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

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.

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 mos

Stories within stories, interwoven with both a modern and classical sensibility. Beautiful written and conceived. A delight for any adult who loved fairy tales and myths as a child.

It is rare to find a duology this complex, multifaceted and complete. The author uses beautiful, evocative language to tell layer upon layer of strange, beautiful stories. She wraps everything up in a totally delightful way. If you love fairy tales, fantasy books, or wonderful language you need to read this duology. There are very few books that can compare to the wonder of the Orphan's Tales.