was ayearslater reread of a fantasy I remember liking in high school, one of Terri Windling's Ace Fantasy Specials,
It opens with a somewhat deadly prologue involving Gods, in which the Trickster Rimble playfully meddles with humanity, creating the novel's most interesting concept, landdraw, in which children are born with characteristics metaphorically resembling the land in which they were conceived.
Piedmerris, born in a peaceful, fertile area, are plump and placid, and have a psychic connection to the land, Jinjirri, born in an earthquakeprone area, have hair whose color changes with their moods so they normally wear scarves, lest everyone be able to read them too easily, and can change gender at will.
Etc.
This is a pretty cool concept, and is carefully worked out down to issues like, "What if a woman conceives in one land, then goes to another" She miscarries.
The actual plot involves a bohemian household, into which nine misfit characters are drawn by the machinations of Rimble so he can fix something that went wrong in the past and either avert an apocalypse or bring about a change in consciousness, I forget.
The climax is a bit incoherent,
This is a very odd book, full of deliberate fourthwall breaking, anachronisms, and tossedoff inventions, It has a very sixties feel to me, with all the free spirits and drugs, though I guess the eighties also had a lot of idolizing of bohemians and freeing your mind.
It's written in omniscient POV, which was unusual even then, It's both ambitious and slight, which is a strange combination,
Based on this, I would have expected Greenhalgh to go on to a quite interesting career, Instead, she wrote a sequel, Trickster's Touch, which I recall not liking, and then vanished without a trace, Does anyone know what happened to her Beyond the obvious answer that her second book flopped and she quit writing, I love a good trickster tale, and the land draw stuff, mood ring hair, and gender bending was nifty,
The story felt a little incoherent and inconsequential for something that was the omg end of teh world! and the whole Gods endorsed soulmate incest stuff was a little much for me.
An "Ace Fantasy Special", this book has a novel setting, an interesting geography, and well thoughtout societies, On the negative side, half the characters tend toward the bland, the author has a tendency to explain situations unnecessarily and sometimes more than once, and if one is going to have a literal deus ex machina ending one had better make it more exciting than a maypole dance.
The negative side starts first, unfortunately, in the prologue where a meeting of the Greatkin not quite gods, but close enough occurs that is written with all the excitement and wonder of a regional meeting of Walgreen's sales managers.
It is literally unnecessary for the prologue to be there, as the issues they discuss come up in the book later, but we do get a short list of some of the Greatkin that will play their parts: Rimble, Greatkin of Deviance, the Impossible, and the Unexpected, and a sitelinkTrickster Jinndaven, Greatkin of Imagination Themyth, Greatkin of Civilization and Phebene, Greatkin of Great Loves and Tender Trysts.
The story picks up with Zendrak, the Trickster's Emissary, riding to different points to set into motion Rimble's plan, Zendrak must get nine people with certain talents together in the Saämbolin city of Speakinghast to get a ritual performed in time, The lands of this world each have an effect on its peoples, pushing Nature over Nurture to such an extent that countries are defined by their land's effects rather than by political borders.
The Saämbolin like an orderly life the Tammering have a gift of prophecy while the people of Jinnjirri are known for their wild, imaginative ways, change gender at will, but have little control over their hair color and there are many others.
It makes for an imaginative mix of people in the communal house in Speakinghast, and when they are squabbling over house rules or visiting each other's exhibits the prose shines.
But the plot lacks any sense of urgency, and Zendrak's maneuvering runs into only a little opposition, It has some very good moments, but there are also pages that can be skipped over with no loss, and I wish Greenhalgh's editor had wielded her red pen more effectively.
The cover and concept got me to pick up this book, though the politics almost lost me, Not that it was badly written, just that it's not my cup of tea in fantasy genre writing, I was definitely intrigued by the idea of people from different lands having different abilities and physical characteristics, but it didn't seem to come together by the end, for me.
Still, I'm glad I read it, It was an interesting change of pace for me, I found this little book forin a tiny used bookstore and I bought it because of the promising title, and I thought my little sister would enjoy it.
Warning: read this before you gift it, I decided that myyearold sister was not old enough for this particular book, I don't recall why I believed it was a children's book, but I was certainly wrong,
I loved the introduction to this book, and it pulled me in like no fantasy I've read in a long time, Of course, it was from the lates, I was intrigued by the various races in this world there were a great number, I honestly wish a map had been included so that I could wrap my head around the geography of the place, The book has fastdeveloping characters and
fantastic social commentary, something I was surprised to see in a book from, The book had fantastic characters, even though I couldn't always determine why they were significant,
Although I loved the majority of this book, the plot if there really was one or eight, with characters we only met once or twice was convoluted.
The ending was incredibly rushed, I felt incredibly far away from any sort of resolutionpages from the end, Then a large event takes place that "resolves" everything, but not really at all,
Four because I loved it, one taken away for the poorly composed ending, Decent story about turmoil among the Gods, An enjoyable if confusing yet somehow still ordinary tale somehow loses all of its charm and introduces some seriously messed up plot points in a sudden and maddash attempt to avert a similarly sudden endoftheworld plot line.
Also, Im still very, very confused about almost everything that happened, Cant recommend even though I did very much like the first third of it, Trigger warnings for rape and other sordid topics,
I read old fantasy and scifi novels written by women authors in search of forgotten gems, See a fulllength review at sitelinkForgotten Female Fantasy Imaginative, thoughtprovoking, funny, engaging fantasy, Interesting but imperfect, this is more curiosity than hidden gem, but I'm very glad I came across it randomly, Shows what creativity and inclusion was like outside the mainstream ofs/s fantasy, but looking back you want it to do more with the themes of trauma and change and diversity/deviance.
The worldbuilding is wild but undisciplined, the plot is pacy but almost frantic at times, the author packs so much in there's a lot of exposition, the characters are diverse but also a bit constrained by their heritage/races though not genders though again, chances are missed.
Enjoyable and remarkable nonetheless. I very much enjoyed this book, The worldbuilding and mythos is fantastic, as well as the characterization of the nine main characters, The idea of a person's general outlook on life and skills being based on where they were born is very neat, and can cause interesting things like a parent from area A and a parent from area B having a child that is from area C.
There are some crude humor moments, and some things are for sure NSFW, but it was a fantastic read, Boring and stupid! HIS NAME MEANS MISCHIEF, . . Rimble, the Trickster, is a merry god dancing through streets as a gust of leaves, hobbling along canals as an old hag, roaming through gardens as a wiry dog.
And where Rimble travels, trouble follows, Trouble of a most peculiar nature, One has to be sanely mad in order to see its method, The residents of Speakinghast, unfortunately, are blind to Rimble's ways, From the Jinnjirri, whose hair changes color to match their moods and whose gender fluctuates almost as often, to the Tammirring, who listen to the winds of the universe and translate its sigh not one can see the significance of the Trickster's game.
And see it they must, for now his odd pranks are becoming quite dangerous, And definitely deadly .