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published 1994; paperback 1994, DAW
What would you do if you encountered an elflord in New York City? Go through his wallet and check out his story. Rosemary Edghill's elven character has had the misfortune of falling into the hands of the most relentlessly practical people on earth: librarians. Even worse, they're library science students, which means that instead of scraping for work they have some free time.
Rohannen Melior’s story checks out. Worse still is his reason for being here: he's lost a sword that can only be handled safely by members of his family. Anyone else who handles the sword undergoes a transformation that is neither pretty nor pleasant; it happened once before in human history and then we called the resulting monster Grendel. Only Melior can recover his stolen sword, but he is unfamiliar with even the most mundane aspects of the city.
Books about elflord characters loose in the big bad city tend to rely on humor, using an alien viewpoint to explore such incomprehensible devices as hairdryers and microwave ovens. It's funny to watch the elfland bumpkin struggle with aluminum foil or subway tokens, but always there is an edge of desperation beneath the laughter, echoing the emptiness of urban life. Edghill uses an easy hand with such humor, choosing to direct the focus toward her human characters, who also struggle through an incomprehensible, lonely world. Her book is richer for it.
Melior's human rescuers are strong, detailed people with lives of their own. It's difficult to imagine a group of people more typecast than a group of library sciences students, but Edghill manages to go deeper. None of these people are idealistic or naive; there is no immediate adoption of their elf-friend into their midst. They are wary enough to resist Melior's story, yet kind enough to clothe and shelter him, for reasons which may have less to do with Melior's plight than with their own longing for adventure. What else is left to them but weekend nights spent capping each other's quotations at the potluck?
But there's more to this book than Melior's story. Edghill turns to the story of Grendel as well. Grendel was once an ordinary man confined by circumstance, rather than intelligence. He had taken perhaps only a few steps down the wrong road when the sword found him, took hold of him, and warped his being. It takes days for the soul to die, even while the body becomes huge and monstrous and an eater of flesh. Isn't that what urban decay is? First the limiting of circumstance caused by poverty and simple weariness after the work day's over. Once the jobs are gone the desperation sets in, and crime seems better than starving. Few find a way back from that path, and so there are thousands of Grendels in our cities, thousands of eaters of flesh. Edghill makes us pity the predator. She makes us long to see an end to his pain.
End it does, in an act of gallantry that's almost incomprehensible, coming as it does from a cynical New Yorker. The human spirit endures. Courage, honor, and collective responsibility are recognized by the modern world, slowly and dimly at first, though at the end with bravery sufficient to move even an elflord to silence.
Throughout this book Edghill retains her grasp over her characters and settings. We view her people and places through a tight focus that lends a depth of realism to a story which might otherwise be mistaken for light fantasy. Light this book is not. Like any of the great medieval stories it's an epic romance, and like the best of those stories it ends in death and repudiation. This book is a major accomplishment.
Review by Rebecca Parkhurst
Reviewed March 23, 1997
ISBN 0-88677-622-8
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