Palimpsest
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Narrated by:
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Aasne Vigesaa
About this listen
Between life and death, dreaming and waking, at the train stop beyond the end of the world is the city of Palimpsest. To get there is a miracle, a mystery, a gift, and a curse - a voyage permitted only to those who’ve always believed there’s another world than the one that meets the eye. Those fated to make the passage are marked forever by a map of that wondrous city tattooed on their flesh after a single orgasmic night.
To this kingdom of ghost trains, lion-priests, living kanji, and cream-filled canals come four travelers: Oleg, a New York locksmith; the beekeeper November; Ludovico, a binder of rare books; and a young Japanese woman named Sei. They’ve each lost something important -- a wife, a lover, a sister, a direction in life—and what they will find in Palimpsest is more than they could ever imagine.
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Yasodhara tells the story of her own Sinhala family, rich in love, with everything they could ask for. As a child in idyllic Colombo, social hierarchies, their parents’ ambitions, teenage love shape Yasodhara and her siblings’ lives, and, subtly, the differences between Tamil and Sinhala people; but the peace is shattered by the tragedies of war. Yasodhara's family escapes to Los Angeles. But Yasodhara's life has already become intertwined with a young Tamil girl's.
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Pronunciation
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Grim
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Inspired by classic fairy tales, but with a dark and sinister twist, Grim contains short stories from some of the best voices in young adult literature today: Ellen Hopkins, Amanda Hocking, Julie Kagawa, Claudia Gray, Rachel Hawkins, Kimberly Derting, Myra McEntire, Malinda Lo, Sarah Rees-Brennan, Jackson Pearce, Christine Johnson, Jeri Smith Ready, Shaun David Hutchinson, Saundra Mitchell, Sonia Gensler, Tessa Gratton, Jon Skrovron.
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amazing
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Max Tivoli is uniquely cursed. His mind ages normally, but he is born with the withered body of a 70-year-old man, and his body ages in reverse. Despite this torment, Max manages three times to cross paths with Alice, the woman who captures his heart. Because he appears to be a different person each time they meet, Max has three chances for true love.
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odd premise, but it works!
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In a city devastated by an epidemic, where survivors are all missing parts - an arm, a leg, an eye - Nell has always been an outsider. Her father is the famed scientist who created the biomechanical limbs that everyone now uses. But she's the only one with her machinery on the inside: her heart. Since the childhood operation, she has ticked. Like a clock, like a bomb. And as her community rebuilds, everyone is expected to contribute to the society's good, but how can Nell live up to her father's revolutionary ideas?
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Incredible.
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My name is Etan, and I am Adorned. A living piece of art, I exist to please the divine rulers of Kered. With nowhere to turn after my father died, I tried my luck in the capital city. Little did I know how quickly I would be robbed, beaten and forced to sell myself into servitude. But I was lucky enough to gain the attention of Roberd Tallisk, an irascible but intriguing tattoo artist who offered to mark me with enchanted ink for the enjoyment of the nobles. I was given a chance to better my station in life, and I could not refuse.
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Bloody Brilliant...until the last few chapters
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Because You Love to Hate Me
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In this unique YA anthology, 13 acclaimed, best-selling authors team up with 13 influential BookTubers to reimagine fairy tales from the oft-misunderstood villains' points of view. These fractured, unconventional spins on classics like Medusa, Sherlock Holmes, and 'Jack and the Beanstalk' provide a behind-the-curtain look at villains' acts of vengeance, defiance, and rage - and the pain, heartbreak, and sorrow that spurned them on. No fairy tale will ever seem quite the same again!
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I enjoyed more than I expected
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By: Ameriie - editor
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San Francisco, 1915. As America teeters on the brink of world war, Charmian and her husband, famed novelist Jack London, wrestle with genius and desire, politics and marital competitiveness. Charmian longs to be viewed as an equal partner who put her own career on hold to support her husband, but Jack doesn't see it that way...until Charmian is pulled from the audience during a magic show by escape artist Harry Houdini, a man enmeshed in his own complicated marriage. Suddenly charmed, Charmian's eyes open to a world of possibilities.
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Who Knew...?
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The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender
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Magical realism, lyrical prose, and the pain and passion of human love haunt this hypnotic generational saga. Foolish love appears to be the Roux family birthright, an ominous forecast for its most recent progeny, Ava Lavender.
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Beautiful and Haunting Fairytale
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Star-crossed lovers, meddling immortals, feigned identities, battles of wits, and dire warnings: these are the stuff of fairy tale, myth, and folklore that have drawn us in for centuries. Fifteen best-selling and acclaimed authors reimagine the folklore and mythology of East and South Asia in short stories that are by turns enchanting, heartbreaking, romantic, and passionate. From fantasy to science fiction to contemporary, from romance to tales of revenge, these stories will beguile listeners from start to finish.
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great stories, terrible narrators
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Jen Williams, acclaimed author of The Copper Cat trilogy, featuring The Copper Promise, The Iron Ghost and The Silver Tide, returns with the first in a blistering new trilogy. The great city of Ebora once glittered with gold. Now its streets are stalked by wolves. Tormalin the Oathless has no taste for sitting around waiting to die while the realm of his storied ancestors falls to pieces - talk about a guilt trip. Better to be amongst the living, where there are taverns full of women and wine.
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Couldn’t put it down!
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By: Jen Williams
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What listeners say about Palimpsest
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Michael G Kurilla
- 06-20-21
Somewhere to end up when something is lost
Catherynne M Valente's Palimpsest concerns four individuals who each have lost something. Chance encounters with random people who possess a tattoo of part of a map of a city as well as sexual relations with these individuals permits transfer to Palimpsest which offers the promise of finding what they lost. Each has a unique history to relate, while they learn to navigate this new landscape.
Each individual has a detailed backstory of how they came to be, along with their involvement with what they have lost. Palimpsest as a place is a confusing locale with an eclectic set of inhabitants who all seem to know what they are doing and exhibit ease and comfort with an environment that is both hauntingly familiar and equally bizarre. In the end, the search itself and acceptance is more important than the missing item.
The narration is acceptable, although the frequent scene shifts could have been helped with a bit more character distinction.
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Overall
- J. Miles
- 11-25-20
Catherynne Valente never ceases to amaze
Clearly a fae creature herself, Ms. Valente blends her worldly and other worldly experiences using vivid vocabulary to transport you to places you could never have imagined, titillating your senses every step of the way. Unlike her fairyland series which is highly recommended for children of all ages, this book is not for children. While I love hearing Ms. Valente narrate her own tales, this narrator does not disappoint! The accents and emphasis bring this story to life, and though I've listened to it a few times, it continues to take my breath away.
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1 person found this helpful
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- 4thace
- 07-07-18
Beautifully written and enigmatic
I used to wonder whether a person could write a novel by writing fabulous scenes full of detail and wonder, and just stringing them together like beads on a string with whatever you would need to make them semi-coherent. Now I think I know. This is a story which takes place in two worlds, our own and in the dream world of the city-state Palimpsest, and the four main characters who can travel back and forth do so by means of sex with a fellow traveler. It is confusing at first for the listener to know that the character you have just been introduced to in one setting has just gone to a completely different one with different kinds of logic governing how things work and how people think, and more than enough work to try to keep them straight without being burdened with a strong plot driving what is happening. Instead, the yearnings and fears of the characters are the main force behind what happens. There are scenes of what seems like depravity and others straight out of fairy tales frequently alluded to explicitly, and the people who the core four encounter are endowed with their own motivations which you can start to suspect or to trust, and later revise your intuitions about, but it doesn't seem like in the end there is a clear sequence of one thing leading to another and culminating in the outcome we end up with. Fortunately the author is well equipped to provide compelling images draped with sumptuous language to make the whole thing a mostly pleasant experience. I am hazy on what exactly happened, but I have arrived at a state where I don't much care about the facts stated. It's not that kind of book. The four characters, two male and two female, each have motivations to return to Palimpsest and come to an awareness that they need to do this together if they do it at all. The title is not an accident, because the idea of a scroll which is erased and written over translates into the sexually transmitted tattoos which each traveler accumulates with each linkup, as well as the idea of the reality of the city itself being eradicated and rewritten over all time. Just as a familiar section of a city can fall into ruin, the characters undergo horrific mutilations and sometimes commit them as well. Maybe there are happy well-adjusted people in this world, but I don't remember hearing about any. So if you are in the mood for a portal fantasy with elements of the weird and macabre, this could be the story for you. I've reviewed some other books with the same level of experimentation going on before and I think this one feel more successful than most from my vantage point, perhaps not from everyone else's. It's put a couple of writing ideas in my mind too, so I wouldn't rule out someday coming up with my own beads on a chain fiction.
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7 people found this helpful
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- Elior Sterling
- 11-06-20
Farieland for grown ups
This book is less fiction than long form poetry and a magic spell that draws you inside a sigil made of memory and wishes and longing and sex. I listened in two sittings, rapt by the narrator's voice and the imagery.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Paul
- 01-29-22
Intoxicating
Valente's prose is as luxurious and intoxicating as her imagination. The reader is outstanding and conveys emotion like no other reader I've listened to.
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- Iszi H
- 02-02-17
The accents bring the reading to life
The narrator has the most lovely and soothing voice. Her pacing and astonishing skill with accents makes this recording a joy to experience. She is so deft with the subtle flavorings in each nation's speech that the listener can readily associate all the cultural context that really brings this story meaning.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Ember LePage
- 08-18-24
Brilliant imagery
This book will haunt my dreams in the best way. Not for everyone but definitely for me.
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- Emily
- 07-16-16
A Book That's a Natural for Audio
Would you consider the audio edition of Palimpsest to be better than the print version?
I don't know if I'd call it "better," but it feels right. The book demands to be read aloud, so experiencing it as an audiobook is natural.
What other book might you compare Palimpsest to and why?
Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino
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2 people found this helpful
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- Michael
- 08-09-15
Excellent Prose, but lacks maturity
I enjoyed the language, imagery, characterization and flow of this book, yet it also continually seemed to me written for a young adult audience. Perhaps when I was a much younger self I would have found the eroticism titillating, shocking, and discomforting in turns, however at my age and experience, I found sexual content rather bland. I much preferred the author’s The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making, which had a much better balance.
There is a lot to like in this novel as it tries to create a world of fascinating mystery and dreamlike imagery, and it often does, but for me the spell was repeatedly broken, making the overall experience less than fully satisfying.
There is a significant amount of sexual content and situations that are rather mild, yet would be quite offensive to many, and would be inappropriate for younger readers.
The narration was excellent throughout.
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11 people found this helpful
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- Sarah Prentice
- 04-13-16
Amazing as always!
I absolutely love Valente's work. I've listened to the fairy land series and six gun snow white. I didn't expect to love this book as much as I did, totally devoured it, couldn't turn it off. Makes me think of "fairy land come of age"
Fantastic performance by the reader.
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5 people found this helpful