Recent reads

War for the Oaks, by Emma Bull. Along with the works of Charles de Lint, this is one of the works that started the subgenre of urban fantasy that prospered through the 1990s and 2000s before recently being supplanted by Sparkly Vampires In Lurrrve, Pretentious Title With Amusingly Improbable Monsters mashups, and reiterations of steampunk set in a conveniently idealized Victorian age.

It's an amusing and adventurous story that appeals to a number of romantic adolescent urges: the love of music; the wish to possess secret knowledge of another world, and to be able to enter that world; the desire for magical abilities that conveniently short-circuit all those tiresome realistic limitations of the mundane adult world; and the desire to find oneself, and one's own neighborhood, the focus of supernatural attention and importance.

It's also amusing for a middle-aged reader to find that he bears a far greater resemblance to a despised, comically incompetent minor villain of the piece than to any of the romantic heroes that vie for the attention of the supernaturally gifted female musician who is the protagonist of the story. It's not the first time this has happened. In Cabell's Domnei, I felt far more affinity for Ahaseurus than for that gaudy hero Perion.