Issue Number 57
 (March 2001)

Book Reviews

by Ellie Miller

Peter Beagle, Tamsin, NAL, 1999, ISBN 0451457633

Part coming-of-age saga and part ghost story, this wise, witty, and darkly fey novel centers around its thirteen-year-old narrator Jenny's life-changing encounter with a ghost named Tamsin after she (Jenny) has been transplanted screaming and kicking every step of the way from the sidewalks of New York to a centuries-old manor house in the Dorset countryside due to her mother’s remarriage to an English agricultural biologist.

Completely miserable in her new environment and bitterly resentful of her suddenly-acquired stepfamily, she's abruptly jolted out of her funk when a reunion with her beloved Mister Cat (who has been languishing in durance vile due to British quarantine restrictions) leads to his courtship of a ghost cat which apparently only he and Jenny can see.

That cat leads them to a hidden room where they find Tamsin, a lovely and lonely ghost whose personal tragedy, the traumatic death of her lover at the hands of Hanging Judge Jeffreys during the Monmouth Rebellion, has kept her tied to Stourhead Farm for over three hundred years. Trying to free Tamsin from the horrors of the past puts Jenny directly in harm's way in the present, but the end result of her efforts ultimately liberates them both and brings the book to its powerful and truly spellbinding conclusion.

I wish that I could find the words to really explain what it is that moved me so much about Jenny and her world. Far beyond the eerieness of Faerie... the Wild Hunt, Boggles and "things that go bump in the night" which also inhabit it... if there's any real magic in this genuinely magical tale, I think that it's Peter Beagle's ability to somehow get inside his young heroine's head... take on her voice and feelings... and make her live! The writing here is so incredibly fine that it simply beggars description. Pick up a copy... meet Jenny... and, once you have, I suspect that she'll steal your heart as completely as she did mine.

Order Tamsin from Amazon.com
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Jan Siegel, Prospero's Children, NAL, 1999, ISBN 0345439015; in UK, Voyager, 0006512801

One of the things that I found especially interesting about Prospero's Children is how successfully it employs many of the standard devices of Heroic Adventure fantasy in such a fresh and effective way. In her first novel, British author Jan Siegel utilizes a coming-into-one's-magical-powers approach as a premise for much of her action... which works out extremely well since it enables her to move her heroine "there and back again" through time and space without sacrificing one ounce of credibility in the process.

A powerful talisman (not a ring, but a mystical key of Atlantean origin) has resurfaced in an old mansion in modern Yorkshire after being lost for centuries, just in time to become an object of contention between an evil witchdame in alliance with a demon and our naive but gutsy heroine, Fern Capel, and her delightfully-unbrattish younger brother, Will. The youngsters acquire some powerful supernatural allies in their attempts to find and rescue the key... a sympathetic loup garou and a charismatic wizard... but the odds are against them, and the initial battle for its possession goes to the Powers of Darkness.

Undaunted, Fern uses her own newfound powers... her "Gift"... to follow the villains into the distant past hoping to recover the key and prevent its misuse. This places her in Atlantis on the eve of its destruction with the fate of the rest of the known world hanging in the balance. While this may all sound a bit overblown, by me, such conflict is part and parcel of the whole fantastic mystique, and, quite frankly, Ms. Siegel does it so well that I found myself perfectly willing to suspend my disbelief, sit back and simply enjoy just being along for the ride!

Order Prospero's Children from Amazon.com
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Dave Luckett, The Tenabran Trilogy: A Dark Winter, 1998, ISBN 1862913684; A Dark Journey, 1999, ISBN 1862913811; A Dark Victory, 1999, ISBN 1862914060; Omnibus Books (Scholastic Publishing Group, Australia)

One of the most common themes in fantasy is the overcoming of some sort of major Evil force/threat to a land's stability and well-being by a few good characters, operating at an initial disadvantage under circumstances of enormous pressure and deadly peril, thereby achieving their own personal goals while restoring order and stability to the land itself. When it's well-done, the <g> trufan is as happy as a child hearing the beloved "once upon a time" for the umpteenth time, knowing that wonderful things still remain to be told, and Mr. Luckett’s completely solid reworking of this theme more than met that criteria for me.

I know that there are two schools of thought about first person narration. I happen to like it very much, especially in the hands of a fine writer who uses it artfully to give me access not just to the actions, but to the inner world and mindset of hir central characters.

Our hero, a young squire named Will de Parkin, tells of his adventures in the service of disinherited knight, Silvus de Castro, who has taken up the cause of a band of sword maidens who are sworn to defend Tenabra against her enemies: the enemy in this case being wicked Prince Nathan who has usurped the throne of one of its smaller kingdoms through his terrible use of Dark Arts and is now bent on conquering the rest of Tenabra.

As battles are fought and won and various perils met and overcome, suspense mounts while other equally fascinating characters... the girl-mage, Asta, is such a delight... are added to meet the increasing scope and demands of the story.

Ultimately, the action expands from Tenebra above to include its underground regions where goblins rule (a beautifully-delineated concept), and the final confrontation between Light and Dark left me absolutely satisfied but more than a little regretful at having reached the "...Well, I’m back..." point and the end of my Tenabran involvement.

Although the series has won major awards in Oz, (IMHO) marketing this splendid "Heroic Adventure" saga as YA may well be one of the main reasons why it is not yet available in either the UK or USA, where it could certainly more than hold its own against heavy-weights such as Brooks, Jordan, Goodkind and Martin and where, quite probably, Dave's lucid style and superb plotting could win him a secure place in the hearts of readers like myself who find many of the above writers overly repetitious and excessively convoluted.

Not available through Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk

Juliet E. McKenna, Tale of Einarinn Series: The Thief’s Gamble, 1999, ISBN 0061020362, Harper; The Swordsman’s Oath, 2000, ISBN 0061020370, Harper EOS; The Gambler’s Fortune, 2000, ISBN 185723989X, Orbit UK

To date, British SF writer Juliet E. McKenna has managed to make it across the pond with two volumes in her on-going series of Sword and Sorcery adventures. I enjoyed them so much that I decided not to wait for a US printing of her third novel and ordered it from Amazon.co.UK.

Although I do make the distinction rather clearly in my own mind, I'm not at all sure how to verbalize what I see as the difference between Sword and Sorcery and Heroic Adventure. (I suspect it's most probably a matter of degree, having primarily to do with style and characterization.) You might say, quite justifiably, that characters in HA must stay alive for a purpose while those in S&S simply purpose to stay alive.

That isn't such an easy proposition for this particular band of adventurers. Livak, Ms. McKenna's feisty heroine, is eking out a somewhat precarious existence as a gambler and thief in the shadowy underworld of the realm until a routine housebreaking goes dangerously awry and she encounters Ryshad, swordsman and warrior, whose life quickly becomes entangled with hers through the machinations of Shiv, a crafty wizard, who needs both of their talents to uncover the Magickal secrets of the ancient Empire in order to save their own badly-factionalized land from a band of Dark sorcerers who are determined to invade, conquer and destroy it. And that’s about the best that I can do by way of a precis. Ms. McKenna’s canvas is simply too broad, her story too far-reaching and complex to lend itself readily to summarization.

However, I must also add in that context that the craftsmanship here is absolutely first rate! Many times, I found myself almost catching my breath at the sheer audacity and scope of this author's vision. Told primarily in the first person, the point of view shifts from volume to volume, which adds enormously to their immediacy and impact; but what really excited and hooked me was her graphic world-building and hell-for-leather action involving an entire social spectrum of utterly memorable characters.

Long and short? These fascinating novels either separately or combined make for one incredibly good read... more than good enough to make me willing to forego my distaste for getting involved in an on-going series and happily snatch them up just as fast as Ms. McKenna is able and willing to produce them.

Order The Thief's Gamble from Amazon.com
Order The Thief's Gamble from Amazon.co.uk

Order The Swordsman's Oath from Amazon.com
Order The Swordsman's Oath from Amazon.co.uk

Order The Gambler's Fortune from Amazon.com (due out August 2001)
Order The Gambler's Fortune from Amazon.co.uk

John M. Ford, The Last Hot Time, Tor, 2000, ISBN 0312855451

I firmly believe that some of the finest and most imaginative writing in the SF field these days is coming out of the Minneapolis "School" of writers. The latest novel by Phillip K. Dick Award winner John M. Ford is Contemporary Fantasy, which (hopefully) isn't completely accurate because, frankly, I’d hate to have to live in the dystopic, near-future world that Mr. Ford has envisioned, although it is a truly fascinating one from a reader's point of view and his hero, orphaned, loner Danny Holman, ultimately manages to make a place for himself there.

Mr. Ford bypasses the details of exactly what has happened and presents us fait accompli with the results of (presumably) nuclear catastrophe in MidAmerica... one of the more interesting of which being that the border between Faerie and our human reality has been dissolved, and the two species are now sharing an uneasy and troubled coexistence in a land where Elves can wander as they choose, but humans are limited by the Threshold that lies between.

Trained and licensed as a paramedic and trauma specialist, Danny has left Iowa for unspecified reasons and is headed for Chicago when he inadvertently witnesses a deadly gun-battle between two limousines. He stops beside the loser, provides emergency, life-saving assistance to its badly-wounded passenger and has his first encounter with its owner, mysterious boss-figure, Mr. Patrise; his human bodyguard, Lincoln McCain; and his Elfin associate, Cloudhunter.

Events move swiftly from that point. Once the young lady has been taken to hospital in Chicago proper, Patrise offers Danny his protection and a new identity as "Doc Hallownight" as well as lifetime employment as doctor-in-residence at his luxurious headquarters deep in the heart of Chicago"s Levee... the shadowy, lawless region between the two worlds, where Elf and human gangsters skirmish with sorcery and machine guns and where anything can be sold, smuggled or stolen.

Given the violence in Patrise’s world, that lifetime may be short, but there's plenty of work for Danny to do, and he finds both the home that he has lost and new friends and a lover there. However, as he gets more and more entangled in Patrise’s empire and his plans for humankind, he is also forced by the nature of his profession and his own innate goodness to take sides in his employer's fight against both Elfin excesses and a dark and terrible, ancient Evil that threatens to destroy both worlds. When battle is ultimately joined, the denouement is simply breath-taking.

I really loved this book! Minneapolis writers quite frequently tend to deal with themes about Faerie and contemporary human interaction (Will Shetterly’s superb Borderlands books and Emma Bull’s War for the Oaks come immmediately to mind), and Ford does them all proud with his completely fascinating, uniquely-personalized take on the subject. Maybe you could subtitle it "The Godfather Meets the Ungodly", but whatever label you choose to apply, this wonderful read sure worked like a house-a-fire for me!

Order The Last Hot Time from Amazon.com
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Caroline Stevermer, When the King Comes Home, Tor, 2000, ISBN 0312872143

Written by another Minneapolitan, this is an incredible but completely indefinable little jewel of a book that essentially leave whoever's trying to review or summarize them shaking hir head and mumbling a lot. Neither the novel itself nor its components lend themselves to any sort of easy capsulization, but taken as a whole it's a quiet mindblower!

I honestly don't think that it will be everyone's cup of tea, but if you read and relish Bull, Dean, McKillip, De Lint et al, chances are that it will wind up on your "keeper" shelf too. Part coming-of-age tale, part quasi-Renaissance, save-the-kingdom saga, over-laden with some really intriguing Arthurian echoes, its plot is rooted in what happens in the lives of "little" people, especially its heroine and narrator, Hail Rosmer, a wool merchant's daughter who wants solely and desperately to become a great artist, when an old prophecy is fulfilled and two-hundred-years-dead Good King Julian of Aravis is brought back to temporal existence by sorcery only to find his kingdom in turmoil and disarray, torn between a weak king and a conniving Prince Bishop.

Hail's observations of and involvement with the subsequent struggle on the part of a small group of the King's followers to set-things-right make up the bulk of the action, but only part of its interest and charm. Not peripheral but integral to the plot is Hail's account of her apprenticeship experience as she strives to gain mastery of her talents. Meanwhile, things happen... armies march... Hail is there. She tells us simply and directly about what she witnesses and how she feels about, and her sense of caring and involvement becomes entirely our own through the magic of Ms. Stevermer’s writing.

In my own mind, I keep coming back to that. I can’t tell you just what it was that moved me so much about this beautiful book. Maybe like music that must be heard... experienced whole in performance... to be appreciated, there are some books where the delight comes simply in accepting whatever an author has felt well and truly in hir heart into your own. For me, When the King Comes Home is one of them.

Order When the King Comes Home from Amazon.com
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Helen Merrick and Tess Williams, Editors, Women of Other Worlds, 1999, ISBN 1876268328, University of Western Australia Press

In all probability, Women of Other Worlds would never have found a home in a commercial press. Today's bottom-line-oriented publishers want to pigeon-hole, categorize, label, and this book defies definition. Subtitled Excursions Through Science Fiction and Feminism, it is truly one of the most fascinating anthologies that I’ve ever read: a brilliantly edited, intensely-eclectic collection of essays, short fiction, criticism, poetry and conversation which has its roots in the events of WisCon XX (1996) and represents a kind of crystalization of the ideas and inspirations that were generated at the time by the veritable who's-who of feminist science fiction authors and scholars who were in attendance.

This book is a celebration of their willingness to dance on the cutting-edge of what if! and I see it as a wholly-unique literary touchstone against which an incredible variety of more traditional concepts about gender, ethnicity and culture can be and are tested... expanded and/or redefined... as a result of that juxtaposition. I also think that it’s important to mention that much of the attraction here (at least, from my point of view) can be found in the fact that this collection imposes no strictures whatsoever upon our perceptions beyond those which we are personally willing to accept... preaches no dogma except that diversity is... and insists only upon our willingness to open ourselves to possibility and then deal with whatever we’ve found within its pages...especially that which moves or impresses us deeply... as best we can once we’ve paused long enough to consider all of its ramifications.

What moved and impressed me most? First and foremost, being able to savor all of the nuances of Ursula LeGuin’s gutsy and heart-breakingly beautiful WisCon XX GOH speech, An Envoy from Senectutus, was worth the entire cost of the collection. Since I am particularly interested in the minutae of fannish history, Jeanne Gomoll's evocative Introduction which traces herstory from MidAmeriCon in 1976 through the genesis and flowering of the WisCon phenomenon and the establishment of the Tiptree Award gave me such a vivid sense of what it must have been like to have been a part of those exciting times that I found it especially intriguing. As an extension of and addenda to what Jeanne had to say, I was also caught by Susanna Sturgis' Notes of a Border Crosser and Helen Merrick's From Female Man to Feminist Fan.

More? "Founding Mother" Pat Murphy's wry and witty discussion of the metamorphosis of the Tiptree in Illusion and Expectation: the Baking of a Science Fiction Award and Justine Larbalestier’s Tiptree Stories, anecdotes about the woman herself, made for truly delightful reading. Finally, icing on the cake for me was the editors' decision to close this incredible book with a section taken from Judith Merril's unfinished memoir, Better to Have Loved: Excerpts from a Life.

Order Women of Other Worlds from Amazon.com
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