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Under the Healing Sign, the second book in the Crossroads series about Vets In Fantasyland, does not exactly have a plot or a structure so much as .... like, the first two-thirds of the book is mostly a series of largely nice, occasionally bittersweet anecdotes about Our Heroine BJ's first year as Fantasyland's Official Veterinarian, and then there is a Battle and a Tragedy and suddenly the book is like "PART TWO!!" and all of PART TWO is "OH SHIT WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE."
Stuff that happens in Part One:
- BJ pursues her relationship with Stefan, a fedora-wearing faun (this was before fedoras were gross) getting his undergraduate degree so that he can go on to become a vet
- BJ befriends Fiona, a Wiccan grad student who gets her outfits from Hot Topic and her sense of judgment and proportion in magical experimentation from every villain in season six of Buffy
- BJ also befriends Dr. Estevan Protera, a dashing queer scientist with a swordcane who is an expert in physics and also in fencing and also in fashion
- BJ also also befriends Gredya, a recovering addict werewolf who was a villain in the last book, and ends up co-parenting her adorable-but-runty werewolf puppy
- BJ and her vet school buddy Lee Ann the Farmgirl Vet give a bunch of centaurs a class on prenatal care and emergency medicine
- Centaur Polyta, who inherited the position of Chief Centaur after her husband's death in the previous book, grows into a leader and turns out to be the best Chief Centaur that there has ever been
- Dave the Bro Vet adopts a whole bunch of Nac Mac Feegle and feeds them pizza and beer to clean his animal hospital
- dodos find crossroads! everyone makes fun of them
- Annie the Religious Vet comes for a visit from her religious mission in Chad; she gives BJ her journal to read, BJ is like "well the God stuff is kind of weird but she's certainly a heck of a vet"
- Lee Ann steals a breeding pair of an endangered species and drops them off in Crossroads to FLY FREE, to BJ and Annie's deep exasperation and judgment, only to discover that there are already hundreds of them living there
- a selkie cheerfully invites Lee Ann and BJ to join his harem
- Crossroads is invaded by gross, friendly, parasite-infested chimerae who wander around flaming everything in their path in an amiable and inquisitive fashion
- it turns out the gross-but-friendly chimerae are the female version of griffins and they are in Crossroads for mating season; BJ's griffin friend is like "ugh please don't tell my tragically star-crossed human girlfriend about this, it's SO EMBARRASSING"
- everyone goes to a wedding!!
- SUDDENLY THE BIG BAD FROM THE LAST BOOK ATTACKS WITH FIONA AND THE CHIMERAE AND THE GRIFFIN GETS INTO A FIGHT WITH THE REST OF CROSSROADS TO PROTECT THEM AND THE ADORABLE WEREWOLF PUPPY IS MURDERED AND EVERYONE IS LIKE 'WELP WE'RE COMPLETELY DOOMED BETTER EVACUATE CROSSROADS WHILE WE STILL CAN'
Stuff that happens in Part Two:
- everyone has a lot of very serious conversations about how there is no possible way to win against Big Bad Morgan
- meanwhile possibly the book's weirdest plot twist, Dee Dee, the evil vet student from the last book who helped Big Bad Morgan for reasons nobody could figure out, turns out to have been secretly dating BJ's brother in Chicago FOR REVENGE!!!
- Dee Dee the evil vet student then goes berserk at her first sight of Big Bad Morgan, slaughters half a dozen people with wildly implausible out-of-nowhere fighting skills, and promptly gets slaughtered by Morgan in turn
- the king of Crossroads, who has generally been Sir Not Appearing In This Book, turns up again and almost immediately gets killed rescuing Hot Topic Fiona from her own poor life decisions
- BJ and the god of Crossroads painstakingly evacuate every Crossroads species to locations elsewhere in the multiverse in advance of the oncoming doom
- this would seem like a lot of work except it turns out Crossroads really only has, like, seven species total, and that's including the dodos
- BJ FINALLY tells her faun boyfriend Stefan that she has a fatal degenerative disease that will kill her if she ever moves back to West Virginia and therefore she cannot evacuate Crossroads with everyone else
- the last five people left in Crossroads -- including BJ, the God of Crossroads, BJ's faun boyfriend Stefan, Hot Topic Fiona, and Stein the cranky Holocaust survivor whom I have forgotten to mention until now -- make a final stand against Big Bad Morgan
- despite the fact that everything that has happened in Part 2 is predicated on the idea that there is no way to beat Big Bad Morgan, these five people beat Big Bad Morgan!
- except the god of Crossroads dies in the effort
- so BJ becomes the new god of Crossroads! Congratulations, BJ!
ON TO BOOK THREE, which is, as I remember, the weirdest of them all.
This entry is cross-posted at Livejournal from http://skygiants.dreamwidth.org/468137.html. Please feel free to comment here or there! There are currently
comments on Dreamwidth.
Stuff that happens in Part One:
- BJ pursues her relationship with Stefan, a fedora-wearing faun (this was before fedoras were gross) getting his undergraduate degree so that he can go on to become a vet
- BJ befriends Fiona, a Wiccan grad student who gets her outfits from Hot Topic and her sense of judgment and proportion in magical experimentation from every villain in season six of Buffy
- BJ also befriends Dr. Estevan Protera, a dashing queer scientist with a swordcane who is an expert in physics and also in fencing and also in fashion
- BJ also also befriends Gredya, a recovering addict werewolf who was a villain in the last book, and ends up co-parenting her adorable-but-runty werewolf puppy
- BJ and her vet school buddy Lee Ann the Farmgirl Vet give a bunch of centaurs a class on prenatal care and emergency medicine
- Centaur Polyta, who inherited the position of Chief Centaur after her husband's death in the previous book, grows into a leader and turns out to be the best Chief Centaur that there has ever been
- Dave the Bro Vet adopts a whole bunch of Nac Mac Feegle and feeds them pizza and beer to clean his animal hospital
- dodos find crossroads! everyone makes fun of them
- Annie the Religious Vet comes for a visit from her religious mission in Chad; she gives BJ her journal to read, BJ is like "well the God stuff is kind of weird but she's certainly a heck of a vet"
- Lee Ann steals a breeding pair of an endangered species and drops them off in Crossroads to FLY FREE, to BJ and Annie's deep exasperation and judgment, only to discover that there are already hundreds of them living there
- a selkie cheerfully invites Lee Ann and BJ to join his harem
- Crossroads is invaded by gross, friendly, parasite-infested chimerae who wander around flaming everything in their path in an amiable and inquisitive fashion
- it turns out the gross-but-friendly chimerae are the female version of griffins and they are in Crossroads for mating season; BJ's griffin friend is like "ugh please don't tell my tragically star-crossed human girlfriend about this, it's SO EMBARRASSING"
- everyone goes to a wedding!!
- SUDDENLY THE BIG BAD FROM THE LAST BOOK ATTACKS WITH FIONA AND THE CHIMERAE AND THE GRIFFIN GETS INTO A FIGHT WITH THE REST OF CROSSROADS TO PROTECT THEM AND THE ADORABLE WEREWOLF PUPPY IS MURDERED AND EVERYONE IS LIKE 'WELP WE'RE COMPLETELY DOOMED BETTER EVACUATE CROSSROADS WHILE WE STILL CAN'
Stuff that happens in Part Two:
- everyone has a lot of very serious conversations about how there is no possible way to win against Big Bad Morgan
- meanwhile possibly the book's weirdest plot twist, Dee Dee, the evil vet student from the last book who helped Big Bad Morgan for reasons nobody could figure out, turns out to have been secretly dating BJ's brother in Chicago FOR REVENGE!!!
- Dee Dee the evil vet student then goes berserk at her first sight of Big Bad Morgan, slaughters half a dozen people with wildly implausible out-of-nowhere fighting skills, and promptly gets slaughtered by Morgan in turn
- the king of Crossroads, who has generally been Sir Not Appearing In This Book, turns up again and almost immediately gets killed rescuing Hot Topic Fiona from her own poor life decisions
- BJ and the god of Crossroads painstakingly evacuate every Crossroads species to locations elsewhere in the multiverse in advance of the oncoming doom
- this would seem like a lot of work except it turns out Crossroads really only has, like, seven species total, and that's including the dodos
- BJ FINALLY tells her faun boyfriend Stefan that she has a fatal degenerative disease that will kill her if she ever moves back to West Virginia and therefore she cannot evacuate Crossroads with everyone else
- the last five people left in Crossroads -- including BJ, the God of Crossroads, BJ's faun boyfriend Stefan, Hot Topic Fiona, and Stein the cranky Holocaust survivor whom I have forgotten to mention until now -- make a final stand against Big Bad Morgan
- despite the fact that everything that has happened in Part 2 is predicated on the idea that there is no way to beat Big Bad Morgan, these five people beat Big Bad Morgan!
- except the god of Crossroads dies in the effort
- so BJ becomes the new god of Crossroads! Congratulations, BJ!
ON TO BOOK THREE, which is, as I remember, the weirdest of them all.
This entry is cross-posted at Livejournal from http://skygiants.dreamwidth.org/468137.html. Please feel free to comment here or there! There are currently
comments on Dreamwidth.