The Orphan’s Tales

Title: The Orphan’s Tales; Volume 1: the Night Garden & Volume 2: In the Cities of Coin and Spice
Author: Catherynne M. Valente
Rating: 5 /5

Summary (From Amazon):

The Orphan’s Tales; Volume 1: the Night Garden A Book of Wonders for Grown-Up Readers

Every once in a great while a book comes along that reminds us of the magic spell that stories can
cast over us–to dazzle, entertain, and enlighten. Welcome to the Arabian Nights for our time–a lush and fantastical epic guaranteed to spirit you away from the very first page….

Secreted away in a garden, a lonely girl spins stories to warm a curious prince: peculiar feats and unspeakable fates that loop through each other and back again to meet in the tapestry of her voice. Inked on her eyelids, each twisting, tattooed tale is a piece in the puzzle of the girl’s own hidden history. And what tales she tells! Tales of shape-shifting witches and wild horsewomen, heron kings and beast princesses, snake gods, dog monks, and living stars–each story more strange and fantastic than the one that came before. From ill-tempered “mermaid” to fastidious Beast, nothing is ever quite what it seems in these ever-shifting tales–even, and especially, their teller. Adorned with illustrations by the legendary Michael Kaluta, Valente’s enchanting lyrical fantasy offers a breathtaking reinvention of the untold myths and dark fairy tales that shape our dreams. And just when you think you’ve come to the end, you realize the adventure has only begun….

Volume 2: In the Cities of Coin and Spice

Catherynne M. Valente enchanted readers with her spellbinding In the Night Garden. Now she continues to weave her storytelling magic in a new 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….

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. 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. 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. 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. Open it anywhere and you will fall under its spell. For here the story never ends and the magic is only beginning….



Review:

It’s hard to talk about these books in-depth without revealing the stories contained within, because of that I shall be straight to be point as I can be with this review. I personally found each volume of this series to be wonderful and entirely enthralling. And since one of the aspects of the tales is the power a story has, with it even affecting both teller and listener, that effect is more than appropriate. But in fair warning I must mention the stories are told on several levels and not exactly linear in their telling. An example goes as follows: Story Orphan tells->Story told by character A->Story told by character B taking place an unknown amount of time ago->Story Orphan tells->Story told by character C which is another viewpoint of B’s Story, ETC. Or another way to envision it is a series of nesting dolls, each one containing and leading to another, even if it’s just another face on one of the dolls

These are not the kind of stories where you can just take things in passively. To understand the whole narrative, and in the end every fragment of these tales does creates a single narrative, you have to be able to focus. Because without focusing and paying attention the connections between the stories, which sometimes are nothing more than a simple and quickly mentioned word, could be utterly lost. But the stories, on all levels, are worth the challenge of making yourself understand the narrative. They are worth the tears, the smiles, the horror, and the disgust they call pull out of your heart. I wish you to enjoy these tales as I did, and let yourself be lost in a world where even the gods can be lost children and the one’s fate can be written on their eyes.