'Deathless' stuff on Tor.com

From the email...

'Deathless'  is the highly-anticipated new standalone novel by award-winning speculative fiction author Catherynne M. Valente, due out from Tor Books on March 29, 2011. A glorious retelling of the Russian folktale Marya Morevna and Koschei the Deathless, set in a mysterious version of St. Petersburg during the first half of the 20th century, DEATHLESS is one of Cat's best books to date, filled with gorgeous prose, sensualism, and memorable characters that Cat’s fans love her for.

Koschei the Deathless is to Russian folklore what giants or wicked witches are to European culture: a menacing, evil figure; the villain of countless stories which have been passed on through story and text for generations. But Koschei has never before been seen through the eyes of Catherynne Valente, whose modernized and transformed take on the legend brings the action to modern times, spanning many of the great developments of Russian history in the twentieth century.

DEATHLESS, however, is no dry, historical tome: it lights up like fire as the young Marya Morevna transforms from a clever peasant girl, to Koschei's beautiful bride, to his eventual undoing. Along the way there are Stalinist house elves, magical quests, secrecy and bureaucracy, and games of lust and power. All told, DEATHLESS is a collision of magical history and actual history, of revolution and mythology, of love and death that will bring Russian myth back to life in a stunning new incarnation.

To view this special excerpt from DEATHLESS, please click on the following link:  http://www.tor.com/stories/2011/01/excerpt-deathless-by-catherynne-m-valente.  

AND as a special BONUS, Tor.com also has a promotional comic Cat and artist Amy Houser did for Arisia 2011; it depicts Marya Morevna's encounter with the household domovoi from Chapter Three of the book, click on the following link to check it out: http://www.tor.com/stories/2011/01/deathless-comic. 

There will be lots more to come between now and March 29^th – additional excerpts, blog posts, tour dates and other exciting materials – but for now this should whet a few appetites for this amazing original fantasy epic!


And there was I having totally forgotten that 'Deathless' was in the reading pile... As I've said before, I've never really read anything of Valente's so will be picking this up fairly soon (now the release date is a little closer). Has anyone else read this yet?