Deathless

Reading this book felt like drinking a pitch-black winter night. That’s the best way I can describe it. Somehow, Valente managed to masterfully bottle the frigid sensation of a bleak midwinter and transport it to the page.

I’ve always loved this book for how mythic and grandiose it feels even in the short amount of pages it has. This is something that I feel would come alive in an animated adaptation where you can really capture the eerie and surrealist imagery used.

Deathless is a lyrical retelling of Koschei the Deathless tales from Russian folklore, combining richly magical elements with historical and cultural details of post-revolution Russia. The novel presents wonderful oddities, such as Stalinist house elves, woven soldiers who fight battles between Life and Death, and bureaucratic dragons. However, the center of this story Marya Morevna, a child of the revolution and a complex character, who is capable of being at once naive, cunning, kind, and sometimes vicious. Throughout the journey of her life, Marya goes through many transformation, first with her marriage to Koschei the Deathless himself. She is tenacious… show more.

Set in Russia during World War II, this is a retelling of The Death of Koschei the Deathless. I was absolutely ensnared by the lush prose and the heart-tugging plight of a girl whose youth was stolen by war and hunger and strife. Though we live in very different times and places, in Marya Morevna I saw myself, a girl who reads Pushkin and feels more comfortable among the impossible creatures that dwell within the walls of her house than with the other kids at school. A girl whose childhood is both magical and frightening, who is one day… show more.

Catherynne Valente is another of those writers whose books you can safely buy sight unseen because you just KNOW that you will get value for your money. I chose Deathless for this list because it is the story of Koschei the Deathless… through the person of Marya Morevna, the woman who is his bride and his undoing. In this re-telling of the Russian fairy tale, which is told through “modern” times and can be both harrowing and bitterly amusing in turn, Valente accomplishes what has been described as “a collision of magical history and actual history, of revolution and mythology,… show more.