Sometimes books just come along at the right time. I don't mean that you read a book in September and the main character is named September. Although that was also true in this case. I mean that you don't know you're starving for a rollicking, frolicking fairytale until you open it up and get swept away, realizing by the end of the first page that your eyes are smiling and your heart is poised to soar. ⁣
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This is a classic, Victorian-style fairytale reminiscent of Lewis Carroll, Frank L. Baum, and George MacDonald. It's actually even more classic than that — it's a retelling of the Greek story of Persephone. But you needn't bother with that if you just want a tale "in which a girl named September is spirited off by means of a leopard, learns the rules of fairyland, and solves [a good many] puzzles." It's full of shiny, absurd, familiar, foreign, poignant things. Absent wartime fathers and strong mothers, spriggans and pookas, Midwest boredom and glorious stars, sentient smoking jackets and lamps, doing dishes and going on quests, golems made of soap and wyverns begat by libraries. There's rest and struggles, there's heartlessness and blood, there's heartfullness and more struggles and more rest. It's not a clean, sanitized tale, but it's a good one. And now, on the eve of fall, is a perfect time to read it. Especially if your soul needs a good, old-fashioned fairytale.⁣
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Content notes: references to child abuse, painful oppression and abuse of power, wrestling and brawling, life-threatening injury, deceit