The Leaning Pile of Books
Apr
24
2011

Hope everyone had a good weekend!  I just got back after spending my weekend away and was quite happy to see that this year’s Hugo nominees have been announced.  Also, I’ve read 2 of the 5 books and enjoyed them both (Feed by Mira Grant and The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms by N. K. Jemisin).  And I was also thrilled to see Lois McMaster Bujold was nominated, although I’m not quite caught up enough in the series to have read Cryoburn yet.

It may be a little quiet this week since I haven’t had a chance to even start the review I need to write yet (Dragonsbane by Barbara Hambly).  Hopefully I’ll be able to start on that soon and finish at least one of the books I’m reading.  I started Eona by Alison Goodman while I was away this weekend since I didn’t want to risk losing my signed copy of the book I was already reading (Passion Play by Beth Bernobich).

On to the books…  This week 1 ARC and 2 review copies showed up.

Naamah's BlessingNaamah’s Blessing by Jacqueline Carey

This is the final book in the third trilogy set in the same world as Kushiel’s Dart, and I’m very excited about reading it.  I really enjoyed the first book in this series, Naamah’s Kiss, and I also devoured Naamah’s Curse despite some reservations.  On her website, Jacqueline Carey says she is going to be signing copies at The Signed Page this year (it’s actually available for pre-order on the site now along with China Mieville’s Embassytown).  She also put up a link to the first chapter. This conclusion to Moirin’s story will be released on June 29 in both hardcover and ebook formats.

Returning to Terre d’Ange, Moirin finds the royal family broken. Wracked by unrelenting grief at the loss of his wife, Queen Jehanne, King Daniel is unable to rule. Prince Thierry, leading an expedition to explore the deadly jungles of Terra Nova, is halfway across the world. And three year old Desirée is a vision of her mother: tempestuous, intelligent, and fiery, but desperately lonely, and a vulnerable pawn in a game of shifting political allegiances.

As tensions mount, King Daniel asks that Moirin become Desirée’s oath-sworn protector. Navigating the intricate political landscape of the Court proves a difficult challenge, and when dire news arrives from overseas, the spirit of Queen Jehanne visits Moirin in a dream and bids her undertake an impossible quest.

Another specter from the past also haunts Moirin. Travelling with Thierry in the New World is Raphael de Mereliot, her manipulative former lover. Years ago, Raphael forced her to help him summon fallen angels in the hopes of acquiring mystical gifts and knowledge. It was a disastrous effort that nearly killed them, and Moirin must finally bear the costs of those bitter mistakes.

The Fear PrincipleThe Fear Principle by B. A. Chepaitis

This is a recently released reprint of a science fiction book that was published about 13 years ago.  It’s the first book in the Fear series and is followed by The Fear of God, Learning Fear, and A Lunatic Fear.  The book is fairly short, at just under 200 pages, and is also available as an ebook (the Kindle version is only $4.99).  It sounds pretty interesting, and I’ll be reviewing it next month.

Dr. Jaguar Addams knows about fear. On a satellite prison called Planetoid Three, she establishes a telepathic link to her subjects. She confronts their demons. And makes them her own . . . They were known as the Killing Times, when serial murder reached epidemic proportions. Victims of hard-edged crime demanded hard-wired punishment, and the new prisons were born. Now one determined woman, a survivor of that dark age, tries to rehabilitate killers by tapping into the source of their obsessions: their worst fears. Her name is Jaguar Addams, and she is about to face the most challenging subject of her career. The ultimate assassin. A dangerously disturbed woman who will teach Jaguar the true meaning of fear.

The RogueThe Rogue by Trudi Canavan

This is the second book in the Traitor Spy trilogy, following The Ambassador’s Mission.  This trilogy is set in the same world as Canavan’s Black Magician trilogy.  I haven’t read any of these books, although I am somewhat curious about them.  This novel will be released in hardcover and as an ebook on May 2011.

Discover the magic of Trudi Canavan with her brand new novel in the Traitor Spy Trilogy…

Living among the Sachakan rebels, Lorkin does his best to learn about their unique magic. But the Traitors are reluctant to trade their secrets for the Healing they so desperately want.

Meanwhile, Sonea searches for the rogue, knowing that Cery cannot avoid assassination forever. The rogue’s influence over the city’s underworld, however, is far greater than she feared.

And in the University, two female novices are about to remind the Guild that sometimes their greatest enemy is found within…

The Traitor Spy Trilogy, which began with The Ambassador’s Mission, is the new series set in the world of the international bestselling Black Magician Trilogy.

Review of Eon by Alison Goodman
Apr
21
2011
Eon
by Alison Goodman
576pp (Paperback)
My Rating: 7.5/10
Amazon Rating: 4.1/5
LibraryThing Rating: 4/5
Goodreads Rating: 4.03/5
 

Eon by Alison Goodman has been published as both an adult and a young adult novel in different parts of the world.  This novel has received several awards and honors: it is the winner of the Aurealis Award, an ALA Best Book for Young Adults, a Locus Recommended Reading Selection, a James Tiptree, Jr., Award Finalist, a CBCA Notable Book, and a Bank Street College Best Book of the Year.  It has also been published under several different titles: Eon, Eon: Dragoneye Reborn, Eon: Rise of the Dragoneye, and The Two Pearls of Wisdom. A sequel, Eona, was just released this week.  This conclusion to the story is also known as Eona: Return of the Dragoneye and The Necklace of the Gods.

Every twelve years, one of the twelve energy dragons becomes ascendant, and the Dragoneye for that dragon steps down to be replaced by his apprentice.  At the same time, a new apprentice is chosen by the energy dragon from among twelve candidates and the cycle continues.  No one understands the reasoning behind the dragon’s choice of a new boy to replace the old one, who uses the power to control the earth in ways such as preventing earthquakes and monsoons.  In exchange for this power, much of the man’s Hua, or energy, is depleted by the end of his 24-year bond with his energy dragon.

It is nearing the end of training for the candidates who will appear before the Rat Dragon, the keeper of ambition.  The boy considered least likely to be chosen is Eon, a cripple who is only in consideration due to his very rare gift.  It is not very often that a person can see one energy dragon, but Eon can see all of them except for the Mirror Dragon, who has been missing for 500 years.  However, Eon and his master are playing a very dangerous game in the quest to make him the Rat Dragon apprentice – for Eon is actually not a twelve-year-old boy but Eona, a sixteen year old girl.  If it is discovered that a girl has the audacity to try to become a Dragoneye, she will be killed according to the law, which forbids females from attaining this position.  Yet not being chosen is also hazardous since Eona’s master will no longer have a use for her and she may end up sold to a new master, or worse.  So Eona has to hope she is chosen and can keep her identity secret while serving as an apprentice and eventually Dragoneye.

While it’s a fairly simple story with some predictable moments, I found Eon thoroughly engrossing and could hardly get myself to put it down once I was about 20% of the way through it.  It was a very fun story set in a fascinating world, and it also had two story elements that I personally tend to like: an Asian-influenced setting and a lot of emphasis on gender roles in society.

That said, it should come as no surprise that what I enjoyed most about the book was the world-building and the culture.  Eon is set in a patriarchal, Asiatic land that uses the magic of the twelve energy dragons for the common good – to keep earthquakes at bay or prevent flooding, for example.  While the Dragoneye united with a dragon is quite powerful, it’s not power gained without sacrifice.  By the end of the 24 years the Dragoneye spends with the dragon, he is quite weary and seems much older than his years.  Only males are considered worthy of learning this magic:

 

Women have no place in the world of the dragon magic. It is said they bring corruption to the art and do not have the physical strength or depth of character needed to commune with an energy dragon. It is also thought that the female eye, too practiced in gazing at itself, cannot see the truth of the energy world. [pp. 2]

Of course, we know immediately that this is not true due to Eona’s rare gift of being able to see all the energy dragons that are still accounted for (since one of them went missing 500 years ago).  Part of the fun is realizing this while everyone else other than Eona and her master remain oblivious to the fact that a woman has the sight that could change everything.

Although her situation was interesting to read about and I liked her well enough, I didn’t love Eona as a character.  Even though the entire book was told from her first person perspective, I never really felt like I understood Eona all that well beyond the surface level.  She had fears about being discovered to be a female, and rightly so, since this knowledge would lead to her death.  Also, she had faced a lot of hatred from others due to the fact that she was a cripple.  It was clear that Eona had a kind heart.  In a lot of ways, she was the ultimate underdog since the odds were so against her and I had sympathy for her because of these but I never really had an affinity with her because of who she was.  Throughout the entire book, I felt like I wanted to see Eona succeed because she’d had it so rough and not because she felt like a real character to me. Also, there were some occasions when she didn’t seem particularly bright, although I have some mixed feelings on whether or not she should have known better.  Without spoiling the plot, I’ll just say that part of me thinks it makes sense that she acted the way she did due to the culture she was raised in and the beliefs that had been presented to her for her entire life.  The other part of me thinks she should have seen the situation and had a better realization of what was going on.

In spite of the fact that I didn’t love Eona, there was one character I found very compelling, Lady Dela.  Lady Dela is a Contraire, a man with a woman’s spirit.  In the tribe she comes from, Lady Dela is considered fortunate due to this dual male and female energy, although some at court do not see her that way at all.  She’s also very helpful, knowledgeable about the happenings in court, and seems rather wise.  It’s an interesting contrast to Eona, who is lucky enough to have both small hips and a small chest and has learned to act like a boy.  In some ways she feels like a boy, but there are certain scenes that show she’d like to be more feminine such as when she tries on some of Lady Dela’s jewelry when no one is around.  Most of the other characters were not terribly memorable, although I did still like Ryko (Lady Dela’s bodyguard) and the prince.  The main villain was a bit too evil without any good qualities for my taste.  However, part of me also felt that made sense since he was the Dragoneye for the dragon associated with ambition.  His ambitions seemed to have overwhelmed all else.

There were some infodumps that slowed down the pace.  The first two pages were all details about the energy dragons and the Dragoneyes.  Yet I found these sections didn’t really bother me since I found the world truly interesting and did really want to know how it worked.

The ending did bother me a little bit just because there were some problems that were too easily solved by magic.  It certainly wasn’t a deal-breaker since I still enjoyed this book a great deal, but certain issues were resolved more quickly and suddenly than I would have liked.

Even though I felt it had some flaws – infodumping, characters who were not fully fleshed out, and a dash of magic-makes-it-better syndrome – I really loved reading Eon.  The world, the exploration of the topic of gender, and culture were the highlights, and the tension in the story about whether or not anyone would discover Eona’s secret kept me fully immersed to the point where I did not want to stop reading it.  I’ll definitely be reading Eona and most likely sometime soon – because I still really want to know what happens next!

My Rating: 7.5/10

Where I got my reading copy: I bought it (because I got the sequel from the publisher).

Read an Excerpt

Other Reviews:

The Leaning Pile of Books
Apr
17
2011

This week I’m excited about watching A Game of Thrones on HBO tonight – finally!  But first I’m going to talk about some books (yay!) and do some cleaning (boo!).  The OCD part of me also wants to decide what to read next since I just finished Dragonsbane by Barbara Hambly, which was a great fantasy book.

For the books – this week brought 3 ARCs and 2 finished review copies.

The Uncertain PlacesThe Uncertain Places by Lisa Goldstein

I’d never heard of this book or author before I was contacted about reviewing it, and I can’t believe I hadn’t heard of either because they both sound fantastic.  Lisa Goldstein has been a finalist for the Hugo, the Nebula, and the World Fantasy Award and has won the American Book Award for The Red Magician.  Also, first line from the press release:

 

What if magic existed — for a price — and fairy tales were as real as the Brothers Grimm, the Oxford English Dictionary, and the ’70s?

As you probably know, I love fantasy involving fairy tales and I also love the description about a family secret.

The praise section for the book also has quotes from Ursula Le Guin, Tim Powers, and Patricia McKillip.  Praise for the author has a quote from Diana Wynne Jones calling Lisa Goldstein “the perfect, born storyteller.”  After reading this, my anticipation level is pretty high.  I can’t wait to read it, but I’ll try to wait until it’s a little closer to its release on June 15 to read it.

An ages-old family secret breaches the boundaries between reality and magic in this fresh retelling of a classic fairy tale. When Berkeley student Will Taylor is introduced to the mysterious Feierabend sisters, he quickly falls for enigmatic Livvy, a chemistry major and accomplished chef. But Livvy’s family—vivacious actress Maddie, family historian Rose, and their mother, absent-minded Sylvia—are behaving strangely. The Feierabend women seem to believe that luck is their handmaiden, even though happiness does not necessarily follow. It is soon discovered that generations previous, the Feierabends made a contract with a powerful, otherworldly force, and it is up to Will and his best friend to unravel the riddle of this supernatural bargain in order to save Livvy from her predestined fate.

EmbassytownEmbassytown by China Mieville

I was fortunate enough to win an early copy of this from LibraryThing’s Early Reviewers program.  Ever since I saw it in the publisher’s catalog last year, I thought it sounded like a very interesting book and have really wanted to read it.  Embassytown will be released on May 17.  Since the ARC requests reviews be posted after release date, I’ll wait until early next month to start it.

China Miéville doesn’t follow trends, he sets them. Relentlessly pushing his own boundaries as a writer—and in the process expanding the boundaries of the entire field—with Embassytown, Miéville has crafted an extraordinary novel that is not only a moving personal drama but a gripping adventure of alien contact and war.

In the far future, humans have colonized a distant planet, home to the enigmatic Ariekei, sentient beings famed for a language unique in the universe, one that only a few altered human ambassadors can speak.

Avice Benner Cho, a human colonist, has returned to Embassytown after years of deep-space adventure. She cannot speak the Ariekei tongue, but she is an indelible part of it, having long ago been made a figure of speech, a living simile in their language.

When distant political machinations deliver a new ambassador to Arieka, the fragile equilibrium between humans and aliens is violently upset. Catastrophe looms, and Avice is torn between competing loyalties—to a husband she no longer loves, to a system she no longer trusts, and to her place in a language she cannot speak yet speaks through her.

Sleight of HandSleight of Hand by Peter S. Beagle

This is a finished copy of this story collection, which I had received as an ARC a little while ago.  I’m hoping to read it over the next couple of weeks.  Although novels are more to my liking than short stories, I loved The Last Unicorn and was excited to see one of the stories was about Schmendrick.  Also, I’ve heard some very good things about this particular book.  I might even read it next, but I’m also considering reading some books by authors I haven’t read yet who will be at BEA now that the schedule has been released.

Abundant with tales of quiet heroism, life-changing decisions, and determined searches for deep answers, this extraordinary collection of contemporary fantasy explores the realms between this world and the next. From the top of the Berlin Wall to the depths of the darkest seas, gods and monsters battle their enemies and innermost fears, yet mere mortals make the truly difficult choices. A slightly regretful author and a vengeful-but-dilapidated dragon square off over an abandoned narrative; the children of the Shark God demand painful truths from their chronically absent father; and a bereaved women sacrifices herself to change one terrible moment, effortlessly reversed by a shuffle of the deck. Whether melancholic, comedic, or deeply tragic, each new tale is suffused with misdirection and discovery, expressed in the rich and mesmerizing voice of a masterful storyteller.

Born of ShadowsBorn of Shadows by Sherrilyn Kenyon

This was one of those surprise books that showed up.  Since Sherrilyn Kenyon is a New York Times bestselling author, I thought it might be nice to try reading this book, but it is actually the fourth book in the League series.  I looked them up and it sounds like each book in the series features different characters, though, so I’m not surely how closely connected they are.  So if anyone has read these books, do they stand alone?  If not, would it be worth getting the first book to read?

Born of Shadows will be released on April 26 in hardcover and as an ebook.  The other books in this series are (in order) Born of Night, Born of Fire, and Born of Ice.

In a world where the League and its assassins rule, where betrayal and treachery are everywhere . . . the only survivors are those ones who are . . .

BORN OF SHADOWS

For Caillen Dagan, a defiant soldier of fortune, survival isn’t a right, it’s a brutal daily battle. Moving through the Ichidaian universe like a wraith, his brushes with the law and death are legendary. But when an act of rare heroism reveals his hidden birthright, he’s forced into a world much more dangerous and cold-hearted than the bloody streets where he was raised-one of obscene wealth and lethal politics.

Ferocious and determined, Desideria serves as an official bodyguard for her queen. Born of questionable genetics, she will do anything to prove herself worthy of the weapons she carries and the position she’s won by combat. But when she uncovers a ruthless plot to assassinate the queen and overthrow her country’s government, Desideria is caught in the crosshairs.

With assassination contracts out on both of them, Caillen and Desideria must learn to fight together or die alone. And if they fail, their governments will fall into the hands of an unimaginable evil.

City of the SnakesCity of the Snakes by Darren Shan

This was another surprise book, and it will be released on June 2 in the US.  It’s the conclusion to The City trilogy following The Procession of the Dead and Hell’s Horizon.  Supernatural crime sounds like it could be fun, but I’m not sure about reading the series just because there are so many other books that look more interesting to me.  If you’re read them, feel free to let me know what you think, though!

For ten years Capac Raimi has ruled the City. Created by the first Cardinal to continue his legacy, Capac cannot be killed. 

Then Capac disappears. His trusted lieutenant, Ford Tasso, suspects the mysterious villacs, ancient and powerful Incan priests. To Ford, only one man has the cunning to outwit such adversaries-Al Jeery, who has taken the guise of his father, the terrifying assassin Paucar Wami.

Al has no love for Capac and no wish to tangle with the villacs. Until Ford promises him the one thing he truly craves-retribution against the man who killed those he loved most and destroyed his life. Lured into the twisted, nightmarish world of the Incan priests, Al will learn more about the City than he ever imagined, and be offered more power than he ever desired.

But in the City, everything comes at a cost…

What Works: Dragonsbane by Barbara Hambly
Apr
12
2011

This is a new feature I’ve been considering doing for a while – talking about a small portion of a book and why it works (or doesn’t perhaps in some cases).  For my inaugural post, I’m going to discuss the first chapter of the book I am currently reading and why it works.  What it does so well is setting up the book as being not-quite your traditional high fantasy novel and really making the characters involved interesting immediately.  This book is Dragonsbane by Barbara Hambly, which was recently re-released as an ebook after being out of print for a while (along with several other books by the author).  It was originally published in 1986 and is the first book in the Winterlands series. (Note: I’ve actually seen the publication date listed as everywhere from 1985 – 1987, but I went with the date listed on the author’s website.)

In the first chapter of Dragonsbane, we are introduced to two people who are not your traditional fantasy hero and heroine – and not just because they have two very common names that are easily pronounceable, Jenny and John.  First, we are introduced to Jenny, a witch of rather mediocre powers.  Yes, you read that right – Jenny is not the most powerful magic-user in the land but actually not very powerful at all.  She’s also 37 years old instead of in her teens or early twenties.  Nor is she beautiful or even particularly noble as is shown when she defeats some bandits no thanks to Gareth, her would-be rescuer.

When Gareth startles some bandits, Jenny is forced to fight them and feels obligated to use her magic to finish one of the dying men:

 

Jenny sighed, feeling suddenly cold and weary and unclean, looking upon what she had done and knowing what it was up to her yet to do. She knelt beside the dying man, drawing the stillness of her magic around her again. She was aware of Gareth’s approach, his boots threshing
through the dew-soaked bindweed in a hurried rhythm that broke when he tripped on his sword. She felt a tired stirring of anger at him for having made this necessary. Had he not cried out, both she and this poor, vicious, dying brute would each have gone their ways . . .

. . .And he would doubtless have killed Gareth after she passed. And other travelers besides.

She had long since given up trying to unpick wrong from right, present should from future if. If there was a pattern to all things, she had given up thinking that it was simple enough to lie within her comprehension. Still, her soul felt filthy within her as she put her hands to the dying man’s clammy, greasy temples, tracing the proper runes while she whispered the deathspells. She felt the life go out of him and tasted the bile of self-loathing in her mouth.

Gareth is rather disturbed by this, but Jenny accepts it even though she didn’t like it. As soon becomes evident, living in the Winterlands isn’t easy and it’s all about survival.  It’s complicated, this line between morally right and self-preservation.

When Gareth recovers from his shock over Jenny’s actions, he comes to the realization that as a witch Jenny should have done something far more spectacular such as casting fireball, blindness, or polymorph.  So he asks Jenny why she didn’t, to which she responds simply, “Because I cannot.”  It upsets her deeply to admit this:

 

Even after all these years of knowing it, she found the admission still stuck in her throat. She had come to terms with her lack of beauty, but never with her lack of genius in the single thing she had ever wanted. The most she had ever been able to do was to pretend that she accepted it, as she
pretended now.

At this point, I already like Jenny – she’s showing human complexity and doesn’t seem like a stereotypical heroine, gorgeous or a superwoman.

It turns out Gareth is on a quest: a dragon is in need of slaying so he has come to find the one man alive who is a true dragonsbane, Lord Aversin.  He’s heard all the ballads about how courageous and honorable Lord Aversin is so he’s rather disappointed to learn he didn’t kill the dragon by facing him with a sword but with a harpoon dipped in poison, followed by an axe.  Alas, his hero did things the way least likely to get himself killed rather than the standard, romantic method.  But surely he’s still as handsome and imposing as the ballads say?

Not exactly…  When Gareth meets John, Lord Aversin, he discovers he is unkempt, medium-sized, and wears spectacles.  Oh, and he’s standing in a bunch of mud next to a pigsty.

So much for our would-be hero’s romantic notions of dragon-slayers.  The poor boy faints.  (The blood loss from the wound he got in the battle probably had something to do with this, but it was still good timing.)

The entire first chapter of this book and the way it set up the characters really intrigued me.  Right now I’m about 50% of the way through it and am still really enjoying it.

Have you ever read a first chapter that really drew you in and made you want to know more about the characters like that?  Or, have you read Dragonsbane or any other books by Barbara Hambly?

Oops!
Apr
12
2011

I keep expecting this to happen since often when I close my Twitter while I’m working on a post, it ends up over the “Publish” button in WordPress.  A post I was revising for tomorrow just went up because of this.  I’ve removed it from the site, but of course it’s still showing up in my RSS feed.  Oops!  Look away, for it is unfinished!

In that case, I’ll try to put it up tonight instead of tomorrow.

Review of Deathless by Catherynne M. Valente
Apr
11
2011
Deathless
by Catherynne M. Valente
336pp (Hardcover)
My Rating: 8.5/10
Amazon Rating: 5/5
LibraryThing Rating: 4.5/5
Goodreads Rating: 4.34/5
 

Deathless by Catherynne Valente is a more modernized retelling of the Russian folktale about the death of Koschei the Deathless, often known as “The Death of the Immortal Koschei” or “Marya Morevna.”  It’s set in Stalinist Russia and is mainly about the aforementioned Marya Morevna, the woman who was sought after by both Koschei and Ivan in the story.  Deathless was released in hardcover toward the end of March and is also available as an ebook.

When she was six years old, Marya Morevna was first exposed to the “naked world,” the magic that other people did not seem to notice.  As she was sitting by the window, Marya saw a bird fall out of a tree and become a man.  This man came to her front door, saying he had come to marry the girl in the window, and left with her oldest sister.  Twice more Marya saw birds fall from their tree, turn into men, and take away her other sisters in order to marry them.  This left her waiting the day her own bird would come (and with a lot of curiosity about where exactly husbands come from).

As she grows older, Marya sees more and more of the magical parts of the world, meeting the domoviye of her household and Likho, the Tsaritsa of the Length of an Hour.  They all make mention of the coming of Koschei, and one day an owl drops out of the tree outside and turns into a handsome man.  This time Marya was not at the window to see it, and is taken by surprise when she answers the door to find Koschei come to take her away.  Yet she leaves with him, where she lives in his land and fights in his war against the Tsar of Death – at least until the day the inevitable happens and she meets her Ivan.

Ever since reading The Orphan’s Tales: In the Night Garden, I’ve been a fan of Catherynne Valente’s writing and reading The Habitation of the Blessed cemented that belief in her skill as an author. She has a flair for gorgeous prose filled with imagery and imaginative, beautiful storytelling (and although her stories are not at all comedies, there are parts that exhibit a terrific sense of humor as well).  Although she has three (!) novels coming out this year and I’m looking forward to each of them, Deathless is the one I was most excited about since I love stories based on fairy or folk tales.  Also, I know very little about Russian folklore, so I was interested in learning more about these stories.  Although I didn’t enjoy it quite as much as The Orphan’s Tales: In the Night Garden by the time it was over, I did enjoy reading this novel, especially the first half.

Deathless was a little different from the other two books I’ve read by Valente.  While it contained the same creativity and wit I’ve come to expect from her work, the writing style was not nearly as elaborate.  The prose was still lovely, but it was less complex with less description and more dialogue than normal.  From the opening paragraphs in the first chapter, I was swept into it by the writing which was perfect for a fairy/folk tale:

 

In a city by the sea which was once called St. Petersburg, then Petrograd, then Leningrad, then, much later, St. Petersburg again, there stood a long, thin house on a long, thin street. By a long, thin window, a child in a pale blue dress and pale green slippers waited for a bird to marry her.

This would be cause for most girls to be very gently closed up in their rooms until they ceased to think such alarming things, but Marya Morevna had seen all three of her sisters’ husbands from her window before they knocked at the great cherrywood door, and thus she was as certain of her own fate as she was certain of the color of the moon. [pp. 15]

There are also some reoccurring patterns throughout the novel that I loved, particularly “long, thin” and the importance of the number three.  There are several times when a part of the story is told with three almost identical but slightly different parts, which lent well to keeping it feeling like a fairy/folk tale retelling.  Throughout the story the number three remained significant – from the marrying off of Marya’s 3 sisters to the 3 birds; to the 3 tests Baba Yaga made Marya undertake and her 3 friends she asked for help in each; to Marya’s meeting her 3 sisters later in the story.  Plus the story had 3 central figures: Marya, Koscshei, and Ivan.

While Deathless is technically a fantastic novel and I very much appreciated it, I had no emotional connection to any of the characters in the story.  Because of this, I didn’t love it the way I wanted to or felt it really deserved, especially later in the novel.  For the first half of the story, I was quite enchanted by Marya’s youth and glimpses of the magical parts of the world as well as her relationship with Koschei.  She had sort of a love/hate relationship with him – she did seem to truly love him but she also despised him for what happened to all the girls who came before her.  Yet even though he was a liar who tried to tell her there were no other girls, I also felt like he was not exactly unlikeable – he was the Tsar of Life, and as such he was what he was.  I loved the three tests Baga Yaga gave Marya to see if she was worthy and how Marya handled them.  I also loved Marya’s friends in Koschei’s realm. However, once Marya actually married Koschei I felt some of the magic from the first half of the story was gone.  This is actually perfectly fitting with the story since it’s true that at the point the awe and wonder of the discovery of this “naked world” was wearing thin, but it remains that my favorite part of the book was this sense of wonder the first half had.  In the second part, Marya became a harder woman involved in a war, and although I loved the fact that the story always must unwind a certain way (in this case with Ivan coming for Marya), I wasn’t as riveted by the story after Ivan arrived.  This is not to say I didn’t like the latter half of the story, just that I found myself loving the first half and not as absorbed in the second one.

Overall, Deathless is a darkly beautiful novel that keeps the feel of a folktale retelling with the repetition of the significance of three.  Its prose isn’t as densely ornate as other novels by Valente, but it still retains its elegance and the novel has the same clever artistry her work is known for.  In spite of my admiration for this, it never elicited the emotional response I like to have when I read a book or made me truly care for the characters involved.  In addition, I wasn’t as enamored by the second part of the novel as the first, which I thought was fantastic.  However, these hindrances to my total adoration of Deathless are fairly minor – and just prevent me from giving it the 10 I would have given it if these were not the case.

My Rating: 8.5/10

Where I got my reading copy: Review copy from the publisher.

Read an Excerpt

Read about the Origin of the Novel

Other Reviews: