The Girl Who Raced Fairyland All the Way Home - Hardcover

Valente, Catherynne M.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1250023513 ISBN 13: 9781250023513

Verlag: FEIWEL & FRIENDS, 2016

Inhaltsangabe

This final book in the New York Times-bestselling Fairyland series finds September accidentally crowned the Queen of Fairyland. But there are others who believe they have a fair and good claim on the throne, so there is a Royal Race―whoever wins will seize the crown.

Along the way, beloved characters including the Wyverary, A-Through-L, the boy Saturday, the changelings Hawthorn and Tamburlaine, the wombat Blunderbuss, and the gramophone Scratch are caught up in the madness. And September's parents have crossed the universe to find their daughter.

Who will win? What will become of September, Saturday, and A-Through-L? The answers will surprise you, and are as bewitching and bedazzling as fans of this series by Catherynne M. Valente have come to expect.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

Catherynne M. Valente is the New York Times bestselling author of over two dozen works of fiction and poetry, including Palimpsest, the Orphan’s Tales series, Deathless, Radiance, and the crowdfunded phenomenon The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making (and the four books that followed it). She is the winner of the Andre Norton, Tiptree, Sturgeon, Eugie Foster Memorial, Mythopoeic, Rhysling, Lambda, Locus, and Hugo awards, as well as the Prix Imaginales. Valente has also been a finalist for the Nebula and World Fantasy Awards. She lives on an island off the coast of Maine with a small but growing menagerie of beasts, some of which are human.

Find out more on her website and on Twitter!

ANA JUAN is a world-renowned illustrator known in the United States for her wonderful covers for The New Yorker magazine, as well as the children's books The Night Eater, and Frida, written by Jonah Winter. She lives in Spain.

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The Girl Who Raced Fairyland All the Way Home

By Catherynne M. Valente, Ana Juan

Feiwel and Friends

Copyright © 2016 Catherynne M. Valente
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-250-02351-3

Contents

Title Page, 
Copyright Notice, 
Dedication, 
Dramatis Personae, 
Chapter I. The Queen of Fairyland and All Her Kingdoms, 
Chapter II. Something Not So Grand as a Gryphon, 
Chapter III. An Audience with the Queen, 
Chapter IV. The Once and Future Club, 
Interlude: Sisters Oughtn't Keep Secrets, 
Chapter V. The Cantankerous Derby, 
Chapter VI. The Man from Blue Hen Island, 
Chapter VII. Everything Has a Heart, 
Chapter VIII. Greenwich Mean Time, 
Chapter IX. I Punish, You Punish, He or She Punishes, 
Interlude: Abracadabra, 
Chapter X. Journey to Mumkeep Reef, 
Chapter XI. The Tattooed Penguin, 
Chapter XII. A School of Saturdays, 
Chapter XIII. Inspector Ell and the Case of the Hijacked Heart, 
Chapter XIV. A Detour Through Voleworld, 
Interlude: The Hourglass Waste, 
Chapter XV. The Brave and the Bonkers, 
Chapter XVI. A Troll in the Hand Is Worth Two in the Bush, 
Chapter XVII. A Practical Girl, 
Chapter XVIII. City of Fools, 
Chapter XIX. The Girl Without Warning, 
Chapter XX. The Heart of Fairyland, 
Chapter XXI. Death Comes Round for Tea, 
Chapter XXII. Winds of Change, 
Chapter XXIII. Exeunt on a Leopard, 
About the Authors, 
Copyright, 

CHAPTER 1

The Queen of Fairyland and All Her Kingdoms

In Which We Begin Just Precisely Where We Ended, Far Too Many People Talk All at Once, an Emperor Gets Himself Stabbed, Queen September Makes Her Inaugural Speech, and a Wondrous Race Is Scheduled for Thursday Next

Once upon a time, a country called Fairyland grew very tired indeed of people squabbling over it, of polishing up the glitter on the same magic and wonder and dashing dangers each morning, of drifting along prettily through the same Perverse and Perilous Sea, of playing with the same old tyrants and brave heroes every century. Because she was quite a large and opinionated country, and because she was as old as starlight and twice as stubborn, and because she had a mountain range on her left border that simply would not be bossed about, Fairyland decided to do something about it one day in March just after her morning tea.

A vast and hungry country takes tea somewhat differently than you and I. Fairyland's teatime consisted of a dollop of rain in the Autumn Provinces, a particularly delicate icing of clouds over the Painted Forest, a healthy squeeze of blazing sun in the Hourglass Desert, and a fresh, green wind blowing wild through the streets and alleyways and secret corners of Pandemonium.

The Green Wind sailed through the tufted wool cupolas and brocade bridges and taffeta towers of the capital city. He banked off felt and bombazine memorial statues, twirled on his left toe on the copper silk tip of Groangyre Tower, and stopped to kiss every black lace gargoyle on every rooftop and balcony in the place. He was a handsome thing, with a neat little pointed green beard and dancing green eyes. He was dressed in a green smoking jacket, and a green carriage-driver's cloak, and green jodhpurs — but he had left behind his green snowshoes in his flat in Westerly and swapped them out for green winklepicker boots. Fairyland is warm in March, which is not called springtime, but Bideawhile, for Fairyland has not four seasons, but five and one quarter. In Bideawhile, the bare winter trees put forth tiny paper buds, and on these buds are written secrets, memories, tales only trees can tell.

The Green Wind finished freshening up every curtain and front stoop in town. He straightened his green cravat and soared over the Janglynow Flats, through Hallowgrum and Seresong, stopping only for a short coffee at his favorite crinoline café, and then, without further dawdling, straight through the satin green of Mallowmire Park, to a certain window in a certain palace. The certain palace was called the Briary; of all the lovely towers and castles in Pandemonium, it alone was not made of silk or wool, but of living vines, briars, trellises, and flowers that bloom all year long. The certain window belonged to the Queen of Fairyland.

Pink and yellow peonies chased each other round the window frame. A bluish yellow light fluttered over the walls of the Queen's bedroom, where wild dahlias of every color crowded together, as close as wallpaper. The light came from a hard-working hurricane lamp on the Queen's table. The room stood quite bare except for that humble table, two armoires, and the Royal Desk. The Royal Desk was carved out of a single enormous crystal tree that some brave window-maker cut down long ago in the Glass Forest. It still glowed with fiery hot colors though it was a thousand years old and counting. Rich green and violet and scarlet and orange blankets towered on a small thin bed like an embroidered mountain, for the work of a Queen often takes all night long, and even monarchs need naps, from time to time.

But the Queen was not asleep in her bed or at work at her desk. In fact, the Queen had not yet even seen that bed, nor jumped up and down on it even once. The room stood quite empty and prim and full of anticipation, waiting to be useful. The Green Wind made his apologies and sailed out into the sunny sky. He swirled down the buttercup and begonia walls of the Briary, past the tearooms and the coffee-rooms and the saucer-rooms, to quite another window.

This window was round the back, very tall and thin and serious, like a church window, but it offered a far more interesting view than an empty desk and a hurricane lamp at the end of its oil and its wits. The Green Wind put his green eye to the window and saw several alarming things inside: a broken Dodo's Egg (along with its Dodo), an enormous scrap-yarn wombat, a talking gramophone, a great red Wyverary, a Marid, a troll, a girl carved out of wood, a Redcap, and about a hundred people, animals, Fairies, and other assorted creatures with the power of frowning and shouting, all drenched in jewels and velvet, all expressing those powers of frowning and shouting as hard as they could. In the midst of it all stood the Queen, looking as baffled as a goose in calculus class.

And so the final dish in Fairyland's tea was a heaping, hideous, unruly platter of shouting, stomping, and rather unskilled fisticuffs.

"You shut up!" screeched Hushnow, the Ancient and Demented Raven Lord, who collected all the bright and shining things from all the worlds and hoarded them in Fairyland before the days of the week had names. Warm sunshine danced through the blooming walls of the Briary's great hall. Light bounced off the Raven Lord's onyx-armored wings.

"Emperors do not shut up!" roared Whipstitch, the Elegant Emperor, who ruled Fairyland with a silken fist five hundred years before your grandmother learned to dance. The golden buttons on his peacock-blue cloak trembled in fury.

"Has anyone got a rowan branch?" trilled Titania sweetly — and I'm sure I needn't tell you who she is. She stared down a certain pale giant by the name of Gratchling Gourdbone Goldmouth, with angry red stitches running all up and down his tattooed skin and SPALDING written on his back in a lovely hand. "It's just the thing for giving jumped-up sporting equipment a good hiding."

Goldmouth bellowed rage at the palace hall.

"And you I'll have for a coat," Titania purred to Reynaud the...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: FEIWEL & FRIENDS
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2016
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1250023513
• ISBN 13: 9781250023513
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Zeichner: Juan Ana
• Anzahl der Seiten: 320
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Feiwel and Friends; https://us.macmillan.com/publishers/feiwel-and-friends/; ; 120 Broadway; New York; NY; 10271; USA
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar