Moonlight Held in Flesh

This book is like Francesca Lia Block and Melissa Marr teamed up to write the book of my dreams.

Well no, actually, it's not as good as all that. But it has elements of both writers which is giving me a nostalgic zing. The intrigue of a Faerie book written after a War between humans and faeries sometime in the near future keeps me turning pages.



Actually, I can do better than that. In my teenage years, I read a lot of books by Sherryl Jordan. While a beautifully evocative author, her books were a little bit sameish on theme: stories were often about outcasts and, much of the time, they would be set in some post-apocalyptic world/historical world. Both backdrops had much the same feeling.

With Janni Lee's first book, Bones of Faerie, I'm getting a bit of that vibe. The main character, Liza, is an immediately sympathetic character. Supporting characters are vivid. It is not just the bits and pieces of information on the humans vs faeries War that keeps me turning pages.

I know that, in a year or so, Melissa Marr's first book Wicked Lovely is going to be released as a movie. Around that time, there is going to be multitudes of fanfic flying up all over the place. In the meantime, though, this book is making me want to take that characters from that universe (because I am too busy to think up original characters, naturally) and put them into the situation of War against the humans. \

A part of me is hoping that Janni Lee's sequel novel, Faerie Winter, is going to be a prequel -- much like Malinda Lo's Huntress was a prequel/sequel of her Cinderella story Ash -- but a bigger part of me somehow doubts it.

I work in a sci-fi / fantasy specialist bookshop so, it shouldn't come as a surprise, I tend to end up giving recommendations of books to read to friends of mine fairly often. Especially when they are visiting from Canberra. Especially when they are living with us in our house ;)

A couple of months ago, I gave such a recommendation to ingysledge which, in turn, gave her an idea of the kinds of books I might like.

Now, I don't like sci-fi. Fantasy is more my thing and reasons such as greater character development and aspects of romance, as opposed to machinery and technology, are my reasons. However, when Ingrid suggested Keeping It Real by Justine Robson, I decided I'd give it a go.



For the first 50 pages, I was having moments of "Oh, yeah this isn't so bad.... hah, that line was actually quite good! ... don't know why I'm still reading this book really... oh, there's a reason. Pity the whole book isn't like this". I likewise suffered to about page 100, and here was where the cartoon light turned on above my head.

145 pages in, I looked down to the page number to realise, with some surprise, that I hadn't put the book down in almost 50 pages. This shit just got really good.

What is this book about? Well, it's probably going to come as a real fucking surprise to see that I like faery fiction. The premise of the Quantum Gravity series, of which Keeping It Real is just the first, is that a bomb some time in the not too distant future has gone off and disintegrated all of the barriers between Earth, or Otopia as it is now called, and other realms, including the faery realm, the elvish realm, the demon realm and that of the elementals. Oh, and our main character is a cyborg.

I now think, given I know how the end of the book rounds off, that the first 100 pages are going to improve immensely through knowing what is about to happen and seeing all the signs of foreboding in the text.

To my excitement, I realised that this was not just a trilogy, but a first book in a series of five so far that have been released. To my disappointment, however, this first book is not a stand alone. For sure, it ties up many of the loose ends but, for the characters, there are many openings left to be explored in later books.

So, as today is a public holiday and the public libraries are not open, I am suffering to write down my thoughts of the book I currently have, and making plans in the direction of the local library tomorrow afternoon.

Alright. So this.... This is a story that is best represented by itself. It's poking fun of a whole lot of things, and was really fun to rewrite.

(If anyone knows how to do dreamwidth cuts, I'm happy to hide these stories behind them. I just don't know the html)



The Underground and Himself
This was before they knew him. He was arrogant, self-entitled, after that, but all the Sidhe were like that. Brought up as unelected aristocrats of the fey. At least according to Themselves. So what was he doing down here?

He was humble, only just this side of broken, and only just doing that well. Frator Victatio didn't forget much that he saw. He never brought it up afterwards, and neither did Bones. By the time they arrived at Arize's place, they were already pretending like it had never happened.

But out there, on that dank, drunken night, they had made first sight of the Sidhe that would become Samael. Vic didn't drink, but he did a good impression of a drunk man for all of that. They were swaying back and forth on the street that kept moving -- the street totally could have been moving; it was the underground, after all -- when Bones stood shock-still and Frator Vic resumed watchful sobriety.

"What the fuck is one of the Sidhe doing down here?"

Bones was moving again before Vic could quite reach out to stop her. She could take care of herself, it was just that Vic didn't necessarily think it was a good idea for her to prove that on a member of a race whose presence down here usually preceded violence.

As he watched this Sidhe, however, he didn't think that that was going to be the case. This one looked... lost. Like he didn't know what to make of the two of them, or even of himself having found his way down here. It was unsettling to see in the usually confident Sidhe.

Not unsettling to Bones, apparently.

"You look like shit." She wasn't saying it to borrow trouble, though Vic felt some concern that this might be the way her standard bluntness was received. For surety, the Sidhe was taken aback. Then his eyelids dipped half over his eyes in a way that somehow didn't obscure his view of Bones; a reasonably suave move coming from the Sidhe, since Bones stood almost as high as the lithe fey man.

"You are the bone woman."

Clearly, he'd heard of her.

Bones didn't preen for a moment over the obvious claim to infamy. "Yes. And you are tall, dark and reasonably attractive. For a fairy boy. So what are you doing here?" She attempted a leer but, between her drunken stance and lack of one eye behind the eye-patch she wore, it came out as almost more of a snarl.

Vic groaned under his breath, but the 'fairy boy's eyes flickered up immediately to assess him. Damned Sidhe. Their hearing was as bad as the vampires'. Vic cleared his throat, but stood his ground. Cherry wouldn't like it at all if he came home in more than one piece, but she'd like it far less if he didn't come home at all.

The Sidhe's eyes moved away from Vic as suddenly as they'd come to him, obviously -- probably correctly -- assessing her as the more volatile threat.

"And, he is?"

It was interesting that, bedraggled as he still clearly was, he was already beginning to command some of that arrogance that made up much of the backbone of his race. Bones didn't play into it at all. "That's Vic. And I'm Bones. And, you are?"

"I don't... have one." He frowned.

"A name? Eh." Bones shrugged one bare shoulder. "You'd be surprised how common that is around these parts. Why are you here?"

Bones' emphasis referred back to the original question, still unanswered, and now repeated twice. Apparently, this time the fairy boy saw fit to answer it.

"I have no where else to go." That lost look was returning to his features again. Apparently, they'd offered something to distract him for a while. Vic found that he almost preferred the fairy boy when he was cusping on arrogant.

"You do now," Bones supplied briefly. "Come on. Let's go knock on the Succubus' door."

Vic groaned again, this time without the Sidhe's note. Arize wasn't the best for having house guests; his partner even less so. This was going to be... interesting.

"Vic? You coming?"

Coming? Vic questioned silently, his feet already moving to follow up behind them. Like he'd miss this.

I turned to the_bone_yard as I started writing this this morning to say 'Man, I really need to stop writing this depressing shit'. So this is the low mood of the vignettes. There's been too many vignettes were all the fairies concerned were kind and lovely people. Makes me sad like sparkly vampires.

Ahem. Don't know if this was inspired by anything beyond the last vignette, really, but I was reading Yeats' Celtic Twilight this morning and also Lady Gregory's Visions and Beliefs of the West of Ireland.



This was the story of the Summer Girl, how she came to Fairyland, and how she had gained the attentions of King Finvarra. It is a story she would have told herself, if she had been able to remember it.

For the most part, she remembered silence. Not so long ago, there had been the voices of others, later the sounds of revelry, but now, nothing. Just silence, in an opulent room of which she was the only occupant. That wasn't always the case. Betimes, the fairy king would return to the room, and then she would be whirled into a too brief time of sound and colour, all previous points of reference forgotten until, once more, silence.

She couldn't remember how long the silence had gone on this time. It seemed like a while, long enough that when a sudden break came to silence, she startled. Immediately, her eyes looked for the king, but he was not there. It was not the kind of sound from a door opening, or even a footstep. The sound originated in her head. A voice, like from before.

"He didn't expect I would come back."

The voice was strained, drawing to her mind's eye a conversation in images that already seemed to be halfway through a story. Through him, she remembered herself, but that did nothing to help the lone figure staggering through a wilderness that even she could not see the end of, with nothing but dry sand for miles, and hot grit burning the undersides of his feet. He was tired, bone tired, and had been travelling so long already.

Her shock gave way to a shuddering sob.

"Don't think of it. There was nothing you could do."

Before she could argue, she received a string of images, of the young girls who had been Summer Girls before she, girls that the king had stolen away from others, decked in the finest of clothes and jewels until his interest in them waned. She looked down at herself, decked as she was in the finest of clothes and jewels.

"You can get out of there." From the determination in the strain in his voice, she came to realise his link to her was keeping him going. She resolved no argue with him no more after that; wouldn't risk taking even that much of his strength from the journey back. Instead, she kept on talking to him, quoting poetry remembered from high school to him, anything that would distract him from his long journey that would bring him back to her. Meantime, as she kept tight hold of that contact, she launched herself away from the king's bed, as though stung, covered herself and exited the manor via shadows and doorways.

"Think not of it sweet one so. Give it not a tear; sigh though mayest and bid it go any-- anywhere--"

As she continued, tears choked her thoughts, filled her eyes and overflowed to her face. He spoke back to her too, when he could.

"Remember... Do you remember where we used to meet... the old building... Do you remember it?"

"Of course. Yes!"

"There we will meet. Tell no one."

He was silent thereafter for the longest time. Tears burned down her cheeks over fairy cruelty and deception, for there was no doubt in her who had delivered Him so far and thought he'd not come back. For a long time, she sat alone in the old building, waiting and hardly daring to hope. When the sound of leaves crunching outside the building touched her ears, she stood, wiping tears with both heels of her hands, and fear and hopefulness vied for first emotion.

Despite that, she knew she could take the few steps to the front of the building if He had actually found his way back here. She pulled herself to the doorway, bracing herself as best she could for the eventuality that the king of the fairies had found her. She had no time for relief when she rushed forward to break his fall from his last unsteady steps.

"I found you," he croaked, and his voice in her ears this time was the sweetest thing she'd heard by far.

"Come on, please. Just a little further," she said, already starting to bring him closer to inside the building, and looking furtively over his shoulder just in case. But no, this was their safe place, theirs alone. And, with her help and the last of his strength, they found shelter together within the walls of the old building where they would not easily be found by the King Finvarra.