Bull, Emma: Territory
Territory
Writer: Emma Bull
Genre: Fantasy
Pages: 318
I think I first heard of this book when SciFi Weekly reviewed it. The premise in and of itself didn't interest me: I tend to hear "Western" and my eyes and ears glaze over. However, I've heard many the praise of Emma Bull's writing, and the cover really got to me. And the more I thought about it, the more the premise interested me too: a fantasy that takes place in the Old West. To my ears, that's new and unique. And the more I thought about it, the more I wondered why it hasn't been done more often in this genre. Maybe it has but I'm just not aware of it, which is very possible, but curiosity finally got the best of me.
The premise: Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday are legendary figures of the West, and in Territory, Emma Bull explores the magic behind the land that actually brings such figures together, as well the fictional creations of Jesse Fox and Mildred Benjamin. In the town of Tombstone, there's a struggle for certain people to gain as much territory (and therefore magic) as possible, and Jesse Fox and Mildred Benjamin find themselves hopelessly stuck in the middle.
Spoilers, yo.
The book started out a bit shaky as I struggled to put pieces of the plot together and figure out just who these characters were. As I said before, my eyes and ears tend to glaze over when it comes to the Old West, so while I recognized the names of Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday, I had no idea who these men were supposed to be in context of history, and the beginning made me feel that I needed to know that. The informed reader wouldn't have had to figure out who was good or bad or good but corrupt, whereas I was struggling to put it all together. It was the fictional characters I latched on to, and rightfully so since they get the most POV time in the book, where as figures like Doc Holliday, Wyatt Earp, and John Ringo are more mysteries/antagonists than anything, at least from the POV of the fictional characters.
There's a lot I liked about this book: I appreciated the world-building and how Bull put me into the time period and the mindset and the culture of the West. Mildred Benjamin was a great character, a young widow who works at the newspaper and writes serials for a magazine on the side. Her character provided the reader with a chance to hear a lot of what was informing the plot, though for most of the book, very little seemed to connect, and in some cases, I don't think things connected at all. Or maybe they didn't because I'm uninformed. Example: the subplot with the mining company trying to bully people off their land: it starts out as a story for Mildred, and then when the fire happens (a fire I'm not convinced WASN'T an accident), people who supposedly represent the mining company take an extra step to scare people like Mildred off their property. How does that figure into the larger plot? It's never directly resolved: it happens, but it's never connected to what's revealed as the major conflict of the book: the struggle between Wyatt Earp and John Ringo for more territory and more magic. Though it'd make sense, if you think about it, that it IS related, because after all, the magic is set up to be a part of the land and the elements, and the mining company is after silver. The question is: to whom does that mining company belong? Based on the book, I don't think it belongs to either party, but then again, I could be uninformed and the silver mine may have belonged to one of the Wyatt brothers. But if that was the case, why'd the younger one go through the trouble of the stage coach robbery?
To be honest, there's quite a few questions left hanging at the end of the book. On one hand, I like that Bull left the ending ambiguous, especially in regards to Mildred and Jesse, so I can fill in the blanks myself. On the other hand, the book just ends, and save for Jesse binding Earp's magic so that the man isn't as powerful, well, what is there? We know that Ringo sent men to kill the Chinese girl and to kill Lung, but the plot with Ringo is never resolved. The last we see of him is him setting fire in that store, and for what reason? In terms of characterization and world-building, I see no point. Why would Ringo want Jesse Fox to KNOW that he's one of the few who can control his magic? To me, that scene read as something to show the reader, "Oh yeah, Ringo's magic too, so Earp's not the only suspect!" Okay, fine, but I wish that'd been done with a little more grace, because I'd never gotten the impression that Ringo was that MALICIOUS up until that point. Maybe if I'd been informed, I would've already known this and would've been waiting for him to do something like this, but I wasn't so, so it was awkward.
And while we don't get the most technical explanation in the world, I do like how the magic works and how the characters are or are not able to utilize it. Though I didn't understand the point of Mildred having a splash of it, save for putting her in a position to make her believe the truth (at least, I gathered she had a splash of it). The magic's one of the strongest elements of the book, though, and I wish a little more time had been spent on it. For a fantasy book, the fantasy element is very minimal or simply not talked about, and that's a shame, for while I enjoyed getting to know the characters and the story itself, I wanted the fantastical elements to strengthen that a little more so that it didn't read like a tale set in the West with a splash of magic, but rather a "real" fantasy Western, whatever that is. Basically what I'm saying is that the magic could've been an stronger driving force in the story, a force the reader was made more aware of all along.
But for all my nitpicks and issues, I really did enjoy this story. The details I loved, like the horse training (something someone who owns or at least is very familiar with horses should being able to appreciate), and Mildred's friendship with the Earp wives, all of whom are tragic figures in and of themselves. I loved the relationship between Jesse and Mildred, and while that time period doesn't allow for the level of romance I wanted (would a kiss have been too hard to throw in there?), it was still very enjoyable. And Chu. Oh jeez, talk about the oldest trick in the book, but still, an enjoyable little sub-plot.
My Rating
Worth the Cash: it's not out in mass-market paperback in the US yet, but give it until the end of December, as that's when it's slated to come out. The book's very enjoyable on a lot of levels, especially in regards to how the magic is tied to the land and the characters that inhabit the land. I'd love to see more fantasy done in this way, fantasy that's truly "American" rather than the Tolkien rip-offs, because as much as I can enjoy those rip-offs, that magic isn't ours, and despite the wealth of American fantasy writers, the actual number of American fantasy seems to be sorely lacking (not that I've read everything that's out there, but I can name a few books I consider to be "American" fantasy, and one of them's written by a Brit!***). I'd love to see this book, which takes the American West and infuses it with magic, start a trend in the genre, because it revitalizes the history and legends and myths of American, and frankly, I think that's what the American genre needs.
*** = The Brit I'm referring to would be Neil Gaiman with his American Gods, because while many of the gods and goddesses in that book are NOT American, Gaiman ties them in so perfectly with the American culture that it's impossible to call it anything but. That, and there's the title. The other books that come to mind, of those I've read, is Charles de Lint's Someplace to be Flying and Cherie Priest's Eden Moore books, starting with Four and Twenty Blackbirds. But note that all of these are modern, contemporary fantasies. Emma Bull's is the first that truly uses American history as a setting. That's what I want to see more of.
Next up:
Impossible by Nancy Werlin