Customer Reviews

The Orphan's Tales: In the Cities of Coin and Spice: 2

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is a book (or, with its predecessor, pair of books) written on an old model: The Thousand Nights and a Night. Yet I found it as original, and delightful, as any book I've read in years. It consists of fairy tales, yes, but not retold fairly tales. Rather, entirely new tales, abundantly imaginative, gorgeously written, and stunningly and intricately framed.

The outer frame is set in the garden of a Sultan's estate. The Sultan's daughter is about to be married. The Sultan's son has befriended the orphan girl who lives in the garden. She tells him stories written on the inside of her eyelids (and eventually he tells her the stories written on the outside). The Arabesque setting of this frame immediately suggests The Thousand Nights and a Night, and so too does the way the stories do not come to immediate conclusions. But Valente's design is more complex than Scheherazade's: instead of simply ending stories in the middle and completing them the next day, these stories encounter other stories in their midst. So the character in one story will meet a new character with their own story to tell, and the first story will pause as the subsequent tale is recounted ... and so on.

The book is divided in two main parts, "The Book of the Storm" and "The Book of the Scald"; each dominated, to an extent, by one story. "The Tale of the Crossing", in the first part, concerns a one armed boy crossing a lake in the company of a ferryman in search of the girl who has been his companion during a terrible childhood. The lake is clearly enough analogous to the Styx, and the ferryman to Charon ... but of course he has his own story. In the second part we read "The Tale of the Waste", about a Djinn imprisoned in a cage, and her story concerns her position as one of the Queens of the Djinni, and the attack she is ordered to lead on the city of Ajanabh.

As the subtitle suggests, much of the focus is on a couple of colorful cities, both in terrible decline. The city of coin is Marrow, and their coins are most horrifying created. The city of spice is Ajanabh, but, as we learn, the spices are all dead. Despite the current state of decline of these cities, The Orphan's Tales is packed with wonders. We read of living Stars, of mechanical women, of manticores, of a giant who is the gate of a city, of courteous kappas (and what happens when a kappa bows), of repentant sirens, of edible gems... Valente's imagination is prodigious, and she weaves lovely new patterns with existing mythical threads, and she finds gorgeous new fabric as well. And all knitted together with poetic prose.

The stories are not just intertwined structurally, but thematically as well. And characters from one story will sneakily pop up later from a different angle. Time is rather fluidly treated - the book seems to cover perhaps the entire history of its exotic world. (I can imagine an annotated version attempting to arrange the events chronologically.) One repeated theme is marriage, and for the most part (though not entirely) the marriages treated in the book are sad. (Which seems to bode ill for the Sultan's daughter's wedding.) But perhaps more central to the book's theme is Story - the way in which the stories change depending on the teller, or on the focus, or on the outcome, is fascinating. As too is the way Valente toys with our expectations for Story - the way in which familiar patterns are altered.

In the Cities of Coin and Spice gives us The Book of the Storm and The Book of the Scald, completing The Orphan's Tales.

Probably nothing Valente could have done would have matched the impact that In the Night Garden made on me. I read it at a personally very difficult time, when for a few brief days her prose lifted me out of my grief and gave me something new to consider. That book was a blessing for me-- execution and timing interacting perfectly.

Even if it cannot (for me) match the first, In the Cities of Coin and Spice would still be something that I would very much recommend. The Orphan's Tales deserve to be read as a whole. The achievement is impressive-- fractured fairy tales, seemingly completely new; nested stories; characters and motivations both dark and strange.

I have not been a fan of Valente's other work, to be honest, but these volumes are just wonderful. Fairy tales written for grown-ups which still capture the experience of being a child.

I loved this volume just a little bit less. The gap was largely seated in the Tale of the Scald. It felt just a touch too long-- somehow did not catch me as much as the other three sections. But this is a minor quarrel.

Valente is such a good writer. Her style doesn't always work for me, but in these books, it works perfectly. If you haven't read anything in the series, then begin at the beginning.

There's actually not a whole lot I can say about the concluding volume of Valente's The Orphan's Tales. I loved it. I was satisfied. I didn't want to put it down, and thanks to a four-day weekend, I really didn't have to. I did find myself wishing that I'd had the chance to read this volume immediately after volume I because there's a lot of subtle detail and symbols and entangled storylines that I found myself straining to remember. But the good thing is I love these two books so much I look forward to reading them again in the future, back to back, just like I wanted.

The Orphan's Tales is the kind of story that rewards re-reading. I know that when I go back to volume I, I'll get far more out of it now that I know how the whole thing ends. There's a certain kind of joy in that knowledge, and I don't say that lightly, because I don't like re-reading stuff. But this, in its own way, it reminds me of The Lord of the Rings: something rich and developed enough to return to year after year. Granted, the two stories couldn't be more different: Valente's world is rich with diversity, symbolism, feminism, fairy tale, and magic. The way these stories weave themselves together is nothing short of beautiful, and I hear, again and again, that The Orphan's Tales are structured after The Arabian Nights, which I've never read, so I don't know how it really compares, only that Valente's work is a jewel and any fantasy reader's library is sorely lacking if these two volumes aren't a part of it.

Just as lushly written as the first book, I was initially so excited to see what would become, not only of the tattoo-eyed girl and sultan-prince boy, but also more of the lavish world that her tales created. I immediately bought it on the Kindle, and I think that something was lost in the digital translation. The drawings that were so intricate in the first one were blurry and hard to decipher on the screen (excluding the smaller drawings - those were blown up and actually easier to see) and there was just something missing... I am not, of course, entirely sure if that feeling is due entirely to the nature of sequels or due to the nature of digitization, but I do suspect it is the latter. Either way, this is a darker collection of tales and while it does include a nice conclusion, I do still have lingering curiosities and questions. Regardless, this was all in all, a wonderful and mythical addition to the tradition of fairy tales and one that I genuinely enjoyed reading. I will keep an eye out for the print version, too and keep my fingers crossed that an audio version will some day be produced.

I am currently reading this book. It's more of a mind bender than anything else. I would advise taking notes just to see the connections that each sub-story and story-within-story has. It worked with the other book and the imagery alone makes the book very well written.

It's hard to review this book separately from In the Night Garden, because ultimately they're one book in two volumes. And so star ratings are somewhat arbitrary.

Like In the Night Garden, In the Cities of Coin and Spice is a lovely book made up of nested, interconnected stories. The stories are bizarre and fascinating and peopled by interesting, unusual characters. Like the first book, this one contains two "big" stories within the main frame story, and with dozens of nested stories within each of those. I admit to finding the first of the "big" stories here a little disturbing, as it was darker than anything we saw in In the Night Garden, but it is nevertheless very well-told. I also didn't see the pieces coming together at the end of each "big" story in the same exciting way they did in the first book--but here, we see how all the stories come together to form part of the story of the orphan girl, which works very well. Like the first book, In the Cities of Coin and Spice is exceptionally well-written and has lots of strong, complex female characters who have meaningful relationships with each other. Also like the first book, this one has deckle edge pages, which annoyed the hell out of me all over again as I tried to flip back to previous sections as things began to fit together. But that's a minor annoyance in what was a lovely book, one which adds depth to the characters and world we'd previously met, as well as bringing in lots of great new characters and tying everything together well at the end.

Ultimately, I'd recommend The Orphan's Tales to almost anyone, with the caveat that it requires some concentration; I read In the Night Garden and In the Cities of Coin and Spice over about three and a half weeks, during which I was quite busy, and with one other book in between, and despite my being a detail-oriented reader there were occasional references I didn't remember. Ideally you'd read both books over a long weekend with few distractions. One of these days I'll have to read them again--and yes, they are that good.

So very happy with this book! Beautifully written in delicate tongues, it weaves a tapestry of carnelian and brass in a world of fire and dreams.

This book has captivated me. The author has such a way with words and weaving these stories within stories within stories until they all come full circle and join up as a wondrous tapestry.

I am tempted to see if there is an audio version just so I can hear these read out loud.

The closest thing to that is to get S.J. Tuckers two albums of songs that are inspired by these books!

My favorite books outside Jim Butcher in the last 5 years!

This story twines around itself and its predecessor until the reader is snared in a land filled with cloves and fire and monsters that dance in starlight. A beautiful read.

I found this second book of "The Orphan's Tales" less engaging than the first one. This is probably why I so easily put it down after reaching the middle and didn't pick it up until weeks later.

"In the Cities of Coin and Spice" was much darker and less enchanting than "In the Night Garden" and its characters less compelling. I thought the first half ("The Book of the Storm") was extremely disturbing for a book of fairy tales and the second ("The Book of the Scald") was a little too scattered, as if Valente had run out of inspiration and energy. I also felt that all the story threads should have been pulled together better, to tie in with the main orphan's tale.

In spite of my complaints, "In the Cities of Coin and Spice" still was a great book, which I enjoyed a lot for its originality and unconventionality. I still don't think that it holds wide appeal, not everyone will be into this kind of writing. However, if you are in a mood for some original and sometimes downright bizarre fairy tales which break all fairy tale stereotypes and celebrate women, Valente's both books of "The Orphan's Tales" are for you.