Eccentric Circles
Rebecca Lickiss
Ace, 218 pages
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The premise of this debut novel is that the world of Fairy is shaped by human imagination, as expressed in tales
and books; and that changes made to Fairy shape the Human world in turn. It's an interesting idea that doesn't
get much exercise in this featherweight fantasy.
When her great-grandmother Dickerson dies suddenly, Piper Pied is astonished to discover she's been left Grandma's
house. There are disadvantages to accepting the bequest--dealing with her eccentric family, for one thing, not
to mention the chore of sorting through the thousands of books Grandma has accumulated over the years. Still, Piper
figures it's about time she gave up her nomadic lifestyle.
But the house is only the first astonishment. Walking into the kitchen the morning after moving in, Piper finds
an incredibly handsome man dressed in full medieval garb seated at her kitchen table. He's an elf, he explains
matter-of-factly. And he needs her help to solve Grandma's murder.
Piper doesn't know what to disbelieve first. Who would have wanted to murder Grandma? Can the man--Aelvarim--really
be an elf? And is Grandma's house really some kind of gateway between the worlds of Fairy and Human? But as Aelvarim
draws Piper deeper into the world of Fairy, she has no choice but to believe--not just in magic but in the murder,
which is attested to by a growing number of clues. Everything seems to hinge on the novel Grandma was writing before
her death--a novel that seems to have vanished. If Piper and Aelvarim can't find it, the worlds of Fairy and Human
will tear completely apart, and Fairy will be destroyed forever.
Lickiss is engaging storyteller, and brings a nicely humorous feel to the narrative, particularly in her portrayal
of Piper's very odd family. There are also some clever touches, such as the explanation for Aelvarim's generic
hunky-elf appearance: "Thank goodness for Tolkien," he comments. "Before him, elves were all short,
ugly, nasty bastards."
But there's not much to the murder mystery; and the influencing-Fairy-with-story idea bogs down in the extreme
unimaginativeness of Grandma's novel, once it finally surfaces. The other side of this premise--that Fairy has
a reciprocal influence on the Human world--is barely explored. And just as Piper's initial acceptance of Fairy
comes much too fast (you'd think a person would be a tad more freaked out to discover that her home was an interdimensional
gateway), the way she eventually solves things feels much too easy. It's reasonably diverting reading, but there's
little of substance here.
Copyright © 2001 Victoria Strauss
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