レビュー要約

• 濃密な文体と複雑な入れ子構造を楽しむ読者に強く響く。幻想的な美しさの一方で、語りの密度を重く感じる読者もいる。

レビュー

• In the story garden

  Some charmed books seem to expand to fill a universe. You know the world almost from the first paragraph and yet page after page it never ceases to surprise you. The Orphan's Tales is one of those, a long book of tales within tales for story tellers and dreamers and everyone who has ever enjoyed a fable or an Arabian night.

• Tales within tales, dreams within dreams

  Tales within tales within tales, all woven together like a magical, colorful tapestry depicting griffins, dead moon walkers, beastly princesses, princely beasts, pirate saints, Stars, snake gods, and so much more, all written in dark ink around the eyes of a little girl. Reading Valente's prose is like dreaming; during the act, you understand everything and think you see the truth, but when jerked back into reality, the stories fade together into a colorful, abstract image. It's pretty and meaningful, but you can't quite explain the story behind the image as well as you would like to. The book begins with a lonely little girl who lives in the palace gardens. A prince, curious and slightly afraid, meets the little girl, and soon after the two bond in a tender friendship punctuated by midnight meetings in which the girl spins her tales. Her tales are myths of creation, journeys, religion, death, and life, but not as we have heard before. Some of the myths are dark, involving death and violation, but others are whimsical and yearning. A number of fantastical creatures inhabit the pages, all interacting in some way or another, as if existing on a great web. They are spread apart along the plane of the web, but somehow, they are all directly or indirectly connected in this big tapestry of life. In the Night Garden is one of the most unique books that I've read in a long time; it's a book that you read for the stories and the prose, a book in which to meander, not a plot-dominated book that keeps you up at night with non-stop action. Valente's writing is flowery and imaginative, but purposeful. She chooses her words carefully and does not write for the sake of putting words down on paper. It takes a while to get used to the flow and rhythm of her prose, but once you do, you lose yourself in her words and stories, just like the little prince who loses himself in the girl's tales. Sometimes, the tales within tales within tales got confusing, and I lost track of where I was. I was tempted to even make a little map of what happens. But I think that while the book is composed of stories, the stories come together to result in the symphony. Would you attend a symphony orchestra to listen to just the violins or the cellos? Would you try to isolate each section, analyze the single instrument's contribution to the overall whole? Some may, but in doing so, we sacrifice the final symphony for just one instrument. No, we listen for the finished product, to rejoice in how so many different components come together to create beautiful music. That is how this book should be read, as a symphony of well crafted tales that create a more beautiful whole. Approach the book with patience and an open mind. It will all come together in the end as something lovely and unique, I promise.

• Just buy it.

  One of those books that stays firmly lodged in your mind. An assembly of mythic storytelling archetypes in a fresh and engaging package. I even loved the confusing Matryoshka narrative structure. Well worth a read.

• Ein wundervolles Werk der anderen Art

  Kurzbeschreibung: Versteckt im Garten des Palastes lebt ein Mädchen. Man hat sie dahin verbannt um sie leichter ignorieren zu können. Denn einst wurde sie verzaubert. Man zauberte ihr Geschichten auf die Augenlider. Wer genau hinsieht erkennt darauf die Zeilen und Wörter, diese erzählen von Wundern, von Königen, von Meerjungfrauen und Biestern. Man glaubt etwas schlimmes passiere, wenn sie ihre Geschichten erzählt. Sie sieht so anders aus, mit ihren Tattoos um den Augenlidern, ihr Blick schmerzt, so traurig und leer. Doch nach langer Einsamkeit erscheint ein Junge, er ist mutig, er ist neugierig, er hört ihr zu... Meinung: Durch Bücher wie die Fairyland Reihe, habe ich Valente kennen gelernt, durch Deathless habe ich sie dann so richtig lieben gelernt. So wie mir, erging es sicherlich vielen. Da man ja auf die weiteren Fairyland Bände zu warten hat, habe ich mich anderen Romanen von ihr angetan. Zum Glück! The Orphan's Tales: In The Night Garden ist, wie man Valente kennt, kein sehr einfaches Buch. Besonders da es hier nicht für den Massenmarkt geschrieben wurde. Was dem Buch aber ganz besonders seine Würze gibt. Es kommt daher mit einem rauen Seitenschnitt und wunderbaren Illustrationen. Die Geschichte ist auch zunehmend komplexer als das, was ich bisher von ihr las. Ihr könnt es euch in etwa so vorstellen: Ihr lest das Buch, haltet also eine Geschichte in der Hand. - In dem Buch erzählt das Mädchen mit den beschrifteten Augenlidern einem Jungen ihre Geschichten. - In der Geschichte erzählt eine alte Frau einem Prinzen ihre Geschichte. - In dieser Geschichte bekommt sie von ihrer Großmutter eine Geschichte erzählt. - usw... Auch wenn es zuerst wahnsinnig verwirrend klingt, so schlimm ist es gar nicht. Es ergibt sich nur ein ungewohntes Erzählmuster. Denn alles geschieht unter dem Deckmantel der Grundstory, dass das Mädchen in ihrem Garten ihm von sich erzählt. Da es jedoch dann Geschichten in Geschichten sind, handelt es sich mehr oder weniger um einzelne Erzählungen die, wie ein Teppich, flüssig ineinander verwoben sind. Man erhält also keinen direkten Lesefluss einer durchgängigen, geraden, Handlung. Ab und zu springt man dann auch zurück in den Garten und erfährt wieder mehr über das Mädchen. Trotzdem macht aber alles seinen Sinn. Ich konnte dieses Buch wirklich genießen! Es ist wunderbar poetisch geschrieben und man erkennt eindeutig Valentes Schreibstil wieder. Dass man immer tiefer und tiefer in das Geheimnis und diese Welt eintaucht, als wenn man sich durch Lagen wühlt, hat mich richtig fasziniert. Man trifft auch auf altbekannte Geschichten wieder. So lässt Valente mal wieder alte Märchen mit in ihre Geschichten einfließen. Nicht nur europäische, auch asiatische oder russische. Daher habe ich mir dieses Buch auch als erstes zugelegt. Seit langem begeistern mich ja neue Interpretationen alter Märchen. Es ist sicherlich kein Buch für Kinder, so fantasievoll es auch ist. Ein wenig morbide ist es auch. Kann es euch aber nur wärmstens empfehlen wenn ihr auf mystische und märchenhafte Werke steht und keine Angst vor nicht ganz so einfach zu lesenden Büchern habt. Aber ist man erst einmal in diesem Buch drin und hat sich an den Erzählstil gewöhnt, dann merkt man wie man immer tiefer hineingezogen wird! Freue mich schon sehr auf Band 2, The Orphan's Tales: In The Cities of Coin and Spice.

• Tales that twine like ivy

  In years of reading being a fantasy reader; I can firmly say I've never found a book quite like this before. The Orphan's Tales: In the Night Garden is a remarkable piece of storytelling. Undoubtedly influenced by the fantasy, horror and satirical stories in One Thousand And One Nights; the book's opening thread is of a supposed demonically possessed young girl living in a palace garden. Shunned and feared by nearly all around her, the nameless girl tells stories to an equally unnamed boy of the royal court. This allows a linear flow into tales that are vivid, elaborate depictions of magic, blood vengeance, quests, fabulous cities and an incredible range of mythical beings as well as princes, kings, witches, deities and more. There is a touch of a reminder of Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities, as well as Jorge Luis Borges' The Book of Imaginary Beings, for me. What I love are the twists to the characters' stories as they appear, disappear and then are encountered again (akin to music where the refrain is heard once, vanishes, then returns to be touched on again, growing resonant with added details). Also, as another reviewer notes: there are wonderfully depicted female characters and, delightfully, they are all different with none being decoratively simplistic. However, for all the wondrous prose, I do find some elements less satisfying. I like flashes of wit and humour in fantasy writing to add dimension to themes that can, sometimes, become portentous. There are a couple of moments where I smiled or had a quiet laugh (a questing Prince obsessed with formulas and theorems and Grog the Magyr lambasting the uselessness of mermaids), but for many of the stories it seemed absent or it was lost in my reading of it. The structure of the storytelling can be discouraging at times. With so many characters across near fifty stories; it can be difficult to find an emotional connection instead of an intellectual one. It's easy to view some as just another link in a chain, where the fabulously outlandish becomes the everyday, rather than memorable individuals. The stand-out characters are in the stories of The Net-weaver, The Pale Girl and St. Sigrid. The characters' relationships to each other seemed to be far more understandable, and sympathetic, in terms of their motivations and actions. These later tales remain my favourites of the entire sequence. The interior ink drawings by Michael Kaluta (an established and talented comic book artist and illustrator) may have been commissioned to play a similar role as in The Grimm Brothers' Illustrated Tales. It is unfortunate that some of the odd, repetitive, positioning and sizing in the text does not always enhance or complement. For readers looking for a book that is a different take on classical stories, or as adult fantastic fiction, I'd recommend The Night Garden as more than worth the time to become absorbed in. I wouldn't strongly recommend it for people who want a more traditional, epic fantasy novel though.

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