Catherynne M. Valente's "Deathless" [1 of 2] - A Voluntary Tension Between Fates

[I originally intended this as a one-off review, but found I had too much to say. As such, I've split it into two parts. And still, there'd be so much to say...]

Kashchey the Immortal by Viktor Vasnetsov, Wiki Commons

The labyrinth is, after all, a devil's trick. Devils know only good tricks.

I came to this book quite by accident, when, in a reading slump, I resorted to AI for good fantasy recommendations. I must admit, I was doubtful at first. I didn't know how I felt about the colorful cover. About Russia through an Occidental lens. About stories and strange birds, and nightmares, and war.

Yet I delved into Catherynne M. Valente's Deathless anyway, and let me tell you, what a good choice it turned out to be. Officially branded as an alternative history book, Deathless is, at its core, a retelling of a well-known Russian fairytale, "The Death of Koschei the Deathless".

spoilers ahead

But then, aren't fairytales, in their way, also alternative history? Stories humming on the air that surrounds you like layers of sleep. As the Jungians correctly identified, it's a foolish thing to turn away from stories and folklore, because they carry in them such a wealth of meaning. Fairy stories aren't mere stories, they are patterns, and arguably that's true for all stories, but for these more obviously than in others. These are tales that show you not only how life is meant to be lived, but also of the dark and unintelligible things that lurk inside you. You can see Jungians like Robert Bly bring out extraordinary things from tales that have populated our collective imagination since times out of mind - because it's not for nothing that these stories survive this long.

Fairytales are magnificent things, and as soon as I opened the book, I fell in love with its archaic style and its colorful description, the subtle exaggerations and the suspension of natural laws. Children love stories, after all.

The book does an interesting thing, it takes a story (deathless in itself, but also timeless) and anchors it to a very specific and very dark time in Russian history - the Russian Revolution (followed, of course, by the war, the Siege of Leningrad, all sorts of terrible things). It anchors it to a specific girl, Marya Morevna, in an effort I could definitely relate with. Fairytales, while starring a specific character, have about them a sort of universality. That's their magic. But in that magic, you also find yourself wondering how, and what specifically would need to occur for such conclusions to be reached in the life of a specific girl. So Valente flips the script a bit and narrows in from the generalizing that is typical in fairytales. to one child.

Against the backdrop of the Bolsheviks coming to power, Marya begins to discover strange, supernatural creatures living inside her house, and even a peculiar old woman who teaches her about the mythos of the world and the various entities that rule the earth, including herself who, as the Tsarina of the Hour, commands misery and misfortune.

In time, Marya encounters other entities, most significantly the Tsar of Life, Koschei the Deathless, thus called after he cut out his own death and hid it away, who charms and takes her away to his kingdom of life and abundance.

Just as the world around her is going to shit, Marya disappears into a mirror world, also not without its perils. What she encounters here, aside from the difficult reality of dedicating your life to someone, is a sister-war to the one currently wrecking Leningrad, the war between Koschei and his brother, the Tsar of Death, Viy.

It seems regardless where she runs, she can not escape the war between the forces of life and the armies of death. So running out of options to hide, she proves her worth (as all must in the world of folklore), and pitches her tent with the army of Life.

To be Deathless is to treat with death in every moment. To stave death is not involuntary, like breathing, but a constant tension, like balancing a glass on the head.

Yet life, ironically, intervenes. As a young girl, Marya discovers a factory of Yelenas, all Koschei's previous wives, and is warned they all betrayed the Tsar of Life by falling for Ivan Nikolayevich (a version of Ivan the Fool, a typical hero in Russian stories), and have now been punished. For every Yelena, she is warned, there is an Ivan. For every soul, a distraction from the war against the Tsar of Death. And mired in the horror of war, of course, years later, Marya comes face to face with her own Ivan, whom she can't help loving, and who eventually takes her away and returns her to the world of men (and a starving Leningrad under siege, where they watch everyone they meet and love die slowly and painfully).

There are grave consequences for losing your way.

...to be continued...