Lindholm, Megan - Wizard of the Pigeons

[oyceter]

Wizard is a wizard of Seattle; he protects the city, and in return, the city protects him. His magic works as long as he takes care of the city's pigeons, has less than a dollar in his pocket, and other strictures. But something called the Grey Mir is coming after him, and he doesn't know if he can manage to thwart it.

What I particularly liked about this book was the sense of Seattle as an almost living city, written by someone who (presumably) knows it and loves it. And I loved the sense of magic everywhere, buried in the most innocuous things, like children's jump rope verses, and if you could only see slantwise somehow, you could fall into that magical Seattle where there are true wishes and wizards. In this Seattle, buskers or homeless people on the streets could be wielders of powerful magic. I also liked the descriptions of how Wizard managed each day as a street person, how Lindholm shows us his means to procure meals and coffee, his way of looking respectable so that no one suspects that he is homeless.

On the other hand... I don't know if this is Lindholm's first book, but it feels like it was written fairly early in her career. I got a bit lost during Wizard's crisis and am still not quite sure what Grey Mir was, and there are bits about his past life that I would have liked to be more fleshed out, or tied to the plot, or something. And while I enjoy the prose narration, the dialogue between the characters sounds somewhat artificial to me -- something in the rhythm or the vocabulary feels just a little off. This may be because it was written in the eighties? Or maybe Lindholm/Hobb's dialogue is always a little clunky, and I just don't tend to notice so much in her books as Hobb, since they take place in unfamiliar locales, as opposed to present-day Seattle. Maybe the high fantasy trappings of the Hobb books somewhat disguises the unnaturalness while the modern setting in this book amplifies it.

Still a good read though, and worth the effort of finding it.

Comments

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

I think Lindholm's best and least clunky dialogue is in the Ki and Vandien books, which are raffish low fantasy about a teamster and her wild man of a boyfriend. They're also my favorites of her books-- the ones where she makes it look easy.

I haven't read Wizard in a while, but I remember having to just guess what was going on with Grey Mir and what happened at the end and what happened to Cassie. I think it showed a loss of control over the material-- Lindholm seemed to want to leave some elements up to the reader's imagination, but didn't provide enough information for the reader to come to their own conclusions.

I too liked the parts about Wizard surviving on the streets the best.

[barbary-coast.livejournal.com]

I agree with you about the Ki and Vandien books. They remain my favorite of what I have read of her works. I like her use of very ordinary people in a fantasy setting, and she did it quite well in these. I've only recently picked up one of her novels written under the name Robin Hobb.

[oyceter]

I found her via her Hobb novels, which I like. They're a little clunky, prose-wise and the first trilogy especially falls apart in terms of structure, but I'm fond of her characters, which makes up for a lot.

[oyceter]

I need to get my hands on those sometime... I really wish Lindholm books weren't so hard to find. Well, either that, or I could shell out $11 for the British imports. Hrm.

I think another problem was that all the elements she had thrown in there never quite got summarily resolved or tied together satisfactorily. Tad Williams also manages to write giant confrontations that I somehow manage to overlook, and then I have to flip back ten pages, reread, and end up scratching my head again (ah yes, Memory, Sorrow and Thorn).

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

I see them now and then used. I could grab any I see for you. Though really, the British imports would be nicer and are well worth the money.

[oyceter]

I've got the second book of the trilogy sitting on the shelves now, and I'm sort of sloooowly waiting for the other two to fall in my hands.

Though I might eventually buckle and just get the imports, like I did with Wizard.