Retreat, Day 6

This is my first review for The Green Man Review, but I cannot help but feel I have somehow come full circle from the moment in a 2005 World Fantasy Convention bar when someone kept telling me how much they enjoyed my Green Man Review reviews and I kept mentioning they had the wrong Cat. Now all I can do is assume they traveled in time somehow. And so. Let’s look at a nifty book in the here and now, in what is hopefully the first of many reviews.

The Reader: War For The Oaks is a hardbound book presenting a photography project by Tim Cooper. It’s a slim little 8.5″³x 11″³ volume, clocking in at 96 pages. The pleasant interior design presents the photos nicely, along with some pretty arboreal details. The cover, whose design is unobjectionable but unremarkable, features a photo that lets the reader know exactly what the book is about: photos of people reading War For the Oaks in various Minneapolis locations.

There are a few books I have re-read so many times that they are an integral part of fantasy to me, and Emma Bull’s first novel, War for the Oaks is one of them, featuring Eddi McCandrey and her half-human, half-elvish band, the Fey. It was originally published in 1987; the paperback copy I’ve been carrying around for decades is battered and coverless now, but it was a pleasure to have the task of going back and reading it yet again in order to do this review.

I’m not alone in loving this story, and the book’s part in defining and shaping urban fantasy cannot be overestimated. Reading in many ways like a crisper, less Romantic version of Charles de Lint, Bull demonstrates in this book that despite being one of the quieter writers, she will become a major talent. Many nifty but commercially non-viable projects that we would miss if reliant only on traditional publishing have come out in recent years, often supported through crowdfunding; this one was a Kickstarter project. It’s delightful to see a project dedicated to the novel in this way, celebrating how much the book has meant to many readers.

Which is perhaps my major caveat. This book will enchant, down to their very toes and beyond, those who love Bull’s novel and know the city as well. Cooper’s photos show locations from the book in an order corresponding to the novel’s chronology, each time with people reading War for the Oaks somewhere in the picture. For someone who loves the book in part because of its setting, the sole disappointment may be that the photo are low enough resolution that sometimes it is difficult to make everything out.

Familiar with the book but not so much with the city? Mileage will vary here, depending both on one’s degree of affection for the book as well as how firmly the reader is attached to their vision of things. Someone with a mental vision that is particularly strong, in fact, might find it jarring to have it contradicted by these pictures.

Familiar only with the city? Here again mileage will vary radically depending on factors like how interested one is in examples of projects like this or if one is a book collector specializing in fantasy and science fiction (in which case, you’ve probably had the novel on your list but just never got around to it). Lovely extra details scatter themselves here and there throughout the book, as well as photos featuring other authors like Elizabeth Bear, Stephen Brust, PamelaDean, Marissa Lingen, Scott Lynch, and Patricia C. Wrede. Essays by Dean, Sigrid Ellis, Sarah Olsen and Katherine St. Asaph appear at the back, along with a poem by Alec Austin.

Familiar only with the city? Here again mileage will vary radically depending on factors like how interested one is in examples of projects like this or if one is a book collector specializing in fantasy and science fiction (in which case, you’ve probably had the novel on your list but just never got around to it). Lovely extra details scatter themselves here and there throughout the book, as well as photos featuring other authors like Elizabeth Bear, Stephen Brust, PamelaDean, Marissa Lingen, Scott Lynch, and Patricia C. Wrede. Essays by Dean, Sigrid Ellis, Sarah Olsen and Katherine St. Asaph appear at the back, along with a poem by Alec Austin.

I’ve stuck this on one of my shelves of favorite F&SF next to that battered paperback copy of War for the Oaks, because it’s definitely a keeper. Next time I’m at a con with the author, I may even take it along, because having it signed by the person whose book inspired so much passion would make it even niftier.

(Tired Tapir Press, 2014)

You can read this review at http://thegreenmanreview.com/books/recent-reading-eddi-and-the-feys-revival-tour/

Today’s wordcount:5006
Current Hearts of Tabat wordcount: 99942
Total word count for the week: 10014
Total word count for this retreat: 27091
Worked on Hearts of Tabat, story “Days of Sweetness, Days of Want”
Time spent on SFWA email, discussion boards, other stuff: 30 minutes
According to Fitbit, 11646 steps, 85 flights of stairs, 5.26 miles

From Hearts of Tabat:

The journey upward was full of splinters and soot, but both girls made it. They wandered through the rooms here, which were lower-ceilinged but just as once richly appointed as the downstairs had been. Here too, though, looters had stripped away most of the valuable things other than the built in furniture and even there, the shelves that had once held drawers gaped openly. Bales of paper, blackened on the outside, fell aside at the touch to reveal white internals, blank and ready for words that would never come.

There were two separate suites, both facing out over Printers Row, and in one, rather than looting, someone had smashed: a mass of crockery, and a number of terra-cotta house dolls, every Trade God in the house, it seemed. Revelation picked through the fragments, taking out the faces where she could find them, accumulating them into a little heap of smiles and eyes and pointed noses.

“What are you doing?” Grace said irritably. “Those aren’t worth anything.”

Revelation bit her lip and kept down on her knees, sorting through the fragments. She thought to herself, they have value because I want them, even if someone else might think they’re worthless. Anger smoldered in her like a damp match.

“Do you think they’ll have some power, because they’re Trade Gods?” Grace persisted. “That’s foolish. Only the moons are real.”

“I know that,” Revelation said. “I’m not a heretic.”

“Then why are you sorting those out? Do you think you can put one back together?”

Revelation shook her head. Grace pulled at her shoulder. Reluctantly, she swept the faces she had found, two handfuls worth, into her pockets and let Grace move her along.

The fire’s touch had manifested in every room, charring walls, blackening fabrics. It smelled overwhelmingly of burned things, which was not a smell that Revelation had considered unpleasant before this day, but now pressed at her nose until she found herself dipping her face into her shoulder, trying to breathe through the fabric of her cloak. Grace seemed unaffected by the smell, moving quickly to anything she thought might yield some value, and forcing her gleanings on Revelation, whose load grew heavier and heavier as they sorted through the rooms: a brass lantern; half a picture frame, the edges gilded; a small glass jar full of an unknown white paste; a handful of yellowy-gold feathers, so bright that she thought they must be painted at first.

They both froze when they heard the noise from below.