A novel concept and absolutely beautiful prose.

Here is what I wrote to the author upon finishing this book:

Today I finished reading The Habitation of the Blessed. I love it. This was a book that I approached with some caution, having so loved the short story, having so loved your reading of one of Imtithal's chapters, having felt so near to its construction and so far from its execution -- like you were always speaking to me from that land while asking me for words to seed that rich earth. To read this book, Cat, was to find paths of our conversations twisting and turning, lined with fruit-bearing word-trees that knew me as I knew them.

The truth of things, the depth of them. I kept reading it and thinking this, too, yes, this. I kept thinking of what I wanted to say about it while reading it, and then forgetting what I wanted to say as I read the next sentence, because I couldn't hold this whole world of yours, had to let it run a river through me while I tried to sip it.

At first, I read it slowly. I had to learn its shape, because it was clear to me from the beginning that Hiob's story was not a frame so much as its own fragment. Learning that was important. Reading it was like gathering two armfuls of sand towards me, and then finding as grain piled on grain that there were things to be unearthed from it, that there was a wholeness in these fragments, and how beautiful, how heartbreaking it was to see the narratives knitting together in perfect time to the decay of the texts that held them. And by that point I was reading as quickly as and with an urgency sympathetic to Hiob's.

It's just so brilliant, Cat. It's so brilliant, and so beautiful, and so full of grace.

I love that the bodies of the Blemmye force you to see a person in a body -- that to be a female Blemmye is to forego ever saying "dude, my eyes are up here," because it is impossible to look at breasts without them looking back. It is impossible to make an object, a commodity, of such a body.

I love that trees are made up of people. I love that you have seeded your world with Alexander and Sappho and Saint Thomas. I love the balance of the narratives, I love how every single character fascinates me and makes me want to know them, even John, who is infuriating.

Theotokos is Hagia's daughter, isn't she? I can't wait to hear her voice telling stories, as I think she must in books to come.

I love the Crusades as invented by a peacock with my brother's name.

Cat, I can't even say all I want to say in the length of an e-mail. I love this book that hurt you so much to make, and I want to read more in this world. The things you said in it. This -- this, I think, crystallised in me more than anything else:

That is the purpose of stories, that no matter where we walk in the world, we walk twice: once in the warm sunshine, and once in the silvery light of every tale we have ever heard, seeing each thing as it is, and also as it was.

That is why your mother brought me from Nimat when you were but babies, all the way down the long roads lined in yellow flowers, along the blue river, all full of stones. So that you would know how to walk twice, and so that your stride would be kind.

To walk twice. And I think of The Waste Land, and how you will always be this other walking always beside me no matter where you are, because your words are with me, and I eat the fruit of your book trees and they seed in me and send up shoots through me, and reading your books is to practice some strange, alchemical horticulture of the heart.

I love you, and I love this book so much. Thank you.

This was a very odd but very interesting book--or books, I suppose, since it was sort of like four books in one. I was impressed by Valente's imagination and use of language; every page brought fresh images and vivid wordings. I enjoyed this book, although in some ways it was a little frustrating (many pieces of the narrative are missing, and the further into the book you get, the greater the lapses become), and I look forward to reading the sequel (which sadly doesn't come out until November!).

A habitual reader of fantasy might take this book in stride, but not me. I thought it was completely nuts in the best way possible--challenging and weird and wonderful

Filled me with a strange sense of dread and loss; the inversions in Pentexorean philosophy, the inflexibility of John's faith in the face of his senses... these all tore at me so humanly. Hagia's inaction, the way she lets her love blind her, and it is the most cruel of her emotions... Cat Valente seems to have a way directly to the strings of my heart.

10/1/2018 - reread and still love it at 5/5 stars.

I have the sequel ready to go. I'm always in awe of a writer of fiction who can get at a truth through a character's revelations. When there are several characters with the ability to be layered as allegory as well as fantasy, and they all have revelations and loves, it's divine. When I finished the re-read, I could happily have started at the beginning once more. (but she has so many books I haven't read yet, that I must go forward, not hold still!)

I often find Catherynne M. Valente's work difficult to categorize (unless "Can I read it NOW?" counts as a category). I tend to conceptualize books based on what I read them for - fun characters, well-built fantasy world, interesting philosophical science-fiction, entertaining writer, and so on. But Valente doesn't really fit in to any of those mental maps. I mean, her stories are lovely, but tied up in the fact that her stories, as stories, WORK is the way that she weaves words together into a kind of poetry. Her language is almost spellbinding; it does that thing that I always want fantasy to do - catch you up in itself and make everything seem more vivid, more bright, more perfect. (If anyone has ever read Elaine Scarry's "Dreaming by the BooK", Valente does that thing that Scarry talks about where she uses colors and descriptions of light and opacity to make the images appear before your eyes...I think I've just written a review aimed at the audience of myself.)
Anyway, Valente is one of those authors who I can't help but read, but don't know how to recommend. Books with beautiful language! Books with gorgeous mythic imagery! Books that you don't want to put down because you're worried they're not real and might disappear when you're not reading them!
If any of those speak to you, try this book.

Catherynne Valente is without a doubt one of the most skilled authors working in the fantasy and science fiction genres today. Her prose is dense, and colorful, and detailed-- to wade into it is like immersing oneself in an ocean inhabited by brilliant, impossible fish and corals. Putting one of her books down quite literally feels like surfacing.

"The Habitation of the Blessed" highlights Valente's prowess at weaving multiple, seemingly disparate narratives into a whole and comprehensible story. She takes the kingdom of Prester John and peoples it with extremely human monsters and confused, self-serving humans. She dapples the narrative with metaphor without even once depleting or effacing a character's narrative significance or personality. "Habitation" is a story about love, loss, regrowth. It questions the philosophical relationship between mind and body, teasing apart the distinction.
It takes a fantastical world, and places the reader squarely among its indigenous peoples as the first outside conqueror tries to claim it for himself.

I cannot wait for the next two books.

It has a few narrators. Hiob who is the most recent, a monk transcribing the word of the others. Hagia, John, and Imtithal. Their stories intertwine. There are things left unknown.
I wish it had more illustrations. The map shows what a Blemmeye and a pantoii might look like, but there are so many others I can't imagine very well.
Valente does certainly paint a picture though. I love her writing, I've never read anyone who writes better, prettier, darker, more complex, more creative. She starts often with some existing myth or lore and gives me more to think about and imagine than I thought was possible. She makes the world seem a more interesting place, even though the "real" world doesn't have in it many of the things she writes about. She reminds of possibilities. Her stories are so good.
I have to read Volume 2 to really tell how I feel about this one, but it was a pleasure to read.