Foiled Again picks up right after we left off, with Aliera not yet used to the idea of faery at all, let alone her place as a Defender of a realm she can't even see normally.  Avery is bound and determined to be her knight, and Aliera is bound and determined to not trust him.

The storyline is again really terribly short - these are really almost graphic novellas.  The "dark lord" is a little eye-rolly, especially given the age-group this is aimed at, and the reveal on who is the big bad was woefully expected (although handled fairly well).  I liked that Aliera wasn't given super instincts to go with her new position, and she's flailing around wildly trying to figure everything out and be the hero.  That's a nice and unexpected direction to go, and I hope it continues.  What I didn't like, and which wasn't a problem as much in the first, was that with the very stylized speech and thought bubbles, I really had a hard time during the climax figuring out who is saying (or thinking) what to whom.  I think this is my own fault for not reading enough comics as an impressionable child, but I really did have to read a few pages over again to match lines with characters.  Despite my own shortcomings, that shouldn't ever be a problem.

As the first did, we're set up here at a nice breather, ready for the next encounter.

Short Reviews: January 2013. Ironskin, Tina Connolly

Ironskin, Tina Connolly.  ISBN: 9780765330598

January 2013

YA: This book reminded me very strongly of Jenna Starborn, in that it really does quite simply take Jane Eyre, mess around with the setting, and let it fly again.  I enjoyed Jenna Starborn, and I did enjoy Ironskin also, but I do think that the world-building in the former was a little more realized.  There were some implications in this endeavor that weren't fully dealt with, and several others which were just left to hang unresolved.  

However!  While the setting in Jenna Starborn is pretty ho-hum Victoriana in space, THIS setting is really very interesting.  I would have LOVED to see an original story set in this world, rather than a re-hash of a classic.  I got the impression that a lot of thought had gone into creating an interesting concept for a world, and then when it came time to write a story - they choked up.  I totally understand that; I'm a worldbuilder, and a character writer myself, not a plotter.  But I do feel somewhat cheated that this really very interesting scenery and background was wasted on a watered down YA edition of Jane Eyre.  

A world in the twilight of an Empire powered by the stolen life-energy of the fae really deserves something a bit more original.

ETA: apparently there is now a sequel: Copperhead.

Curse of the Thirteenth Fey, Jane Yolen

Curse of the Thirteenth Fey, Jane Yolen
ISBN: 9780399256646
Read November 20, 2013

YA: Sleeping Beauty re-tell from the perspective of the fairy "godmothers" although the sleeper is a fae also...

Weird.  I think that I would have enjoyed it more if I had been allowed to come to the realization that this was a Sleeping Beauty re-telling more gradually and naturally over the course of the story, instead of having it plastered on the cover.

Because to be quite honest, it ISN'T the story of Sleeping Beauty. Unless you accept that the story of Sleeping Beauty that we all know was mangled all out of shape and smushed into a container that didn't quite fit it all, and then dumped out somewhere quite different and mixed up with some extra bits from who-knows-where.

To that end, I have a hard time reviewing this.  Is it a good re-work of Sleeping Beauty?  For me, nope.  It was weird, focused on the fae end of things, didn't really have that mystical fairy-tale feel, and too many of the classic elements were missing or occluded.

Was it a good story of itself?  Actually, yes.  I liked Gorse, I liked the mythology of their strange Appalachian-seeming hippie-fae family, I liked all the sibling interactions, and I really really liked the bits in the dark with the Grey and the Prince.  Those bits strongly reminded me of The Perilous Gard (Elizabeth Marie Pope) which I read a while back.  I really like creepity fae that take advantage of darkness and odd motivations.

So I'm not sure about it.  My suggestion?  Try not to think about classic fairy-tales when you read it, and just enjoy a strange, somewhat nigglingly-familiar story about a clumsy and unlucky 13th child of the fae, and what happened a long time ago, when she was a child.

The Perilous Gard, Elizabeth Marie Pope

The Perilous Gard, Elizabeth Marie Pope.  ISBN: 0590460579

Read September 4, 2013

YA: Newbery Honor.  Bloody-Mary-era England mysterious castle and well-built fae.

Picked up a slightly-damaged paperback at the 10-for-$2 table at the Greenville Literacy Society's Really Big Book Sale.

 

I somehow missed this when I was younger, and I'm sort of sad that I did.  It's very Willow/Labyrinth/Dark Crystal feel, and the fae are beautifully done.

Kate and her sister are handmaidens to the Princess Elizabeth in exile while Bloody Mary rules, until Kate's impetuous sister writes a letter to complain of their treatment.  The sister gets dragged into Mary's court, but Kate (blamed for the complaint because she's not the pretty one) is exiled even further, to the Perilous Gard, all the way out near the Irish border.  

The castle is eerie and filled with servants who seem to have a divided loyalty.  The village is filled with traumatized peasants.  The forboding woods are filled with ancient oaks.  The lord and his younger brother are hiding a sad, dark secret.  Headstrong, stubborn, logical Kate is determined to find out how they're all related, even if it gets her kidnapped Underhill.

Really truly very good.  If I had been younger when I first encountered it, I have a feeling it would end up in the supreme favorites who-can-do-no-wrong list with The Hero and the Crown and the Alanna books.  As it is, as an adult, I notice the seams, so it downgrades to merely extremely solid.