Deathless by Catherynne M. Valente

Author: Catherynne M. Valente
Title: Deathless
Themes: love, power, humanity, war, death

Plot: From Amazon

Twentieth-century Russian history provides a background for Valente's lush reimagining of folkloric villain Koschei the Deathless and his dalliance with Marya Morevna, a clever but troubled young woman. After Koschei sweeps Marya away from her family's home in St. Petersburg-Petrograd-Leningrad, Baba Yaga assigns her three tasks that will make her worthy of marrying Koschei. As she spends more time in Koschei's Country of Life, Marya starts to become too much like her unearthly lover, until naïve Ivan Nikolayevich helps her regain her humanity (as well as the sympathy of the reader). Valente's lush language and imagery add to the magic and fundamentally Russian nature of the story, drawing pointed parallels between the Soviet Union's turmoil and the endless war between Koschei and his brother, Viy. Readers used to the Brothers Grimm and Charles Perrault will find this tale peculiar but enchanting.

My Thoughts: Reading Deathless was a revelation for me. It was my first Valente (certainly not my last) and it shocked me. I devoured this disturbing, sensual, and beautiful re-imagined folktale. I can't say that there is a single likable character in the whole novel...with a cast ranging from humans, spirits, demi-gods (??), and seasons. But they are compelling. The imagery alone is fantastic-Marya lives in a human world full of twelve mothers, red scarves, and house spirits. Then she is transported (it's a long trip including trials and feasts which is an unnerving and delightful sequence in itself) to the land of Life which is populated by spirits, living architecture, and the unending struggle against Death and his kingdom.

In addition to the bold and bizarre world-building, Marya enters into marriage with Life, who puts on skin to please her. The exploration of an open marriage and bdsm is intriguing though certainly not the main focus of the novel. This melding of Russian folklore is truly about war and loss and that all things End. I'm still not sure if I want to read all the fantastic elements of the story as an escapist fantasy from the realities of starving during a crumbling regime in mid-century Russia or as a wonderful surrealist dark fiction.

Rating: ****1/2
The only reason this doesn't have five stars is because I know this dark magical realism thing doesn't appeal to everyone. 

Similar Books: Amazon recommends Gregory Maguire and Neil Gaiman and similar authors...but I am forced to disagree. Neither gets as grimy, dirty, dark, and transcendent as Valente does in Deathless. With that said, I really can't think of any similar reads off the top of my head. Oops.

Tender Morsels by Margo Lanagan

I really question the YA branding of Tender Morsels. That thought aside: brilliant, heartbreaking, beautiful, bittersweet re-imagining of Snow White and Rose Red, though the beginning also hints at some Donkeyskin themes (incest, rape) and the ending hints at a more Sleeping Beauty Evil Queen theme (a mother's jealousy). I wouldn't say this is an easy read, but it is certainly powerful and lyrical.

The Fifties by David Halberstam

An epic book that hopes to cover the whole of the American experience during the 1950s. Topics range from integration in schools/sports/etc. to Marilyn Monroe to Kennedy and Nixon's televised debate to the A bomb to Westinghouse commercials. I won't lie, this has taken me about 6 months to finish because it is not a book to sit and devour. I did find it a nice general overview of the period, obviously it could never go too in depth due to its scope. It was interesting and well written.

Kill Me Softly by Sarah Cross

I read this for the promise of a "fairy tale mash up" and was happy to find Bluebeard as the main story. It's YA so of course insta-love ensues (must be hard to fall FOR SERIOUS in love successively with two guys, who happen to be brothers, within a week....) as well as really illogical decisions. While it was a quick read and it wasn't overly offending, I probably won't read any further books in the series just because of the sheer stupidity of ALL the characters...is this was kids these days are reading?

Salt & Storm by Kendall Kulper

I found this to be a nice middle ground between Tender Morsels and Kill Me Softly....more YA then Tender Morsels with a dash of that instalove and completely illogical decision making, but also bittersweet, brutal, and lyrical. I immediately thought of Margo Lanagan's The Brides of Rollrock Island. The alliance between a Pacific Islander harpoon boy and a sea witch in the 1860s turns to romance which leads to tragedy. Quite good.

Reading Through 2012-6

Completed This Week:

American Bloomsbury: Louisa May Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Henry David Thoreau: Their Lives, Their Loves, Their Work by Susan Cheever
***
If you managed to finish reading the subtitle I'm sure you have some idea of what Cheever's nonfiction multi-biography is all about. In truth, this has been on my TBR pile for a while but reading March inspired me to actually pick it up! I'm glad I did.
American Bloomsbury is a bit scattered, very superficial (it's only 200 pages, I know that's not a lot of room to get in-depth!), but very entertaining and interesting. Towards the end Cheever does insert herself into the story, which did turn me off a bit, since I'm sure you can fill 200 pages about these legendary writers and Transcendentalists without describing the author's "research" trips with her kids and dogs. Not that I wouldn't enjoy those stories, I just found that they didn't really fit into the overall telling of Cheever's story.
Cheever focuses quite a bit on Thoreau and his infatuation with Fuller, as well as Emerson's infatuation with her. Unfortunately Fuller's significance to history is never quite explored; but Emerson's, Alcott's, and Thoreau's certainly is. If you want a quick glimpse into a grouping of 19th century authors and their world, I would recommend it. You might also want to check out this quick review.

East by Edith Pattou
****
I do love fairy tale retellings, and this retelling of East of the Sun, West of the Moon (or Cupid and Psyche, or vaguely Beauty and the Beast plus tasks) is quite an enjoyable YA novel. Set in 16th century Norway, East takes the reader all throughout Northern Europe and even into France as young Rose sets off as a captive with a White Bear and then sets off to free him from a troll queen. I did find it difficult to imagine her family quite as literate as it was, but I enjoyed the cast enough to overlook it. Pattou definitely has a romantic style of writing, which makes even the most gruesome or harsh scenarios seem a bit "soft" but gives a far more emotional and poetic image to the book.
I haven't read many, but this is my favorite retelling of this tale. I do wish it had a little bit more...I don't know, pizzazz? It was a great and enjoyable retelling, but it doesn't quite capture the heart and imagination the way my other favorite retellings do (Daughter of the Forest and Wildwood Dancing by Juliet Marrillier, Beauty by Robin McKinley, and Fitcher's Brides by Gregory Frost).

Death Masks by Jim Butcher
**
Okay, let's just admit I enjoy this series.
In this fifth addition Dresden faces a duel with an ancient vampire, hunting down the lost Shroud of Turin, and a band of thirty bad-ass fallen angels. And dodging the cops. And the return of his half-vampire girlfriend who "wants to talk." I really wonder about all the stress Dresden is under, but obviously his coping skills aren't the best...since he just seems to spiral into further trouble with less sleep and self-care!
While these books do feel somewhat episodic I kind of hope that there is an overarching storyline that I will pick up on sooner or later, that ties them all together. I also think Murphy didn't get enough "screen time" in this novel of the Dresden Files. I do love Murphy.

Blood Rites by Jim Butcher
**1/2
Another foray into The Dresden Files this week! This one follows an entropy curse surrounding an up and coming progressive porn film director and his cast...as well as guardian puppies from Tibet and some secret family history for Dresden that is dramatically revealed to him by White Court vampires! Exciting.

Cloaked

Title: Cloaked

Author: Alex Flinn

Themes: fairy tales, love, friendship, responsibility, commitment, quest, magic, money, duty

Rating: **

Plot: I'm not your average hero. I actually wasn't your average anything. Just a poor guy working an after-school job at a South Beach shoe repair shop to help his mom make ends meet. But a little magic changed it all.

It all started with a curse. And a frognapping. And one hot-looking princess, who asked me to lead a rescue mission.

There wasn't a fairy godmother or any of that. And even though I fell in love along the way, what happened to me is unlike any fairy tale I've ever heard. Before I knew it, I was spying with a flock of enchanted swans, talking (yes, talking!) to a fox named Todd, and nearly trampled by giants in the Keys.

Don't believe me? I didn't believe it either. But you'll see. Because I knew it all was true, the second I got cloaked.

My Thoughts: Cloaked is a mash up of fairy tales Flinn believed to be underrepresented in literature and film, which is an exciting premise! She takes elements from: The Elves and the Shoemaker, The Frog Prince, The Six Swans (Juliet Marillier's Daughter of the Forest is an excellent retelling btw), The Golden Bird, The Valiant Tailor, The Salad, and The Fisherman and His Wife.

My first thought is that...that's a lot of obscure (well, unless you like fairy tales) stories to mash up and still have a cohesive representation of each. In fact...the only one that really shines through is The Frog Prince, arguable the most well known of the bunch. My second thought was that Flinn's epilogue explaining all this really should have been a prologue.

Flinn writes a believable and likable male lead (in all three of the novels I've read this is true...now that I think about it), most side characters are fairly flat and one-dimensional but that actually works in the stories-since the protagonist is pretty self-absorbed. In fact, he's so self-absorbed that he can't figure out the obvious romantic feelings a certain girl has when the reader knows it from page one (oh wait, is this a YA trope?). Or apparently recognize obviously dodgy behavior in others...but I guess it keeps the plot moving.

Johnny's adventures take him from Florida to the Keys then across the nation and into a vaguely defined European country with the aid of a magic cloak. But capturing the frog he's after requires a bit more than a cloak that can transport you where ever you wish to go. In fact it requires the aid of six swans, a fox, a rat, a magical ring, a best friend, and a surprisingly lax mom.

Nevertheless Johnny's trials reveal his own ambitions and emotions while giving him a clearer sense of self and self-worth...which he uses to become a celebrity of sorts by the books conclusion.

Cloaked suffers just a bit from Harry Potter Syndrome...the conclusion just takes it too far and wraps it up too completely to make it a satisfying read.

Recommendation: If you are a fan of fairy tales and fairy tale retellings I would give it a go. If you like whimsical YA you may enjoy Cloaked. However, it's certainly not the best of either category and suffers a bit in the character development and conclusion.

Random Quote: "I'm in. I won. I don't need the fox or the inn or anything. I'm not going to get shot at. I just have to catch the frog, something any little boy can do. For once in my life, something is easy! (106)"

Similar Reads: Beastly and A Kiss in Time both by Alex Flinn, My Mother She Killed Me My Father He Ate Me edited by Kate Bernheimer, The Rose and the Beast by Francesca Lia Block

Flinn, Alex. Cloaked. New York: HarperTeen, 2011.

Waiting on Wednesdays: Cloaked

"Waiting On" Wednesday is a weekly event, hosted at Breaking the Spine, that spotlights upcoming releases that we're eagerly anticipating.

This week's pre-publication "can't-wait-to-read" selection is:

Cloaked by Alex Flinn

Released Date: February 8th, 2011

What Amazon has to say: I’m not your average hero. I actually wasn’t your average anything. Just a poor guy working an after-school job at a South Beach shoe repair shop to help his mom make ends meet. But a little magic changed it all.

It all started with a curse. And a frognapping. And one hot-looking princess, who asked me to lead a rescue mission.

There wasn’t a fairy godmother or any of that. And even though I fell in love along the way, what happened to me is unlike any fairy tale I’ve ever heard. Before I knew it, I was spying with a flock of enchanted swans, talking (yes, talking!) to a fox named Todd, and nearly trampled by giants in the Everglades.

Don’t believe me? I didn’t believe it either. But you’ll see. Because I knew it all was true, the second I got CLOAKED.

White as Snow

Title: White as Snow
Author: Tanith Lee
Themes: fairy tales, Snow White, insanity, rape, power, paganism, Christianity, Greek mythology, abandonment, love, forgiveness
Rating: ****

Plot: Once upon a time there was a mirror...

So begins this dark, unusual retelling of the story of Snow White by the writer reviewers have called "the Angela Carter of the fantasy field"-a whole novel based on a beloved story, turning it into a dark and sensual drama full of myth and magic.

Arpazia is the aging queen who paces the halls of a warlord's palace. Cold as winter, she has only one passion-for the mysterious hunter who courts the outlawed gods of the woodland. Coira is the princess raised in the shadow of her mother's hatred. Avoided by both her parents and half forgotten by her father's court, she grows into womanhood alone...until the mirror speaks and blood is spilled and the forest claims her.

The tragic myth of the goddess Demeter and her daughter, Persephone, stolen by the king of the underworld, is woven together with the tale of Snow White to create a powerful story of mothers and daughters and the blood that binds them together, for good or ill. Black Queen. White maid. Royal huntsman. Seven little folk who live in the forest. Come inside, sit by the fire, and listen to this fairy tale as you've never heard it told before.

My Thoughts: Honestly I'm not really sure what to say about this novel. It has several components that I am bound to adore-first of all it's written by Tanith Lee, also it's a fairy tale retelling, in addition to all that it also incorporates Greek mythology. It has intriguing, if not necessarily likable, characters (in fact, not a single character is truly likable). It has a bit of magic, a bit herblore, a bit of just plain insanity. It's entertaining-not romantic, not sweet, and certainly not mere fairy-tale fodder.

The majority of this book is actually centered around Arpazia, a stolen princess who is raped and then shunned by her warlord husband. The isolated girl grows into an obsessively cold and distant women who at times hates the daughter she sees only a few times over her entire life. Most of the time, she simply forgets she has one at all. Madness is essential to this character, a sort of cold hazy madness of a self-absorbed and abused woman. A later abortion confuses the evil mother even more, convincing her she has killed her child and now has none.

When Coira does become the center of the novel she is a teenager much like her mother, cold and distant. Neither woman has ever connected to anyone else on a human level, and to both other people don't truly exist. Coira is taken away by a man with seven dwarfs, who mutiny and set her up as a "master" they can control. They venture underground, to a mining city called the Underworld which is ruled by a mad prince who fancies himself Hades. It is here that Coira's life begins, where she falls in love, dies, marries, and is saved and taken back above ground. Of course, it is fairly easy to see the connection to Persephone here, and Lee makes that parallel very obvious by renaming Coira when she becomes princess of the underworld-Perspheh.

One again, Tanith Lee has fashioned amazing settings and borderline insane personalities that move the storyline along.

Recommendation: A very dark, and soemtimes lurid, retelling of Snow White that fully explains the evil (step)mother and her confused role in her daughter's death and rebirth. If you love dark fantasies or fairy tale re-tellings then this is a great read, I recommend it.

Similar Reads: Red as Blood, or, Tales from the Sisters Grimmer by Tanith Lee, Deerskin by Robin McKinley, Fitcher's Brides by Gregory Frost, The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter

Lee, Tanith. White as Snow. New York: TOR, 2000.

Book Review: Thomas the Rhymer

Ellen Kushner has written fantasy novels, poetry, short stories, and plays, and has done some solo spoken word projects. Thomas the Rhymer (1990) was Kushner's second novel and won the World Fantasy Award and the Mythopoeic Award. (From Kushner's webpage here). (Cover image found here.)

Since it has been a few weeks since I finished this, and am just now getting around to reviewing it I at first that it would only be a "mini" review, but have found I have a lot to say about it! Perhaps stewing over it has helped? This is also sort of related to this week's Weekly Geeks topic!

I checked this out from my university library (well, actually I had it ordered from another library since mine did not carry it but those are just details!) and put off starting it for about a week. When I did eventually pick it up, it took me the first few chapters to really get involved in the story but by the end of the novel I wasn't ready to give up on the characters.

Title: Thomas the Rhymer
Author: Ellen Kushner
Themes: friendship, love, music, magic, fairies, quests
Plot: A minstrel lives by his words, his tunes, and sometimes by his lies. But when the bold and gifted young Thomas the Rhymer awakens the desire of the powerful Queen of Elfland, he finds that words are not enough to keep him from his fate. .As the Queen sweeps him far from the people he has known and loved into her realm of magic, opulence-and captivity-he learns at last what it is to be truly human. When he returns to his home with the Queen's parting gift, his great task will be to seek out the girl he loved and wronged, and offer her at last the tongue that cannot lie.

My Thoughts: First of all, I feel that the book's official plot overstates Thomas' "task" to "seek out the girl he loved and wronged..." When reading Thomas the Rhymer romance seems to come second to his new dedication to, and the role of, "the tongue that cannot lie." With that in mind, I would classify this book more of an adventure/fantasy than a romance, which seems to be a selling point in official plot descriptions. That aside, Kushner has taken the traditional ballad/tale of the captured minstrel of great beauty and skill (with the harp, singing, and the ladies) and turned it into living, breathing characters and a very real (vaguely medieval) Europe (I assume Scotland, since that is supposed to be where the ballad comes from?). While I had a hard time believing Thomas' change of heart, I felt that he was basically within his "character" throughout the novel, and instead found some of the supporting characters to be a bit flat.
The novel goes through four narrators, each with a slightly different voice, although I have to admit that Gavin's voice was my favorite because it seemed to be the most unique, and defined his character clearly.
I also found that there was some ambiguity around the Queen of Elfland's challenge that was never cleared up, and it certainly bothered me while I was reading Thomas. Perhaps I had not read carefully enough, but the challenge in which Thomas was a part, did not make sense to me. With that said, I enjoyed this book immensely and bored my family to death updating them on the plot as I continued through the chapters. Of course, I love fairy tales and any sort of retelling, so I was bound to love Kushner's Thomas despite the fact that I couldn't really relate to the characters. The story was well told, and Kushner brought all the people and places to life on the page.

Random Passage: "Since the story wouldn't leave me, I decided to play with it. It might make at least the first half of a ballad, with its sorry tale of jealousy and murder. And there were images that touched me: the young wife burying her dead husband and child alone at night; her weary walk to the king's door...Harp in hand, I began to pluck at the words and the tune (p. 129)."

Recommendation: I would recommend this novel if you like any of the following: Fantasy stories, Elfland stories, fairy-tale/ballad retellings. I don't want to say that everyone should read this book, but I think a great many people would enjoy it!

Similar Reads: Winter Rose by Patricia A. McKillip, Tam Lin by Pamela Dean*

Kusher, Ellen. Thomas the Rhymer. New York: Bantam Books, 2004.

* I haven't actually read Tam Lin, although I own a copy, but the story-lines have obvious similarities!