Radiance - Tapa dura

The long-awaited first science fiction novel - though it's really more of a cosmic fantasy - from Tiptree winner Valente is a masterpiece of storytelling, seductive in prose and ambitious in scope ... This will captivate readers with all the drama and wonder that Valente's strange and wonderful golden age Hollywood demands. (Publishers Weekly)

Valente's descriptions are lush and striking, her worlds reveling in the dreamiest of nods to classic science fiction, where alien planets are full of life and easily reachable.
A heady, strange, and beautifully written novel about how stories give form to worlds.

(Kirkus)

An intriguing examination of how we piece together our personal narratives (Washington Post)

Radiance is a sleek rocket ship of a novel, swaddled in Art Deco decadence and glossy with an unsettling alt-history patina. (New York Times)

Valente writes beautifully baroque prose (Financial Times)

Radiance is a lush, pulpy parable about storytelling and self-perception, part old-fashioned thriller, part postmodern metafiction, the narrative intercut with film scripts and gossip columns to create a layered account of a glorious past that never was. (Guardian, best science fiction and fantasy novels)

Valente has crafted beautiful imagery and packed every page with breathtaking invention (SFX magazine)

Heady, dreamy, beautifully written, art-deco, literary sci-fi (Anna James, A Case For Books)

One of the most original books of the year so far, this tale of the romance of silent film movie-making and early Hollywood soons veers into the most unpredictable of directions and takes the reader to new worlds and horizons that are truly staggering in their speculative sense of wonder ... Bizarre, exhilarating and a must read for anyone with a thirst for the uncommon. (Love Reading)