In the killer hook opening to this portal fantasy, John, a gay graduate student, has a problem. He and his mysterious roommate Kyle ran into each other in a bathhouse, and fled in opposite directions. Several weeks later, Kyle still hasn't returned, and the rent is coming up. And while Kyle is extremely strange - he's covered with weird tattoos, carries around swords and knives, always keeps his room locked, and, bizarrely, claims to be a milkman - he has never failed to pay the rent on time, which makes up for all other flaws as far as John is concerned.

While John is trying to figure out what to do, a letter arrives addressed to Kyle - the first Kyle has ever received - with no return address. In a mixture of desperation and pent-up curiosity, John opens it. It contains an ornate gold key, and a sheet of paper reading, "DON'T."

Cut to Kahlil (aka Kyle), who is on a mysterious errand in his own world, carrying a bag containing a talking skeleton and gloomily musing that once he gets back to our world, he will probably get the order to kill John at any moment. When he returns to our world (just in time to pay the rent), we see it through his eyes. Everything is shockingly vibrant, intense, and beautiful... compared to where he's from.

This is one of the most engrossing and fun otherworld fantasies I've read in a while. The worldbuilding is fascinating. Kahlil's world is suffused with a sense of wrongness, but not in the grimdark way where everyone is a rapist sociopath and nobody ever has any fun. It's meticulously detailed - there's a funny scene where John sits in a bath and tries to figure out what the hell the cleaning implements and ointments are for, then finds out when the servants arrive and start cramming tooth powder into his mouth - but faded. The food has little savor, the colors are dimmed, and even the air is thin. Some catastrophe seems to have cast a magical pall over the entire landscape.

While there are horror elements (like the talking skeleton and some very creepy magic), the tone is more like old-school swords and sorcery given a modern gloss than actual horror. It's dark in parts, but playful in others. There's banter and egg-laying weasels. The plot is complex and intriguing. I assume John and Kahlil will eventually have a romance, and that they will be instrumental in restoring life to the world. But in terms of how that will happen, I have no idea. The broad outlines may be clear, but the way in which things have happened has been consistently surprising.

There are some flaws, which have not spoiled my enjoyment. Some of the supporting characters get a lot of page time but very little character development. There are a few points where characters fail to take what seems like the obvious, sensible action, for no particular reason other than that the plot needed them not to. And while parts of the story have a very real feel to them, other parts are paper-thin. In particular, John seems to have sprung out of thin air, with no school responsibilities, no family, no history, and no associates other than the ones who are central to the plot.

Still, like I said: really fun. Without getting too spoilery, I will mention that John's introduction to the world is sufficiently rocky that I initially thought, "Oh, God, this is going to be that cliched crapsack world where every single character is a total asshole and everyone is constantly getting slaughtered for no reason." That turns out to not be the case. Or, at least, so far it hasn't been.

This is an extremely long novel broken into ten parts of about 100 pages each. If you have already read this, please note that I am only on Part 2. Please do not spoil me for anything past that!

The Shattered Gates (The Rifter)

Servants of the Crossed Arrows (The Rifter)

A refreshingly different YA fantasy: no love triangle - no on-page romance! - and a determinedly non-epic plot.

Teenage street kid and thief Digger is about to deliver some stolen letters when she nearly gets caught by the Green Men, who function as both law enforcement and the anti-magic Inquisition. She manages to get away, but her boyfriend is captured. (He never appears except in flashback, and is presumed dead.)

She runs for her life, and falls in with some helpful teenage aristocrats who either believe her story (fleeing a nunnery) or just feel sorry for her. Next thing she knows, she's impersonating a lady's maid for a sweet aristocrat girl. This leads to her and a bunch of plotting aristocrats getting snowed in by an avalanche. Intrigue follows, all on a very small scale as they're all trapped on a single estate. There was so much sneaking in and out of the same rooms that I started picturing this as a play, with one door closing stage left as, with perfect timing, another opens stage right.

I had mixed feelings about this novel, but Digger's voice is great. She's suspicious, scornful of the "nobs," a compulsive thief, accustomed to living on the edge and bewildered by people being nice to her. Surely they have some ulterior motive!

The plot, which needed to be as clever as the protagonist, is awfully rickety. People consistently help Digger out and tell her extremely important state secrets for no good reason. In a book whose protagonist's main characteristic is self-sufficiency, this was unnecessary and implausible. Digger earns a living by ferreting out secrets; she should have had to ferret out everything, not have several crucial ones just handed to her.

This is doubly implausible given that she's (supposedly) an ordinary girl of gentle birth, fallen on hard times and working as a lady's maid. The maid should not have aristocratic adults confiding secrets in her which they could be executed for, on the basis that she seems intelligent!

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Likable characters, good protagonist, and definitely different from the mainstream, but the plot had big problems.

StarCrossed

An exceptionally fun urban fantasy of the “magic in a modern city” type, as opposed to “my supernatural boyfriend” type, written by a TV writer whose credits include Doctor Who.

Peter Grant is a smartass rookie cop in London whose life changes dramatically when the sole witness to a decapitation murder turns out to be a ghost whom only he can see.

The plot is not exactly strikingly original, but the narration and atmosphere are outstanding. What makes me dislike a lot of urban fantasy is that it’s clearly supposed to be witty, but isn’t. This novel is full of quotable bits of very authentic cynical cop humor, and often made me laugh aloud. I suggest reading the first chapter, if you have an e-reader, to see if you too like the voice.

I can’t vouch for the authenticity of the London setting or of Grant’s West African heritage, but within the novel itself, both are vivid and believable. His London absolutely feels like a real city that you visit for the space of the novel, multicultural and sprawling and full of the little details people who love their hometown know.

The magic and magical beings, again, are not terribly original, but done extremely well, with humor and cleverness. The supporting characters are fun, sketched in bright strokes— I especially liked Grant’s mentor and a family of river spirits. This is a real craftsman’s book.

Note that it contains some gruesome murder scenes, including one with a dead baby. (The dead baby is not graphically described.) They’re not gratuitous and they’re essential to the plot, but as a murder mystery, it’s on the gritty rather than the cozy side. That being said, it’s overall a cheerful, playful book, not one where rocks fall and everyone dies.

I think it would appeal to fans of Steven Brust’s Vlad Taltos series. It also reminded me a bit of Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere, but Peter Grant is a much more interesting protagonist than Richard Mayhew.

There are two more books in the series, but the first, at least, stands alone. I will definitely read the sequels.

Midnight Riot

Panelists: Rachel Manija Brown, Cora Anderson, Janni Lee Simner

Please forgive or correct any errors made in these notes. They were typed quickly and in shorthand, and I made them legible and comprehensible as best I could. But they are not 100% complete or accurate.

R: What was your introduction to the idea of companion animals?

J: Pern! And imaginary friends when I was growing up

C: The She-ra horse! When I was six, I had an imaginary friend who was a winged unicorn named Starlight with a rainbow mane, who could turn invisible and go to school with me. Oh, and Pern also.

R: Dragonsong I used to think up lists of names ending in -th. I mostly had blue and green dragons - the sidekick dragons. I always liked the sidekick characters. Also, I used to tame wild animals when I was a kid. You can tame a feral cat in about six months, if you’re patient.

R: What is the appeal of a companion animal (telepathic or not)?

R: I was obsessed with animals, and you get into an emphatic empathic communion when you sit for hours with feral cats. Telepathy goes right to the heart of that. Also, there’s a powerful draw in the idea of a creature that can understand you perfectly. At least, there is when you’re as a kid.

C: There’s something about creatures that not only understand you but love you regardless. Pern dragons never say 'fuck this noise, I'm outta here,' no matter what you do). McCaffrey has said Pern is inspired by the feeling, as a five-year-old, of getting a pet. You want the pet to be a perfect friend, and it just wants to be a cat. It's what you want from a childhood pet, then a boy/girlfriend, that you can’t have. It’s the wish fulfillment that something can understand you completely.

J: As an outcast child with no close friends until later, imaginary friends always were there for you and also wanted to do what you wanted. Best friend + subservience.

R: Should we jump into subservience?

C: The Heralds of Valdemar. In those, the Companion will in fact repudiate you and leave. The Pernese bond is unbreakable. In other ones, the animals don't have human morality. The Companions are metaphors for guardian angels; they won't condone serial killers. It’s a different type of relationship.

R: Don't forget they are sparkly magic white horses.

C: It’s the dream of a horse, not a real horse.

J: When I first rode a horse, I was disappointed. They weren't flying!

R: Judith Tarr said Anne McCaffrey based dragon Impression on watching humans with young horses. Of course a real horse is much more rebellious.

C: And can't talk.

J: But then you can believe they understand you perfectly. If they can’t talk they can’t contradict that feeling.

R: Going back to the idea of companions as metaphors for other relationships…

J: Childhood wish fulfillment animals. I get much less interested when it becomes metaphors for adult relationships, but fiction seems more interested in that.

R: Romantic relationship with everything but the sex... and sometimes they do include sex, hopefully not with the animal. The Temeraire series by Naomi Novik has dragons in the Napoleonic wars. Those dragon-human relationships are very much like a good marriage, complete with falling outs, but if the humans have sex, it doesn’t affect the dragons, and vice versa.

C: I've read the first book - that's the one where the relationship is seriously romantic. Another rider treats his dragon as an aircraft, and the dragon just wants to be loved. The rider gives it more baubles and thinks that’s all it needs. It’s classic unrequited love, complete with pining.

J: Most bondings happen with adolescence. It’s a stand in for coming of age/romance.

R: Before the panel we were talking about Ariel, by Stephen Boyett. It’s maybe not that good of a book objectively, but it’s interesting. The hero is a teenage boy in a post-apocalyptic world where technology has been replaced by magic. He bonded with his unicorn when he was twelve, when the book starts he’s nineteen. The virgin mythology is real. They fight sometimes. It’s definitely a romantic relationship. But he can't have sex with anyone, woes. At the end he does, and the unicorn leaves. It’s clear that unicorns are better than sex.

C: And then there's Pern, where you have to have sex. [Audience indicates that they’ve almost all read Pern.] When the dragons do it, so do you. NO EXCEPTIONS!

J: You are forced to the dragon’s schedule. How do they feel when the humans are still at it?

R: The Pern books actually mention that. I think it was meant as id wish fulfillment, but it comes across as problematic, McCaffery used just enough realism that it seems creepy.

C: She's said in interviews that these are not romantic relationship, but in the books, the dragon’s partners are almost always the humans’ partners. So, you start getting sex = love. It makes the concept of choice more problematic.

J: Also one-sided.

R: Pern has very contradictory canon. The dragons are color-coded by gender. Green dragons are always ridden by men, and they’re always female. The only dragons with female riders are gold, and they’re extremely rare. So most dragon-mating would also involve men having sex with men. But it took 10 books for McCaffrey to be explicit about that.

C: I totally didn't notice that when I was nine.

R: I think the dragon mating is meant to be the wish-fulfillment of being utterly swept away by passion. It’s an appealing fantasy, but the execution highlights the creepy aspects: rape is love

C: There’ve been thousands of discussions about this. There’s the 70s trend of romance novels that start with rape. One theory is that in society where it's not OK for women to want to have sex, it's an out so that you don't feel like a “slut.” [Sarcasm scare quotes.] It can be a safety net if you don't own your own desire. Is the dragon mating flight the same thing? “It wasn't me, it was the dragon!”

R: Animals are close to nature, so it may also be the romanticized idea of that. You don’t have to worry about social restrictions. Let’s just all bone!

J: Do any books go the other way? Where the animals and people have to discuss whether they want to have sex?

C: Arrows of the Queen, sort of. A girl is bonded to stallion. Sex is not stigmatized and they are not compelled to have sex when the other, but they can tell. “Could you warn me next time? I'm in the middle of something, and then really?” They negotiate the timing.

R: The C. J. Cherryh Finisterre novels. (Rider at the Gate) We should discuss these more when we get to parodies and dark takes. On this planet, animal life is telepathic and empathic, and can overwhelm humans. Certain people can bond with night horses and put up mental shields. Sex transmits both ways. But it’s not overpowering, you can go with it or not. There’s one scene where the rider wants sex, and the horse is bored.

C: If your companion animal is comparable intelligence to you, what does it mean that the human is the decider?

J: Except in Valdemar.

C: It’s not always the case, but most often. Dragons have no choice in Pern. They have to do what they are told to do, no exceptions.

J: A Swiftly Tilting Planet. There’s a flying unicorn and a boy; neither are making solo decisions.

Audience: In Pern they are bonded, but choices are built into the environment

C: In Temeraire, dragons are human-level smart but subservient. Later in the series they start trying to get voting rights.

R: In other parts of that world dragons are equal to humans, or even superior.

R: Wolf companions are interesting because authors tend to use older research that turned out to be incorrect. The concept of the alpha wolf comes from wolf behavior in zoos. In the wild, the wolf pack is actually a family: a breeding male, a breeding female and pups. It’s not about constant fighting for dominance or rape.

J: A happy family of wolves. I want to read that.

C: Ya'll can talk about sex, I'm talking about Jhereg. It’s got a snarky flying lizard. AND IT’S AWESOME. It’s extraordinarily loyal, but will tell you that you're stupid. It’s much more realistic, like real friends. Not a creepy “I love you forever and everything you do is awesome.”

J: So you need your perfect friend companion, and your companion who will give you advice and call you out.

A: Sabriel: Mogget and the Destructible Disreputable Dog.

R: A kind of subversive version is Diana Wynne Jones’ Dogsbody. Who is whose companion? Sirius the Dog Star is a powerful being in the form of a tiny dog. It’s told from dog’s point of view, and the girl is actually called a “companion.”

C: Other books where the animal is the POV character?

J: Maybe the Valdemar short stories?

A: The Princess and the Bear

A: Traveller (Not fantasy.)

C: Does the bond need to be magical? I was explaining to my mother-in-law what I was doing at Sirens and since she doesn’t read fantasy, I explained what a bond animal was. She is blind and has a guide dog, and asked whether her guide dog was a ‘bond animal.’

J: Even in fiction it’s not always a magical bond, now that you mention it.

R: Sure. Pern is what first comes to mind, but Robin McKinley is next. She has very emotional relationships with non-magical bonded animals. She also has service animals. If you look at Deerskin and The Hero and the Crown, there are points where the heroine is badly wounded or sick, and her horse or dog acts as her service animal.

J: In Tamora Pierce’s books, everyone ends up with animals. They’re not always magical.

Audience: Have you read the Mountain's Call series by Judith Tarr, with the horses? (The Mountain's Call; under a pseudonym.) I loved Pern, but not so much for the sex issues. I read Valdemar, but the companions a bit too much – it’s a great relationship if you fall in line. In Tarr’s series, she really nailed the perfect horse relationship. No one is in charge. There are Gods in horses bodies, but they act like horses.

J: Tarr has a YA book, House of the Star, with magical horses. [Under a pseudonym.] The protagonist asks the horses why they need humans. The horse says humans can think around corners.

Audience: No one was better than anyone else. No subservience.

J: You get something bigger than the sum of either.

C: Question time!

Audience: Friendships vs. Partnership? Dealing with Dragons books.

R: I didn't think of those because I would think of them more as two characters, not an animal companion.

C: In those, the human is the companion animal.

Audience: Back to sex! There are books with deep romantic but non-sexual bonds with animals. Everyone avoided using the word asexual. Is that conscious, that the human is in an asexual relationship? Or is it just bestiality avoidance?

C: In most examples the characters do have sex, just not with each other. I hadn’t considered the idea of bond animals as asexual relationship. That’s a good thing to think about.

R: Yeah, it’s interesting. I didn’t think of it because the partners are usually sexual, but with others.

J: That would be a good opportunity for exploration.

A: It could be a model of an asexual partnership.

A: Zoo City, by Lauren Beukes, is a book where you only get a companion animal if you were bad. If people saw it, they knew you did something wrong.

R: We didn't get a chance to talk about it, but there’s a little subgenre where the animal companion is a part of you, a manifestation of your soul. Zoo City actually had a little take on The Golden Compass included as a fake academic paper.

Audience: There’s the Firekeeper series. (Wolf Captured (Firekeeper)) Would that count as companion animals? Girl raised by wolves. She can't remember who she is. One of the wolves is her best friend. They even have thoughts of 'if we were the same species, we'd be together' but it's not weird. They can speak, but not telepathically; the way wolves speak. Is that a companion animal?

J: Raised by wolves is a trope on its own.

Audience: She thinks of herself as a wolf. When she’s found by humans, she insists she is a wolf. Her relationship with the wolf does become romantic but not sexually. It’s an example of a romantic asexual relationship.

J: There’s a wide range of ways of dealing with this. It hasn't been explored enough.

R: If ya'll go write it, there are lots of places to explore.

J: The animals are always the good guys.

R: No! If you want to see evil companion animals, read Sheri Tepper’s Grass. The companion horse are evil aliens. The Cherryh books I mentioned earlier have a parody of the special girl with a special bond. It doesn't go very well.

Audience: Recommends Yuletide fics that were dark interpretations of Valdemar.

In China Mieville's wildly inventive science fiction/fantasy take on Moby Dick, earth and water are reversed. No one may step on the terrifying land lest they immediately be munched by some predatory creature tunneling up from below. Luckily, the railsea is covered in train tracks and traversed by a multitude of trains - including the moler train Medes, which hunts giant moles and is captained by a woman obsessed with the great ivory-colored mole that bit off her arm.

This was probably the most purely enjoyable book I've read all year. That being said, it's a love-it-or-hate-it novel - it has a very distinctive and odd prose style, bizarre (awesomely bizarre!) worldbuilding, and lots of metafictional authorial intrusions into the text. But if you've always liked the sound of China Mieville's worldbuilding but don't like grimdark, this is the book for you - all the worldbuilding, none of the grim. (Spoiler: the cute pet survives.) Also, you don't need to have read Moby Dick (I haven't) but a number of things are much funnier if you know the general outlines of the story.

Railsea is packed full of cool details, fascinating beasts, and sense of wonder. The worldbuilding is wacky but logical on its own terms, and the world keeps unfolding and unfolding, revealing more and more secrets and marvels. The ending is the logical outcome of everything that came before, and perfectly so: a succession of satisfying revelations leading up to a final image that made me grin until my face nearly cracked. (Not the thing about the bill, that fell flat; I mean everything else.) Tons of little details which at first seem annoying (like the use of & instead of "and") or throwaways turn out to be there for a purpose - worldbuilding, thematic, or just a running joke. (I cannot believe that Mieville actually managed to sell me on the ampersand, which annoyed me immensely when I began reading.)

Railsea repeatedly made me laugh out loud, sometimes at the author stepping in to give the readers a head-up about the plot, sometimes from events in the story itself. And though the hero is a boy, it has tons of women and girls in the supporting cast - so many that it made me realize just how unusual that is in most science fiction novels.

I didn't like Mieville's other kids' book, Un Lun Dun, but I absolutely loved Railsea. Highly recommended. I suggest that you give it some time if the style and metafiction put you off at first - it took me a little while to warm up to it, but I ended up falling in love. I would also advise against knowing too much going in. A lot of the fun is discovering all the little details for yourself. Also, be aware that the beginning, though not super-graphic, is gorier than the rest of the book.

By the way, this did not read at all YA to me, so also don't be put off if you don't generally like YA. It's more of a playful adult novel with a young protagonist. Though I could also see it being a good read-aloud.

Railsea

Feel free to put spoilers in comments.

Five queer kids save the world after an apocalypse!

With that premise, I expected to enjoy the book a lot more than I actually did. It’s largely a comedy, with the apocalypse caused by Muldoona, a Goddess lurking in her Fortress of Despair and eating peeled grapes. Humor is the most subjective of forms, and others might well find this book funnier than I did. I mostly found it totally unfunny.

The first chapter introduces Skilly, a bisexual 5000-year-old caveman in a 17-year-old body, due to having been given an Amulet of Immortality by his brother Urf.

It is a rule of fiction that protagonist cavepeople get names that sound like names, and non-protagonists get guttural grunts. See also The Clan of the Cave Bear: Protagonist: Ayla. Leading Man: Jondalar. Supporting Cast: Creb, Brun, Broud. In both books, this is explained within the text: Ayla and Jondalar are Cro-Magnons, who are more verbal, and Skilly was not his birth name. Still, the rule stands. Why don’t cavepeople ever get brief names that don’t sound like manly grunts, like Eee, Bip, or Baa?

I am always complaining that ancient immortals never sound, talk, or act like ancient immortals. But in a comedy, why not mine the fact that a main character is prehistoric for laughs? Though Skilly mentions ancient stuff sometimes, he otherwise seems like a modern 20-something.

The other main characters are Vikky and Ginger, a pair of indistinguishable shallow, snarky teenagers, Julia, a less shallow but still snarky teenager, and Marly, who is trans or genderqueer. Marly’s gender identity is not clear-cut, which I liked. Marly is in a locked-in juvenile facility for skipping school. It was explained that teenagers can be locked up for stuff which is not illegal for adults. This is true, but, as was typical of many plot points, an unlikely motivation or occurrence does not get any more plausible just because it’s given one line of justification. Some of this was clearly meant as a joke, but I generally didn't find it funny. In other cases, even satire needs to make sense on its own terms, and this book often didn't.

The apocalypse consists of magically-induced nuclear catastrophe, which kills hundreds of thousands of people and leads to Ginger and Julia getting stranded, along with other shallow American tourists, inside Anne Frank’s house. This is every bit as embarrassingly anvillicious as it sounds. Meanwhile, Marly is stranded in juvenile detention. The kids’ predicament has some nice narrative tension… until Gods give them all magical amulets that solve everything.

If this had been about straight kids, I would not have made it past chapter one. If I hadn’t been on an airplane, I would have given up right there. However, I made it to the end, and I’m kind of glad I did, because the WTF just kept coming. Starting with Marly, previously the most sympathetic character, in the space of a single conversation, becoming one of the least sympathetic characters I have ever encountered in anything.

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Not my cup of tea. But it might be yours! I have a low tolerance for hipster irony, and very particular tastes in comedy.

The End

I am Jan Xu. Mother, ex-teacher, daughter and wolf. My family is all Lang, Mandarin Chinese for "wolf." We live among the human population of Singapore, looking like any ethnic Singapore-born Chinese. We have adopted the culture of our human counterparts, becoming human. Yet in our chests beat the hearts of wolves, our voices the howls of distant hunters.

An urban fantasy by a Singaporean author who may be better-known to you by her real name, Joyce Chng. While A Wolf at the Door had some problems, it was one of the few recent urban fantasies which I've even liked enough to finish. (By "urban fantasy" I mean the modern "hot and/or wisecracking person kicks supernatural ass in modern times," not the Emma Bull/Charles de Lint "magic in the city" books. Damask's book bridges those categories.)

Most urban fantasy, of the "kicks supernatural ass" variety, fails to hold my interest; it feels bland, plasticky, dull. In what I've read, the protagonists rarely have any relationships outside of romances or power dynamics with their vampire clan/werewolf pack/sugar glider flock, the landscapes tend toward generic American cities, and there's nothing going on other than magic spells, politicking among the pack, romance, and fighting: no details of life that make a world feel real.

Damask doesn't follow any of those patterns. Her Singapore feels completely real, and is a character in its own right. The characters have many relationships of different types: familial, pack, friendships. Jan is happily married and has two young daughters/pups. In fact, the best parts of the book involve daily life as a Singaporean werewolf.

Where the book falls down is plot and structure. There are two timelines running in parallel, one in the present and one in the past. They are poorly divided, sometimes marked "past" and sometimes not (and occasionally marked "past" when they're actually in the present). The storyline in the past is underdeveloped, with way too much tell and not enough show, and is not strongly connected to the present storyline. The present storyline is better, but oddly paced.

Five stars for atmosphere, three for character and prose (sometimes awkward, sometimes quite good), two for structure. But like I said: this is the only urban fantasy I've read all year that I actually finished. The world and setting are very, very good. Also, it's only $1.99 on Amazon: Wolf At the Door

Sequel to Night Gate, in which, you may recall, I was fascinated by the twelve-year-old heroine's stirrings-of-first-love relationship with Billy Thunder, her dog who turns into an attractive teenage boy when they go to fantasyland together to try to wake her mother from a coma.

Now back in the real world, it turns out that Rage's mom briefly rallied, but is now worse than ever. Oops. To Rage's sorrow, Billy Thunder is a dog again. For the first half of the novel, Rage has brief dreams of fantasyland, but much of the action involves her battle and then friendship with a troubled bully from her school, Logan. A human rival for Billy Thunder, I thought.

But when she finally confides her magical adventures to Logan, he becomes fascinated - even a bit obsessed - with her descriptions of Elle, her dog who became a beautiful blonde girl. For the rest of the book, she and Logan have somewhat random fantasyland adventures while Rage longs for Billy Thunder and Logan longs for Elle. This is the first novel I've ever read in which the romantic quadrangle consists of two humans and two transformed dogs.

A third book was promised, but that was seven years ago.

Winter Door

Another archival review. But I still stand by it. This is a fantastic book. It's also notable for having one of the few love triangles (love quadrangles, actually) which I actually liked. She even picked my favorite, which usually doesn't happen.

Peri, a young woman whose fisherman father drowned, casts a spell against the sea, calling forth a monster… and a Prince.

A magical, moving, and completely original story, peopled with quirkily charming characters. Unlike most fantasy novels, this isn’t about wielding swords and spells to save the world, but about the power and wonder of both magic and human relationships. Peri is a likable, offbeat heroine, and the choice she makes regarding the three men who come into her life, the magician, the prince, and the sea dragon, is believable and heartwarming.

All the characters, even the most minor ones, have their own lives and agendas, bringing to life the vividly imagined setting of a fishing village on the edge of enchantment. Dialogue is sometimes poetic, sometimes funny, but always well-phrased. The balance in this book between the little moments of daily life and the beauty of magic and feeling reminded me of books like The Secret Garden.

It's one Patricia McKillip's more obscure novels, but also one of her best.

The Changeling Sea

Note: Prompted by Goodreads, I am reposting some archival reviews I did ages ago while working at the Jim Henson Company, many of them for a series of proposed children's fantasy TV movies which never actually happened. Alas.

I am in love with Mr. Lindstrom, my science teacher. I found out where he lives and every night I perch on a tree branch outside his bedroom window and watch him sleep. He sleeps in his underwear: Fruit of the Looms, size 34.

Owl Tycho is a fourteen-year-old girl who can turn into an owl, or perhaps an owl who can turn into a girl. She’s not just a girl with magic powers: she looks a little like an owl in human form, her blood is black and her skin is grayish, and she lives on a diet of mice and insects. She has fallen in love with Mr. Lindstrom, her divorced, forty-year-old science teacher.

But Mr. Lindstrom has no idea that she loves him, much less that she watches him nightly from a tree branch. Owl soon becomes exhausted from the effort of watching Mr. Lindstrom all night while also keeping up with her school work, keeping her secret from her classmates, and convincing her parents that there’s nothing wrong with her. And then a mysterious intruder shows up in the woods around Mr. Lindstrom's house...

An absolute delight: witty, charming, heartfelt, and original. Owl has some problems that will be familiar to any teenager: her difficulty fitting in and making friends; her crush on a teacher; the strange but cute boy her own age; parents who are well-meaning but don’t understand. But those common issues are seen from the point of view of a character who is literally alien, as much owl as she is girl.

The result is both startling and funny, and makes these archetypal problems and their resolution seem fresh and new. The characters are all sympathetic and believable, if odd. The ending is a bit coincidental and predictable, but still satisfying. Great title, great concept, great voice.

I haven't liked any of Kindl's subsequent books as much as this one, but I haven't kept up with everything she's written.

Owl in Love