Deathless
Leningrad Diptych • Book 1
by Catherynne M. Valente
Narrated by Kim de Blecourt
Why Listen to This Audiobook?
Koschei the Deathless has never felt this seductive or this doomed — Valente turns Russian folklore into a love story only the Soviet Union could produce.
- Great if you want: lush literary fantasy steeped in Russian myth and Soviet history
- Listening experience: incantatory and slow-burning — demands full attention, not background listening
- Narration: de Blecourt's cool, measured tone suits the book's mythic distance perfectly
- Skip if: ornate, poetic prose exhausts you faster than it enchants you
About This Audiobook
In Leningrad across the convulsions of the twentieth century, Marya Morevna grows from a clever child of the revolution into the beautiful and dangerous bride of Koschei the Deathless, the great villain of Russian folklore. Catherynne M. Valente's retelling takes the traditional fairy tale structure, the soldier who must be satisfied, the quests, the bargains made with death, and runs it through the machinery of Soviet history: collectivization, purges, the siege of Leningrad, and the particular texture of life in a state that demanded ideological purity while practicing systematic horror.
Kim de Blecourt narrates with a voice that suits the novel's blend of fairy tale formalism and historical brutality, giving Valente's ornate prose its proper music while keeping the emotional stakes grounded. The audio format is particularly suited to Valente's work, which has an incantatory quality that sounds better spoken than read silently. At just over eleven hours, Deathless is a rich, demanding, and deeply rewarding listening experience.