Book Review: Rain as a Luxury of the Very Rich

 The Rain Artist, by Claire Rudy Foster (Moonstruck Books)

In a dystopic future, the Earth is so polluted that pure water is a luxury enjoyed only by the ultra-rich. Rivers have run dry and the seas have become so heavily saline that whales are extinct. Quadrillionaires throw artificially generated “rain parties,” complete with handmade bespoke umbrellas created for each occasion by Celine Broussard, the last umbrella maker. The front of her workshop is rented by a florist, who seems to be a gentle soul, happy to arrange artificial flowers, but who is actually a far darker, far more dangerous character. And that’s before we learn just how dark and dangerous he really is. As a result of a dynastic power struggle, Celine finds herself framed for the patriarch’s murder. Soon she’s on the run across a devastated landscape, along with her terrifyingly competent tenant and a young woman desperate to terminate an illegal pregnancy.

I loved the gorgeous, sensually evocative prose that drew me into each setting through the direct experiences of the character. I loved even the unlovable characters and how the author portrayed their crimes and shortcomings in a way that allowed me to change how I felt and make up my own mind about them. I loved how the characters changed, finding both courage and fellowship on their flight.

In many ways, The Rain Maker doesn’t fit the usual dystopian-thriller genre. With sureness and skill, the author draws the reader into the world and its inhabitants, beginning with very accessible scenes and progressing, layering subtle details upon details, into a world like and unlike our own. She doesn’t hit us over the head with bizarre elements as she slowly and carefully creates a world in which they are plausible. In this way, the book is generous with its welcome to readers who are familiar with the genre as well as those who are new, naïve.

Gorgeous and unsettling and ultimately filled with hope. Highly recommended.

Short Book Reviews: A Deliciously Bizarre and Terrifying Dystopic Medical Thriller

 Leech, by Hiron Ennes (Tordotcom)

I should preface my review with the confession that although I don’t read a lot of horror, this novel captured my imagination and kept me staying up way too late, turning the pages. It straddles the boundary between science fiction and horror, with a nod to thriller pacing and suggestions of fantastical elements. In a far, but not too far, dystopic future, Earth is barely recognizable. Upheavals have overturned the layers of crust, so that the surface is all but barren. Humans must mine the caverns for wheatrock foodstock. Winters are bitterly cold and getting worse. Even so, settlements persist. One such is an estate ruled by a grossly obese baron who relies on sophisticated machinery to stay alive. When his doctor dies, he sends to the elite Interprovincial Medical Institute for a replacement (the narrator). But this is no simple matter of sending another graduate of the same school. The nameless narrator shares consciousness, knowledge, and memories with every other graduate. In fact, they are all human hosts for a single, telepathic parasite.

As if that weren’t bizarre enough, the cause of death of the former physician turns out to be a second parasite arising deep in the caverns. It’s not only deadly, it’s incredibly difficult to kill, and it’s spreading from one host to the next like wildfire.

I loved the medical neepery, the skillful way the author introduced the characters and plot elements, the rocketship ride of dramatic tension, and the wildly inventive world-building.

Content warning for violence, gore, mental rape, and a few other horrors. The book might be too nightmarish for some readers.

Book Review: Mothtown, A Brilliant Second Novel from Caroline Hardaker

 Mothtown, by Caroline Hardaker (Angry Robot)

Caroline Hardaker’s second novel, like the first, presents a challenging read. It asks the reader to keep critical faculties, human sympathy, and a healthy degree of scientific skepticism onboard as the story unfolds. It’s been described as a cross between horror and mainstream, but I don’t think it’s horror in the usual sense, any more than Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka is. It might better be described as a psychological mystery. Whether the fantasy/science-fictional/surreal elements truly exist in Hardaker’s world or whether they are creations in the mind of the main character is, ultimately, a judgment call for the reader to make.

The story alternates between “After,” in which the adult protagonist races desperately through a sinister wilderness, and “Before,” looking back to his childhood. The “Before” section opens on an apparently dystopic world in which people go missing and floral tributes appear on all-too-many doorsteps and street corners. This is the first part of the mystery: What is going on? Are people really vanishing? If so, where are they going? If not, where are their bodies?

Although his parents try hard to protect him and his sister, ten-year-old David believes something more is going on. When his beloved grandfather--a Professor of Superstring Theory and Dark Matter Studies--disappears and his parents insist the old man is dead, David refuses to believe them. He becomes convinced that his grandfather has found a door into another world, a place he truly belongs. And David is determined to find such a world for himself.

David faces many difficulties in the ordinary world. He’s barely verbal, doesn’t pick up on social cues or interact with others, and seems oblivious to the feelings of others. His mother’s increasingly anxious about the “disappearances,” and despite this, David takes off on his own to visit the cemetery where his grandfather is buried. As a mother myself, I was furious at his lack of sensitivity. Fortunately, Hardaker’s skill kept me reading long enough to ask the question, “What is going on with this kid?”

David is more than an unreliable narrator, although he is that, too, and herein lies the second part of the mystery. What, indeed, is going on with him? Can we trust anything he says about himself, the world, other characters, his grandfather—anything?

Can we read between and behind the lines to discover the real story?

==SPOILER ALERT==

Short Book Reviews: Thoughtful Sociological SF from Rachel Swirsky

January Fifteenth, by Rachel Swirsky (Tordotcom)

Rachel Swirsky is one of the most thoughtful, provocative writers in contemporary science fiction. Her work embodies the human experience with all its pathos and glory, without ever preaching or descending into hyperbole. In January Fifteenth, she begins with asking “What if…?” What if Universal Basic Income happened? Who would it help, and how? Which problems would it solve, and which make worse? And how many lives would be untouched, because some problems cannot be solved by money?

Instead of an exposition-laden diatribe, Swirsky takes us inside the lives of four very different women. With compassion but notably without judgment, she plays out their days before, the day of, and after the annual UBI payouts. 

Hannah is a middle-aged mother fleeing an abusive ex-spouse, an escape made possible by her monthly UBI. But “doing a geographic” cannot solve her well-founded fears of discovery, nor can it take the place of unexpected and effective help.

Janelle is a single, Black, struggling journalist wrestling with a rebellious, activist younger sister. Her life has become an unending drudge of barely making ends meet by interviewing strangers about UBI, even though her sister and—formerly—she herself opposed the policy.

Sarah, a pregnant teenager, a prisoner of a religious cult that practices child marriage, polygamy, and keeping women poor and ignorant, trudges to the UBI disbursement center. Her money will not buy her freedom, even if she could imagine such a thing, for it belongs her elderly husband.

Finally, Olivia parties with her wealthy, entitled college student friends, vying for who can spend their UBI in the most wasteful fashion. Her life is a parade of drug-induced visions, superficial relationships, and fear that her parents will find out she’s flunked out. On the surface, she is the most financially well-off character, yet by far the most enslaved.

January Fifteenth is science fiction at its best: stories that are challenging, accessible and, most of all, human. 

Recommended.

Book Reviews: Cool Idea, Confusing Bummer Ending

Book description: “Vanja, an information assistant, is sent to the austere, wintry colony of Amatka to collect marketing information. Intending to stay just a short while, she falls in love with her housemate and prolongs her visit. But when she stumbles on evidence of a growing threat to the colony and a cover-up by its administration, she embarks on an investigation that puts her at tremendous risk.”

Told through deceptively simple prose, Karin Tidbeck’s Amatka depicts a world chillingly reminiscent of George Orwell’s 1984. Layers of bureaucracy and social conditioning create the illusion of a happy community, while despair, disease, and alienation produce attrition and threaten the city’s survival. Social and psychological disintegration parallel the breakdown of the physical environment. Objects large and small must be constantly marked with written labels or names spoken aloud or they break down into amorphous goo.

The use of language in creating and maintaining reality is one of the more creative I’ve seen. I admired how Tidbeck introduces her world with very little explanation, using subtle clues layered into the otherwise prosaic action. For most of the book, I had a pretty good idea of what was going on: the mutable nature of matter, the increasing suppression of dissent, the enforcement of conformity, and the inexorable loss of history. I was curious about how humans had come to live in a world in which the basic rules of physics were so plastic and what the underground resistance was about, but I was also confident that the answers would be made clear.

The publisher describes this book as, “A surreal debut novel set in a world shaped by language in the tradition of Margaret Atwood and Ursula K. Le Guin.” The only part of this description I agree (other than “debut”) with is “surreal.” Atwood and Le Guin created imaginative, provocative stories, but their work is accessible to most readers. There’s a difference between being mysterious and mystifying. As I waited for the answers to the many questions Tidbeck raised, she piled mystifying upon mystifying until I had no idea what exactly Vanja was discovering (other than that the commune was re-using stable “good” paper for announcements).

The book ends with Vanja acting in an erratic, destructive manner, setting fire to the records she previously treasured, and then being lobotomized so that when she’s freed, she no longer possessed the speech that would allow her to re-shape the world as part of the resistance. I don’t mind grimness, but such a downer puts Amatka squarely in the 1984 camp. This could have been such a cool book, too, with a denouement that made all the sacrifices worth it. After earning my trust as a reader, Tidbeck dropped the ball royally. I doubt I’ll pick up anything of hers in the future. To be fair, however, I don’t think the disappointing ending is entirely Tidbeck’s fault; it’s what happens when pretentious literary editors take on genre projects. 

Short Book Reviews: Composite Creatures, by Caroline Hardaker

 Composite Creatures, by Caroline Hardaker (Angry Robot)

This is a very strange book, but strange in the sense of mind-bending speculative fiction about a dystopian future, executed with great skill and, most of all, respect for the reader’s intelligence. In an era when all too many novels spoon-feed information, practically hammering the reader’s attention, Caroline Hardaker builds her world, characters, and mysteries layer by intricate, subtle layer. She invites us into a world that is grim but recognizable, one in which pollution and habitat destruction have resulted in the loss of most animals city dwellers might see, including pets. Governmental institutions are slowly being replaced by private ones, notably Easton Grove, and the author doesn’t tell us upfront what it does. Norah, the viewpoint character, has signed up with Easton Grove and has been matched with Arthur, a notable novelist. She’s understandably nervous about their first date in a bizarre courtship by corporate decree, but all goes well, they set up housekeeping together, and soon a cardboard box arrives. Inside is a creature that sounds awfully like a cat. A pet! I thought. They’ve gone through this rigorous process and qualified to parent a pet!

Little did I know that the strangeness was just beginning. As Norah becomes increasingly obsessed with “Nut,” as she has named the creature, Arthur grapples with crippling writer’s block and their network of friends gradually disappears. Then Nut’s fur falls out, Easton Grove increases its surveillance, and Arthur sports a new tooth, wrenched from Nut’s jaw.

In places, Composite Creatures wanders over the border into horror, but I don’t think it belongs properly to that genre. It’s edgy, complex, layered dystopian science fiction, with the emphasis on the inner lives of the people caught up in the Kafka-esque world. It isn’t an easy read or a pleasant one, but is nonetheless rewarding. Norah and Arthur are so much like ordinary people, and we are all vulnerable to the intense seductions and pressures they succumb to.

Two Book Reviews Demonstrate the Future is not What We Expect

The Apocalypse Seven, by Gene Doucette (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)

My introduction to Gene Doucette’s witty style was his previous novel, The Spaceship Next Door, reviewed here. This newest adventure has all the charm, warmth, and thoughtfulness I’d come to expect.

One morning, a small and disparate group of people – college students, a hermit preacher, an astrophysicist, for example – wake up to find the world changed. Each seems to be utterly alone. Familiar buildings are more or less intact, but wildlife and vegetation has taken over the university town of Cambridge. There’s no electricity, and all the batteries are dead. The astrophysicist notices the stars are in subtly wrong positions. As the group makes contact with one another, gathering at the university, they support one another when they aren’t arguing, for each has a different understanding of what has happened. Touré, a twenty-ish Cambridge coder, calls it the whateverpocalypse. Just as they learn they are not the only humans alive and suspect around a century has elapsed while they were unconscious, they begin to suspect they are not the only intelligent species on the planet, but it’s anyone’s guess whether the ghosts or aliens or whatevertheyare mean the human survivors well or ill.

By far, the sneak star of the book is Norman, the coywolf (coyote-wolf hybrid) tamed by the blind character, Carol.

 

Tiny Time Machine, by John E Stith (Amazing Select from Amazing Stories)

I’ll read anything by John E. Stith, but somehow I missed this charming short novel. The description says it’s “for young adults,” but I disagree. While teens are going to love it, and it’s a novel featuring young characters, it’s so full of buoyancy and hope that adults will gobble it up, too. Meg describes herself as the daughter of an angry scientist dad, so angry that he in fact turns a smartphone into a time machine that not only peeks into a not-too-distant future but allows people to jump into it. Alas, it’s not a future anyone would want to live in. The planet is dying, and humanity along with it. The oceans have turned into a stiff jelly, reminiscent of ice-9 in Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle. Meg and her new friend Josh embark upon a quest to stop a billionaire technologist whose well-meaning attempts to clean up the ocean’s plastic garbage will lead to this bleak future. Soon they’re on the run from the police, as well.

One of the things I enjoy about Young Adult novels is how teens can have agency, not only in their own lives but in the world. Typically, parents are therefore absent or dead (in Meg’s case, both of them, her father recently so), and that frees the characters from supervision. In this story, not having a parent deprives Meg and Josh of the perspective and resources an adult ally could offer. They have internal challenges of growing up and learning to work together, deal with jealousy, and so forth, all within the limitations that minors face. This is while figuring out what happens in the future and how to stop it.

As a bonus, the book contains a piece of short fiction, “Redshift Runaway,” set in the same world as Redshift Rendezvous. When a sentient alien pet runs wild on a starship traveling a significant fraction of the speed of light, where the laws of ordinary physics no longer apply, chaos ensues, but also understanding. Nobody writes relativity-based science fiction better than Stith.

 

Short Book Reviews: Librarians as Feminist Revolutionaries

Upright Women Wanted, by Sarah Gailey (Tor.com)

In a post-collapse eternally-at-war America, most States are rigidly controlled, with traveling women Librarians bringing only Approved Materials to small communities. 

Conventionally rigid “virtue,” subservience to male authority, and suppression of free thought are the rule in Esther’s world. Just before the start of the story, she has fallen in love with another teen girl, their affair has been discovered, and her lover has been hanged. Only the power and political standing of her father has saved Esther’s life. So she does the only reasonable thing: she runs away to join the Librarians. Who are not at all the conventional, convention-enforcing women she expected: a lesbian couple and a third, who presents as female in public but wears trousers and insists on “they” in private. To say this blows up Esther’s preconceptions and challenges her guilt for having the “wrong” attractions is putting it mildly.

The core of the story emerges as Esther gains in confidence, rising to face one increasingly dangerous challenge after another. The world is nothing like what she expected, and the only way to gain her own freedom to be fully herself is to fight for the rights of others to do the same.

A satisfying ending concludes this thoughtful page-turner.

Short Book Reviews: A Transgender Heroine in a Dystopic World

The Book of Flora (The Road to Nowhere, Book 3), by Meg Elison (47North)

I loved the first book in this trilogy (The Book of the Unnamed Midwife), the “origin” story of the collapse of civilization when most women die in a plague, and the heroism of the unnamed protagonist, who records her survival – and transmits her midwifery skills to ensure the next generation. Although I was uneasy about the portrayal of men as either bullies/gangleaders/rapists or gay, I went along with it for the sake of the story, which was as gripping (it won the Philip K. Dick Award) as it was grim. The second installment, The Book of Etta, was also grim, for many of the same reasons, but intrigued me with its treatment of LGBTQ folks in a world where controlling women’s bodies and maximizing their fertility are the keys to humanity’s survival.

Flora, a transwoman and silk weaver from Etta, is the central character in the third book. The story is just as dramatic, with a cast of intriguing characters, strong narrative prose, and a nice balance of pacing. Yet I found myself with increasing resistance to the portrayal of men and of relations between the sexes (however many sexes there are). Some of this may have been due to recently reading several of Alexander McCall Smith’s The Number One Ladies Detective Agency novels, set in Uganda, which include some of the most genuinely good, kind men in contemporary literature. Maybe America goes the way of savagery, but it was hard for me to imagine someone like Obed Ramotswe or Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni behaving that way. Afrofuturism may point the way to a compassionate path through dystopia. At any rate, The Book of Flora kept me turning the pages, but it isn’t a world I’d ever want to live in, which is not the purpose of literature, anyway. I’m glad to have ventured into Elison’s dark, terrifying future, and see this trilogy as an important contribution to the examination of power, sex, gender, and culture.

Short Book Reviews: Encrypted Blood

Implanted, by Lauren C. Teffeau (Angry Robot)

This dystopic YA novel revolves around several nifty premises: the Earth has been so polluted that the majority humans survive only in domed cities, while efforts are underway to ameliorate the toxins and re-establish a viable ecology; the dome cities are stratified, with the rich elite living on the topmost levels, with access to greenery and sunlight, while the poor scrabble for a living in the “Terrestrial” slums; brain implants that permit direct mind-to-mind communication as well as social media are near-universal and because of this, data is highly insecure, so... sensitive material gets encoded in the blood cells of specially trained couriers who physically transport it from sender to 

recipient. That’s only the setting.

The plot itself draws together a variety of threads. The heroine, Emery, comes from a lower level and has worked her way to better prospects. She’s been on a crusade that’s pit her skills against the thieves who rip implants from the skulls of their victims. She’s also become romantically entangled with a fellow gamer, although they’ve never met in person and she doesn’t even know his real name. As for the agency that recruits her to carry encrypted data in her blood, she uncovers plots within plots as New Worth (the city built on the ruins of Ft. Worth, Texas) stumbles toward “Emergence” into the supposedly restored outer world.

The setting, main character, and evolving action were absorbing enough to keep me reading for most of the book, but toward the end I had problems with the lack of focus. It seemed to me that the book couldn’t decide what it was about, and my attention kept being pulled in different directions: ecological disaster story? Romance? Techno-spy thriller? Victim seeking revenge? “Betrayal and reconciliation”? Other readers might feel differently. The book certainly stands out for creativity of conception and narrative voice. I’ll be keeping an eye out for the author’s next adventure.

Short Book Reviews: Children of the Spaceship City

Edward Willett The Cityborn. DAW July 2017

One thing I adore about good YA is the agency of the young people. That is, they make judgments, set their own goals, and demonstrate both persistence and resourcefulness. That describes the two central characters in this dystopic-sf novel. Having landed on a distant planet, a spaceship gradually transforms into a city, and then decays. 

While the officers clone themselves and then use nanobots to pass on their memories and skills to the next generation, the Captain has for various reasons not passed to new bodies. And as the Captain’s vital signs sink ever lower, so do the parallel vital functions of the City. A desperate scheme results in the creation of two children, in vitro offspring of the Captain and First Officer, who are then theoretically capable of taking the place of the dying Captain and restoring the City. 

One of the children is kidnapped by a rebel underground, dedicated to overthrowing the class tyranny of the Officers; now a young adult, he is joined by the other, who narrowly escapes being turned into a mind-controlled Captain. The two are catapulted into a quest filled with action, suspense, and the emotional turmoil of carving out an individual identity in a world determined to control and exploit them. An exciting, absorbing read for adult as well as YA readers.

Short Book Reviews: Coming of Age in a Post-Atomic Alternate World

The initial premise of this novel is an appealing one: the woman creator of the raunchy, underground-style superhero comic, Sputnik Girl, may actually be the heroine of her own story, transported from an alternate world. The operant word is “may” because Debbie Reynolds Biondi is so befuddled with tranquilizers, booze, and casual sex, she’s anything but a reliable narrator. 

As the story unfolds, it simultaneously wanders from that premise as the true history of Sputnik Girl is revealed. Cataclysmic events like the testing and deployment of atomic bombs have fractured off alternative, parallel worlds from our own. In Atomic Mean Time, Debbie, her family, and friends, live in a polluted, increasingly totalitarian world that is careening toward thermonuclear catastrophe. As Earth Mean Time Debbie delves ever deeper into Sputnik Girl’s origin story, her own history unfolds. 

Touches of humor abound, as do dark moments. The parallel-but-different details (like Richard Nixon committing suicide in Atomic Mean Time, but the Beatles were just as popular) were well done, but personal events like Debbie being molested as an adolescent didn’t play out emotionally as believably. 

In the end, Sputnik Girl is rendered irrelevant to her own story. It’s not about finding the grit to transcend the horror of a dystopian, heart-breakingly unjust world, the way a superhero origin story works, but about sacrificing your own comfort and happiness for a greater good and then proceeding on to a rootless, emotionally numb life when no one but you remembers. I think the key to my dissatisfaction lies in the absence of grappling with personal trauma in the midst of a global tragedy. For me, the mirroring of internal and external struggle give a story resonance. That objection aside, the book moves along briskly, with nuggets of delight and despair interspersed with plot twists. Others may not feel as I do, and will enjoy without reservation this nicely paced, slyly humorous atomic tale.

Amazing Fantasy Round Table: 50 Shades of Fantasy

This month's Amazing Fantasy Round Table examines the question of whether modern fantasy comes in shades other than grim and gritty.

Warren Rochelle: Fantasy: How Many Shades of Grey?

All right.  I’ve been browsing in The Encyclopedia of Fantasy. I googled “different kinds of fantasy—and, for the most part, found similar lists and similar terms.  I doubt most of those who write for this blog would be surprised at the terms and definitions I found, such as:  

Ø  high fantasy: immersion, set wholly in the secondary world, “with its own set of rules and physical laws,” (no connections between here and there). Think Middle-earth.

Ø  low fantasy: “a sub-genre of fantasy fiction involving nonrational happenings that are without causality or rationality because they occur in the rational world where such things are not supposed to occur. Low fantasy stories are set either in the real world or a fictional but rational world, and are contrasted with high fantasy stories (see above)… The word "low" refers to the level of prominence of traditional fantasy elements within the work, and is not any sort of remark on the work's quality” (Wikipedia contributors. "Low fantasy." (Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 27 Mar. 2013. Web. 2 May. 2013.)  Examples include The Borrowers, Tuck Everlasting, The Five Children and It, Edward Eager’s novels, and so on.

Ø  epic fantasy, which is centered on the quest, relies on a heroic main character, stresses the battle between good and evil, heroes, legendary battles—often called heroic fantasy.  A portal-quest or portal fantasy could be a variant, with a prime example that of the Chronicles of Narnia.

The lists go on to include contemporary/urban fantasy, anthropomorphic, historical, dark, science fantasy—you get the idea. Fantasy, all about good vs. evil, the light versus the dark, heroes and heroines, magic, dragons, and their ilk, comes in many shades of grey. (50? That’s another essay—see the blog on sexuality in fantasy, okay?)  Then, there is immersive vs. intrusive and liminal or estranged and … But instead of defining each and every one, and dredging up examples (which is something I like to do when I teach fantasy lit—English 379, this fall, 3:30-4:45 TTh, come on down), I want to talk about the shade of grey I write and why (and yes, grey, the British spelling, and not the American gray. Grey just looks …. well, grey, and it’s prettier… I digress).

So. What’s my shade of grey?  I have two published fantasy novels, Harvest of Changelings (Golden Gryphon, 2007) and its sequel, The Called (Golden Gryphon, 2010). A third is being edited, The Golden Boy, and a fourth in progress even as I write, The Werewolf and His Boy. They are all, I am thinking, low and intrusive fantasies. True, The Golden Boy is sort of pushing the above definition of low, as it is set in an alternate reality, that of the Columbian Empire. Magic is real, but it is illegal, and the Empire is definitely meant to be a rational country. Magic, does, however, intrude, according to the Columbian political and religious authorities. But, the others: this world (more or less), and then magic returns (thus intruding), or is disclosed in some fashion, voluntarily and otherwise. Harvest and The Called are set in North Carolina; Werewolf, in Virginia. Complications ensue—lots of complications. Bad things happen. The good guys are in serious trouble. Yes, there are forays into Faerie from time to time, but on the whole, things happen here, not there.

The question of the moment is why, to what end. Part of me has always wanted to believe in magic (oh, all right, part of me does believe in magic) and that it is real and if we just knew—the right people, the right words, where to look—we could find it. It’s always been here. There has to be a reason for all these stories. So, I create fictional worlds that satisfy this longing. In these worlds the magical and the mundane intersect, overlap, come into conflict—and I find these encounters fascinating. As do their real-world counterparts (encountering the unexplainable), such meetings pull back the veils and reveal us as who and what we really are. They are meetings in which we are forced to ask the question of what it means to be human. That some of these encounters are fraught with peril is also part of this question.  To be human is, sometimes, to be in danger, to be facing great evil, and to have to confront that evil, albeit the evil is a monster, another human, or a personal darkness. To be human is to undertake the quest. As Le Guin says in her essay, “The Child and the Shadow,” “fantasy is the natural, the appropriate language for the recounting of the spiritual journey and the struggle of good and evil in the soul”(Language of the Night 64).