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(finished) Deathless - Catherynne Valente
Feb. 4th, 2013 10:08 amDeathless
Russian folklore/Russian revolutionary history, crossover/fusion/whatever. It read like one long extended fairy tale.
I'm pretty aromantic and asexual in general, so I wasn't all that sure about this book when it got to the more romantic bits. I don't know why but sex scenes in books make me a little uncomfortable in the "why is so much of the page devoted to this", not in the "ew sex" sort of way. I guess I'm too used to reading sex scenes as more PWP than scenes in a book? But I really enjoyed the (hahaha) bit with Baba Yaga's pestle, ahahaha, it was perverse and wonderful and smutty and kind of horrendous, but also powerful, because of how explicitly sexual power was shown to be power, period.
I mean, this book was about power relations. Not in a community, network kind of way, exactly (though that gets mentioned here and there), but in an elemental way - two opposing, passionate forces. Life and Death, Husband and Wife, Predecessor and Successor. It had some very big ideas and by the end it convinced me of those ideas. But the storytelling occasionally fell down.
Valente is a very good writer. She's won at least three major awards that I know of and probably more besides. Her writing isn't always something I can lose myself in; it takes a little work, but it gets me after a few chapters. But I wasn't all that emotionally invested. I think the book skipped around chronologically a little bit too much, I think. I didn't feel present in it. I felt more like I was watching it through a viewpane or something. I found it hard to invest in the other characters, too.
I did love all the folklore and fairy tale shout outs though, especially with how they melded with Stalinist Russia (the domovoi and the dragon and the three sisters, especially).
And for all that it's a type of love story, it's really about power, and how it shifts between two forces, and how it shapes those forces, and - yeah. A lot of the things it said about marriage, I recognized in my parents' marriage. A lot of the things it said about history, I recognized in my own history. And almost all of the storytelling weaknesses I noticed make sense through the lens of folktale.
Pretty sure I will re-read this one, though I don't know when.
Russian folklore/Russian revolutionary history, crossover/fusion/whatever. It read like one long extended fairy tale.
I'm pretty aromantic and asexual in general, so I wasn't all that sure about this book when it got to the more romantic bits. I don't know why but sex scenes in books make me a little uncomfortable in the "why is so much of the page devoted to this", not in the "ew sex" sort of way. I guess I'm too used to reading sex scenes as more PWP than scenes in a book? But I really enjoyed the (hahaha) bit with Baba Yaga's pestle, ahahaha, it was perverse and wonderful and smutty and kind of horrendous, but also powerful, because of how explicitly sexual power was shown to be power, period.
I mean, this book was about power relations. Not in a community, network kind of way, exactly (though that gets mentioned here and there), but in an elemental way - two opposing, passionate forces. Life and Death, Husband and Wife, Predecessor and Successor. It had some very big ideas and by the end it convinced me of those ideas. But the storytelling occasionally fell down.
Valente is a very good writer. She's won at least three major awards that I know of and probably more besides. Her writing isn't always something I can lose myself in; it takes a little work, but it gets me after a few chapters. But I wasn't all that emotionally invested. I think the book skipped around chronologically a little bit too much, I think. I didn't feel present in it. I felt more like I was watching it through a viewpane or something. I found it hard to invest in the other characters, too.
I did love all the folklore and fairy tale shout outs though, especially with how they melded with Stalinist Russia (the domovoi and the dragon and the three sisters, especially).
And for all that it's a type of love story, it's really about power, and how it shifts between two forces, and how it shapes those forces, and - yeah. A lot of the things it said about marriage, I recognized in my parents' marriage. A lot of the things it said about history, I recognized in my own history. And almost all of the storytelling weaknesses I noticed make sense through the lens of folktale.
Pretty sure I will re-read this one, though I don't know when.
EDIT:
OMG, just found this. Wooooooow. I'm somehow not surprised? Ahahahahaha god, um, well I don't regret reading the book but I kind of regret buying it.... Oh well! I won't buy anything more from her at least. Idk, the racist things really made me bluh.
