Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Plot Summary: Four scattered individuals enter Palimpsest after having mindless, thoughtless, impulsive sex with a person bearing a map-like tattoo (ah-hem, with no consideration for gender). This unexplainable land feels disjointed and distorted like a dream. Nothing is tangible or nailed down, and horrors and pleasures wash over our characters in equal measure. Once someone visits Palimpsest, their skin is marked forever with the map tatoo, and some unfortunates get it smack on their face. I particularly envy the lady who got it on her tongue. It's been a while since I've encountered a book I couldn't, or wouldn't finish, but when reading feels like a chore, rather than a pleasure, it's time to move on. I have a love-hate feeling for this novel, because part of me is awed by the pure poetry of the images Catherynne Valente brings forth. Some of her sentences should be framed and mounted on a wall, like art. They were simply gorgeous. But, and there is a big BUT here, I never felt like there was something I could grab onto. I was lost in this mad, beautiful, horrible dream, and I just wanted to wake up and put my feet on solid ground again. Valente never lets the reader ground herself on terra firma, or get a sense that here is one world, and there is the other. The two worlds mix and blend together until I was dizzy and wanted to throw up. The writing is very close to pure poetry, and it drove me mad trying to piece together the disconnected fragments of this story. It's a hard, hard read, and I need so much more structure in a story to feel happy there. I can't help wishing that the earth-bound parts of the story reflected a hard, cold reality, and thereby provide a juxtaposition between the living and dreaming. It was an intriguing vision, but one that I could not hold onto.