“Deathless” by Catherynne M. Valente

I’ve long been a fan of Catherynne M. Valente’s work, but I only recently got around to reading her 2011 novel Deathless. This book retells the folktale of Koschei the Deathless and sets it against the backdrop of the rapid changes in Russian society during the 20^th century, from the Russian Revolution to World War 2.

In addition to Koschei, other figures from Eastern European folklore play important roles in the story as well. During her early life, the main character, Marya Morevna, befriends the house spirit known as the domovaya. Once she arrives in Koschei’s country, she encounters a leshii and a vila. Most notably, Baba Yaga sets her three seemingly impossible tasks to complete before she’ll be allowed to marry Koschei. But Valente doesn’t just rely on name-dropping to make the story feel like a fairy tale. The first section of the book, which details the marriages of Marya’s three elder sisters, is written in a style that deliberately evokes such stories. A later section, in which Marya encounters her sisters once again, is written in a similar style. These are interspersed with parts of the story that take a more realistic tone, creating the impression that Marya is moving back and forth between real and mythological worlds, and that eventually, these worlds bleed into each other.

Valente also uses the story to critique communism and authoritarianism. Throughout the book, the names of Marya’s home city and the street she grew up on are changed to reflect the ideology of whoever’s currently in charge. The residents are expected to act as if these have always been the names of the street and the city, reminiscent of the “We have always been at war with Eastasia” in 1984. One interpretation of a scene late in the book is that the dominance of the Communist regime has stripped the magic and wonder from the world, such that many magical beings have forgotten what they are. (Baba Yaga seems to be the exception, proving that you don’t mess with Grandma if you know what’s good for you.)

This is a complex, multi-layered, at times surreal novel. It’s different from Valente’s other books, and I continue to be impressed by the versatility of her writing.

“Summer of Night” by Dan Simmons

Summer of Night has often been compared to Stephen King’s IT, and with good reason. Six friends living in a small town discover that an ancient, evil force is lurking beneath the surface of an idyllic summer. The adults would never believe them if they tried to tell anyone, so it’s up to them to destroy it before it can bring ruination to their town—and perhaps the whole world.

With all six of the main characters being boys living in the same town, and five of the six being the same age, it would be easy for them to blur into each other. But Simmons imbues each of them with a distinct personality, so I never had trouble telling them apart.

I also loved the atmosphere of the book. Simmons did a great job of evoking the feeling of a seemingly endless summer vacation, close-knit friendships, and the growing sense that soon things are going to change forever. The parts of the book that weren’t about the ancient horror felt really nostalgic.

The climax of the story was wonderful, too. Simmons switches back and forth between different groups of protagonists as the kids put their plan into action. He’s a master of the cliffhanger, pulling the “camera” away from one of the kids just as they’re in mortal peril. And he made sure that all the kids played a role in the ultimate defeat of the monster.

I did feel like the thematics of the ancient evil were a little muddled. The descriptions of the worms and their burrows were wonderfully gross and menacing. But the worms aren’t the only minions the monster has. There are also formerly-human revenants and an amorphous, insect-like darkness that Lawrence glimpses skittering under his bed. There doesn’t really seem to be any connection between these different types of servants. Overall, though, this is a great book that I think fans of King are especially likely to enjoy.

“Drowned Country” by Emily Tesh

I enjoyed Emily Tesh’s debut novella Silver in the Wood and was excited to read this follow-up. I love the idea that the forest “remembers” all the land it used to cover, allowing Tobias to access the past of the forest.

I also liked how this book dealt with the fae. The descriptions of the eerie, desolate landscape of Faerie were vivid, and it felt like a unique take on this mythology.

Tesh has moved on to a very different genre with her novel Some Desperate Glory, but I hope she returns to the world of the Greenhollow Duology. I would love to read more stories about these characters.

“A Prayer for the Crown-Shy” by Becky Chambers

I greatly enjoyed the first installment in Becky Chambers’s “Monk and Robot” series, A Psalm for the Wild-Built. The story continues with A Prayer for the Crown-Shy, in which the tea monk Sibling Dex travels around Panga with the robot Mosscap. Mosscap seeks an answer to the question, “What do humans need?”

I loved seeing the different kinds of communities on Panga. All of them are built on a profound respect both for other people and for the natural world, but they span a wide range of aesthetics and ideologies in other ways. The Monk and Robot books are definitely cozy sci-fi, and this one felt like a travelogue. It was a fun, relaxing read, and Dex and Mosscap were both endearing characters.

Coziness doesn’t mean a complete lack of tension, though. Dex first ventured into the wilderness where they met Mosscap because of a deep dissatisfaction with their life. Although there are moments in the book where they find happiness and contentment, some of that dissatisfaction remains. As a tea monk, they’ve focused their life on helping others, and now they’re aiding Mosscap’s quest to understand what other humans need. But Dex hasn’t, until now, really applied that question to themself. Ultimately, A Prayer for the Crown-Shy is a book about the importance of self-care.

I don’t know whether Chambers is planning to write more works in this setting, but I hope she is. I’ve had a lot of fun following Dex and Mosscap’s adventures, and I’d like to continue doing so.

“The House Next Door” by Anne Rivers Siddons

Most haunted house stories take place in old houses, the more crumbling the better. Anne Rivers Siddons’s The House Next Door is notable partly because the titular haunted house is brand new. At first, Colquitt Kennedy is upset when the lot next to her house, filled with lush vegetation, is purchased for the building of a new home. Her disappointment turns to happiness when she sees how beautiful the house is and befriends the architect who designed it. But that happiness curdles into horror as the house’s sinister aspect becomes apparent.

Maybe the most terrifying aspect of the house is the way it uses people’s own flaws or weaknesses against them. Sometimes that means drawing them back into bad habits they’ve worked to overcome. Sometimes it means driving a wedge into the pre-existing cracks in a family, widening them further. At first, it seems as if Colquitt would offer nothing for the house to latch on to. She’s a kind and generous person without any dark secrets in her past. But several times throughout the story, she wonders if some particular escalation of the house’s malice could have been avoided if she had done a certain thing. Each time, she concludes that it wouldn’t have changed anything. The repetitiveness made me wonder if she was trying to convince herself. Is it possible that passivity, or unwillingness to “cause a scene,” is a flaw that the house uses to get its hooks in Colquitt?

Siddons does a wonderful job of showing the relationships between the characters…and then showing how those relationships fall apart as the characters come under the house’s influence. Three couples inhabit the house over the course of the novel. The book could very easily become repetitive, but Siddons avoids that. Partially, she holds the reader’s interest through relentless escalation of the house’s malice. But another secret to the success of The House Next Door is that each family who buys the house is distinct from the others. Tolstoy wrote that “every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” All the families who move into the house start out with some underlying unhappiness that the house works on. But they aren’t the same. Siddons makes them feel like real people, not just “Future Evil House Victim #2,” so the tension and empathy felt by the reader don’t become dulled by repetition. The House Next Door deserves to stand alongside The Haunting of Hill House and The Shining as classics of the “haunted house/hotel/other dwelling” genre.