Chapter 12: In Which You Never Want to Leave the Enchanted Garden

How do you write a review of your favorite book? I have a hard enough time talking about it. You know when it's one of those books that you want to tell the world about but when you start your words get all jumbled, you can see their eyes kind of glossing over as they nod at you, and you keep interjecting words like "awesome" and "fantastic" in the hopes that they will understand. In the Night Garden by Catherynne M. Valente is that book for me.

I started reading it because of how much I loved the album For the Girl in the Garden by S. J. Tucker who does readings of bits of the stories with songs based on them. Sab got both of the books in the Orphan Tale's Series (this one and In the Cities of Coin and Spice which I will definitely be reading soon) for me as a surprise present and once I picked up In the Night Garden, I had the hardest time in the world putting it down.

The basic story is that there is a girl who was banished to live in the gardens outside the royal palace. When she was a child a curse was put on her where stories were written in such tiny text across her eyelids it looks like a continuous streak of black at first glance. The people of the land see her as a demon child but she cannot be released from her curse until she has someone to listen to the tales. This is hard when everyone is forbidden to come near her. However, when one of the princes finds his way to her he becomes enchanted by her tales and begs her to share them. The best way I have of describing this book is like a nesting doll (we called them Matroyoshka dolls when I was little but that is neither here nor there). One story will begin and then a character in that story will start a tale of their own so you will listen to them for a while, then go back to the frame story, then another person will go. It seems like it could be confusing but everything is interconnected. It's really quite brilliantly done. Going in this fashion it takes about 200 pages for the first story hear to come to its conclusion.

These stories are brilliant new fairy tales full of all your typical tropes: princes, princesses, witches, satyrs, gryphons, pirates but all with different perspectives (that they are happy to share) and mixed in with a generous helping of new creatures like Beast (my personal favorite), skin traders, star gods, body thieves, dog headed monks, and so much more. The world is lush and beautifully explored, it feels so real you don't want to leave when the story is done. This book garners my highest recommendations and I hope some of you will read it so I'll have people to talk to about how awesome it is!

In the Night Garden by Catherynne M. Valente (483 pages)

Judgement: Darkly Enthralling (10 out of 10)