![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
(no subject)
You know that thing where no matter what hobby you have, you can write a cozy themed mystery novel series about it? Like, there's knitting-themed cozy mysteries and gardening-themed cozy mysteries and accounting-themed cozy mysteries and so on?
I don't think 'cozy themed series' is a thing for fantasy novels, because it's kind of been subsumed by urban fantasy which is a whole separate thing, but maybe it should be a thing? Actually I would kind of love if that was a thing. (ACCOUNTING-THEMED COZY FANTASY NOVELS BY THE DOZENS.) And if it was a thing, then Barbara Ashford's Spellcast and its sequel Spellcrossed would fall squarely into that subgenre.
So the basic premise is that Our Heroine Maggie goes on a road trip and accidentally gets sucked into a tiny community theater in a charming small town in Vermont, which is full of charmingly eccentric theatrical types and wacky theatrical hijinks, and also it turns out powered by the charming and angsty fairy director who uses his MAGICAL FAIRY POWERS to help all these charmingly eccentric characters put on successful musicals while coming to terms with their personal hangups and growing as people. The first book is about Maggie getting over her low self-esteem by performing as the clambake lady in "Carousel," and the second book is about Maggie getting over her parent issues by directing "Into the Woods." While falling in love with/sorting out relationship status with the charming and angsty fairy director, of course. They are basically the coziest damn things I've ever read.
And, like, OK:
- it's wish fulfillment up the wazoo
- there are all kinds of ethical problems with fairy magic cheerfully being used to futz with people's emotional states and ability to perform high-quality theater that are really very BARELY glancingly addressed
- don't go in looking for numinous because there's really very little numinous to be found
- also many of the charmingly eccentric theatrical types verge on stereotype (I cringed, for example, at the subplot about the gay actor playing Neville Craven who kept accidentally giving off incest vibes during his scenes with Archibald in "The Secret Garden") (although actually the loud and intimidating but good-hearted Chinese choreographer who SPEAKS IN ALLCAPS was my favorite and I would very happily read all about her romance with her mild-mannered Swiss-German stage manager husband)
So if you're likely to be irritated by those things, stay away, but I had massive amounts of fun. The books just kind of exude comfort -- at least if you are a person who loves musicals and loves cheesy fantasy novels, which, I mean, there's no denying I am the target audience. There is an X painted on my chest. HERE I AM.
But also I think I'm a bit cozy comfort fantasy-starved? Seriously, cozy theme fantasy can become a thing any time now.
I don't think 'cozy themed series' is a thing for fantasy novels, because it's kind of been subsumed by urban fantasy which is a whole separate thing, but maybe it should be a thing? Actually I would kind of love if that was a thing. (ACCOUNTING-THEMED COZY FANTASY NOVELS BY THE DOZENS.) And if it was a thing, then Barbara Ashford's Spellcast and its sequel Spellcrossed would fall squarely into that subgenre.
So the basic premise is that Our Heroine Maggie goes on a road trip and accidentally gets sucked into a tiny community theater in a charming small town in Vermont, which is full of charmingly eccentric theatrical types and wacky theatrical hijinks, and also it turns out powered by the charming and angsty fairy director who uses his MAGICAL FAIRY POWERS to help all these charmingly eccentric characters put on successful musicals while coming to terms with their personal hangups and growing as people. The first book is about Maggie getting over her low self-esteem by performing as the clambake lady in "Carousel," and the second book is about Maggie getting over her parent issues by directing "Into the Woods." While falling in love with/sorting out relationship status with the charming and angsty fairy director, of course. They are basically the coziest damn things I've ever read.
And, like, OK:
- it's wish fulfillment up the wazoo
- there are all kinds of ethical problems with fairy magic cheerfully being used to futz with people's emotional states and ability to perform high-quality theater that are really very BARELY glancingly addressed
- don't go in looking for numinous because there's really very little numinous to be found
- also many of the charmingly eccentric theatrical types verge on stereotype (I cringed, for example, at the subplot about the gay actor playing Neville Craven who kept accidentally giving off incest vibes during his scenes with Archibald in "The Secret Garden") (although actually the loud and intimidating but good-hearted Chinese choreographer who SPEAKS IN ALLCAPS was my favorite and I would very happily read all about her romance with her mild-mannered Swiss-German stage manager husband)
So if you're likely to be irritated by those things, stay away, but I had massive amounts of fun. The books just kind of exude comfort -- at least if you are a person who loves musicals and loves cheesy fantasy novels, which, I mean, there's no denying I am the target audience. There is an X painted on my chest. HERE I AM.
But also I think I'm a bit cozy comfort fantasy-starved? Seriously, cozy theme fantasy can become a thing any time now.
no subject
no subject
Nick O'Donohoe! The Magic and the Healing (1994), Under the Healing Sign (1995), The Healing of Crossroads (1996). I cannot tell for the life of me whether those would hold up if I re-read them, although the central conceit of a veterinary practice for mythological creatures is still gold. I remember liking the first two very much and the third not at all. I always wanted more about Morgan. She was such a weird quasi-Arthurian touch. (Doesn't she hail from a country that would have been the Waste Land if she hadn't murdered the Fisher King, or something?) To the best of my knowledge, the trilogy is dead out of print. If it turns out that my parents still own the copies I read in high school, I'll lend them to you. I can't promise anything, though—there have been several devastating book-losses since then.
no subject
no subject
I will keep you posted. I need to visit and look for a bunch of books, anyway. I've unpacked all the books I brought with me when I moved out, whch has suddenly highlighted how many books I apparently left behind.
and the fact that she dumps her series love interest after it turns out he's actually only a fast-aging five years old
I . . . may have forgotten that. Wow. What species is he again?
I barely remember Morgan, but what you're saying sounds vaguely correct...
She's martial and red-haired and has some kind of relationship history with the king of Crossroads from when he was younger and really, really stupid; she is happiest when she is washing herself in blood. Completely batshit. Enjoys leading armies. Might be some kind of syncretic reference to the Morrigan, but I'd need to re-read to be sure.
I also have good memories of a Wyr woman whose name I am unable to remember at the moment, due to it being nearly AAAAAAGH TWENTY YEARS since I last read these books. She and BJ have a gorgeously awkward conversation about her coming into heat.
no subject
The love interest is a faun, I think. My recollection is that her discovery of the age thing comes along with a fast-progressing pregnancy and she's like, 'wow, I thought your general demeanor was just charming youthful faun high spirits but it all makes so much more sense if you've ACTUALLY ONLY BEEN ALIVE FOR FIVE YEARS, can't cope with this!' and nopes out of the relationship. She has the kid but they do not get back together. Probably one of the weirdest fantasy romances I've read, but at least the book acknowledged ... the weirdness ...
Oh, I do remember Morgan now! I remember the Wyr woman, too. In general I remember the books having a lot of nice stuff around respected enemies and the Hippocratic Oath and the medical obligation to patch up even the people who may have tried to kill you or will try to kill you in future, all of which is catnip to me.
no subject
Thank you! One way or another, these books will ride again.
The love interest is a faun, I think.
Stefan! There is some mythologically clever thing about the rest of his name that I am not remembering right now! Thank you!
My recollection is that her discovery of the age thing comes along with a fast-progressing pregnancy and she's like, 'wow, I thought your general demeanor was just charming youthful faun high spirits but it all makes so much more sense if you've ACTUALLY ONLY BEEN ALIVE FOR FIVE YEARS, can't cope with this!' and nopes out of the relationship.
FAIR. COP.
In general I remember the books having a lot of nice stuff around respected enemies and the Hippocratic Oath and the medical obligation to patch up even the people who may have tried to kill you or will try to kill you in future, all of which is catnip to me.
Yes. I think that's actually a lot of the plot of Under the Healing Sign, which is, now that I think about it, at least in memory my favorite of the three.
no subject
OTOH, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the even more obscure O'Donohoe book I kept: Too Too Solid Flesh, which is a pure sci-fi whodunit featuring a production of Hamlet largely performed by robot actors. Very Asimovian, totally fascinating, and published by -- of all things -- TSR, the company behing the Dungeons & Dragons empire. Very, very odd, but also very, very good...and, of course, utterly out of print.
no subject
no subject
That sounds deeply confusing and I must find it.
no subject
In related, Sharyn McCrumb's Bimbos of the Death Sun - murder of unpleasant author at sf convention - might be kind of cozy?
no subject
Yes, except I remember it being garbage about actual fan culture, even for allowing for the differences between when I read it, when I started attending conventions, and when it was written in 1988. (Which was sad when I realized, because the title is a gift from the B-movie gods.) Diana Wynne Jones' Deep Secret (1997)?
no subject
no subject
There is!
(As a novel, I prefer the sequel The Merlin Conspiracy (2003), but it's not the one that takes place at a con. And Deep Secret does have some amazing sequences, like getting to Babylon by candlelight, there and back again.)
no subject
no subject
That is my mother's favorite in the series.
no subject
no subject