The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making by Catherynne M. Valente

The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making (goodness gracious that’s a long title) by Catherynne M. Valente is a wonderfully imaginative modern fairytale about a girl who circumnavigated Fairyland in a ship of her own making. September is a twelve-year-old girl who lives in Omaha, Nebraska. Her father is away at war and her mother is always working. Because of this, when September gets the chance to travel to a new magical and exciting world, she jumps at the chance to leave her boring home in Omaha. However, Fairyland isn’t what it used to be. The Good Queen Mallow has been killed by the Marquess and Fairyland is now kept under a set of strict rules: fairies’ wings are locked up, taxes are imposed upon its residents, and there’s now a greenlist barring some people from entering the magical kingdom. The Marquess’ laws have spread everywhere that September goes on her adventure. September and her rag-tag group of friends—a wyverary named A-through-L and a marid named Saturday—are forced to go on a quest for the Marquess and have no choice but to accept.

Along the way, September meets a lot of really well developed and unique characters. Every single one had a clear personality and habits and it was really quite fun and interesting to wait and see what the next character would be like. I especially adored A-through-L, a wyvern who had encyclopedic knowledge of the first third of the alphabet, and they were just such a creative character as well. It’s just so impressive how they all actually have their own traits, because there are just so many of them. Sometimes they did have kind of similar personalities, but for the most part, they were really creatively imagined and really did add to the story, which goes straight into my next point: everything and everyone is in the story for a reason.

When you take a step back and think about it, you could really come up for a bigger reason for each of the characters being in the story. They aren’t just there for their own little chapter or to bump the plot along, but they raise the stakes and add explanations for the bigger story/plot in general. 

I also thought that the narration was rather interesting. It wasn’t narrated in a traditional way, but they were a little more detached and often broke the fourth wall to “talk” to the reader. I can see how some people could find it annoying or how it makes it so that it’s harder to really see how September is feeling, but I think that September’s emotions were able to come through and this type of narration added to the whimsy and quirkiness of the novel.

I have a YouTube channel where I animate some of my book reviews! Be sure to check it out at: www.youtube.com/@theeccentricbookshelf.

The book wasn’t all incredible though. For starters, September DIDN’T EVEN GET THE BOAT UNTIL WE WERE 80% OF THE WAY INTO THE STORY. Frankly, I feel ripped off, scammed, lied to, tricked, swindled, and absolutely boondoggled (I had to look that one up). It also did get a little gory and violent towards the end, which wasn’t too big of a problem, it was just unexpected and didn’t seem to follow the tone in the beginning. It’s not the most exciting story either. It didn’t grab my attention like The Last Dragonslayer or The House in the Cerulean Sea, and, in part, I think it was due to the way the story is written. I love all the fancy words and it really does help with achieving the vibe of a Victorian fairytale, but it’s not quite as good for action or for faster-paced scenes.

However, the book was pretty enjoyable and there’s a HUGE plot twist at the end (it’s crazy) and could definitely teach little kids morals or whatever if you’re interested in that. I thought that it was quite sad in some places and, again, I utterly adored the characters. There are more books in the series, but I’m not dying to read them like I was for the sequels to The Last Dragonslayer. Overall, it was a pretty enjoyable book with really fun characters (yes. I said it again. I really like the characters, okay?) and a really magical/whimsical/fantastical/fantastic read.