Uptown Local and Other Interventions
I finally got around to reading Diane Duane's short story collection Uptown Local and Other Interventions, which I grabbed when she was having that 50%-off sale on her ebooks (man, I hope she does that again sometime), and I thought I would discuss it for the edification of the YW fen around who may not be sure whether they want to drop money on it. Coming from the perspective of someone who is generally not too thrilled about short stories in SF (I don't know why, but I usually like my SF novel-length), I do think this is worth the money, although maybe you will want to wait for another sale.
As YW fans can probably guess from the name, there are Young Wizards stories in the collection -- two out of eleven, and both of them have been previously published, so you might have read them before. "Theobroma" is the only non-YA YW piece ever, I think, and as such it's interesting to see an adult wizard at work. (The difference between YA and non-YA fiction in this universe appears to be the age of the protagonist and the suggestion that people might, possibly, ever have had sex sometime.) It's actually a rather charming little story about a wizard in New York on errantry looking for a lizard-spirit who helps manufacture chocolate. Bonus points for the guy's PDA/Manual that he talks to -- in the Speech, if he wants. (It is possibly a sign of advancing technology that reading it, I thought about how if it were one of the current crop of iPhones this would not even be all that weird, except for the quality of the responding AI and, you know, the magic. The stylus input is possibly on the quaint side. I don't know; does anyone have PDAs anymore that aren't smartphones?)
The title story, "Uptown Local," is the only story in the whole collection I actually had read before; it was reprinted in the 20th anniversary hardcover of So You Want To Be a Wizard. (Obsessive completionist? Who, me? Not as completionist as I would like, sadly.) It's very cute. Nita and Kit are bored one day and go on a journey through the subway system to all the various alternate worlds of New York. Also there is Robert Heinlein. Which is maybe a little strange, but I assure you the whole story is very fun. Clearly I thought it was worth buying twice.
The rest of the stories, though, are not YW -- and they're excellent as well. The foreword calls it "the usual life-affirming stuff," and, well, if you like Duane, you pretty much know what you're getting. Stories are set in (a) Switzerland, (b) Ireland, and (c) New York, because this is Diane Duane we're talking about. (I facepalmed a little when the protagonists of the Ireland-set story STILL ENDED UP IN SWITZERLAND. Clearly the next YW book needs to be Wizards in Switzerland too. Because they've already been to Ireland. Maybe they've been to Switzerland and I forgot.) I mock because I love. Also a lot of the stories are about food. (Like the pair of stories where apparently the Sibylline Books still exist and are actually cookbooks. Yeah.)
My favorite stories were actually neither of the YW stories (though of course I liked the YW ones a lot because, you know, yay YW). I really liked "Bears," about shapeshifting bears in (go on! guess a country!) Switzerland. Apparently that's just my style of urban fantasy. But most of all, I think, I liked "The Fix," about a slave-boy at the Colosseum who dreams of coaching and training the gladiators (what, you think there's any reason I wouldn't like this story?), and then is given the opportunity to live his dream for a day after he happens into some money and offers some of it to Venus. Venus of course personally makes his dream come true in an awesome way, and yes, the ending is ridiculously happy and aww. Awwww. (Plus it even made me like gladiators, and gladiator stories are usually my least favorite. I know, I am weird.)
Up next: I was going to read some Sutcliff, but the library just emailed me that my ebook of Jo Graham's Black Ships (Aeneid remix, Sibyl POV) has come off hold, so I guess I'll be trying that out. I will let you know how the whole "checking out library books on a Kindle" thing works, and hopefully the book is good. Possibly I should have read the whole actual Aeneid first, because I think I missed most of the katabasis doing only the AP selections. Whoops.
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As YW fans can probably guess from the name, there are Young Wizards stories in the collection -- two out of eleven, and both of them have been previously published, so you might have read them before. "Theobroma" is the only non-YA YW piece ever, I think, and as such it's interesting to see an adult wizard at work. (The difference between YA and non-YA fiction in this universe appears to be the age of the protagonist and the suggestion that people might, possibly, ever have had sex sometime.) It's actually a rather charming little story about a wizard in New York on errantry looking for a lizard-spirit who helps manufacture chocolate. Bonus points for the guy's PDA/Manual that he talks to -- in the Speech, if he wants. (It is possibly a sign of advancing technology that reading it, I thought about how if it were one of the current crop of iPhones this would not even be all that weird, except for the quality of the responding AI and, you know, the magic. The stylus input is possibly on the quaint side. I don't know; does anyone have PDAs anymore that aren't smartphones?)
The title story, "Uptown Local," is the only story in the whole collection I actually had read before; it was reprinted in the 20th anniversary hardcover of So You Want To Be a Wizard. (Obsessive completionist? Who, me? Not as completionist as I would like, sadly.) It's very cute. Nita and Kit are bored one day and go on a journey through the subway system to all the various alternate worlds of New York. Also there is Robert Heinlein. Which is maybe a little strange, but I assure you the whole story is very fun. Clearly I thought it was worth buying twice.
The rest of the stories, though, are not YW -- and they're excellent as well. The foreword calls it "the usual life-affirming stuff," and, well, if you like Duane, you pretty much know what you're getting. Stories are set in (a) Switzerland, (b) Ireland, and (c) New York, because this is Diane Duane we're talking about. (I facepalmed a little when the protagonists of the Ireland-set story STILL ENDED UP IN SWITZERLAND. Clearly the next YW book needs to be Wizards in Switzerland too. Because they've already been to Ireland. Maybe they've been to Switzerland and I forgot.) I mock because I love. Also a lot of the stories are about food. (Like the pair of stories where apparently the Sibylline Books still exist and are actually cookbooks. Yeah.)
My favorite stories were actually neither of the YW stories (though of course I liked the YW ones a lot because, you know, yay YW). I really liked "Bears," about shapeshifting bears in (go on! guess a country!) Switzerland. Apparently that's just my style of urban fantasy. But most of all, I think, I liked "The Fix," about a slave-boy at the Colosseum who dreams of coaching and training the gladiators (what, you think there's any reason I wouldn't like this story?), and then is given the opportunity to live his dream for a day after he happens into some money and offers some of it to Venus. Venus of course personally makes his dream come true in an awesome way, and yes, the ending is ridiculously happy and aww. Awwww. (Plus it even made me like gladiators, and gladiator stories are usually my least favorite. I know, I am weird.)
Up next: I was going to read some Sutcliff, but the library just emailed me that my ebook of Jo Graham's Black Ships (Aeneid remix, Sibyl POV) has come off hold, so I guess I'll be trying that out. I will let you know how the whole "checking out library books on a Kindle" thing works, and hopefully the book is good. Possibly I should have read the whole actual Aeneid first, because I think I missed most of the katabasis doing only the AP selections. Whoops.
Read this entry on Dreamwidth ||
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