The Girl Who Soared Over Fairyland and Cut the Moon in Two
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No, cancel Yes, report it Thanks! You've successfully reported this review. We appreciate your feedback. December 15, ISBN: And I'll have a daughter with Saturday because I already had one that I haven't had yet and the verbs are very difficult but they seem to add up to the future is a fist and it won't let me go even if I put a hammer right through it.
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Because, my goodness, Ms. Valente, it took you so long to get anywhere. I do love your language, and I adore September, whether it's her adolescence in Omaha or her adventures in Fairyland, but really, we know which of those we're picking up these books to read about, right? And once September gets to Fairyland, well, as she remarks herself initially this time she's coming as a visitor, not yanked there for a crisis though she does eventually find one, except it's on the Moon but because she wants to see her friends again.
And there is so much descriptive imagery, so many weird surreal landscapes a city that is a whelk on the Moon, a land of photographic exposures, a cosmic black dog all those creative bursts of imagination we so love Valente for, and yet they seemed less controlled this time around. I was having to slow down and reread to figure out what it was that I'm supposed to be picturing and what is actually happening.
I really got the feeling that Catherynne Valente kind of meandered around for a while figuring out where her story was going to go, and then never edited that part into a proper narrative. The ending, though, redeems most of chaotic fuzziness in the middle. Every fairy story has darkness at its heart.
Valente has been building each Fairyland story onto the previous one, and while they are not precisely stand-alone, they have been self-contained adventures. But in this third book, it becomes necessary to understand what has gone before as September comes to understand certain things about Faeries. And here, Valente also departs from the pattern of the last two books, which end with September being whisked back to her farm to await her next Fairyland adventure. I am not entirely sure that this wasn't cheating. That same feeling I got that the author's floundering in the middle was not edited out of the manuscript also makes me wonder if the ending was the author having trouble deciding what to do next.
But it is an ending that makes me wonder what she's going to do next, and I will of course pre-order the next Fairyland book like wow. Yes, of the three Fairyland books so far, this one is my least favorite and I would be so disappointed to be disappointed again. But "disappointment" is relative because I still give "Girl Who Soared" an unhesitating 4 stars.
Even a slightly wobbly and undisciplined Catherynne Valente book is full of more concentrated brilliance and win than most authors can manage in an entire career. View all 3 comments. Feb 07, Algernon rated it really liked it Shelves: Just because it's imaginary doesn't mean it isn't real this is September, a. Repeat offender this cutie, but I don't mind.
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On the contrary, I hope she makes plans for many more wacky, bittersweet, tenderly wistful returns to the land where Imagination runs free and where she can follow the imperatives of her Criminal heart. That's right, you heard me! The denizens of Fairyland have dubb Just because it's imaginary doesn't mean it isn't real this is September, a. The denizens of Fairyland have dubbed Saturday a professional Criminal, licensed and outfitted her properly in black silks and guild hat. Readers familiar with her previous adventures already know she deposed a tyrant of the land in the first book and messed with the proper order of the shadowy undeground realm in the second one.
So she's considred a professional and unrepentant troublemaker. Now she's heading for the third sphere, up in the air where the Moon is shaken to its very foundations by an angry Yeti. Who will be called to save the Moon but our freshly dubbed Criminal! Here is everything that soared up high and got lost, everything that wanted to keep safe from marauders below.
The Girl Who Soared Over Fairyland and Cut The Moon In Two
This tenderhearted old world catches everything thrown too far and too hard, keeps everything fragile whole: But reaching the Moon is no easy task: You must also be wary of the untrustworthy Blue Wind and its puffins who delight in putting obstacles in your path. And you must recover and take good care of your steed Aroostook: September's quest is series of lessons in life delivered by each magnificent creature she meets as she tries to solve the mystery of the furious Yeti.
Most of the others are freshly minted in the forge of Mrs Valente's fancy and wise in the ways of the heart. The parables deal with predestination, growing up and learning responsibility for your actions, the flexibility of time, courage, love, self awareness, friendship, rules and how to break them. The author breaks the fourth wall herself from time to time in the narrative, as she feels the need to cheer side by side with us readers her heroine in her moments of doubt.
Like the time when September wonders why should she struggle if everything is already written in her red book of Fate. So it is written - but so, too, it is crossed out. You can write over it again. You can make notes in the margins. You can cut out the whole page. You can, and you must, edit and rewrite and reshape and pull out the wrong parts like bones and find just the thing and you can forever, forever, write more and more and more, thicker and longer and clearer.
Living is a paragraph, constantly rewritten. It is Grown-Up Magic. Children are heartless; their parents hold them still, squirming and shouting, until a heart can get going in their little lawless wilderness. Teenagers crush their hearts into every hard and thrilling thing to see what will give and what will hold.
And Grown-Ups, when they are good, when they are very lucky, and very brave, and their wishes are sharp as scissors, when they are in the fullness of their strength, use their hearts to start their story over again. It all revolves around the heart, just as it did in the two earlier books as September got through childhood and through her pre-teen selves. Now she's a young adult, and while the tonality of the book remains whimsical and fanciful, the issues and the dangers she has to deal with have themselves graduated to a higher level.
A heart can learn ever so many tricks, and what sort of beast it becomes depends greatly upon whether it it has been taught to sit up or lie down, to speak or to beg, to roll over or to sound alarms, to guard or to attack, to find or to stay. But the trick most folks are so awfully fond of learning, the absolute second they've got hold of a heart, is to pretend they don't have one at all.
It is the very first danger of the hearted. Shall I give fair warning, as neither you nor I was given? I did struggle a little with this third Fairyland book, as most of the encounters in the quest to find Ciderskin the Yeti seemed random and slightly too childish for the older persona of our heroine. I'm glad I stuck with the story, because everythings comes together masterfully in the end, and every step September takes proves essential to her becoming on arrival something more beautiful and more wise than on departure.
I will try not to spoil the actual plot, and limit myself to name some of the creatures September meets in her journey. From their quotes you can probably deduce a good portion of the lessons they deliver. These quotes also serve to illustrate the particular prose style of Mrs. Valente that put her firmly in one of the top spots on my fantasy firmament. Also, be aware that reading in advance about these lessons might be considered spoilers, so treat carefully from this point forward in my review: Hard to pick a favorite to start with, but because I've always loved sailing I'll present you Ballast Downbound the Klabautermann, who runs a salvage operation on the highway to the Moon: I'm named for the secret, vital core of a ship.
Ballast is the the weight down in the deep that keeps a vessel upright in dark water. A ship's not a ship till she got ballast of her own. Down in the belly, a big massy mess of rope and wood and hardtack and love letters and harpoons and old lemons. Anything that ever fascinated the ship, made it sail true, patched it or broke it, anything the ship loved or longed for, anything it could use.
Whithout ballast, she's just wood. Next in line is Nefarious Freedom Coppermolt the Third, Lobster of the Watch, here to welcome you to the greatest city on the satelite in the best carnie tradition: You'll find Almanack has taken care of all your needs, I promise. See the Grand Moonflower Lawn from the sack of a luxury lunar pelican! You'll have no cause to complain, friend! On the contrary, I say bring me more: Orrery is the city on the slopes of the Splendid Dress, which is a frightful big and lovely mountain.
The Glasshobs built it to keep an eye on the stars, who have a tendency to run off on adventures and forget about how much we downbelow folks need to navigate and cast horoscopes and meet lovers on balconies. A Glasshob is a kind of lantern fish with goat legs, and they carry their breathing parts in silver censers that swing from their fins. Coming back to Almanack, September is invited to meet with the ruler of the city, the Whelk who has some wisdom to pass on in her turn: Everyone is hungry and not only for food - for comfort and love and excitement and the opposite of being alone.
Almost everything awful anyone does is to get those things and keep them. Even the mites and the mussels. But no one can use you up unless you let them. The whole point of growing is to get big enough to hold the world you want inside you. But it takes a long time, and you really must eat your vegetables, and most often you have to make the world you want out of yourself.
I already knew September will be reunited with her darling Wiverary, and where else could she find it but in Almanack's Library, run by Abecedaria the Catalogue Imp, who's a Periwig of the Aldermanic Order, from the Foxtail Haberdashery. She's mighty fierce in her defense of reading: A silent Library is a sad Libray.
A Library should be full of exclamations! Shouts of delight and horror as the wonders of the world are discovered or the lies of the heavens uncovered or the wild adventures of devil-knows-who sent romping out of the pages. A Library should be full of 'now-just-a-minutes' and 'that-can't-be-rights' and scientifick folk running skelter to prove somebody wrong.
It should positively vibrate with laughter at comedies and sobbing at tragedies, it should echo with gasps as decent ladies glimpse indecent things and indecent ladies stumble upon secret and scandalous decencies! A Libray should not 'shush'; It should 'roar'! Let's clap all our hand, flippers, fins, wings, tentacles, paws for Abecedaria and move on with our adventure, picking up blue Saturday along the way from his trapeze lessons in the origami built Stationary Circus, saying hello to Pentameter the sonnet boy and Valentine the love letter girl.
Next stop is an argumentative donkey with a peacock tail named Candlestick. She's teaching lessons about learning: Every place has a Pluto! It's where the universe keeps the polar bears and last year's pickled entropy and the spare gravity. You need a Pluto or you're hardly a universe at all. A lesson is like a time-traveling argument. Becasue, you see, you can't argue until you've had the lesson or else you're just squabbling with your own ignorance.
But a lesson is really just the result of arguments other people had ages ago! You can't learn anything without arguing! As our heroine approaches her final destination, maybe it's time to learn something about her fearsome adversary, to better appreciate the task she embarked on and the real danger she has chosen to confront: A Yeti grows from a little fury snowball to a shaggy monster with black ram's horns and burning red eyes and hands that could crush wine out of boulders quicker than you can say, 'does that avalanche have teeth?
The final lines I've bookmarked in the novel are the three most important lessons September learns, so I'll need to do an even better job of hiding them from unprepared eyes. It's preferable to follow in the girl's footsteps, or the moral of the story loses its impact. The answer comes courtesy of an Undercamel from Pluto: It's a terrible magic that anyone can do - so do it.
Call yourself what you wish to become! And maybe growing up only means getting bigger. As big as Almanack, as a whelk on the moon who can hold a world inside it. Love is a Yeti. It is bigger than you and frightening and terrible. It makes loud and vicious noises. It is hungry all the time. It has horns and teeth and the force of its fists is more than anyone can bear. It speeds up time and slows it down. And it has its own aims and missions that those who are lucky enough to see it cannot begin to guess. You might see a Yeti once in your life or never.
You might live in a village of them. But in the end, no matter how fast you think you can go, the Yeti is always faster than you, and you can only choose how you say hello to it, and whether you shake its hand. I hope the next Fairyland book has more two say about these two star-crossed lovers who live in separate worlds and cannot control the time and place of their next date night. Nov 13, Megan Baxter rated it really liked it.
I love these books. I've said it before, and if there are more to come, I'll damn well say it again. These are books I'd be so happy to read to children, and I would barely be able to suppress my glee to see what stories they'd come up with themselves, prompted by these inventive and whimsical tales. September, every time she goes to Fairyland, steals my heart.
The rest of this review has been withheld due to the recent changes in Goodreads policy and enforcement. You ca I love these books. You can read why I came to this decision here. In the meantime, you can read the entire review at Smorgasbook View all 5 comments. September and the Model A Ford, Aroostook. Twelve-year-old September has visited Fairyland twice before and longs to return. She misses her friends, the Marid, Saturday, and the Wyverary, affectionately called Ell. Life is sad and monotonous at home, where she helps her invalid father and does odd jobs for neighbours.
Anyone for a Taxicrab? But when she finally gets back to her beloved Fairyland, things have changed. For one thing she can't find her friends. The Model A Ford she arrived in is also seemingly developing a personality of it's own both odd with decorative additions.
The Girl Who Soared Over Fairyland and Cut the Moon in Two Book Review
Can September vanquish the fearsome Yeti that is carving up the moon? Will she find a way for the fairies to return and will she ever leave Fairyland again? Dear friends This is the third book in a five part series and just like the first two never fails to impress. Full of fantasic characters and the most bizarre landscapes imaginable, The Girl Who Soared Over Fairyland and Cut the Moon in Two is a middle grade fantasy lovers delight. Catherynne M Valente is a wordsmith of the highest order and although sometimes the story can get overwhelmed by strangeness, the writing is for the most part first class.
This was a lovely third book to the Fairyland series, where September has struggled to return to Fairyland and is wondering if you can ever really go back. The characters left behind in Fairyland have struggled too, missing her and loving her. Life apart is not always easy. September meets a few versions of Saturday and starts to question whether she gets choices in her life, and between that and the nostalgia of childhood and facing being a grownup and what that means for her fairy land and fair This was a lovely third book to the Fairyland series, where September has struggled to return to Fairyland and is wondering if you can ever really go back.
September meets a few versions of Saturday and starts to question whether she gets choices in her life, and between that and the nostalgia of childhood and facing being a grownup and what that means for her fairy land and fairy friends, this book is a bit tinged in sadness. It also includes Valente's amazing imagination that we've seen from her poetry to Palimpsest still my favorite to the very underdiscussed Prester John books. This is the first book of Valente's that I've listened to, and Catherynne M.
Valente is a marvelous performer of her own work. Her voice has the versatility of an old-Hollywood actress, with moments of great rich depth. I feel like going back and listening to everything she's ever read. Her performance enriches her worlds, and I highly recommend the audio. Little bits I liked: The trick is that you're changing into a hundred other things, but you can't let go. You can only try to match up and never turn into a wolf while he's a rabbit, or a mouse while he's still busy being an owl It's harder than it sounds.
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I will clarify that what I attributed to an ambling middle I would now call a fuzzy plot. I've got the general idea of what September was meant to do, adventure-wise, but it it can become the slightest bit muddled, especially when it comes to action. Valente can kind of rush and over-describe her action so that you leave a block of text thinking, "I'm not e [April 28, ] Much of what I was thinking to share about this story I already talked about in the review below, so high five for past me. Valente can kind of rush and over-describe her action so that you leave a block of text thinking, "I'm not entirely sure what just happened, but it sure was pretty!
It does more than make up for it with the characters we meet. Tell me how Valente can make a better character out of an old car with a flower steering wheel than most authors can make their main characters. Everyone is so rich and lovely and every place has Lessons to Teach and Very Important Things to say and I just gobble that up.
I mentioned in my original review that I love stories about growing up and YES. Everything this book said about the confusion of trying to figure out who you are and how we spend a childhood growing a heart, only to have people tell us that being an adult means hiding it away was beautiful. I love this series. I love it, I'm invested, some of my favorite characters are here, and at the end of the day, Valente can tell us just about anything in the most beautiful language.
She can make up any land and any creature and just brings it all to life with wit and clever phrases. I love reading these words so much, it's hard to hold anything else against them. Each of her books seems to have a theme at the heart of them and as will be obvious to anyone reading. I love, love books about growing up and coming of age stories, so I was totally enamored with it.
Plus, we get the extra wonderful spin of both Saturday and September being people out of time. People who experience past, present and future all in a jumble. September grapples with who she will become and what fate means and if she has any choice or control in the matter. My heart went out to Saturday in such a great way in this book. What a wonderful boy and excellent counterpart for September. The middle bits did seem to amble along and sometimes, Valente seemed to lose the string of storytelling and fuzzy some of the main plot points.
If you asked me to tell you about this book, I could more tell you about all the stops on their trip and who they met than the unifying main story line, though the ending was perfect and that I remember. September busted into Fairyland when no one came to get her, so it stands that she had an adventure unlike the two others we've seen. While this kind of scattered middle has caused some people to deduct a star or two, I cannot.
The thrown about adventure and ambling about just prop up a story that is about the scattered and ambling process of growing up. Maybe that's me giving it too much credit, but again, I was predisposed to love this to pieces. I'm just so darn glad to have this series and a little sad to finish it soon and a little worried about having to wait for so long for the next one. But so it goes.
Dec 22, Cherie rated it it was amazing Shelves: This story has been my favorite of the three that I have read so far, but they are all so unique it is really hard to decide. There were so many times that I had to stop and absolutely admire the author's prose and imagination.
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The weather descriptions really struck me. Most of them are in my update comments. If you haven't met September and her friends in this series of unforgettable stories, you are missing out, dear reader! Sep 07, Nikki rated it liked it Shelves: Fairyland has more enchantment, sadness, and whimsy for you.
And in this book, September gets to spend time with Ell and Saturday again — the Ell and Saturday she knew in the first book, and not their shadows. We have another new setting for the friends to explore, and another new problem for September to try to solve. I enjoyed the setting, and stuff like the taxicrabs, and all the puffins. But it does say gorgeous things about friendship and love and having a heart, and growing up. Just as this was settling into a rhythm, where September goes to Fairyland in the first part, wanders about gathering allies, and then solves all the issues, this book shakes things up a bit.
And I gather the next book shakes things up even more, with new protagonists! Aug 25, Arden rated it liked it. It has horns and teeth and the fore of its fists is more than anymore can bear. But in the end, no matter how fast you think you can Listen to me. But in the end, no matter how fast you think you can go, the Yeti is always faster than you, and you can only choose how to say hello to it, and whether you shake its hand. September and Saturday are the cutest. The whole gang is precious. Sep 12, Amanda rated it liked it Shelves: I enjoyed this more than the second book because Ell and Saturday were in it for a good chunk.
However, I didn't enjoy as many of the new characters as I remember enjoying in the first book. The plot was extra convoluted. Sometimes I didn't understand how we had gotten from one point to another. And that cliffhanger was very cliffy and hangery. I will continue with the series eventually though. Dec 24, Vanessa Fox rated it liked it Shelves: Also not quite as good as the first, although better than the second, since it reunites the characters that the first book put so much work into investing us in.
And I did highlight some things. No is the heart of thinking. Everyone is hungry all the time. Everyone wants so much.. Everyone is hungry and not only for foo Also not quite as good as the first, although better than the second, since it reunites the characters that the first book put so much work into investing us in. Almost everything awful anyone does is to get those things and keep them Most often you have to make the world you want out of yourself.
Other people are the puzzle that will not be solved. Such as a character named Turing who says: I do all the things an alive thing does. Do you know another test for living. Mar 14, K. This was beautiful in so many ways. The writing is magnificent, the characters are wonderful and I had a lot of feelings for Ell and Saturday.
It took me a little while to get back into the writing style, and the plot did meander at times, and to be honest I saw the ending coming a long way off. Because it was so feelsy and beautifully written and aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!!!!!! Basically, I need to read book 4 as soon as possible. Favourite very long quote: Teenagers crash their hearts into every hard and thrilling thing to see what will give and what will hold. And Grown-Ups, when they are very good, when they are very lucky, and very brave, and their wishes are sharp as scissors, when they are in the fullness of their strength, use their hearts to start their story over again.
Mar 20, Sonja Arlow rated it liked it Shelves: The writing, still beautiful in places, seemed to have become OTT with overly descriptive pages with no room for a plot line to develop. It almost seemed as if the author was trying to hard to show off her vivid imagination. September has grown up, and is worried that she may have become too old for Fairyland, however if that was the case this would have been a very short story indeed. When she eventually gets to Fairyland or more specifically the Moon she is reunited with her old friends Saturday and A-through-L and, as always, adventure ensues.
This was fun while it lasted but I doubt that I will be reading anything further from this series. View all 4 comments. I love Cathrynne Valente's language in this series, and the way she weaves a variety of folktale creatures into her tale about September's adventures in Fairyland.
I was a little surprised by the ending of this installment, but loved how Valente showed how September was grappling with growing up. Jan 25, Sonja P. This is just my favorite of the fairyland books, and how it is all about choice and choosing the world you want to make and calling yourself what you want to become and it is just so lovely and so hopeful and so good, and I love love love it so much. The first two were some of my favorite children's books ever written, but this one just solidifies Fairyland as my second This is just my favorite of the fairyland books, and how it is all about choice and choosing the world you want to make and calling yourself what you want to become and it is just so lovely and so hopeful and so good, and I love love love it so much.
The first two were some of my favorite children's books ever written, but this one just solidifies Fairyland as my second favorite series of all time behind LOTR, of course. The writing in this is absolutely breathtaking, and I can't wait for Valente's next offering. Whereas the previous books were beautifully written and extraordinary adventures, this one felt so much more personal.
Perhaps it came in a time in my life when I really needed to hear what Valente says; after all, September's struggles mirrored my own. She too struggles with knowing what to want in life, and feeling frustrated with where she is. She wants to rewrite her fate. This book is all about time and fate and making yourself into a person, and about love.