Stealing the Elf-King's Roses by Diane Duane

[meganbmoore]

Stealing the Elf-King's Roses is a modern fantasy that's not quite like any other fantasy novel I've read.  Or rather, I've seen plenty attempted to do it, but none actually succeed.  It is, quite simply, a procedural murder mystery in an alternate reality where magic, and other worlds, exists.  While most modern and urban fantasy that has reality and magic coexisting will bend over backwards explaining how that came to be, Duane simply buildsher world around the idea that the fae exist in live inconjunction with humans and normal reality, and reconstructs the world around that.  

Our heroine is Lee, a Las Angeles prosecutor.  The law, here, works the way we're used to...with adjustments.  Here, people like Lee, who have a Sight are able to see the reality behind words and expose them, and use this to further Justice in the world.  Justice itself is an embodiment that manifests in court, and looks into the hearts of the guilty to allow them to choose their own punishment.  For example, a thief remembers his mother calling him a weasel, and his conscience chooses the form of a weasel as his punishment, a form he's trapped in until justice has run its course.

Lee and her feyhound partner, Gelert(think giant talking dog...there's more to it than that, but just think giant talking dog) are rising prosecutors, though hindered by rumors that Lee's ex, Matt, is favoring her after their breakup(cheating jerk and that's all I'm saying on the matter.)  Soon, though, things go topsy-turvy when and alfen(elf) is found murdered, sending Lee and Gelert on an investigation through seven universes and into the heart of a conspiracy at the heart of the alfen court, mixed in with several assassination attempts(sound like any thrillers you've heard of?)

The book is very good.  Lee is capable and intelligent, the world almost perfectly constructed, and the plot interesting.  It also, interestingly, directly contronts the question of racism via the interactions of humans and different fey races.  There is no "this is the persecuted race and the others are wrong" approach, just a frank look at how people are naturally suspicious and jealous of those different than them.

The book is excellent, and I wish more modern and urban fantasy were like it:  more concerned about the story and world than about who the heroine is going to sleep with.