Tuesday, September 10, 2013

2013 read #117: Deathless by Catherynne M. Valente.

Deathless by Catherynne M. Valente
352 pages

Published 2011
Read from September 7 to September 10
Rating: ★★★★ out of 5

This book, plus one novella and a short story, is all I've read by Valente. Yet I already feel like inducting her into the select ranks of my favorite authors. Her prose gets turgid from time to time, and her works seem to offer more spectacle than emotional heft, but she just clicks with me. Deathless was everything R. Garcia y Robertson's Firebird promised but failed to be: a mesmerizing merger of Russian folklore and history. Despite some unevenness toward the middle, Deathless was an excellent read, employing fairy tale tricks of repetition and mirrored imagery to spectacular effect.

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