Ysabel by Guy Gavriel Kay, $24.95
Guy Gavriel Kay departs from inventing historically based fantasy worlds and brings history alive in the present. The south of France is the scene for a contemporary incarnation of a 2,000-year-old love triangle.
Ned Marriner is taking time off from school in Montreal to be with his father, who is taking photographs for a book on Provence. His father’s super-efficient assistant Melanie has arranged a lot for Ned to do while his father is working. In a deserted cathedral in Aix-en- Provence, he meets Kate, who is studying in France. They are startled by a man coming out of a grate in the floor. The man warns them that he has killed children before and they should go away.
Ned is getting odd feelings about things such as knowing somehow a statue labeled as the Queen of Sheba is someone else and related to the strange man. When Ned sees the man later outside a cafe, they are attacked by a pack of dogs. The man again warns him not to get involved, but the warnings are mysterious enough that Ned can’t help but get involved.
The site of an ancient massacre fills him with so many feelings from the past that he becomes ill. When Ned and Kate go to a sacred site on Beltane eve, they witness an odd ritual. A tragic twist forces Ned to get his family involved in an age-old conflict.
The story shifts from teenagers going it alone to a family coming together in crisis. The mystery brings Ned’s mother back from the dangerous medical work she was doing in an African war zone. It also attracts his estranged aunt, who knows a lot about the ancient magic being invoked and its history in their family. Kay presents this emotionally packed action in vivid scenic settings of Provence and the bloody history of the Celts and Romans who fought there.
Breakfast With the Ones You Love by Eliot Fintushel, $12 | The Kabbalah and a department store provide a path to space and the promised land in Fintushel’s delightfully wacky first novel.
Lea is a teenage waitress whose thoughts can kill. She discovered her powers when she accidentally killed her little brother. Now she has run away and can’t confide in anyone but her cat, who has to keep telling Lea not to kill anymore. She longs for things to be normal and to have breakfast with the one she loves, but everything has to become very weird first.
Her only friend is a hash dealer named Jack. Jack is a student of Jewish mysticism. His revelations have told him to build a spaceship in an abandoned section of a Sears store. It has to be built exactly as in his visions. When it is complete, the Chosen of Earth will join with the alien Chosen to go the Promised Land.
Everyone in the story has crazy secrets. Lea’s landlady can stand up to Satan, and her boss can send the Russian mafia after her. Like Lea, I’m only mentioning some of it before it gets really crazy at the end. Fintushel is also a performer and “Breakfast With the Ones You Love” has the comedic timing of a pro.
The Secret City by Carol Emshwiller, $14.95 | Emshwiller has been writing occasionally for 50 years, and a new work is a treat. In “The Secret City,” aliens trapped on Earth are as lonely and alienated as any disaffected human.
Lorpas’ parents came to Earth as tourists. They were human-looking enough to pass, but it was a struggle to survive after they were stranded. Lorpas doesn’t know if he is the only one of his kind left and despairs of ever finding a mate or a way home.
He befriends an old woman but is forced to run when unwanted rescuers from his home planet show up. He sets off to find a rumored secret city in the mountains.
What he finds is considerably less than a city, but he does find his own kind. He falls in love with Allush while the wild Yourpas greets him with a shower of arrows and never loses his desire to kill Lorpas.
Emshwiller’s aliens are complex, confused and sometimes mean. Those who grew up on Earth don’t know a lot of their culture. They learn just enough to know that however rightly critical they are of humans, their people don’t act any better toward one another.
Fred Cleaver writes a monthly column on new science fiction.
