Catherynne M. Valente
Deathless, the Fairyland books, Space Opera — fantasy with prose that does what most prose doesn't try to.
Catherynne M. Valente's catalogue is one of contemporary fantasy's most singular. The Fairyland series (beginning with The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making) reads as middle-grade with literary instincts most middle-grade doesn't reach for. Deathless retells Russian folklore through Stalinist history. The Orphan's Tales is a frame-within-frame collection. Space Opera is a Eurovision-flavored space-opera in a science-fantasy register. Her prose is unmistakable — lush, allusive, willing to be strange.
For middle-grade readers in the Fairyland books, adult readers across the rest of her work. Content scales widely: Fairyland stays age-appropriate, adult work includes sexual content, violence, and dark thematic material handled with literary care. The reading experience is unlike most fantasy on the shelf — Valente writes with imaginative ambition most writers don't attempt. Pick this shelf when you want fantasy with prose worth memorizing, conceptual strangeness embraced rather than smoothed, and a writer whose every book is its own particular project.
- Prose worth memorizing
- Range from middle grade to adult literary
- Conceptual strangeness embraced
- Every book its own project
