“The Strange Adventures of Rangergirl,” by Tim Pratt (Bantam, 399 pages, $12)
Tim Pratt’s first novel is a delightful tale of a barrista gunslinger and her gang of friends. Marzi (her hippie parents named her Marzipan) is night manager of the Genius Loci coffeehouse in Santa Cruz. A lot of the regulars are artists, as is Marzi, who writes a comic book about the cowpunk neo-Western adventures of Rangergirl.
Jonathan has come to Santa Cruz to study the murals of Garamond Ray that cover the rooms of the coffeehouse. Ray vanished 15 years earlier after the big Loma Prieta earthquake that devastated Santa Cruz. One mural in a storage area, called the Desert Room, has been declared off-limits.
One of the crazier regulars becomes obsessed with an earthquake god only he can sense. A woman comes back from the dead as a mud golem and attempts a late-night break-in to liberate a goddess only she sees.
In Marzi’s comic book, Rangergirl goes through a door to have surreal Western adventures. Marzi goes through a door in a mural to the world of her comic book. Rangergirl’s world is becoming real, and Marzi is becoming her heroine.
The coffeehouse and art scene are equal characters with Marzi and her friends. All are brought to life as we root for the good guys while feeling sympathy for the bad guys at the final showdown.
“The Wave,” by Walter Mosley (Warner, 209 pages, $22.95)
Errol Porter is rebuilding his life after losing his wife and his computer job. He is making progress as a potter when he receives a call from his dead father.
Errol tries to dismiss the calls, but they drive him to make a 2 a.m. visit to his father’s grave. The naked young man he finds there looks exactly the way a young version of his father should. Errol calls the man GT, but he uncannily knows things only Errol’s father could know.
Errol’s sister accepts that this must be his father, and GT reveals secrets Errol’s mother confirms. GT’s explanation for it all is that he has “entered the Wave.”
From this friendly zombie beginning, “The Wave” veers to thriller territory when a government agency picks up Errol and declares GT a threat to homeland security, although they are nothing like horror movie zombies. Zombie revenants have been coming alive in many places. The government is looking for a scientific explanation for them and considers them a major threat to national security.
Errol must make a choice between his old life and the unknown of the Wave. Mosley is writing about Errol’s change in outlook and the explanations behind the events in “The Wave” seem more New Age than scientific. “The Wave” is gripping reading because Mosley writes science fiction with the same streetwise sense of place he shows in his mystery novels.
“The Crippled Angel,” by Sara
Douglass (Tor, 365 pages, $25.95).
I came to Sara Douglass’ “Crucible” series late. Two earlier volumes hold a lot of back story. I didn’t need them for following the characters or the story, but the longer setup may have made the premise easier to accept.
In the late 14th century, England is devastated by the Black Death. Rome is losing its power in England, and Joan of Arc is dying for her cause in France. English nobleman and priest Thomas Neville must face this in a world where archangels are key participants.
The plague seemed to be gone, but it returns as the Dog of Pestilence infects the city. Neville must make difficult choices in a world in which reason confronts faith.
Most of the characters are based on historical figures. I often didn’t know where the line between history and fiction was, but Douglass makes the period come alive so that it does not matter.
I know demon dogs and archangels aren’t mentioned in the standard histories. Douglass writes as though the 14th-century belief was that everything came from the direct intervention of God. The Dog of Pestilence is a stunning visualization that shows the power of fantasy writing. The angels were the fictional conceit that I had trouble accepting without the setup they must have had in the earlier volumes.
Fred Cleaver is a freelancer who writes a monthly column on new science fiction.
