The Girl Who Soared Over Fairyland and Cut the Moon in Two
Ratings10
Average rating3.4
"One of the most extraordinary works of fantasy, for adults or children, published so far this century."—Time magazine, on the Fairyland series September misses Fairyland and her friends Ell, the Wyverary, and the boy Saturday. She longs to leave the routines of home and embark on a new adventure. Little does she know that this time, she will be spirited away to the moon, reunited with her friends, and find herself faced with saving Fairyland from a moon-Yeti with great and mysterious powers. The Girl Who Soared Over Fairyland and Cut the Moon in Two is another rich, beautifully told, wisely humorous, and passionately layered book from New York Times–bestselling author Catherynne M. Valente.
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It's been a week of disappointing sequels in my life. Not that the Girl Who Soared Over Fairyland and Cut the Moon in Two isn't good. It's good, it's just the two prior novels are Oh My Goodness, turn cartwheels, no scoring system goes high enough, amazing. And The Girl Who Soared is good. Maybe even very good, but no better.
Valente's previous works have been a patchwork of disparate settings and characters all loosely bound together in service of a plot, and somehow it just seems to work. Here, the settings are just as magical: a lizard made up of coins guards a cash register that determines your occupation, a whelk has made its shell into a city fueled by its love, acrobats made of paper fold and unfold as they do tricks, and an entire world made up of photographic negatives feature (sadly, while much is discussed about the city of Orrery, which is an Orrery and has every type of “-scope” imaginable, we spend very little time there.) But the threads tying them together feel looser. Zooming from one place to another felt organic and natural in the earlier books. Here it feels frenetic, and I found myself having trouble following why this or that was happening.
Similarly, the other Fairyland books center around themes of Coming of Age and particularly issues of adolescence, in a way that is central, but not overbearing. Here the central theme – how one develops an identity and how volitional that identity is – is equally universal and equally foundational to the book, but its inclusion feels more heavy-handed.
I certainly enjoyed the book, and I certainly will keep reading the series, but just as certainly, it pales by comparison.
I love these books so, so much! The third Fairyland adventure gave me ALL THE EMOTIONS.
If you want to read my gushing, squeeful review, go to SFF Book Review and join me in longing for the next volume in the series.
Valente's style continues to delight.
I like the narrator who is, somewhat but not overly, self-aware. And I never get tired of rooting for September and her friends.
I find it amusing that this story also has a time yeti as I just finished [b:Thief of Time|48002|Thief of Time (Discworld, #26; Death, #5)|Terry Pratchett|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1388177603l/48002._SY75_.jpg|46982] is there some sort of folklore/mythology I'm missing?
