If you're in the mood for a fantasy saga that combines history, myth, locations that range from archaic times to present day (well, in the first volume, the 90s), want said story to be told both suspensefully and wittily, and want an epic which has more than one LGBT character adrift in an otherwise solely heterosexual world to offer (in fact, offers rather the reverse: a story where all the romances are same sex, though there are also strong friendships between the sexes), you're in luck: Rhapsody of Blood: Volume I is the book for you.
Admittedly I'm biased. Ever since becoming aquainted with![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rozk back when Buffy was broadcast both via her great meta and her splendid fanfiction, I've been reading what she wrote avidly and with great fascination. I also love her poetry, which is in print these days as well but will get a separate review. Given how wonderfully well rozk handles language in her fannish life - I remember in particular a stunning portrait of the First Slayer on one end of the scale (forming those glimpses from the show into a fascinating whole which feels genuinenly archaic) and a hilarious BTVS/Six Feet Under crossover which, using the fact Michelle Trachtenberg stars in both shows, tells a story in which Dawn Summers gets kidnapped by accident in place of film star Celeste which lives of its witty dialogue and clashing of worlds - I'm wasn't exactly surprised to find both qualities in her professional fiction, but I was swept away by the sheer scale of it.
Rhapsody of Blood has two plot threads which, one early encounter aside, are separate yet constantly inform on each other. One is the story of Emma and Caroline; Caroline gets killed right at the start in the first appearance of the saga's villains, but considering she becomes one of the busiest chattiest ghosts you can imagine, this is just the beginning of her relationship with Emma Jones, one of our two point of view characters. (It also puts a cramp in their love life, but such obstacles are there to be overcome with style, invention and the occasional third party.) Emma and Caroline begin their career as a supernatural crime fighting team in the British Museum by saving a faun from two freelance angels, aided by the Egyptian crocodile shaped god Sobekh, and their adventures only go wilder from there. It's wit, banter and resolute non-impressedness versus a variety of overlord wannabes and the occasional mad zombie, and bit by bit a pattern starts to get revealed to both readers and characters.
The other plot thread sends us through human history, not in chronological order, and its pov character is Mara the Huntress. (Who saves Emma at the start of the novel from getting killed like Caroline but otherwise has no contact with Our Heroines, though its heavily hinted this will at some point in the future change.) Mara is her own myth, a woman who made it her business to put an end to any gods thriving on blood sacrifices. And to protect the weak, but note she's not called Protector, she's called Huntress. As this book's universe is one where all the gods from all religions ever really do exist (or did, until they met Mara), you can imagine this is quite a task. It also allows our author to put her own spin on several story tropes, myths and historical events. (The way Mara becomes immortal, for example, reminds me both of various Indian fairy tales and the Henry Rider Haggard novel She, with the added twist that Mara is telling this story in first person to Alistair Crowley, and, as she tells him and the readers, has no intention of giving him an actual recipe on how to become immortal, so of course she lied - or did she?) If the Emma and Caroline sections are sharp suburban black comedy (though not always - the showdown at the end of the novel is as epic as you could wish, and takes place, appropriately enough, in Hollywood), the Mara sections are a tragic-mythic fresco painting you watch, as Aristoteles demands, in awe/fear and pity. And a lot of suspense, which you'd think is hard to pull off with a first person immortal narrator but which Roz Kaveney manages splendidly.
If there is one cause of frustration, it's that this is only the first volume of a work in progress, and there are two more to come which aren't published yet. But given this author's writing pace, I don't doubt they will be soon, so if you want something fantastical (in both senses of the word) to enthrall you instead of, say, glaring into G.R.R. Martin's direction while drumming your fingers for a few years: grab this volume as fast as you can. And even if you have already a large reading pile, read this first. It's that good.
Admittedly I'm biased. Ever since becoming aquainted with
rozk back when Buffy was broadcast both via her great meta and her splendid fanfiction, I've been reading what she wrote avidly and with great fascination. I also love her poetry, which is in print these days as well but will get a separate review. Given how wonderfully well rozk handles language in her fannish life - I remember in particular a stunning portrait of the First Slayer on one end of the scale (forming those glimpses from the show into a fascinating whole which feels genuinenly archaic) and a hilarious BTVS/Six Feet Under crossover which, using the fact Michelle Trachtenberg stars in both shows, tells a story in which Dawn Summers gets kidnapped by accident in place of film star Celeste which lives of its witty dialogue and clashing of worlds - I'm wasn't exactly surprised to find both qualities in her professional fiction, but I was swept away by the sheer scale of it. Rhapsody of Blood has two plot threads which, one early encounter aside, are separate yet constantly inform on each other. One is the story of Emma and Caroline; Caroline gets killed right at the start in the first appearance of the saga's villains, but considering she becomes one of the busiest chattiest ghosts you can imagine, this is just the beginning of her relationship with Emma Jones, one of our two point of view characters. (It also puts a cramp in their love life, but such obstacles are there to be overcome with style, invention and the occasional third party.) Emma and Caroline begin their career as a supernatural crime fighting team in the British Museum by saving a faun from two freelance angels, aided by the Egyptian crocodile shaped god Sobekh, and their adventures only go wilder from there. It's wit, banter and resolute non-impressedness versus a variety of overlord wannabes and the occasional mad zombie, and bit by bit a pattern starts to get revealed to both readers and characters.
The other plot thread sends us through human history, not in chronological order, and its pov character is Mara the Huntress. (Who saves Emma at the start of the novel from getting killed like Caroline but otherwise has no contact with Our Heroines, though its heavily hinted this will at some point in the future change.) Mara is her own myth, a woman who made it her business to put an end to any gods thriving on blood sacrifices. And to protect the weak, but note she's not called Protector, she's called Huntress. As this book's universe is one where all the gods from all religions ever really do exist (or did, until they met Mara), you can imagine this is quite a task. It also allows our author to put her own spin on several story tropes, myths and historical events. (The way Mara becomes immortal, for example, reminds me both of various Indian fairy tales and the Henry Rider Haggard novel She, with the added twist that Mara is telling this story in first person to Alistair Crowley, and, as she tells him and the readers, has no intention of giving him an actual recipe on how to become immortal, so of course she lied - or did she?) If the Emma and Caroline sections are sharp suburban black comedy (though not always - the showdown at the end of the novel is as epic as you could wish, and takes place, appropriately enough, in Hollywood), the Mara sections are a tragic-mythic fresco painting you watch, as Aristoteles demands, in awe/fear and pity. And a lot of suspense, which you'd think is hard to pull off with a first person immortal narrator but which Roz Kaveney manages splendidly.
If there is one cause of frustration, it's that this is only the first volume of a work in progress, and there are two more to come which aren't published yet. But given this author's writing pace, I don't doubt they will be soon, so if you want something fantastical (in both senses of the word) to enthrall you instead of, say, glaring into G.R.R. Martin's direction while drumming your fingers for a few years: grab this volume as fast as you can. And even if you have already a large reading pile, read this first. It's that good.
