The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland And Led The Revels There by Catherynne M. Valente

It’s been a year since September returned from Fairyland and not a lot has changed in this world. Her father is still away at the war, her mother still works long hours and everything is rationed. She’s just turned 13 and the other girls at school don’t much care for her or her stories of Fairyland. She’s been hoping the Green Wind will come by and spirit her away again, but he hasn’t shown up. Then just after she turns 13 she sees a boat sailing across the tops of the fields and gives chase, she falls beneath Fairyland.

The Fairyland Below is very different to Fairyland Above. It’s a dark world inhabited more by shadows than actual people and creatures. September finds it every bit as hard to come to grips with as she did when she first arrived in Fairyland Above in the first book (The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland In A Ship Of Her Own Making). Matters aren’t helped by the fact that September now has a heart, raw and reckless as it may be.

She is reunited in a way with her very best friends anywhere; the Wyvery A through L (Ell for short) and the Marid boy Saturday. I said in a way because just like September in the first book Ell and Saturday have become detached from their shadows and what she meets in Fairyland Below is their shadows, which are only parts of the actual beings, and not always the nicest parts. Ell is more selfish and less affectionate than his above counterpart and Saturday is very forward and impulsive. In fact September isn’t even sure she likes him very much.

Fairyland Below is largely controlled by the wild Halloween, who is actually September’s shadow. I didn’t like Halloween, and September was frankly shocked by what her shadow self is and what she advocates. It’s going to take everything September has and that of her friends to bring this all to a satisfactory conclusion and it may even affect events in the real world outside of Fairyland.

I adored The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland In A Ship Of Her Own Making, and I think it was far and away the best book of 2011.  It’s sequel is still a very good book (as I said in my review of the first Fairyland book I don’t believe Cat Valente is capable of writing a bad book), but not quite the mind blowing experience that Circumnavigated was. I felt it was darker, especially the depiction of September’s and Saturday’s shadow selves. There are however wonderful moments and characters. The Vicereine of Coffee and the Duke of Teatime along with their children; Darjeeling, Kona, Peaberry, Matcha and even the Littlest Earl, were very amusing. I also liked the Fairy Physickist Belinda Cabbage. The ideas and Valente’s astonishing imagery were still on display and I am in awe of both this woman’s imagination and her incredible facility with language. One thing I did miss from the first book was that narrator played a much smaller role, and I felt that more of her would have been welcome.

While with Circumnavigated one was left with the feeling that September had unfinished business, so the sequel was very necessary. The end of Beneath is more final and things seem to be wrapped up neatly. I wouldn’t rule out a third book, but I do feel that September’s story is now told.  

Once again Feiwel and Friends have done a wonderful job and given us a book of genuine quality, complete with Ana Juan's marvelous and whimsical illustrations on the cover and at the start of each chapter.

Despite maybe not being in my mind quite to the same level as The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland In A Ship Of Her Own Making, The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland And Led The Revels There is still a wonderful experience that will cross generational boundaries and deserves to be read by everyone.

Back to Fairyland

If anyone has read my review of Catherynne M. Valente's The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland In A Ship Of Her Own Making they would be well aware that I am head over heels in love with the book and the concept behind it.

For that reason I was overjoyed when I found out that tor.com had a new free Fairyland story by Cat The Girl Who Ruled Fairyland For A Little Whileavailable.

The story is a prequel of sorts to The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland In A Ship Of Her Own Making, and is a delight from beginning to end. If you have visited Fairyland with September then I know like me you will be happy to make a return trip and if you have not experienced it then this is a good starting point that will not spoil the book, but should only serve to whet your appetite.

The Habitation of the Blessed Volume 1

This is Travels Through Iest's first ever guest review. I'll explain how this came about. I was really looking forward to Cat Valente's The Habitation of the Blessed. I first heard about it at Aussiecon and then I read the author's Hugo nominated Palimpsest which made me even keener, however I only ever saw one copy of it on the shelves here, and it was gone the next time I visited the shop. It was also going to increase the ever growing TBR pile, and who knew when I'd get around to reading it? By chance an eloquent, well read friend of mine on a message forum mentioned that she had a copy of The Habitation of the Blessed, which she was about to read. She graciously accepted my invitation to write a review and allow me to post it here.

This is how Mylene saw The Habitation of the Blessed by Catherine M. Valente:

Let me start with the superficial: this is a very well made book. The cover art actually matches the contents. The book is made of thick, very smooth paper, that feels soft to the touch. The edges are crafted to look as if the pages have been ripped out of another spine (or are they on the verge of decaying? Read on to understand the origin of this question) – and the ink does not smear. Night Shade Books put some effort into the appearance, which is pleasing to the eyes and fingers of the reader from the first touch.

When I started to read, I needed more than 2 hours for the first 30 pages and suddenly became aware, that I was not enjoying this: I kept looking for hidden meanings, foreshadowings, prohecies, intrigue and it then became clear to me, that I have been doing this all wrong. So back to page 1 – reboot – and just relax, let Mrs Valente (yes, she’s married now) take the lead and just enjoy the ride she’s about to take you on.
And what a ride it was.

The Habitation of the Blessed describes the end of Hiob’s journey, sent out by his church to follow the Indus to it’s source, bringing back news of riches for the church to exploit, preferably the hidden kingdom of Prester John – and while at it, do some missionary work – in the form of Hiob’s written confession, dated 1699.

In a village in the province of Lavapuri, Hiob’s dwindling party finds the first word to their goal. A woman takes Hiob to a tree on which grow books. He is allowed to pick three. He spends the following day(s) and night(s) reading them in turn, translating and transcribing them. Soon he learns, that the books are decaying rapidly, like fruit – which leads him into a reading frenzy.

The first book contains the story of John, the last letter of who in 1165 details his 'kingdom‘, thusly leading to Hiob’s expedition; chronicled by his wife Hagia, a blemmye (a people that have their faces on their chests).

The second book tells Hagia’s own story.

The third covers the tale of Imthithal, a Panoti (a people with very large, white ears), nurse to the royal children.

All three interweave in the history of John reaching Pentexore after having crossed a sea of sand, the Rimal in a powerful prose – every word just so – spilling out an overflow of imagination that borders on madness, sweeping you along to the point where you start eating that damn Mango you had lying around for a couple of days, only to realise that the smell that has been disturbing you for a while wasn’t from your fruit – it was her’s, the written ones, slowly decaying.

The beauty of Mrs Valente’s writing defies being put in words. Strand for delicate strand she unravels belief, religion and the benefits of life eternal in slow, moving sentences – almost poetry. Here’s an artist, the likes of which we are not going to see anytime soon again.

This volume ends with all three of the books already rotten to mush. It leaves you wanting more, and soon. According to Mrs Valente, her husband checked her into a hotel somewhere in the wilderness of Maine, so she was closeted to wrestle this beast down. He might have to do so again – well, I certainly wish both of them all the best – but if it takes a little isolation for Mrs Valente, so I can lay may hands on the next volume – I’m not going to stop her husband.

Palimpsest

I’ll admit that this is going to be a weird review, mainly because Palimpsest is one of the weirdest books I’ve ever read.

If you like your novels with a coherent storyline then read no further, because Palimpsest will not be for you. At times I wondered if author Cat Valente just wrote down every strange and disconnected thought she’d ever had, rolled them all up into a big ball, threw them at the page then wrote about whatever happened to stick.

It’s rather hard to describe Palimpsest. You don’t have to know what the word means to read the book, but the dictionary definition fits and helps:

a parchment or the like from which writing has been partially or completely erased to make room for another text.

There are 4 main characters: Oleg, a transplanted New York City locksmith who has never recovered from the loss of his sister; the beekeeper November, based on the West Coast of the US; Ludovico, an Italian binder of rare books in Rome; and a young, Japanese trainspotter named Sei. Palimpsest is what binds these 4 disparate and geographically distant individuals together, that and the loss of someone significant in their lives.

Palimpsest is a world that can only be reached by having an intense physical encounter with another individual who has a part of the world tattooed on their skin. Once Palimpsest has been visited, the visitor has contracted the ‘virus’, and will forever wear some of the world on their own body and this will allow them to transmit it to other travellers in the same way they first encountered the strange and terrifying world.

The world of Palimpsest is one where the author took her imagination off the leash, let it run wherever it wanted and leave it’s mark all over the place. The breadth and depth of Valente’s imagination is jaw droppingly astounding, the words she uses to bring it to life are perfect and make it real, despite how truly odd it all sounds.

You don’t read Palimpsest so much as you experience it. It’s not a book I can recommend as being good or bad, It transcends that sort of categorisation. It is not surprising that it was nominated for a Hugo, it’s also not surprising that it didn’t win.

I’d never read any of Catherynne M. Valente’s work before and this is not a book I would have picked up without having seen the author at Aussiecon. Despite the brilliance of the prose I struggle without a genuine storyline and I found it hard to connect to any of the characters. They were interesting, but I simply could not empathise with them. This won’t stop me from reading more of Cat’s work, she’s a writer of rare talent and she has upcoming works which have piqued my interest.

I’m not at all sad that I read Palimpsest, in fact I think my reading life would have been the poorer for not discovering it.