A review by bigbear73
The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making by Catherynne M. Valente
5.0
Like many readers, I have a TBR pile several miles high. Because of this, I tend to stay in my ‘sweet spot’ - familiar authors, or authors I’ve already been meaning to get to. This is a sad state of affairs, but the average age of American men is still only around 77, and I have a crap ton of reading to get to before I die as it is. Thankfully, though, a friend of mine had a quote from The Girl in her email signature, and I couldn’t NOT read a book with such awesome word play. I’m glad I veered from my pile for this sweet little distraction.
This book, at its core, is sweet and incredibly fun, with a creative take on Fairyland. There are tons of new ideas, and a great story line. The characters are extremely well fleshed out, and lovable, hateable or just amusing by turns. But none of this holds a candle to how it is written. The prose is incredible and beautiful, and Cat’s play on words is epic. This is the sort of book that can make a wanna be writer either give up in despair because he/she could never reach this level, or aspire to work twice as hard to be able to deliver such a joy to other readers. In short, even if you didn’t like the story, the delivery makes it well worth the read.
Everyone should pick this one up. 5/5 stars.
This book, at its core, is sweet and incredibly fun, with a creative take on Fairyland. There are tons of new ideas, and a great story line. The characters are extremely well fleshed out, and lovable, hateable or just amusing by turns. But none of this holds a candle to how it is written. The prose is incredible and beautiful, and Cat’s play on words is epic. This is the sort of book that can make a wanna be writer either give up in despair because he/she could never reach this level, or aspire to work twice as hard to be able to deliver such a joy to other readers. In short, even if you didn’t like the story, the delivery makes it well worth the read.
Everyone should pick this one up. 5/5 stars.