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Valente, Catherynne M. The Girl Who Fell Beneath Fairyland and Led the Revels There. New York: Feiwel and Friends, 2012.
I really enjoyed The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making, as you may imagine from my several posts on the topic of the book when it was merely a serial internet fiction, and I was very happy to receive this, the sequel, for Christmas.
A year after her return, sans her shadow, September is more than ready to return to Fairyland and the friends she left behind there. As one might expect from dealing with Fairyland, however, when she does get back in she does so widdershins to her expectations, and soon she realizes that she has to undertake another quest, this one less glorious but equally necessary. For the shadows of Fairyland Below, led by Halloween, the Hollow Queen, September's shadow, are inexorably leeching the magic out of Fairyland Above, and September must put right her own mistake and save both worlds, with help of dubious vintage from the shadows of her friends El and Saturday.
This book wasn't as absolutely entrancing as the first, but it was quite enjoyable, and I particularly liked the way September is slowly but surely growing up, and the way the Heartless imagery from the first book is deployed, changed, to devastating effect in this volume. I particularly liked several spoilery developments near the end, having to do with evil and redemption and who you can trust, although the denouement was somewhat less than what I might have wanted, somehow. In any case, I am very much looking forward to the next of September's adventures in Fairyland. Valente described the ending of the first as a stab to the heart of Narnia, and there are certain ways in which these books are unabashedly critical of certain hoary tropes of children's portal fantasy, and I really love that.
I really enjoyed The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making, as you may imagine from my several posts on the topic of the book when it was merely a serial internet fiction, and I was very happy to receive this, the sequel, for Christmas.
A year after her return, sans her shadow, September is more than ready to return to Fairyland and the friends she left behind there. As one might expect from dealing with Fairyland, however, when she does get back in she does so widdershins to her expectations, and soon she realizes that she has to undertake another quest, this one less glorious but equally necessary. For the shadows of Fairyland Below, led by Halloween, the Hollow Queen, September's shadow, are inexorably leeching the magic out of Fairyland Above, and September must put right her own mistake and save both worlds, with help of dubious vintage from the shadows of her friends El and Saturday.
This book wasn't as absolutely entrancing as the first, but it was quite enjoyable, and I particularly liked the way September is slowly but surely growing up, and the way the Heartless imagery from the first book is deployed, changed, to devastating effect in this volume. I particularly liked several spoilery developments near the end, having to do with evil and redemption and who you can trust, although the denouement was somewhat less than what I might have wanted, somehow. In any case, I am very much looking forward to the next of September's adventures in Fairyland. Valente described the ending of the first as a stab to the heart of Narnia, and there are certain ways in which these books are unabashedly critical of certain hoary tropes of children's portal fantasy, and I really love that.