In the Cities of Coin and Spice by Catherynne M. Valente

The directions the stories take, and the way they're told, are new and traditional at once, no mean feat.Īnd so I feel that I got much more out of the first half of the book, when I took it in full immersion, than for the second half, where I took it in drips and drabs. To see each of the characters and their situations through the lush and fresh, fantastic prose that Valente has to offer here, and track through parched deserts with djinns, paper cities with small and broken children, winding rivers with a girl-cum-dragon-cum-goldfish, and all through the stories of a girl in a frozen garden and the prince who keeps returning to hear her tales. No, this is a book I think is made to lose yourself in, to weave yourself into the intricate layerings of different stories into other stories, and follow all the levels and connections of one tale to the next, really feel yourself a part of this world of wonders for a while. It is not made to be read in little bursts, 10 pages here, two chapters there. Show More enjoyable, after finishing it, I feel like this is exactly the wrong way to read such a book as this one. For here the story never ends and the magic is only beginning. Open it anywhere and you will fall under its spell. Graced with the magical illustrations of Michael Kaluta, In the Cities of Coins and Spice is a book of dreams and wonders unlike any you've ever encountered. Nothing is too fantastic, anything can happen, but you'll never guess what comes next in these intimately linked adventures of firebirds and djinn, singing manticores, mutilated unicorns, and women made entirely of glass and gears. And who can resist the stories she tells? From the Lake of the Dead and the City of Marrow to the artists who remain behind in a ghost city of spice, here are stories of hedgehog warriors and winged skeletons, loyal leopards and sparrow calligraphers. Her name and origins are unknown, but the endless tales inked upon this orphan's eyelids weave a spell over all who listen to her read her secret history. Now she continues to weave her storytelling magic in the next book of Orphan's Tales-an epic of the fantastic and the exotic, the monstrous and mysterious, that will transport you far away from the everyday. Valente enchanted readers with her spellbinding In the Night Garden.

In the Cities of Coin and Spice by Catherynne M. Valente