I made something of an event of reading The Girl Who Raced Fairyland All the Way Home by Catherynne M. Valente.  It’s not every day (or year) that I read the final book in the best series I’ve encountered in…probably a decade.  I’ve heard it said that you’ll never love a book you meet as an adult with the same devotion that you loved beloved books met in childhood, or in the passionate teenage years.  I find new books to love every year, but Fairyland is the only series that really does approach the same level as, say, the Song of the Lioness (mainstay of my childhood) or L. M. Montgomery en masse (because all her books feel kind of like one series).

So it was no small matter, reading the final book.  I reread all four of the previous books (Circumnavigated, Fell Beneath, Soared Over, and Boy Who Lost) over the span of a couple weeks, and I read with a pencil in hand.  I virtually never underline or highlight books I read, and on the rare occasion when I do, it’s virtually always nonfiction and some variety of philosophy (casting the philosophy net wide enough to include both Thoreau and Brene Brown).  But I reread Fairyland and underlined sentences and paragraphs that were insightful, or deeply clever, or just gorgeous writing–and I probably averaged one to two underlinings per page, for all four books.  They really are that good.

And then I approached book five, The Girl Who Raced Fairyland All the Way Home.  And it thoroughly lived up to all the books that came before it.  Lots of underlining going on here too.  It’s hard to talk about the plot without spoilers–so suffice to say that September and her friends are in a race for the crown of Fairyland, against all Fairyland’s past rulers.  But it’s not a simple race.  It’s a race hardly discernible from a quest, with an occasional foray into magical dueling, and no shortage of strange creatures and obstacles and mix-ups along the way. Continue reading “Book Review: The Girl Who Raced Fairyland” →