Book Review: The Girl Who Raced Fairyland All the Way Home

 

The Girl Who Raced Fairyland All the Way Home

It’s not easy to bring a sprawling, creative series of books that bustle and brim with incredible doses of imagination to a close.

But Catherynne M. Valente does a pretty decent job with The Girl Who Raced Fairlyland All the Way HomeSuffice it to say that if I tried to summarize the plot here, you would be completely confused (I’m not sure exactly what happened all the time, either) but the gist of the book is that the protagonist, September, does indeed find a sort of “home” by the end of this book, which began many books ago with The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making.

September has become Queen of Fairyland, and in order to keep her crown, she must go off on a race and find the Heart of Fairyland in order to keep her crown. All other past royals who ruled Fairyland (including a quite happy talking Stone) want to regain the crown, too, and duels and mishaps happen. The race is called The Cantankerous Derby, and that it is.

What strikes me is how true Valente has stayed to her vision of Fairyland and imagination itself, and how every page in every book in the series provides the reader with places to pull the fabric of reality aside, to see another world of strange creatures and odd ideas, and September trying to figure out her place in one world while hoping to return, and then leave, the other world.

As always, the language in this last book in the series is challenging and interesting, as Valente writes like no other writer in the young adult market that I have come across. It’s not just the vocabulary. It’s syntax and sentence structure, and the periodic way the narrator is suddenly there, right by the reader’s side, giving advice and inserting herself into the story. It all works together like a magic reading spell.

I was hooked from the first book, but I know this series is probably not for everyone. Maybe hidden worlds are not made for everyone. Maybe only some readers can enter through those passageways. Good luck, Rachel.

Peace (there and back),
Kevin

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *