On Neptune people live on great floating boat cities, sailing in an endless sea shared with leviathan monsters on Uranus the lifetime-long winters are moderated by a lively drug culture and on Pluto the necessity of protection from the -270 degree temperatures has inspired a fashion for extravagant masks. In her alternate early 20 th century all of our system’s planets as well their moons have been colonised by humans, each one with a unique ecosystem and environment to which settlers have adapted. The world is her stage and the solar system her set. As the only child of Percival Unck, a director of big budget fantasy films, she has grown up in front of the camera lens. Severin Unck is a documentary film-maker, infamous for the excoriatingly personal tone of her work. If you like your novels spare or clean this one probably isn’t for you. It took close to a week for me to sit down and start this review after I finished the book I needed that long to digest it. Valente’s Radiance, a virtuoso outpouring of language, style, trope and intertext fit to overwhelm any appetite. This is the gastronomic equivalent of Cathrynne M. It’s wonderful and disconcerting and a bit horrifying and deliciously tempting at the same time. The table is groaning, under the physical and the metaphorical weight of the feast. Imagine a table laden with all the food you can think of things you like and things you don’t like cuisines from all around the world the fresh and the fast three thousand calorie freak-shakes next to organic kale salads dessert piled on top of nachos sitting on a bed of pears.

Radiance by catherynne valente