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What Members Thought
Tales within tales, tales out of space, tales that spring from stars that fall from sky to take human shape; the writer writes like the dreamer dreams dreams - some dreams yearning and romantic, others dark and tragic, each dream holding a little bit of the next dream in its heart: the story as Oriental Ouroboros: the Arabian Nights as template, as both starting point and point of resolution; themes and metaphors and symbols slowly surfacing, to disappear and then reappear again, transformed, re
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Stories are told within stories, moving ever inward (or outward), echoing each others themes and characters. A very imaginative take on what it means to be a fantasy archetype--a maiden, a monster, a captain, a witch. Each tells their own story, and the characters in the story tell *their* own story, and so on. Because there's no prolonged narrative tension, nor any one character in every story, the book lost my interest a few times. I'm glad I perservered, because for every lackluster tale ther
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Jul 07, 2009
Michelle
rated it
it was amazing
Shelves:
to-reread,
worldview,
fantasy,
feminism,
book_club,
award_winner,
dtb-own,
fairy-tales,
faerie,
dragons-beasties
a son of a sultan sneaks out of the palace at night to listen to a more-than-half wild creature tell him wonderous tales. she's an orphan of unknown parentage living out in the gardens of the palace, and she has innumerable stories inked across her eyelids that she spins out unfinished night to night like Scheherazade. as the characters in each tale interact with someone else, they begin telling their own tale before finishing the first, resulting in a russian-nested-dolls approach to storytelli
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A literary matryoshka doll, told by a modern Scheherezade. It can be frustrating ("what happens what happens omg she's started another story"), but it's beautifully constructed; Valente keeps her interwoven stories in order and brings them to a satisfying conclusion. Magical elements, good female characters, and an inept prince or two.
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Mar 22, 2009
Danielle The Book Huntress
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Peregrine
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Kara Babcock
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Julie S.
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Maree
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Terry
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Brad
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Dharmakirti
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Figgy
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Eric
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Andy
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Mar 14, 2018
Denise
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Tatjana
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