In my ongoing, non entirely chronological reading of Terry Pratchett, this appears to be roughly around the point where he started to ramp up as a novelist: ( Read more... )

I picked this up after seeing other people on lj rave about it, and indeed, it’s excellent. Rather unusually, I enjoyed both storylines, although the two-stories-in-different-eras structure is one I usually don’t find engaging. I think it helped that Duey shows us points of contact between them early on, and that the chapters were so short, mostly only a few pages—more short vignettes than full chapters, so that I was never impatient to get back to the other storyline. It works well for the characterization, too, to get the characters in lots and lots of brief snippets of story.

The relationship between Hahp and Gerrard is lovely; I’m really looking forward to seeing where this is going. And Sadima is neither stupid nor a bottomless well of patience. Franklin I am fed up with, despite being fascinated by the dynamic of his relationship with Somiss, who is convincingly and idiosyncratically evil.

Contained insufficient Rune. When he did turn up, the scene between him and Eusis was easily the best part of the volume. Wow, actual characterization and stuff.

We did find out that the planet is inhabited mostly by dinosaurs, though. And there was canon acknowledgement that yeah, this world is kind of on crack. As long as they know it’s on crack, I’m willing to forgive much.

Also contains: carnivorous unicorns, embarrassing rumors, dinosaurs, child prostitution, return of the steamy fencing instructor, crazy ideas that just might work, and invisible walls.

I’ve actually developed some interest in the main character. Firiel is one of those weird ones who isn’t that interesting in and of herself, but becomes (at least slightly) interesting in how she relates to other characters. It’s the interplay that’s worth watching. Her relationship (or lack thereof) with her father is potentially really interesting. Still mostly in it for Rune, though. I do wish we got more of him and Eusis together; they’re an entertaining combination.

Evidently this is a mangafied version of a novel, which does explain some things, like the odd compression of some parts and the suggestion of a somewhat fuller background than we really get to see.

Also contains: more crossdressing, leaps off of cliffs, heretical roses, exploding bunnies, Goatees of Evil, clothes made out of ripped-up sheets, evil betrothals, insincere betrothals, and schools devoted entirely to chess.

 

In which the main character is sent off to a girl’s school-cum-convent, and the story is briefly hijacked by high school manga tropes. What the hell? And why does one of the contenders for the throne have time to screw around subverting the student council?

Also contains: crossdressing, steamy fencing lessons, evil student councils, duels, assassination, school plays, scaffolding, aristocratic underwear, drop ceilings, evil sex-ed, pen names, and bad nuns.

…dammit. I’m out of Vorkosigan books now.

I am not remotely impressed by the story in this manga, which involves a bog-standard cheerful peasant girl of highborn parentage in a medievaloid landscape, but it does have some weirdly entertaining stuff in it, like underground societies, forbidden research, and hints of Big Cosmic Doom. The occasional touches of Big Cosmic Doom do actually manage to add some redeeming atmosphere, but I suppose I am a sucker for pictures of starry night skies. Firiel is utterly uninteresting to me, as are most of the others, but I’m enjoying Rune enough that I’ll get the next couple of these out of the library.

Also contains: invisible injuries! invisible furniture (leaving the characters hovering in space)! palaces made entirely out of platinum! disposable parental figures! lonely towers! pretty astronomers in glasses! unreasonably perky heroines in frilly dresses! court balls! with obligatory Snobbish Socialites! men in leopard skins! heretics! inquisitors! geeky kids with Dark Pasts! dramatic but ineffective chains! books of Mysterious Stuff that everyone wants! Significant Jewelry!

minus. is an odd, whimiscal little webcomic. The main character is a little girl called minus, who happens to have undefined (but more or less omnipotent) magical powers. This would make a pretty lousy adult character, but it works here because the comic is highly episodic—there’s no overarching plot line needing the kind of tension that an omnipotent character would tend to torpedo—and because minus has a kid’s logic and is wholly irresponsible. She’s mostly interested in shrinking herself to rule as warrior queen of the ants or inserting fantastic kingdoms in the school washroom. The hapless people around her just have to cope.

This is an odd favorite for me, since I much prefer stories with a high level of continuity and plot complexity. (There are a few short plot arcs; the one about the two girls who happen into minus’ washroom kingdom is my favorite part of the archives.) But the artwork is really pretty, and the individual episodes are charming and inventive enough to keep me interested.

An older Le Guin which I'd never gotten to. George Orr's dreams affect reality, and his psychologist uses him to remake the world, through a series of progressively weirder changes. A decent, short read; the Aldebaranians are the best part.

I read this because I saw it recommended somewhere as urban fantasy, which I suppose it is in a very loose sense. The transformations of Portland through Orr's shifts of reality are somewhat relevant for my urban fantasy thing, though I'm more interested in reimaginings of specific places, rather than cities as wholes. Mt. Hood becomes an active volcano in several realities, which made the one or two comments on Mt. St. Helens sitting placidly in the background funny in a retrospective way.

Hard-boiled detective story with Knights Templar. This was a fun read, though less mind-blowingly awesome than recommendations had led me to expect. It has a nicely pulpy feel, which is partly the length and pacing--it's short and moves at a good clip--and partly the plot and the ambience, full of covert meetings and grungy urban settings. Also, assassin nuns. I wasn't particularly interested in the characters, which was the book's main flaw for me. The structure--two slowly converging plots--is one that I usually hate, but it works here, partly because one story gets much more time, and because you can see at least some connection early on, and because there's a worthwhile payoff.

I've got nothing else worthwhile to say at the moment; there was nothing for my specific urban fantasy needs, and nothing else that I feel moved to comment on. Just a fun book.

(Slightly but not very spoilery)

This is a really interesting YA trilogy. The premise is that magic  runs in families--but using it will eventually kill you, and not  using it will drive you mad. The story starts with teenaged Reason  Cansino, who has spent her life with her mother Sarafina on the run  from her grandmother, who Sarafina describes as a witch. [1]  Sarafina is a great believer in science, and while Reason has never  been to school, she knows large amounts of math and science from her  mother, and has a good practical knowledge of the Australian  outback. When the book opens, Reason has just been left with her  grandmother after Sarafina has tried to kill herself.

Sarafina is crazy, and Esmerelda is a magic user, and the dillemma  of balancing the two choices is what drives the series. Also  involved are two other magic users Reason's age, Tom and Jay-Tee,  and a handful of other characters.

I really enjoyed these books, but found them frustrating in a few  respects. For one thing, the time frame was too short. I no longer  remember exactly how long the action of the three books takes, but  it can't be more than two weeks, which didn't feel long enough to me  for the amount of action packed in. The pacing of the books was  fine; the pacing of the internal timeframe just felt way too  compressed. I'm not sure why this bothers me, but it always does  when authors do this. The scale of things is off.

But my main frustration with the books had to do with the setting.  This has some tangential relevance for my urban fantasy paper, so  it's probably going to get an inordinate amount of space here, and I  should reiterate first that I thoroughly enjoyed this trilogy and  recommend it highly. The books start off in Sydney, and I was  thrilled. Larbaleister's descriptions of Australia are evocative and  have good details picked out. But Esmerelda has a door in her  kitchen that, when opened, will let a magic user through into New  York City. Larbaleister seems fascinated by New York--it's described  as having its own kind of magic[2], the Australian characters tend to  find it interesting (if baffling, in Reason's case), and Jay-Tee,  the native New Yorker, is massively homesick when she leaves.  There's a fair amount of localization, especially in and around the  East Village. And the characters tend to head straight for New York  at the earliest moment the plot lets them.

I read the first two in February, in Michigan, with a rather bad  cold, so I was not the best audience for this--Australia in the  summer sounded much more interesting at the time than New York in  winter did. But it's an interesting choice. Larbaleister (who is  Australian) gets her characters out of the familiar setting and into  the more interesting foreign city as fast as possible; and it  brought home to me how much setting can matter, and, in urban  fantasy, how much you need the audience to go along with the feeling  that the city is an appropriate setting for the story. If you're  setting a story in your favorite city, it's easy to forget that not  everyone will know why you think it's such a great place; if you  expect the setting to be evocative on its own, it's not going to  work for people who don't know the area. Which isn't what  Larbaleister does--she describes New York, sometimes in loving  detail. But it was interesting to me that of two cities, described  with roughly the same levels of detail, I was much more willing to  accept the foreign (to me) one as an appropriate setting. I found  Larbaleister's descriptions of Australia to have a much more liminal  feel to them than my slush-inundated home state, while the  Australian authors and characters react the same way in reverse. In  that respect, I do think the setting is something of a shortcut  here, a way of taking the characters out of a familiar setting and  sending them someplace more interesting, more appropriate for a  story about magic. It's a shortcut that simply didn't work for me.


________________________________________________________________________

[1] My grasp on the details is hazy now, since I read the first one  about six months ago. Sarafina definitely describes Esmerelda as a  witch, but is also very adament that magic doesn't exist. (Her  daughter's name should give you an idea of her outlook.) I can only  reconcile these by thinking that by witch, Sarafina means something  more along the lines of cultist. It didn't bother me at the time, so  I assume I just can't remember how this fit together.

[2] In urban fantasies, the city tends to be either the enemy,  encroaching on a countryside which is usually equated with tradition  and magic, and those in which the city is a source of power, magic,  and support for the characters. I can't tell whether there's a  distinct shift in attitude depending on when the books were written,  but there does seem to be more of the second kind around these days.  Though Lindholm's Wizard of the Pigeons was an early urban fantasy,  and definitely of this type.

Utterly standard "Dark and Light battle for control of the world" story, but within that stale plot, it's an engaging little book. The characters are the main attraction, particularly Rebecca and Roland. Despite the fact that there are designated Dark and Light Adepts, they're both reasonably interesting, and Huff does some fun things with Evan, the Light Adept, in particular. Just about everyone he meets is irresistibly attracted to him, which causes Roland some difficulties. Rebecca is one of the few mentally disabled characters I've seen in fantasy who actually works as a character. Also: thank you, Tanya Huff, for writing a cat that actually acts like a cat.

The story takes place in Toronto, and does refer to specific locations, including streets and parts of the University campus, but there's no particularly interesting reimaginings of places. There's a troll under a bridge. I'm beginning to think that trolls under bridges are required for urban fantasy.

There's very short scene involving two police hitting a unicorn in their squad car. In an otherwise tightly-plotted book, this scene doesn't have much story function. I do sort of wonder if it was in there purely to allow a picture of a unicorn in an urban setting to go on the cover (which, indeed, it is).

Actually, now that I'm looking more closely at the cover, it's kind of fun--the cover artist, Dean Morrissey, has gone into a fair amount of detail. He did an accurate rendition of a Toronto police car, complete with motto and crest, and there's even a tiny little "TPW" on the manhole cover in the street, and there's a highway sign that seems to be accurate. There's a clock tower in the background that I'm guessing belongs to the University of Toronto. And on a street sign, he's named crossing roads after the Light and Dark Adepts. 

Ryan Armand's Socks. is a playful, quiet little comic about a bored dead girl wandering around a city. After waking up under a tree, she can't remember anything about her life or how she died; so she spends her days listening to people's conversations, leaping through buildings, and watching tv over people's shoulders. Sounds boring, but it's actually quite engaging--I particularly like the girl learning to walk, Ate-like, on the heads of men--and the black-and-white watercolor style is nicely done. More of a plot appears to be getting started.

I've been enjoying Armand's other comic, minus., and it's fun seeing him do something less frenetic but with more continuity.

Umpteenth reread; I only skimmed for the bits I wanted to look at. This is my personal favorite of Diana Wynne Jones' books, for any number of reasons, a big one being that it doesn't fall apart at the end as I think hers often do.

Most of the book takes place at an sff convention in a fictional town called Wantchester, so no help there as far as my real-places-in-urban-fantasy needs go. But some early sections take place near Cambridge and in Bristol. It's the Bristol parts that I wanted to look at again, because one of the characters, Nick, has made up a game based on the geography of Bristol, which becomes Bristolia. Places like the zoo and a big red school become the Cliffores of the Monsters and the Castle of the Warden of the Green Waste [1]. Although we don't get much detail, Nick has invented histories to go along with the places. Nick and Maree spend much of an afternoon driving around Bristolia on his directions; and once they get to Wantchester, Nick starts constructing a similar map for that city. It's not a straightforward mapping of real places onto their fantastic equivalents, but is more imaginative. (I'm particularly fond of the bus station, which becomes "Glass Maze with Monsters".) Nick's games are mostly just background detail, provided for characterization (both of Nick and other people, in how they react), I find it interesting because it's a true fantasy world mapped onto the fictional world of the book. While it's common in urban fantasy to have a world that most people don't notice, having the characters invested in a world that even within the book is fictional is less common. (I saw someone comment recently that people in sf books never seem to read sf, an interesting point.) It works out well for them; Nick and Maree occasionally import logic from the stories they tell each other into their reality--for instance, they periodically do the Witchy Dance for luck, which does turn out to be efficacious. (The Witchy Dance is unrelated to Bristolia, but does come out of Nick and Maree's private reality from when they were kids.)

Riffs on perception and reality crop up throughout the book, for which the setting--an sf convention at which bizarre things really are happening, but can be passed off as con weirdness--is perfect. When a bleeding centaur shows up, con attendees think he's dressed for the ball ("Fantastic costume! Never thought of hiring a horse!"); some rather vicious sorcerers host classes in a conference room; and so on. The convention is a world of its own, which makes all the slipping between different realities in the book work really well [2].


[1] My copy, 1997 hardcover, p. 86.

[2] Which reminds me that I need to finish the Secret Country trilogy.

            Danny Holman, a young EMT who has just left his hometown for Chicago, happens to witness a shootout on the highway and stops to patch up the casualties. By the time they reach the hospital, the car's owner has hired him as a house doctor. Mr. Patrise is a quasi-legitimate... mob boss isn't quite the right word. He's the head of one of many factions jockeying for control of the Levee, the Chicago neighborhood closest to the borders of another dimension.

            In this world, the elves who once inhabited earth returned in the mid 80's, and a number of gateways are open to their world; close to them technology breaks down and a demi-monde operating on magic and barter takes over. Mid-caste elves tend to join or form rival households on the earth side, toting guns and leather trenchcoats; one named Cloudhunter is employed by Patrise (the names in this are delicious). Another, Whisper Who Dares the Word of Words in Darkness, is trying to gain power in the Levee. Most of the US that isn't near a large city has regressed into extremely parochial country life; the cities are largely in ruins, from neglect, neighborhood wars and the destruction that occurred when the gates opened. While there's some sort of rudimentary authority in the Levee, it's clearly insufficient, and Patrise is one of the people who tries to keep order.

            This is a wonderful book, in which just enough of the worldbuilding is spelled out that you can follow it, but with a great deal unelaborated. I've seen other people comment that it's very similar to the Borderland series of shared-world books; whether it should be considered as part of that universe or not seems to be debatable. The plot is slippery enough that I need to reread it to understand exactly what, in the end, happened.

            Comments for urban fantasy project. Aside from the first few pages, the book takes place entirely in Chicago, but a Chicago that's been radically altered by the presence of the gateway to the Shadow world. Much of it was destroyed in a massive fire when the gates opened, and from the outside, the Levee seems surrounded by a perpetual orange light, so that from a distance the city still seems to be burning. Inside the Levee, the ambiance is that of the Prohibition era, from nightclub singers in beaded dresses to men with tommyguns to theatres that play black and white films because the elves prefer them to technicolor. The familiar physical Chicago is almost entirely absent (though there's a brief scene in Union Station and a more important one at Shedd Aquarium); the point of the setting is that it's all but unrecognizable. What remains is a half-mythical essence of the city.

            There are some possible, very oblique suggestions to why the Levee seems to be recreating the '20s. Patrise at one point explains that the elves have to follow the dominant thinking of a group--"slaves to fashion", as he puts it, and this lies behind their highly rigid, hierarchical society, a pattern which they also imposed on humans in the distant past. When the elves withdrew, humans kept the tendency to follow group trends, but also tended to change their taste and their rules rapidly. This habit baffled and frightened the returning elves, who found that humans were impossible to dominate the way they once had; "They were no longer the arbiters; they were just one more designer label." And the elves found that they were susceptible to human trends themselves; human fashions and taste forced themselves upon them, and they were left to try to outdo humans at the game.

            So what exactly is going on here? Is the Prohibition-era ambiance pure glitz for the setting (and it is glitzy; this is a very stylish book), or is it meant to imply that the elves latched on to what they found most alluring in the historical styles of Chicago? Or is this a deliberate recreation by people like Patrise, invoking an era in which people like them could gather power, and assimilating the elves in the city to a paradigm of their choosing? I'm inclined towards the last option, but I really do need to reread this to say anything more sensible here.

            I’ve been deliberately avoiding this book for several years now, despite multiple recommendations, because as soon as you say elves in rock bands I feel myself break out in hives. I finally read it because I clearly needed to for the urban fantasy project, as it’s a classic of the genre. And, once I got pastone or two pages of overwritten prologue, it turned out to be fantastic. It’s generous with its characters and funny without trying too hard, and thoroughly grounded in the local details of Minneapolis.

            The story revolves around Eddi McCandry, a singer in a Minneapolis rock band, who in one evening breaks up with her boyfriend, quits his band (“InKline Plain, the most misspelled band in Minneapolis”), and gets chased down Nicollet Mall by a man who’s also a big black dog.[1] The local Seelie Court has decided to make their ongoing war against the Unseelie Court more serious, and wants Eddi on the battlefield; the presence of a mortal will make wounds serious and death possible for the usually immortal fair folk.[2] Eddi is unwillingly recruited, and saddled with the Phouka, the dog man, who is her bodyguard-cum-watcher as they wait for the first battles to begin. Meanwhile, she’s trying to start a band.

            It’s a heavily character-driven book, with the main relationships being the one between Eddi and the Phouka, neither of whom are wild about being stuck with the other, and between Eddi and her band members. Emma Bull writes her characters with sympathy, and is mercifully free from preachiness. The Phouka, in particular, is a great character [3]:

            Eddi finally noticed the amber color of the stuff in the glass, and smelled the brandy fumes. “That’s for medicinal purposes.”
           “I’m not surprised. I have been consuming it steadily for the last hour, and I can assure you, it was not made for the sake of pleasurable drinking.” He spoke more slowly than usual, but just as clearly.
            “Then why, Eddi asked carefully, “have you been drinking it?”
            “Perhaps because I needed physicking, my heart. Or perhaps not. Tell me, what do you keep it on hand to cure?”
            “Head colds.”
            “Ah, that’s the problem, then. I haven’t got one.”
            “Who writes your dialogue, Lewis Carroll?”

             The thing I was most wary about, the music element, is actually really well done. Bull was (and is) part of the Minneapolis music scene (some of the groups she’s been part of, like Flash Girls and Cats Laughing, have played songs she wrote for War for the Oaks). Although she sprinkles band and song names liberally through the book, including lyrics in places, and although the book does seem richer where you happen to know the music, it’s not a prerequisite; instead of relying on the music references to create atmosphere, Bull describes the music, whether the sound or the sensation of playing, any time that the effect is important. This made a huge difference (especially since the book is almost 20 years old now, and people reading it now, like me, are not necessarily going to know a lot of the bands mentioned, even when they weren’t purely local ones).

            Notes on urban fantasy and places. War for the Oaks has a wealth of local references, most of them quite casual—local clubs, supermarkets, streets and newspapers are mentioned in passing, Eddi and the others play in real Minneapolis clubs, and there are brief scenes in at least two actual restaurants. (One of which, the New Riverside Café, appears to have been a local favorite until it closed in the 90’s. Hurrah for the internet.) Street names and general neighborhoods are mentioned when relevant, but you don’t get the obsessive Mapquest-like effect found in Jack the Giant-Killer. The Minneapolis park system features prominently; several battles are fought in parks, as are other faerie gatherings. On a quick re-skim, I counted Minnehaha Falls as the site of the first battle, Loring Park, Tower Hill Park (in which the eponymous tower is important), and Como park and a conservatory in it.

            Both Eddi and Bull are clearly fond of their city. (Less so St. Paul, which Eddi suggests they just give to the Unseelie Court.) A few pages in, Eddi comments that she loves the Minneapolis skyline; and a page from the end, there’s a comment that “what they’d fought for, after all, was the city the way it was, the way they loved it.” The continuing fortune of Minneapolis is linked to the outcome of the faerie war, a fact that helps to persuade Eddi to take part in it.

            The faeries are mostly placed in the parks, the least urban of the urban spaces, and although they will dress like humans and blend in when they chose to, they are clearly still nature spirits. Cars make the Phouka sick, and some of the faeries Eddi runs across are quite wild. The Unseelie court has walking willow trees (willows again!). Several of the parks have otherwoldly qualities to them. Minnehaha Falls is described [4] as the water at the heart of the city—“not the largest body of water, or the most usefull… the city’s heart…. Now its priests are the Army Corps of Engineers and the Minneapolis Park Board, but it is still a shrine, a place of power. It is the city’s birthplace and its soul. That is why it’s the site of the first battle. Control of the Falls brings with it a great deal of magical leverage.” Casually worked into that explanation is the intertwinedness of the human and faerie worlds that runs through the book. The Faeries have chosen to fight on a place which has become a place of magical significance because of its significance for the human city, and in return, the outcome will affect the human world. In Tower Hill Park, the Queen of the Unseelie Court temporarily borrows the tower, which is covered in unpleasant graffitti. Both courts respond to the human significance of places.

Eddi is an agent of this tangling of faerie and human. She links the two worlds; they tend to interact more when she is around. She is involved in order to enable the faerie folk to die like humans, and she tends to draw them into the human world—they come to clubs where her band plays (with various intentions), and in the the final battle, the outcome of the war is explicitly made her responsibility. While the city’s fate is tied to the outcome of the war, the outcome for the faerie courts is linked to the city and to everything that Eddi finds good and exciting and full of energy about it.

Ultimately, the book implies another, magical world that exists in Minneapolis, in which the parks in particular are liminal spaces with mystical importance, partly because of the faerie world, and partly because of their importance to the human community. The linkage of something concrete (the importance of the real Minnehaha Falls to Minneapolis as a well-known and beautiful place) to something more intangeible (Minnehaha Falls as a sacred space) is a nice example of what I’m interested in. Using a real-world setting means that the connotations it has in the book can be recalled outside of the actual reading experience; fiction gives new significance to the landscape. In many ways, War for the Oaks creates a mythology for Minneapolis. Interesting, too, is what Bull doesn’t use: her faeries are pretty solidly Celtic; none of the area’s own interesting history comes in at all. The falls, in particular, have ready-made mythology; the name Minnehaha was taken from Longfellow’s Hiawatha, and they’ve been a tourist destination ever since. (Why is it always Celtic folktales?) I think Bull ignores the possibilities of local legend partly because she’s more interested in the music. If Minnehaha Falls are the heart of the city for the faeries, the center of the music scene is for Eddi:

Out on Hennepin, the evening had begun. Cars cruised—little imports, shiny pickup trucks, and big American cars with lots of rear suspension and very little muffler. Dance music beckoned from the open door of Duff’s. A boy with an enormous mohawk and a girl in a torn jean jacket and engineer boots were arguing with an earnest young man in front of the Church of Scientology. Three black kids in front of the Skyway Theater had a boom box with something funky overdriving the speakers.

“I love this street,” said Eddi.

Willy shot her a quick look. “You mean that?”

“Too grungy for you?”

“Not quite, no, but love?”

Eddi stuffed her hands in her pockets. “At night,” she said at last, “this is the heart of Minneapolis. Uptown, where we were last night, is maybe its feet, where it dances. Hennepin Avenue is like an artery between them.”[5]

Eddi’s band, which inhabits the real spaces of local clubs and bars the way that the faeries do the parks, embodies the energy of the city. The local music scene acquires a mythology of its own.

[1] I remain baffled as to why the back cover blurb says that Eddi is dumped by her boyfriend. She emphatically does the dumping. And good riddance, too.

[2] As I somewhat expected, urban fantasies in which the local Seelie and Unseelie Courts duke it out over territory seems to be a standard variant.

[3] And made infinitely funnier, to me at least, by the fact that he’s firmly lodged in my head as Artie from Narbonic.

[4] My copy, p. 129; pages numbers are purely for my own later use.

[5] 103-4