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.