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.

Comments

[estara.livejournal.com]

I hope you've also read Duane's "Door into ... " Series, which is great epic fantasy (with male/female balanced world and a bi hero who loves his male best friend, but also a solar flare, eventually... you have to read it).

And, if you like original Star Trek, all her Star Trek novels (she did a lot of the Romulan ones), I think she's the best ST novel author of them all. Her Kirk is more likeable than the original, though. ;D

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

All I've read by her before this is the first of her Wizard books(one of several series I'm convinced R.K. Rowling was very familiar with before starting Harry Potter) though I do have the 2nd and 3rd of that series waiting.

[estara.livejournal.com]

Those are good, too, at least the first four, I sort of lost interest after that. They're shelved as YA, and the other ones I mentioned aren't.

Not sure if you still could get the Door into books, though, as Meisha Merlin shut its doors last year.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diane_Duane#The_Middle_Kingdoms
http://www.amazon.com/Tale-Five-Dragon-Diane-Duane/dp/1892065517/
http://www.amazon.com/Door-into-Sunset-Tale-Five/dp/0312851847/

They still seem to be affordable.
She's also on lj as dduane, I believe.

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

I sort of lost track of the "Young Wizards" a couple of books ago, and lost a few of the later volumes loaning them out to friends, so that's something I've been meaning to catch up on. Out of the ones I've read (1 through 5), the second book, Deep Wizardry, was always my favorite, so I'll be quite interested in seeing your reaction to it.

_{(Ultra-geeky version of Warhol's fifteen-minutes-of-fame confession time: my old boss and I have walk-on parts in one of DD's Trek novels. I'm an alien Starfleet ensign with multiple personalities, he's a human Starfleet captain with a rather Transformers-esque nickname.)}

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

I think you win at alter egos.

[estara.livejournal.com]

I'm soooooooooo envious. More power to you and your old boss.

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

Oh, and since you're a comics geek and I don't see it on the massive-tags-sidebar-of-DOOOOOOOM! over there...have you read Top 10?

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Yes, I have. The massive-tags-sidebar-of-DOOOOOOOM! only emerged about a year and a half ago, and I read Top 10 before that.

It's pretty good.

Why?

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

Why? The "police procedural in alterworld where X works, without being obsessed with shipping" bit in your review. Replace "magic" with "superheroes" and that's pretty much why I loved that series in a nutshell. (Heck, you can even leave in the magic for some of the bits, like Smax...)

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

"without being obsessed with shipping" huh?

But yeah, that's Top 10 in a nutshell. What can I say? It's a type of fictional preferrence with me. And I am very happy Top 10 never actually went "the leads hook up" route with Smax/Toybox, though I feared it would in the Smax mini(which then, like Saiyuki, got the very rare and special "sometime incest is OK" pass from me)

Though I do think she should have let him pound her cheating boyfriend into the dust...