A Local Habitation, by Seanan McGuire

[nwhyte]

Second paragraph of third chapter: Stacy didn’t answer when I called the house. I left a quick message asking her to come by and feed Spike and the cats until I got back. I glossed over how long my absence was likely to be. The last thing I needed was for her to start calling Sylvester, demanding to know whether he was trying to get me killed. I

Comments

[yiskah]

I find this such an odd concept. I've not read any Seanan McGuire (though I have read some of her books as Mira Grant), but Holly Black, a writer I really like, does a very similar thing of transposing Celtic / European folklore to the US, and it took a while for me not to find it jarring. I do very much buy the sort of ideas that Gaiman explores in American Gods, that gods and other similar entities exist in a sort of collective unconscious and thus move when people do - but I DON'T understand a world in which only the European folklore tradition exists, rather than it interacting with Native American tradition and other immigrant cultures. It's something I can overlook in Holly Black as I otherwise very much like her writing, but it doesn't stand up to much scrutiny.