This is just gorgeous. Reading Valente is like eating creme brulee--so, so rich.

This is a great mix of medieval mythology--Christian and secular. I love the slanted retellings of familiar Bible stories and the interwoven stories within stories (something Valente does exceptionally well). There's enough plot to make this a compelling story too; sometimes when the language is this wonderful it kind of becomes an end in itself and there's not a lot of forward motion. But I really wanted to know what would happen and am really looking forward to reading the next in the series.

I'll take a tip from my friend Jenny and post a couple favorite quotes from the book.

I reminded myself: when a book lies unopened it might contain anything in the world, anything imaginable. It therefore, in that pregnant moment before opening contains everything. Every possibility, both perfect and putrid.

Love sometimes gives up, loses faith, even hope, and it cannot endure everything. Love, sometimes, ends. But its memory lasts forever, and forever it may come again. Love is not a mountain, it is a wheel. No harder praxis exists in this world. There are three things that will beggar the heart and make it crawl, faith, hope, and love--and the cruelest of these is love.

The Habitation of the Blessed is a gorgeous, weeping kaleidoscope of heresy, and it was exactly what I needed to get me out of a brief reading funk. I already have the sequel on-hand (and can't wait to help make the third book a reality next year), but I'm going to wait just a moment before continuing in this world, because, as so often is the case with Valente, the prose is so rich and beautiful that it leaves me stunned and wallowing like Hiob. I don't know why I let this sit so long on my to-be-read pile, but it feels like discovering a bit of treasure in an otherwise familiar setting.

I know I've waxed ecstatic about Cat Valente's work before, and how she is 100% cracked in the head and I love her. And if I didn't know it already, I would know that now, because oh shit; this book was destined for my 'batshittery ahoy' bookshelf. I can only imagine that the experience was enhanced by the fact that I listened to the audiobook, and the narrator was outstanding.

There are many levels of Christian-colonizer narrative hidden in this fantastic thing, and I feel as though it was overly appropriate for the approaching Indigenous People's Day. But the prose, homg, she KILLS me. I love how she smashes words together and creates these gorgeous passages that I wish I could just yell at people so they can love them as much as I do. And that end!! oof.

Anyway, recommended so much.

My first book finished in 2011, and it was an incredible way to start the New Year. Blending medieval legend with Christian mythology, it tells the tale of Prester John, the fabled Christian king-priest who, according to legend, converted and ruled peacefully over most of Asia, Eastern Europe, and the Middle East. Except in this version, he got there and it was already an Eden, in which anything planted grows into a tree (books, bulbs, and bodies), inhabited by talking lions, gryphons, and blemmyae.

The language is delicious, densely lyrical, something to really savor. Ms. Valente weaves four storylines with ease, then blends them together so perfectly.... This is a gorgeous book. Read it slowly, and enjoy.

I feel sometimes as if I've been in a perpetual conversation with Valente since I picked up her first book. I never thought to relate so thoroughly to any author or work of fiction. As an Orthodox Christian with a more than passing interest in both the theology and mythology discussed, I laughed at many points where she plays with the absurdity of concepts and the literal/figurative contortions of reality and truth. I also ached at the relationship of John and Hagia, having struggled with a similarly religious lover with ideas of sin I could not countenance or comprehend. It may not speak to everyone, and a certain familiarity with the subject matter is required.

The Habitation of the Blessed is based on the myth of Prester John, which I had absolutely no familiarity with. I know I'm missing out on things because it's all new to me, but it did not hamper my enjoyment of the book at all.

The book starts out slow. Very slow. I've read Valente before, and I knew I would be rewarded if I pressed on, but people who are not familiar with her work might be turned off. I would not recommend this as the first book of hers to read.

After the inital slog, I started to feel the rythyms of the book, and as always magic happened. Valente is a master storyteller. Not a master novelist, a storyteller. I cannot quite express what I mean, but there is something so comforting, so wonderful and rewarding about her books. They make me feel like a child again in an odd way - I have all the wonder and awe and eagerness for more as I did when I was hearing fairytales as bedtime stories. That's her trademark. She creates completely believeable, yet utterly fantastical worlds, and while reading you feel like you are there. You feel you know the people. You love them. You visit them in dreams.

The book made me feel a little... not stupid, but soft. It got my scholarly juices flowing. I've been out of academia for a long time, but part of me wants to re-read The Habitation of the Blessed, take notes, research the references, and write a paper. I want a professor to clue me into all the layers I missed because I was reading for entertainment.

I look forward to book 2!