It's been a week of disappointing sequels in my life. Not that the Girl Who Soared Over Fairyland and Cut the Moon in Two isn't good. It's good, it's just the two prior novels are Oh My Goodness, turn cartwheels, no scoring system goes high enough, amazing. And The Girl Who Soared is good. Maybe even very good, but no better.

Valente's previous works have been a patchwork of disparate settings and characters all loosely bound together in service of a plot, and somehow it just seems to work. Here, the settings are just as magical: a lizard made up of coins guards a cash register that determines your occupation, a whelk has made its shell into a city fueled by its love, acrobats made of paper fold and unfold as they do tricks, and an entire world made up of photographic negatives feature (sadly, while much is discussed about the city of Orrery, which is an Orrery and has every type of "-scope" imaginable, we spend very little time there.) But the threads tying them together feel looser. Zooming from one place to another felt organic and natural in the earlier books. Here it feels frenetic, and I found myself having trouble following why this or that was happening.

Similarly, the other Fairyland books center around themes of Coming of Age and particularly issues of adolescence, in a way that is central, but not overbearing. Here the central theme -- how one develops an identity and how volitional that identity is -- is equally universal and equally foundational to the book, but its inclusion feels more heavy-handed.

I certainly enjoyed the book, and I certainly will keep reading the series, but just as certainly, it pales by comparison. ( )

A nice distraction. ( )

Still beautiful and lyrical and lovely, but it takes awhile to build up to the story. And it gets a little weird, but not in the charmingly weird way the Fairyland books have been so far. ( )

This was gorgeous and amazing as predicted, as one would know if one was reading all the other books in this series. I was so glad to see September reunited with the right versions of her friends, all of them going through new things and reacquainting themselves.

I love the continue play with time (all the September choices, and memories, and her boy's careful, confusing, wonderful timelessness and September's own vanishing and how it effects those who love her), and I cannot even begin to express how madly cackingly gleefully ready for the next book I am based on the last page. Bring it on. ( )

Well this book took me quicker to finish than I thought. I'm in LOVE with this series. I think I liked this book better than the previous book. The last book reminded me of Borges, but this one remind me of Little Nemo at time. It still has that relaxing dream-like atmosphere. I also like the fact this series has creative creatures, this one in particular. I liked the whole part on the moon too. ( )