Catherynne Valente - Palimpsest Review

Somewhere beyond sleep, a city wondrous and terrible waits for those who know the way there. Catherynne Valente's dream-fantasy is a brilliantly sensual and poetic tale that follows four strangers who arrive together in the mysterious city of Palimpsest on one night, their fates irrevocably intertwined.

With descriptions that mix steampunk style with a heave dose of the surreal, Valente has created a fantasy realm that is wholly original even as it echoes familiar mythology.

And her characters are as original and as vivid as her setting.

The writing style is descriptive to the extreme. Some the images seem random, but for the most part, the prose is beautiful and effective at conveying a city that mixes the familiar with the utterly alien.

The book follows four plotlines involving four separate lead characters and it takes a while before they get to the point of interacting with each other. This, combined with some of the rules for travel to Palimpsest that the author has established, result in the opening chapters having a redundant feel to them. However, the strong descriptions and engaging characters are more than enough to overcome these structural issues, and the book just keeps getting better as it builds momentum and the four plots become one.

This story is definitely adult material, as sex functions as the mechanism for travel between dimensions and therefore is a constant element of the plot, although it's no more explicit than what would be found in many books in the romance category.

Palimpsest is also a very powerful tale of addiction, loneliness, and the search for understanding in the world and beyond. Palimpsest is one of the most original works of literature I've read recently. It's a book with a ton of depth that does a great job of really evoking the dream-world that it so richly describes.