Review of The Boy Who Lost Fairyland (Fairyland, #4) by Catherynne M. Valente

Gorgeous beyond belief.

Her diction and vocabulary rarely misstep. She ensorcells with glittering scoops of wordplay piled high. It’s a rodeo show of intriguing imagery starring absurdly well-read children.
We start out with the changeling scenario. A troll boy’s feeble attempt to pass as a human child. When he meets a similar classmate, we are launched into a rip-roaring adventure through Fairyland.

Dream-logic reigns in this poetic epic of young-adult classical fantasy, resulting cinematic yarn that puts me in mind of the Neverending Story. More ideas and world-building are crammed in here than 40 seasons of some Netflix show you won’t remember two months from now.

It’s a glorious jaunt through a magical place, reminiscent of her inspirations (Crowley, George Macdonald, Thomas the Rhymer, Midsummer Nights’ Dream, Tamsin, etc.) – lots of literary references for a novel in this age range abound, especially in the awesome House Made of Books.
I think the author’s true calling is in the Young Adult genre. This genre does produce a lot of novels that cannot be thoroughly enjoyed by adults who also enjoy unfluffy writing. Valente writes purple, almost mauve, prose, though I love her work for that fact. She unashamedly employs ten or twenty adjectives when four would do. Her similes are beyond the pale. This tale drips with jewels like a ripe pomegranate, it oozes like a churly toad with a nose-ache, it’s various warted and protracted fantasies spin out like a shipwreck in a giant whirlpool, caused by the stirring straw of a ten-eyed decaclops. An merry-go-round of luscious dream-images, pregnant with her inimitable wit. Her humor bludgeons you about like a Spongebob piñata at a little league birthday. You’ll be all wobbly from the creamscicle sweetness of her plum-succulent phrases and gobstopper descriptions.

All the bits and bobs and odds and ends really sell this rollicking, foolish story. Like her earlier entries into this wonderful series, this book can be enjoyed in medias res, without but passing reference to previous installations.

I would love to see her focus solely on similar endeavors instead of the adult version of popular fantasy she currently peddles, weighted down as it is by morbid excesses of the most pointless profanity ever to exist.