In the Cities of Coin and Spice by Catherynne M. Valente

Sei loves Palimpsest because of its vast railway network, inside which she can both lose and find herself.

Casimira manufactures mechanical bees, and November becomes a queen bee in exchange for two severed fingers. November hooks up with Casimira, Palimpsest's serially reincarnated, benevolent ruler. Via relentlessly shifting, sometimes demented scenes that alternately dazzle and bewilder, Oleg in Palimpsest finds a construct who closely resembles his sister, while back in New York he begins to pine away. After their initial passage, any of the four can find their way back to Palimpsest-for a single night-by having sex with strangers who bear the tattoo. The current candidates: New York locksmith Oleg, haunted by his drowned sister November, a lesbian beekeeper from San Francisco Roman bookbinder Ludovico, abandoned by his wife and young blue-haired, train-obsessed Japanese drifter Sei. But to receive the mark, first you must have sex with someone who already bears one. You need a passport to enter the improbable city Palimpsest and its magical mindscapes: a map of the city tattooed in black ink somewhere on your body. For here the story never ends and the magic is only beginning.From Valente, another intricate fantasy ( In the Cities of Coin and Spice, 2007, etc.), an expansion of a 2007 short story.

Open it anywhere and you will fall under its spell. Graced with the magical illustrations of Michael Kaluta, In the Cities of Coins and Spice is a book of dreams and wonders unlike any you’ve ever encountered. Nothing is too fantastic, anything can happen, but you’ll never guess what comes next in these intimately linked adventures of firebirds and djinn, singing manticores, mutilated unicorns, and women made entirely of glass and gears. And who can resist the stories she tells? From the Lake of the Dead and the City of Marrow to the artists who remain behind in a ghost city of spice, here are stories of hedgehog warriors and winged skeletons, loyal leopards and sparrow calligraphers. Her name and origins are unknown, but the endless tales inked upon this orphan’s eyelids weave a spell over all who listen to her read her secret history. Now she continues to weave her storytelling magic in the next book of Orphan’s Tales-an epic of the fantastic and the exotic, the monstrous and mysterious, that will transport you far away from the everyday. Valente enchanted readers with her spellbinding In the Night Garden.

In the Cities of Coin and Spice by Catherynne M. Valente