In which the Moon is anarchistic
Nov. 23rd, 2021 12:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bloodygranuaileMy brain needed a break between reading very dense queer theory and reading more very dense queer theory, so I picked up my copy of Catherynne M. Valente’s The Girl Who Soared Over Fairyland and Cut the Moon in Two, which has been languishing on my shelf for quite a while. I bought it a few Readercons ago at a kaffeeklatsch and I’d forgotten that it was signed and had my little sketch of one of the chainsmoking Goth aliens from Space Opera in it.
I liked the first Fairyland book pretty well and loved the second one, so I was hoping to like this one as much as I liked the second one, but I’m afraid I only liked it as much as I remember liking the first one--which is still enough that I will probably pick up the fourth book sometime in the next few years. In this book, September is 14 years old, meaning she is starting to learn grown-up things like how to drive a car and how to be stern. Given that she is only 14 she ends up getting quite a lot of unsolicited advice about marriage, which makes some sense in-context as the main questions in the story have to do with things like time and fate and predestination, and 14-year-old September is repeatedly faced with the knowledge that she is eventually, as an adult, going to have a child with Saturday the Marid, which seems like a really awkward thing to be told by the universe when you’re 14. I wouldn’t have a child with anybody I knew at 14 if you paid me.
Overall it was very cute and very poignant and whimsical and all that stuff I expect from Fairyland book at this point. I feel like I had a bit more trouble following the plot than usual but I also didn’t care very much because deliberately whimsical portal fantasies are often a bit picaresque-y and can get away with the plot being a little bit secondary in importance; it’s mostly there to give the tour of your portal world structure. That said, this felt a little squidgy on structure compared to the last two.
The plot, such as it is, involves the Moon, which is currently going through a set of increasingly disruptive earthquakes (moonquakes, rather) that most of the people September runs into are blaming on a very large and very fast Yeti named Ciderskin. September, who has now been designated a Professional Revolutionary on her visa to Fairyland, must therefore get educated quickly on the backstory of Fairy colonization of the Moon, which involved cutting off a Yeti’s paw and using it to mess about with time, in order to figure out how to stop Ciderskin from disrupting the Moon and its inhabitants any further. Of course, not all the ancient history September learns is quite true from everyone’s perspective, and Ciderskin turns out to have his own reasons for doing things, and we learn some important lessons about the pitfalls of treating other people as tools. There are a lot of really good one-liners and turns of phrase that made me to “Ooh, I’ll have to remember that” and of course I have completely forgotten them all already. If I ever reread these books it will be for the purpose of writing down all the whimsically phrased sage advice September gets so I can make myself look clever.
Overall a charming, escapist read, and a strong example of excellence in the Children’s Portal Fantasy genre, which is admittedly an overstuffed category but one which I have a really big soft spot for.
I liked the first Fairyland book pretty well and loved the second one, so I was hoping to like this one as much as I liked the second one, but I’m afraid I only liked it as much as I remember liking the first one--which is still enough that I will probably pick up the fourth book sometime in the next few years. In this book, September is 14 years old, meaning she is starting to learn grown-up things like how to drive a car and how to be stern. Given that she is only 14 she ends up getting quite a lot of unsolicited advice about marriage, which makes some sense in-context as the main questions in the story have to do with things like time and fate and predestination, and 14-year-old September is repeatedly faced with the knowledge that she is eventually, as an adult, going to have a child with Saturday the Marid, which seems like a really awkward thing to be told by the universe when you’re 14. I wouldn’t have a child with anybody I knew at 14 if you paid me.
Overall it was very cute and very poignant and whimsical and all that stuff I expect from Fairyland book at this point. I feel like I had a bit more trouble following the plot than usual but I also didn’t care very much because deliberately whimsical portal fantasies are often a bit picaresque-y and can get away with the plot being a little bit secondary in importance; it’s mostly there to give the tour of your portal world structure. That said, this felt a little squidgy on structure compared to the last two.
The plot, such as it is, involves the Moon, which is currently going through a set of increasingly disruptive earthquakes (moonquakes, rather) that most of the people September runs into are blaming on a very large and very fast Yeti named Ciderskin. September, who has now been designated a Professional Revolutionary on her visa to Fairyland, must therefore get educated quickly on the backstory of Fairy colonization of the Moon, which involved cutting off a Yeti’s paw and using it to mess about with time, in order to figure out how to stop Ciderskin from disrupting the Moon and its inhabitants any further. Of course, not all the ancient history September learns is quite true from everyone’s perspective, and Ciderskin turns out to have his own reasons for doing things, and we learn some important lessons about the pitfalls of treating other people as tools. There are a lot of really good one-liners and turns of phrase that made me to “Ooh, I’ll have to remember that” and of course I have completely forgotten them all already. If I ever reread these books it will be for the purpose of writing down all the whimsically phrased sage advice September gets so I can make myself look clever.
Overall a charming, escapist read, and a strong example of excellence in the Children’s Portal Fantasy genre, which is admittedly an overstuffed category but one which I have a really big soft spot for.