![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
First book of 2026! This was The Orphan's Tales: In the Night Garden by Catherynne M. Valente with illustrations by Michael Kaluta. I have no recollection of how this ended up on my TBR and I was a little skeptical checking it out in the library, but I'm glad I stuck with it because it ended up being a lot of fun and I will definitely check out the second volume.
You might be a little confused in the beginning, as In the Night Garden is a series of nested stories within stories and the style takes a minute to get used to, but it's worth it. Valente unfolds a veritable matryoshka of tales into neat blooms whose petals all fit together. Retroactive reveals and recontextualiations are delightful here.
Valente's vivid prose brings together her fantastical tales with such clarity; she attends frequently to all five senses, so that the reader knows what the characters are not only seeing, but hearing, smelling, tasting, and feeling as well. There's obviously a lot of fairy tale inspiration here, but Valente definitely brings her own flavor. Women are almost always the hero of Valente's tales (though they play the villains too!) and there are such a great variety of them. Monsters abound too, but they get their chance to tell a tale too. (There's also some gentle ribbing at the Arthurian legends, with one witch lamenting about "all that questing" princes get up to.)
I was so engrossed in the work I didn't realize until quite late in the book how little romance factors into it. In a fairy tale inspired book like this, I would have expected a great many characters motivated by romance, but I can only think of two here who are primarily motivated by a love interest, and this delights me too. I'm arospec myself and while I enjoy a good tale of romance, I also weary of how frequently and totally it is centered in stories, so I was really enthused by how little that's the case here.
Friendship and family relationships do make frequent appearances though, and the friendship between the orphan teller of tales and the young boy hanging onto her words is the framing story. Love between mother and daughter, between brother and sister, even between strangers is a common thread.
She also avoids a pitfall I see in various modern fantasy stories which are so keen to explain the magic of their world they strip it of all mystery. Valente's world remains largely unexplained and asks the reader to simply take it as it is, which I found fun and appropriately mysterious.
The style of the book allows Valente to pull in a great many diverse characters and voices, which she does it well. Most impressive though is her ability to pull a cohesive tapestry out of all the various threads she's juggling.
A really fun and unusual story which I enjoyed a lot--a great start to a new year of reading!
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
You might be a little confused in the beginning, as In the Night Garden is a series of nested stories within stories and the style takes a minute to get used to, but it's worth it. Valente unfolds a veritable matryoshka of tales into neat blooms whose petals all fit together. Retroactive reveals and recontextualiations are delightful here.
Valente's vivid prose brings together her fantastical tales with such clarity; she attends frequently to all five senses, so that the reader knows what the characters are not only seeing, but hearing, smelling, tasting, and feeling as well. There's obviously a lot of fairy tale inspiration here, but Valente definitely brings her own flavor. Women are almost always the hero of Valente's tales (though they play the villains too!) and there are such a great variety of them. Monsters abound too, but they get their chance to tell a tale too. (There's also some gentle ribbing at the Arthurian legends, with one witch lamenting about "all that questing" princes get up to.)
I was so engrossed in the work I didn't realize until quite late in the book how little romance factors into it. In a fairy tale inspired book like this, I would have expected a great many characters motivated by romance, but I can only think of two here who are primarily motivated by a love interest, and this delights me too. I'm arospec myself and while I enjoy a good tale of romance, I also weary of how frequently and totally it is centered in stories, so I was really enthused by how little that's the case here.
Friendship and family relationships do make frequent appearances though, and the friendship between the orphan teller of tales and the young boy hanging onto her words is the framing story. Love between mother and daughter, between brother and sister, even between strangers is a common thread.
She also avoids a pitfall I see in various modern fantasy stories which are so keen to explain the magic of their world they strip it of all mystery. Valente's world remains largely unexplained and asks the reader to simply take it as it is, which I found fun and appropriately mysterious.
The style of the book allows Valente to pull in a great many diverse characters and voices, which she does it well. Most impressive though is her ability to pull a cohesive tapestry out of all the various threads she's juggling.
A really fun and unusual story which I enjoyed a lot--a great start to a new year of reading!
Today I wrapped up Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer, a horror/sci-fi novel with fantastical (?) elements about a biologist exploring a very unsettling landscape.
There are no names given in this book—the narrator and protagonist is simply "the Biologist," and she refers to her other three teammates by their job titles as well. Locations outside of the place they're exploring—Area X—are not given either, but the world is implied to be much the same as our own, with Area X a troubling and relatively recent anomaly. A private company hires the Biologist and her colleagues to venture into this strange place and take notes. They are the 12th such expedition.
I appreciate that much of the horror in Annihilation isn't in-your-face: it's the slow build of things that are just off. This quiet and subtle approach means that when something extreme happens, it feels extreme. The Biologist and her colleagues know that Area X is dangerous before they venture in, but even so, they are unprepared for how and to what degree. VanderMeer's portrayal of how trust frays among relative strangers under these conditions felt realistic.
( Read more... )
( Read more... )
This season's holiday shopping on Kickstarter went very well.
Amazon: In addition to the thing you actually asked about, here are 20 more books that all sound the same.
Me: Meh.
Kickstarter: Here is a book about an autistic Yeti. Or perhaps you'd prefer a Neanderthal comic book?
Me: Shut up and take my money!
So, the Neanderthal comic book arrived today: The Tale of Tal: a Neanderthal graphic novel by Dr. Gianpaolo di Silvestro and Luca Vergerio. It includes introductory materials by Prof. David Caramelli from University of Florence ("The Neanderthals"), Dr. Fabio Bona from University of Milan ("The Cave Bears"), Dr. Fabio Fusco, a researcher/consultant palaeontologist ("Flora and Fauna"), and Prof. Mauro Mandrioli from Unimore ("Science and Graphic Novels"). These parts are bilingual in Italian (black text) and English (blue text). The scientific bibliography is all in black, but a mishmash of languages since it draws on publications from diverse countries.
I am particularly charmed by the descriptions of Neanderthals in the flyleaves. "Neanderthal was an alternative way of being human, with all its diversities and fragilities." Not less than human, just differently human. It reminds me of what we lost, when we lost our cousins on the hominid family tree: a concrete example of wholly different, yet equally functional, ways of being human. We know that three species cohabited in Africa. Modern humans carry DNA from at least three relatives: Neanderthals, Denisovans, and one unknown ("I didn't get his name, but wow what a night!"). We just tend to ... forget.
There are spoilers below.
( Read more... )
Amazon: In addition to the thing you actually asked about, here are 20 more books that all sound the same.
Me: Meh.
Kickstarter: Here is a book about an autistic Yeti. Or perhaps you'd prefer a Neanderthal comic book?
Me: Shut up and take my money!
So, the Neanderthal comic book arrived today: The Tale of Tal: a Neanderthal graphic novel by Dr. Gianpaolo di Silvestro and Luca Vergerio. It includes introductory materials by Prof. David Caramelli from University of Florence ("The Neanderthals"), Dr. Fabio Bona from University of Milan ("The Cave Bears"), Dr. Fabio Fusco, a researcher/consultant palaeontologist ("Flora and Fauna"), and Prof. Mauro Mandrioli from Unimore ("Science and Graphic Novels"). These parts are bilingual in Italian (black text) and English (blue text). The scientific bibliography is all in black, but a mishmash of languages since it draws on publications from diverse countries.
I am particularly charmed by the descriptions of Neanderthals in the flyleaves. "Neanderthal was an alternative way of being human, with all its diversities and fragilities." Not less than human, just differently human. It reminds me of what we lost, when we lost our cousins on the hominid family tree: a concrete example of wholly different, yet equally functional, ways of being human. We know that three species cohabited in Africa. Modern humans carry DNA from at least three relatives: Neanderthals, Denisovans, and one unknown ("I didn't get his name, but wow what a night!"). We just tend to ... forget.
There are spoilers below.
( Read more... )
- Mood:
happy
Religions of Late Antiquity in Practice by Richard Valantasis
An array of documents. Many Christian, including hymns, sermons, acts of martyrs and other accounts, but also Manichean, with hymns and a service, pagan, such as a spell tablet invoking Osiris to recapture a husband's attentions, Julian the Apostate arguing against Christianity, claiming that Solomon worshipped other gods because he was wise, an aretalogy of Isis listing her virtues, and a Mithradic liturgy, and various other things, such as Talmudic tales, and the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas. A number were taken from incomplete documents, so the lacunae pile up, and some of the commentary begs the question a bit.
An array of documents. Many Christian, including hymns, sermons, acts of martyrs and other accounts, but also Manichean, with hymns and a service, pagan, such as a spell tablet invoking Osiris to recapture a husband's attentions, Julian the Apostate arguing against Christianity, claiming that Solomon worshipped other gods because he was wise, an aretalogy of Isis listing her virtues, and a Mithradic liturgy, and various other things, such as Talmudic tales, and the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas. A number were taken from incomplete documents, so the lacunae pile up, and some of the commentary begs the question a bit.
Little Red Rodent Hood by Ursula Vernon
The return of Princess Harriet! Wielding her sword, saving the day, sometimes even listening to her friend Prince Wilbur's good advice!
( Read more... )
The return of Princess Harriet! Wielding her sword, saving the day, sometimes even listening to her friend Prince Wilbur's good advice!
( Read more... )