Review: The Habitation of the Blessed by Catherynne M. Valente

Title: The Habi­ta­tion of the Blessed: A Dirge for Prester John Vol­ume 1

Author: Cath­erynne M. Valente

Pub­lisher: Night Shade Books

Date (to be) Pub­lished: Novem­ber 2010

Syn­op­sis: (from publisher’s website)

This is the story of a place that never was: the king­dom of Prester John, the utopia described by an anony­mous, twelfth-​​century doc­u­ment which cap­tured the imag­i­na­tion of the medieval world and drove hun­dreds of lost souls to seek out its secrets, inspir­ing explor­ers, mis­sion­ar­ies, and kings for cen­turies. But what if it were all true? What if there was such a place, and a poor, bro­ken priest once stum­bled past its bor­ders, dis­cov­er­ing, not a Chris­t­ian par­adise, but a coun­try where every­thing is pos­si­ble, immor­tal­ity is eas­ily had, and the West­ern world is noth­ing but a dim and dis­tant dream?

Brother Hiob of Luzerne, on mis­sion­ary work in the Himalayan wilder­ness on the eve of the eigh­teenth cen­tury, dis­cov­ers a vil­lage guard­ing a mirac­u­lous tree whose branches sprout books instead of fruit. These strange books chron­i­cle the his­tory of the king­dom of Prester John, and Hiob becomes obsessed with the tales they tell. The Habi­ta­tion of the Blessed recounts the frag­mented nar­ra­tives found within these liv­ing vol­umes, reveal­ing the life of a priest named John, and his rise to power in this coun­try of impos­si­ble rich­ness. John’s tale weaves together with the con­fes­sions of his wife Hagia, a blemmye–a head­less crea­ture who car­ried her face on her chest–as well as the ten­der, jew­eled nurs­ery sto­ries of Imtithal, nanny to the royal fam­ily. Hugo and World Fan­tasy award nom­i­nee Cath­erynne M. Valente reimag­ines the leg­ends of Prester John in this stun­ning tour de force.

Extra: Read an excerpt here: Prester John Online

Where Did It Come From?

I pur­chased it from Amazon.

Why Did I Choose It?

I love Valente’s work and can­not wait for more.

My Review:

This tree bore nei­ther apples nor plums, but books where fruit should sprout.  The bark of its great trunk shone the color of parch­ment, its leaves a glossy, vibrant red, as if it had drunk up all the col­ors of the long plain through its roots.  In clus­ters and alone books of all shapes hung among the pointed leaves, their cov­ers obscenely bright and shin­ing, swollen as peaches, gold and green and cerulean, their pages thick as though with juice, their sil­ver rib­bon­marks flut­ter­ing in the spiced wind.

How could you not fall prey to a book with such ele­gant prose as that one paragraph?

Valente has again stolen my heart and added another book to my keeper shelves.  She uses impres­sively vivid imagery to detail a rich and pow­er­ful tale of four sto­ries that at first seem dis­jointed and con­fus­ing, but before long you are swept along the cur­rent of each stream and can­not bear to step away for even just a moment until they meet and mix together a great river you wish would never meet its end.

I stared at my pre­vi­ous three books with the eyes of a starv­ing child – could I not some­how devour them all at once and know their con­tents entire?  Unfair books.  You require so much time!  Such a meal of the mind is a long, ardu­ous feast indeed.

How joy­ful would it be to sim­ply con­sume a book as you do an apple? With every bite, knowl­edge, and every drop of juice, words?  What more could I ask for if it were only that sim­ple.  And yet, with­out ded­i­cat­ing that time to a book, to read it, envi­sion the char­ac­ters and set­ting, would it truly be as mean­ing­ful or wonderful?

… 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.

While this review has given away noth­ing in regards to the three sto­ries within a story, I hope that it has drawn you, with a few small glimpses, into a book that you will rush out to pick up and read for your­self.  It is well worth your time, and while its pages are few, don’t worry if you should lose your­self within and take longer to reach the end.

And with that, I leave you with one last tid­bit from an astound­ing piece of work.

Love is hun­gry and severe.  Love is not unselfish or bash­ful or servile or gen­tle.  Love demands every­thing.  Love is not serene, and it keeps no records.  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 harsher 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.

Note: per­haps you think I gave this rave reviews only because I’ve loved her other books?  Here are some oth­ers who share their thoughts after read­ing this book as well.

The Lit­tle Red Reviewer

The Book Smugglers

Fan­tasy Books Cafe