Palimpsest - Valente

This is a 2010 Hugo nominee.

Palimpsest is the name of a fantasy city. It's hard to reach and has some special rules for entry. One of them is that people enter in groups of four and are then mystically linked together. And how do they enter? Simple. You have sex with a previous visitor. You can find them because afterward a small portion of the city map will appear like a tattoo somewhere on your body. Which makes this sound tawdry, which is unfair to the book.
'Palimpsest' focuses on a quartet, none of whom intended to get sucked into this world. Each of them is driven to return again and again. There is Oleg, a lock-maker who is chasing the ghost of his dead sister, Ludovico who has lost his wife to the city, Sei, a young girl who is courted by the train system and November, a beekeeper who has been claimed by the bees of Palimpsest. They are strangers who span the world and are forced to try and find each other, each at a terrible cost.
This book was a little tough to get into. The imagery in the beginning is so rich that it's almost overpowering. It did begin to click though and became one of the strengths of the story. The city Palimpsest is eye-poppingly fantastic. Each bit of setting is more interesting than the last and it adds up to some serious impact.
I mentioned that each traveler is brought in through sex. This could easily become tawdry but for each of the four main characters this route leads to personal difficulty. Instead it becomes difficult and sometimes degrading. It's easy to see how a lesser writer would have gone in a different and ultimately less satisfying route.
This is a great book. I'm not a huge fan of fantasy writing and the early bits had me frightened. But as it caught hold I found myself working to find more and more time to read. I was sad when it ended (and I don't know a better compliment to give a book). Well worth reading.