I first heard about Deathless (2011) by Catherynne M. Valente five years ago as a book similar to the "Shadow and Bone" trilogy by Leigh Bardugo. And I want to start by falsifying that statement: these books are nothing alike. They share types of characters and both have Russian-inspired settings, but that is where the similarities end. Deathless is a dark and gritty tale of wars that took me by surprise and left me obsessed. It's ruthless and whimsical and magical and devastating. It's unforgiving in such a way you can feel it in your marrow.
“I have survived, but I have not been spared.”
A handsome young man arrives in St Petersburg at the house of Marya Morevna. He is Koschei, the Tsar of Life, and he is Marya's fate. Koschei leads Marya to his kingdom, where she becomes a warrior in his tireless battle against his own brother, the Tsar of Death. Years pass. Battle-hardened, scarred by love, and longing for respite, Marya returns to St Petersburg - only to discover a place as pitiful as the land she has just fled: a starveling city, haunted by death. - Synopsis
First, I need to mention that I lack knowledge about the setting and the folklore the book is built upon. Thus, this will not be a review critiquing the folktales or who can write and represent these myths and eras. This will be review is solely my reaction to the work and its entertainment value to me. In similar words, I went in blind and naive to the context, taken with the promises of a "historical Russian setting" and "Slavic folklore." I think that is also where a lot of my confusion stemmed from at the beginning of the story, and I didn't read up on it before I closed in on the end, wanting to make sure I better understood the context of the book as it seemed to move outside the little knowledge I had. Ultimately its merge with historical events was what made this book unforgettable, and I regret I did not know more about the source material before I opened the book. Yet, I am not sure if it would have surprised me as much as it did if I knew the original folk tales.
The first thing that stood out to me was the prose. It is different from anything else I've read. At first, I struggled with it, but now it feels like I have been nested in a nice, warm house (the irony). I've been reading this book in sips since mid-June, so it is expected that I have grown accustomed to the tone of this universe.
What startled me, was how devastating this book turned out to become. The backdrop of the wars starts as a subplot about the progress of the wars, and how the Tsar of life and the Tsar of Death are always at war, and "the war is always going badly." We notice how the territories shrink and expand as a reflection of them, and how every death is a new soldier for the other side, and how life gets displaced. Then, at a point, Marya returns to Leningrad which "was once called St. Petersburg, then Petrograd, then Leningrad, and then, much later, St. Petersburg again," and re-enters the real world during the Second World War.
Chapter 23 is the worst chapter I've ever read in many right ways. It's cataclysmic. It's so utterly godforsaken, that I struggled to read through and past this point in the book. Until now, it has been a villain-steals-maiden plot, a ruthless-abusive romance arc, a she-needs-to-learn-to-become-cold-and-cruel-like-life-arc, how-can-I-save-the-other-Vasilisa/Yelena, and so on. And now we have the Siege of Leningrad in the early 1940s. 600-800k people starved to death.
“A ration card says, This much life we have allotted you. It says, This much death we can keep from your door. But no more. It says, In Leningrad there is only so much life to go around. It says, The only thing not rationed in Leningrad is death."
"(...) she cried, but without tears, because you cannot have tears without bread.”
When I think back, the coldness associated with life was promised early in the book. I expect life to be warm and plentiful, but this book starts out in a Russia where food is scarce and winters are harsh for the common folk, and it returns to a Russia where the situation is even worse. Where Life rests its fight.
"(...) the strong and the cruel still sit on the hill, and drink vodka, and wear black furs, and slurp borscht by the pail, like blood. Children may wear through their socks marching in righteous parades, but Papa never misses his wine with supper. Therefore, it is better to be strong and cruel than to be fair. At least, one eats better that way. And morality is more dependent on the state of one’s stomach than of one’s nation.”
This book is written in the third person so you always have a certain distance from the characters. That might be one of the reasons why I did not feel particularly much for the romance part of the plot. It felt cold even during its explicit scenes. The sex always felt obsessive, a tug of war of "who's to rule" where Marya is still an abduction victim. She learns the rules of the play even if she can "never be queen." In the original folktale, she's supposed to be a mightier character than what she's given credit for in this book. Still, I noticed her strength growing as she moved through the plot beside Koschei, and how she learned to express strength was not compatible with Ivan's groundedness later on. Despite this, their actions show that there was a relationship of sorts going on even if it was messed up. I think little says it as Koschei himself, “I do not tolerate a world emptied of you."
This book wanders in fairy tale devices. Repetition is something you'll notice quite frequently. It's not an annoying type of repetition. It often most set the setting or is a phrase repeated but gently changed to fit another character and scene. It also makes an argument for reputation inside the book, fairy tales repeat themselves, told from mouth-to-mouth, always with predestined endings, and this is a book based upon fairy tales - if you know the folktale, you likely know how it ends. Also, in Part 2, we get the most fairytale-like scenes of the book, the small advances towards happiness. We also meet mythological creatures like the firebird, a three-headed dragon, the domovoi (house spirits), and villainous figures like Baba Yaga.
"Walk the same tale over and over, until you wear a groove in the world, until even if you vanished, the tale would keep turning, keep playing, like a phonograph, and you'd have to get up again, even with a bullet through your eye, to play your part and say your lines.”
Something I took note of was how the realm of the Dead\Viy's country was portrayed. It is said to be a place where "the death can live anew in peace and suffer no more." They also turn into ghosts whose hunger for life never ends. I've noticed similarities between Norse and Slavic mythology before, and I'm curious if this could be one of these instances as well.
There are many things I could discuss from this book, examples to use, and themes that occur. Yet, I have to conclude at a point. I loved this book. I struggled with it, I grieved with it, and at parts, reveled in the mythical wonders of it. The premise was always dark and it surpassed my expectations by miles. I am sure there are many things I've missed and overlooked after having only read this book once. When I pick it up in the future, it need to do more than simply experience it to better grasp the journey I've been through. It's not one I'm forgetting soon.
Rating: 5\5
Trigger warnings:
Abusive relationship\sex, starvation\famine, abduction, death (a lot of it), force-feeding.
Information:
Format: Paperback Genre: Alternative history, mythology, fantasy Demographic: Adult Number of Pages: 352 Year of publication: 2011 Series: Standalone
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