Spring 2109 (Netgalley, Audible, & Kindle);

Where do I even begin with this novel?

I have been meaning to read this novel since long before it was released. I received this book as an ARC from Netgalley, and picked up the Audible and Kindle versions as soon as they were available but even with all three I had not sat down and devoured it, even as I'd plowed through so much else that Valente had written from Labyrinth forward. I think because I knew how long this would sit with me, and how true it would bleach itself into my bones.

(As a cute beginning aside-

This novella begins "I'm dead. The deadest girl in deadtown," and continues to pluck and interview with the words of Holly Black short story-then-novel 'The Coldest Girl in Coldtown,' the alliterative mimicry of both likely fusing them forever into my mind. )

This novella is a love letter style fuck you to the Patriarchal White Male Superhero of decades, told in the style of the The Vagina Monologues about by the 'Women in Fridergators' as Gail Simone termed them. These are the stories of girlfriends and wives, who always bare the brunt, the abuse, and often the role of the murdered on the path of Responsibility and Greatness for The White Patriarchal Male Superhero.

This work is comprised of six stories of such women, in the "Hell Hath Club" with meets in Dead Town, told from each of their point of views. Each character is very clearly based on a specific, identifiable female from six different comics (Marvel and DC both), whom have been fridged in any (and often many) numbers of way by the universe they were in. They all tell a harrowing story of the life they had before and then after superpowers/superheroes came into their lives, with a sharp close look at the razor wire gender and genre tropes that cut them off at the knees at every turn after.

The writing in these pieces if fierce and fearless, coming for your blood and the love of anything that touched that world, to strip it bare from your hands. Cat pulls out all the stops for these pieces, eviscerating the roles when have been shoved into from good girl to whore, from sane to insane. The requirements of each role and the unsettled feelings the men around them get if they try to step outside of any of these roles, to claim fame, to grow larger, to be uncontrolled, or require respect, or even to want to walk away.

I won't give you any spoilers, but my favorite story was the one for Julia Ash (which I am sure none of you are truly surprised about since I've been in love with her comics counterpart since I was five years old, and I have torn the world asunder on number of these issues for decades of her comics arcs).

A deep and favorite love. Advised reading to all.