Every morning, Sophia wakes knowing that her life is perfect. How could it not be? She lives in the paradise of Arcadia Gardens, an exclusive
gated community. She has numerous friends. She has the biggest and most beautiful home. And she has the best husband, respected by all, who surely
loves her as dearly as she loves him. She was practically made for him.
Then she finds the locked drawer with the hairbrush and the lock of hair - neither of them hers.
Though her friends assure her nothing could be wrong, that she's just being silly (isn't her husband always telling her how silly she is?), doubts
begin to slip into her mind, magnified when she finds more things out of place, more hints that something is amiss in her idyllic life. Just who -
or what - is she married to? And what will happen if he learns that she suspects him?
Review
As one might guess from the title and the early parts of the story, this is a twist on the tale of the Garden of Eden, transposing the Garden
into a surreal vision of suburbia that manages to be utopian and dystopian simultaneously. She meets friends like Mrs. Lion and Mrs. Mink and Mrs.
Fish, and though the writing never outright describes them as beasts it soon becomes clear that, normal as Sophia sees their visits for tea and
gossip, they're not ordinary housewives, and neither is Sophia herself. From finding the strange hairbrush, Sophia begins to see the truth of
Arcadia, the deference and the terror in the eyes of those she thought of as friends. Intermittent excerpts from the HOA rules, each more draconian
than the last, add to the growing horror. There's a dreadful inevitability to how the story must end as it exposes the twisted roots behind a
creation myth that reduces women to disposable things and justifies masculine abuse of power as stemming from the very highest authority. As with
pretty much everything of Valente's I've read thus far, the prose positively sings, and even though it ran darker than I might have preferred, and
it was relatively short (only a couple hours and change, audiobook time), it can't help but be memorable in the way a nightmare is memorable.
Twelve-year-old September - born in May - doesn't think twice when the Green Wind comes to the kitchen window and offers to take her for an
Adventure. She's young enough to still be Somewhat Heartless, and though her mother loves her very much (as does her father, though he's off
being a soldier for the Government), washing dishes in Omaha hardly compares to riding the Leopard of Light Breezes between the worlds to
Fairyland. Of course, any little girl knows that there's more to Fairyland than sightseeing - it wouldn't be much of an Adventure, after all,
without a little danger. But all those boys and girls in the storybooks come home safe and sound in the end of it all, and so should September.
Sure enough, she's hardly in Fairyland for half a day before she's met witches and befriended a Wyverary, a great red beast who claims to have
been sired by a Library and who is an expert on anything, so long as it begins with the letters A through L. There's some talk of a lost Queen
and a wicked Marquess, and it's a bit strange that she has yet to see an actual Fairy, but on the whole her Adventure is off to a grand
start!
Storybooks, it turns out, never tell the whole tale. It's the narrators and novelists who are to blame: everyone knows they're prone to lies and
mischief, and thus only half-truths about Fairyland ever reach the human world. September soon finds herself in the middle of an Adventure far more
dangerous than anything she's read... one that may not have room for happy endings, or even going home.
Review
Stories like this must tread a very fine line. On the one side, there's Wonderland, or Fairyland, or wherever the young human protagonist finds
themselves visiting, by choice or luck: a world full of whimsical impossibilities and metaphors given flesh. On the other, there are the needs of the
plot, developing characters and creating a story arc. Quite often, authors fall on the former side of that line, leaving the story to fend for itself
while they revel in spinning candy-fluff and dancing about with clever turns of phrase (or at least turns of phrase that must have seemed clever at
the time.) This book is a rare example of finding that very fine line and sticking to it. Valente spins her candy-fluff and dances with her words
while somehow managing to create reasonably intricate characters in a story with real dangers that - remarkably, given the wild and illogical nature
of Fairyland - actually makes sense. September makes a bold but not infallible heroine, and her native companions can't always protect her from the
dangers of the journey, though they do try. She quickly becomes more than a simple proxy for the reader, with a history and personality that directly
affect the story. Taking after her mother, a plant worker during World War II who taught her that all broken things may be fixed with enough effort,
September takes an active part in her Adventure and Fairyland's problems, rather than drifting along like a wayward tourist while other people do all
the work around her. The Marquess makes a terribly devious foe, alternately sweet and ruthless. Though this is the first of a (stated) five-part series,
it wraps itself up fairly neatly, if not quite cleanly: September suffers significant setbacks and lingering losses, and it's no mere click of the
silver slippers to return home. The writing itself also deserves a mention, playing with the reader and the narrative in a manner evocative of the best
of Lewis Carroll, yet never losing sight of the story. This is a book that practically begs to be read again as soon as you finish, not simply because
of the lovely turns of phrase but to see how it all ties together.
It has been a year since Nebraska girl September met the Green Wind and rode the Leopard of Light Breezes to Fairyland, faced strange wonders and
dark dangers, and defeated the evil Marquess. She's been reading up on mythology in the meantime to prepare herself to return (and help hide from the
radio reports, for her father is still overseas fighting in someone else's war, while her mother still works long hours as a mechanic), but hasn't
seen a speck of a green coat or flick of a spotted tail in all that time. September's starting to fear that her friends have forgotten about her, and
she'll never leave the mundane world again. Then she sees a rowboat among the corn, as Fairy a thing as she's ever spied. Sure enough, she follows it
straight into Fairyland... but things are not well here. Shadows have gone missing, draining away the world's magic, and there's talk of a new Hollow
Queen in Fairyland-Below. A girl made of shadow herself, who draws all the lonely and neglected shadows to her. September's own missing shadow, left
behind in her first adventure - now the greatest threat Fairyland has ever faced. Since she created the problem, September sets out to fix it, but
quests invariably go awry, and even heroines can fail.
Review
The first installment of Valente's Fairyland series was a pure delight, a perfect balance of whimsical phrase and solid storytelling and singular
characters. Here, the author proves that, at least in Fairyland, lightning can indeed strike twice. September's not quite the same girl she was when
the Green Wind came to her and offered her an adventure a year ago; as she grows up, Fairyland reveals more of its own darkness and complexity, and
her new, wild heart adds extra problems as it compels her to care more deeply, even in instances where she might be better off not caring at all.
Some of what she learned before helps her, but many of the challenges she faces are new, sometimes even complicated by what she knew (and who she
met) last time: she finds the shadows of her Wyverary friend A-through-L and the Marid boy Saturday, but are shadows true reflections of their former
owners, or something darker, with their own agendas? The story starts quickly and moves at a brisk pace, blending old faces and new, as September
delves into the deeper magics and peculiar physicks of the magical realm... a realm that is not, as in some portal fantasies, just a figment of
childish imagination. (Valente definitely earns extra points for this: even as a young child, it irked me when the wonderful, magical place couldn't
really exist, and the "just a dream" ending has always struck me as literature's greatest cop-out/waste of a reader's time. But, I digress...) As
before, the prose is beautiful, downright lyrical at times, and while the main arc wraps in this volume, sufficient stray threads remain to weave
seamlessly into the third installment. A very enjoyable outing from an author who rarely disappoints.
As a girl, September rode to Fairyland aboard the Leopard of Light Breezes, had a grand and terrifying adventure, made friends and enemies, and
returned home to Nebraska. A year later, she returned for another adventure, fixing a problem she inadvertently left behind. But it's been a year,
and despite what she was promised, September has not seen a twitch of a leopard tale, nor the slightest hint of a strange breeze, or any sign of
Fairyland at all, even though she's spent the entire time preparing herself as best she can. Perhaps she's changed too much and grown too old;
after all, she's fourteen now, practically a young lady, and every storybook knows that only children get to have fairy adventures. She's even
driven a car, the neighbor's run-down old Model A, which is about as grown-up as one can get. But she deeply misses her friends... and wasn't she
told that, just as she could never stay forever in Fairyland, she could never truly leave it behind?
While out mending the fence, September has a peculiar encounter, leading her once more to Fairyland... but, just as before, what she finds is
nothing at all like she expected. Worse, she's almost immediately designated a professional criminal for her tendency to overthrow crooked queens
and marquesses. Along with the Model A Aroostook, which takes on a peculiar personality of its own (after all, in Fairyland, it's been decreed that
Tools have Rights), September finds herself swept up in a new adventure, traveling all the way to Fairyland's wondrous Moon - where she faces a
most dangerous foe who seems intent on destroying everything.
Review
September's adventures in Fairyland (and Nebraska) continue in this third installment in Valente's delightful series. She's growing up (which
is why I put this on the line with younger Young Adult), and though she was always a fairly self-reliant heroine, not so much in need of coddling
and protection as many young adventurers in portal fantasies, now she's a more seasoned traveler who willingly accepts more responsibilities. As
before, Fairyland reflects the dilemmas and troubles she's facing in her real-world life, facing pressure to choose a future (or have one imposed
on her) and leave childhood behind... but does that mean leaving Fairyland behind? After all, the first time she was there, she glimpsed her own
child... and her own future (presumed) husband, the marid Saturday. Yet Fairyland seems reluctant to take her back, and must be tricked into
allowing her to cross over through a gap in the fence. Once there, September finds trouble almost immediately, obligated to a quest before
she even knows what's going on and saddled with a reputation (not entirely undeserved) for lawbreaking and troublemaking. On the Moon, things get
even wilder, stranger, and more dangerous, as she finally reunites with her friends Saturday and the Wyverary A-through-L - both of whom are also
growing up, one of them bound by a fresh curse - and discovers the nature of the enemy she faces. As one might expect from Fairyland (and Valente),
September's adventures are full of peculiar and unexpected characters and images and ideas, wending through various triumphs and setbacks, moving
at a fine pace - right up to the end, which is an unannounced cliffhanger. As a result, several threads and themes feel unresolved, leaving me
hanging until I can get the next volume. The book doesn't even leave me at a resting point between adventures, but ends with September in fresh
danger. This sense of being left dangling wound up shaving a half-star off the rating; just a bit too hard of a slam on the brakes at the end, a
raw cut across the greater series story arc, leaving me feeling that I'd only read part of a book instead of a whole one.
The young troll Hawthorn never wanted to be a Changeling - a boy from Fairyland, wrapped up in human guise and sent to mundane Earth - but when the Red Wind
comes calling, it's very hard to say no. He soon finds himself in a strange and wondrous world, one plagued by inscrutable rules and where the furniture never
talks back or comes alive no matter how nicely he asks, and while he's forgotten his true name and troll self, he knows deep down in his bones that he doesn't
quite fit in here and never will. Then he meets the girl Tamburlaine, who has a very special secret that might return him where he belongs... but Changelings
are never supposed to go back home, and trying to do so may create more trouble than he can possibly understand.
Review
Like the other installments in this enchanting series, The Boy Who Lost Fairyland is overflowing with wild imagery and fun ideas and memorable
characters in a plot that hardly ever slows down. This installment shifts the focus away from the girl September, whom we last left in some peril, but returns
to reveal what's become of her by the end... in doing so, unfortunately, stepping on the toes of Hawthorn and Tamburlaine, shutting them out of their own story
as she becomes the focus and (not incidentally) sets up the fifth and final book in the series. It felt like a mild insult to the pair, whom the reader comes
to know and love through their harrowing adventures in public school and a Fairyland that turns out to be less welcoming than they had hoped, but I'm willing
to forgive it (somewhat - I still shaved half a star) on the precedent that Valente does not tend to leave loose ends; I expect them to be involved in the
series finale. In any event, I'm looking forward to the next installment and the (probable) final adventure in this clever and imaginative take on
Fairyland.
When last we left September - the human girl who rode the Leopard of Little Breezes with the Green Wind from Omaha to Fairyland, who had grand adventures
and met wild beings and faced terrifying foes and made many mistakes but never ever gave up - she had been suddenly and unexpectedly crowed Queen of
Fairyland... but not for long. The world of Fairyland is old, perhaps older than any other world, and has had more than its share of Kings and Queens and
Emperors and Princesses and Prime Ministers - and, to be honest, it has had enough. Now all the rulers of the realm have been restored from their various
exiles, endings, and extinctions, and only one may rule. The royal Stoat of Arms declares a Cantankerous Derby: a race across Fairyland, to find the world's
Heart and bring it to the finish line, winner take all. September didn't even want to be the Queen; it seems a thankless job, prone to abrupt and
painful and lethal termination. But everyone else in the race has either proven themselves a tyrant or seems likely to turn into one. Besides, the Stoat
explains, as the current Queen, she's as obligated to attend the Cantankerous Derby as a fox is obligated to attend a hunt. Thus begins a race the likes of
which even a land as chaotic as Fairyland has never seen before, one with the highest of stakes and longest of odds. And this time, the girl from Omaha who
has been so brave and lucky and clever may find that she's not brave or lucky or clever enough to survive, let alone win...
Review
Valente brings the Fairyland series to an end in a spectacular fashion. September, now seventeen (again, after having spent a while in her forties due to
the time dilation effects of Yeti proximity), has come a long, long way from the Mostly Heartless little girl who thought a trip to Fairyland sounded like a
splended and harmless way to get out of washing the dishes. Her friends have grown with her (literally, in the case of the Wyverary A-through-L), and they've
accumulated more allies (and enemies) through their travels. As appropriate for a race (and typical for the series), the tale takes off almost from the first
page, winding through all manner of wild, borderline hallucinatory imagery and characters and personifications of concepts. Valente's Fairyland makes Lewis
Carroll's Wonderland look downright mundane, with even incidental characters feeling full and rounded despite their peculiarities. Beneath the surface, as
usual for the series, are deeper themes and commentaries that older readers will pick up on even if they might slip over younger heads. The tale revisits a
few old faces and places while venturing into new territory, building to a fine climax that feels slightly rushed, but is ultimately more than satisfying
enough to earn a solid fifth star. The whole makes for a fine and fascinating story.
Once, there were six children in the Brontë house on the edge of the dreary moors... until the two eldest daughters caught ill at their perfectly cruel
boarding school. Now it is time for Charlotte and Emily to return there - tearing them away from their little sister Anne and their often-wicked (but still
their sibling so they love him anyway) brother Branwell, away from their games in the little room at the top of the stairs where they sent their toys to all
sorts of wars and adventures in all sorts of imaginary lands. But when the day comes to escort Charlotte and Emily to the boarding school carriages (with Anne
tagging along for one last goodbye), Branwell insists on a detour to see the new local marvel, the great steam engine at the new train station. What they find
is something much more marvelous than a train: a man made entirely of books, and two wooden men very much like their toy soldiers at home... only nobody else at
the station seems aware of them. Surely this is a magical adventure in the making, and no proper child would turn their back on a chance for one last great
adventure before school and growing up steal magic away. Thus they find themselves whisked off to Glass Town, a place they invented - only it's not exactly like
their games. For one thing, their Napoleon Bonaparte wasn't made of bones with musket arms, nor did he ride a great firebreathing rooster. For another, they
never invented "grog", a miraculous liquid that cures death - a liquid at the heart of the great war shattering the realm in a very literal sense. And surely
they would've remembered inventing Brunty, the terribly wicked book man. As the Brontes become swept up in the struggles and politics of Glass Town, they realize
that this is no longer a game... indeed, unless they're very clever and very lucky, they might never live to make it home to England again.
Review
The Glass Town Game draws inspiration from the real-life childhoods of the Brontës in a story with strong nods to Edward Eager and other classic
children's tales (plus a few slight shades reminiscent of another Valente series, her delightful Fairyland books.) The world is full of wonderfully inventive
imagery and ideas, bound by a thin veneer of storybook logic and literalism. At its heart are four siblings struggling with growing up and coping with both the
deaths of loved ones and futures that they feel powerless to direct: their parson father insists the only real role for a lady is a governess, at least until she
becomes a wife, and Branwell's artistic leanings will be no use to a boy clearly expected to follow in his dad's footsteps. At times, the plot drags a bit as it
wends through backstory and lingers over oddities, and there were a couple threads and characters that seemed underutilized by the end. I'm also sure I missed
some points by only having a vague, cultural osmosis familiarity with the Brontës. Still, it's a fun, somewhat throwback story with some brilliant turns of
phrase and a solid heart to it.
Long, long ago, when a particularly wild forest fell in love with a particularly mild valley, all was right with the world... but, of course, things
change, as things are wont to do. The forest created a whole host of creatures just as wild as itself, while the valley built a tidy little village just
as mild as itself, attracting all manner of people. Then the creatures, particularly the wildest sort known as Quidnunks, started to hunt the people of
Littlebridge, and the people hunted the creatures and Quidnunks, and only the creation of a powerful treaty kept them from killing each other off
outright. Under the treaty, for every human killed, a Quidnunk must marry that human's ghost and live in the village of Littlebridge, and for every
Quidnunk killed a human must do the same, going to live in the wild forest villages. Again, for a time, all was right with the world... but, again,
things changed...
The boy Osmo Unknown knows every nook and cranny and plank and cobblestone of Littlebridge - and he hates it. He hates how mild and orderly life is
here, how nothing ever seems to happen, especially to a boy like him. He hates how he's expected to become a hunter like his mother, even though hunters
at least get to venture into the Fourpenny Woods beyond town (forbidden to all else) in search of increasingly-scarce game. He hates how wealthy girls
like Ivy never notice boys like him, and never will. Just once, he wants to get lost, find himself elsewhere, have an adventure, but these days the
world seems fresh out of adventure; there haven't been any strange creatures or Quidnunks sighted in so long that some, like Osmo, are convinced they're
just a myth, a metaphor, something made up to keep little children from breaking the rules. Then his mother accidentally shoots an odd creature just
outside the village - a creature with gold blood. A Quidnunk.
Whisked away by a cantankerous being, the half-badger, half-skunk Bonk the Cross, Osmo finds himself deep in the Fourpenny Woods, far from everything
he's ever known. If he fails in the seemingly impossible quest set before him, the treaty will be broken and his whole village will suffer the wrath of
the wilds. This is just the sort of thing Osmo used to dream of happening in his boring, mild life back in Littlebridge... only it's far more terrifying
than he ever anticipated, to actually be on an adventure instead of just reading about one.
Review
I've had pretty good luck with Valente's work in the past, so when I saw this audiobook available on Libby I snapped it up for a listen. With
wonderful turns of phrase, colorful characters, bold adventures painted in all the colors of imagination, and genuine heart, Osmo and his companions kept
me wonderfully entertained from start to finish. It moves at a fairly snappy pace, yet manages to create characters and situations with some roundness and
dimension to them. No scene, no sentence, no word is ever wasted. I also must say I appreciated the narrator, Heath Miller, who gave such life to
already-lively prose and did so in a way that I could actually hear, without mumbling or muttering or whispering or otherwise making me adjust the volume
on my earphones every five seconds (unlike some audiobook narrators I've encountered). I can highly recommend it to readers of any age who want a wild and
whimsical adventure.
Once upon a time, in a land where white men stole and killed and conquered in a ceaseless effort to quench their thirst for power, wealthy prospector
Mr. H coveted a Crow maiden named Gun That Sings. They had a single child before she escaped by the only means left to her, leaving Mr. H a widower and
her half-blood daughter alone in a world that had no place for her, not among the white men or the native tribes. The girl was hidden away from the world,
left free to run in the wilds of her father's estate... until Ms. M came to be the new Mrs. H. Raised in Puritan hellfire, with a strange black mirror
that holds the moon, she mockingly names the child Snow White after the skin and racial purity she'll never have, not for all the torments the woman
lovingly bestows upon her. Thus unfolds a tale of love and hate, of magic mirrors and dark pacts, of wicked witches and not-so-innocent maidens, of the
wild and harsh Old West and curses that even death cannot break.
Review
Valente promises a unique, Western twist on the familiar fairy tale, and delivers that much in full. This story reaches beyond the sanitized Disney
portrayals to the dark roots first recorded by the Brothers Grimm, where keeping a song in one's heart and having animal friends doesn't guarantee happy
endings and handsome princes aren't always available for rescues. This Snow White is no fainting flower, but a girl born to a world that hates her, further
broken and twisted by the warped, abusive attention of a woman who herself was warped and abused in the name of the Puritan God... a woman who only found
some measure of escape by turning to the very forces her religious upbringing forbade. It's not a life for a lily-handed princess, and Snow White isn't a
paragon of virtue herself, doing whatever it takes to survive with the imperfect tools and stunted, bruised heart she's been given. The tale takes several
downright surreal turns, with wild Western towns and traces of Native American mythos amid elements of the original fairy tale, reworked yet still
recognizable: the huntsman is a Pinkerton agent, the "seven dwarves" are a town of other broken women fleeing a world that has no place for them, and the
infamous heart sequence makes for an unexpected plot twist. It ends on a peculiar note. Overall, while I enjoyed Valente's style and remarkable imagination,
I was just a trifle too disturbed by some parts of the story to justify a full four-star rating.
Despite what that human Fermi once speculated on an insignificant watery world, life is surprisingly abundant across the universe - but where there's
life, there's going to be war. A galaxy-spanning, world-burning, species-snuffing-out war, to be precise, waged while that watery world remained
blissfully unaware and conducted its own quaint species slaughtering. Eventually, the survivors metaphorically dusted themselves off, came to their many
senses, and decided there had to be a better way to decide which species were sentient enough to spare and which were acceptable losses in the universal
economy. What they came up with was the Metagalactic Grand Prix, an annual musical exposition which determined resource allotment, trade deals, and
single sales - and, to any newly discovered civilization, whether they would be allowed to live or would be reduced to their constituent molecules for
the safety of the neighborhood.
Danesh was king of the pop charts as Decibel Jones, lead singer of the Absolute Zeros, for a blink of an eye. Now he's in a death spiral of drugs and
alcohol and self-loathing as his solo "career" collapses in a heap of flaming reviews and empty venues. He never recovered from the death of bandmate and
lover Mira Wonderful Star, and his music has shown it. But when aliens finally make contact with Earth, obligating the species to send a representative
to the Grand Prix and prove their worth, he finds himself selected as humanity's ambassador to the stars, along with his straight-laced ex-bandmate (and
also ex-lover) Oort St. Ultraviolet. Unless Decibel Jones can pull off the comeback of the millennium, the odds of humanity's survival are about absolute
zero...
Review
I'm trying to think of how to describe what I just read, and am struggling... in a good way, for once. Space Opera exists at a peculiar
intersection of Douglas Adams, global and interstellar politics, philosophical musings on the nature of sentience and life, utter surrealism, and the power
of rock and roll. Far from being generally humanoid with improbable head growths, the aliens here can be anything from self-aware plants to parasitic
viruses to time- and alternate-reality-traveling red pandas to self-aware artificial entities; interludes explore the history and peculiarities and
interactions of various species, much of which ultimately comes into play, if as a subplot, in the main story. That story can be a little thin on action -
Decibel and Oort are more or less drug along and forced to run the metaphoric gauntlet, and even then have to be prodded more than once to get them to move
- but has surprising layers beneath the overt humor and absurdities. Unlike Douglas Adams's genial white middle-class nobody Arthur Dent, Decibel and Oort
and the late Mira embrace modern England's diversity in color and origin and sexuality, explosions of neon and holographic glitter in the face of drab
tweed... a diversity that many rail against as unseemly and "nontraditional", which is not so much a digression as a theme that runs through the story: how
xenophobia leads nowhere but ultimate destruction. The characters are, naturally, rather flawed; rock and roll, and music in general, doesn't grow from an
unfurrowed field. They struggle and often fail against those flaws, leaning into them for comfort and familiarity, even as they recognize the harm they're
doing to themselves, their loved ones, and the potential fate of an entire planet. On a sentence level, every word and turn of phrase, while sometimes
requiring a little extra focus to navigate from the start to the end, counts.
I almost trimmed a half-star for that thinness mentioned earlier, but this isn't really just the story of Decibel Jones and the Zeros. It's the story of
humanity, of history, of a galaxy of aliens who somehow found a way to not kill each other by recognizing the truly universal power of a power chord, and
hope that maybe, somehow, impossible as it seems, comebacks can happen for even the most monstrous of primate-descended species. The whole book becomes a
wild hallucination of a tale, a mesmerizing flurry of sights and sounds and ideas that can dazzle and dizzy and even overwhelm, yet it has a good beat and
you can dance to it.
