Wandering Adventure Party

Since the beginning of 2025, I’ve been interested in revisiting some of the classic works in the genres I enjoy. Originally the revisit was brought on by an interest in the Traveller Roleplaying Game and a list of influential science fiction works. From there, I got an interest in some of the classical urban fantasy works. Especially after reading the list of personal recommendations from Seanan McGuire. Neither this book, nor this author, appears on McGuire’s list, but Newford and Charles de Lint come up often enough in urban fantasy recommendations that when The Onion Girl went on sale in ebook form, I decided to take a look.Note however, that The Onion Girl is not the first Newford book. I don’t know how I missed that fact myself when picking it up, but it was published about a decade into the original releases of the series. While the Newford stories each stand alone pretty well, and I did not have issues getting to know the characters starting with this one, those who find the very beginning a very good place to start may wish to look at Dreams Underfoot instead.CW: Sexual Assault, Drug Use, Family Abuse, and 1990s Depictions of Sex WorkHow can who you meet affect how you get to grow beyond the traumas you faced as a child?There are two parallel stories told in The Onion Girl: painter of the fantastic Jilly Coppercorn lies in a bed recovering from injuries she received in a car crash, while Raylene Carter tells the story of how she fought against the brother who sexually abused her and escaped the home where she was abandoned by her older sister, her brother’s first victim. Their tales interweave and continue in parallel, each adding a context of “what if” to the other.Jilly’s story involves a theme that she must first heal what’s inside her before friends and magic can help her heal her physical body. Raylene’s story largely involves her and her best friend Pinky on a cross-country spree inflicting upon others what was inflicted upon them as teens. The two parallel each other as Jilly tries, and sometimes fails, to revisit what happened to her as a girl while Raylene largely continues to live in that abused headspace unable to move beyond it. Jilly meets friends in Newford who get her off drugs, get her into art school, get her away from the work she did as a teen prostitute. Raylene has Pinky who pushes the pair of them into ever more trouble until Pinky ends up in prison and Raylene hatches an idea to go take revenge on the sister who abandoned her all those years ago.Largely these story parallels between the two women carry on a theme that while we might be shaped and informed by the traumas we’ve endured, each of us still retains the choice to be who we want to be. That theme remains consistent throughout the book as Jilly continually makes choices about who she wants to be and who she wants to help while Raylene remains concerned with immediate desires for herself and maybe occasionally Pinky.I was talking to friends as I went through this book joking about how the 90s edginess is strong in this one. It opens with the main character being hit by a car and then basically being told to deal with the trauma of being a sexual assault victim or she’ll be stuck with her injuries. While that was my initial thought, I really enjoyed sitting with the found family that Jilly has in her trio, “the Tribe of Small Fierce Women”, with Sophie and Wendy helping her. Along with all the others around Newford who come to her side.The pacing of this one is a bit slower than a lot of other books I’ve read recently, the conflicts the characters are dealing with are a lot more internal and a lot more contemplative. For a good portion of the book, those issues are actively being ignored by the characters. This is maybe not the best book for someone looking for a lot of action and excitement. But, if you’re a fan of getting immersed in the millieu of a book, and sitting alongside the characters and just experiencing their lives for a bit, I think this is a story you might enjoy. After this one, I’m sold on checking out the other Newford books, because I really did like what de Lint set up with the setting.

This post originally appeared on the previous incarnation of this blog on April 23, 2024.This was not my first time reading Three Parts Dead. In fact, I pre-ordered it when it first came out and read it then. Max Gladstone just released the second book of a sequel series to the original Craft Sequence books and in getting ready to read the Craft Wars books, I decided to go back and read the original Craft Sequence. Let me begin by saying that my original pre-order was based on the fact that when I originally heard about Three Parts Dead, I immediately went to pre-order it because the premise sounded like it was written precisely for me. Like specifically for me. It was exactly the intersection of interests.PremiseThat premise is that the Craft Sequence books take place in a world where the law is magic. This book came out while I was just starting my second year of law school. I am both a giant law nerd AND a giant fantasy nerd. So that sentence was enough to snag me. Especially as Gladstone wrote an article with Tor before the book came out that it was inspired by his wife being in law school and the pseudo-Latin that lawyers are subjected to in school sounding like the incantations you’d expect to hear in a magical school book. Which is true. Res Judicata and post hoc ergo propter hoc and Res Loquitur all sound like things a wizard would shout to make things happen. There are days working as a lawyer where I am sad I can’t just shout legal Latin at people and make things happen.Anyway, the plot of Three Parts Dead centers around Tara, a graduate of the Hidden Schools, see: magical law school. The Hidden Schools teach you how to be a magical contracts lawyer slash necromancer. Again, I told you that as a law student slash fantasy geek I thought this sounded awesome. Tara is offered a job, but the permanency of that position relies on her impressing the bosses. That job just happens to be the resurrection of a dead god using contract magic that looks like bankruptcy law tracking the movement of divine energy like forensic accounting. But like, exciting and necromancy. I might be a giant nerd, but trust me.Abelard is another major character in the book, being a priest of the dead fire god of Alt Coulumb. He’s tasked with showing Tara around and acts sort of like the Watson character for when magic needs explained to the audience.Cat is a servant of Justice, formerly the goddess Seril before her death in the God Wars and reconstruction into a new being in a situation not entirely unlike the current one. She’s trying to investigate the murder of a judge who was supposed to hear the case and deal with the implications of all that comes out of the case.What I LikedOkay, so this book released right at the beginning of my second year of law school. Like I said, the premise of magical lawyers was right up my alley. I bought this knowing that the likelihood I connected with it was near 100%. And I did connect with it. Gladstone, now probably better known for being a co-author of This is How You Lose the Time War (see: another instant pre-order for me from premise), gets a voice to the characters and has a skill for the world-building that just makes the whole thing make sense like why wouldn’t law be magic?Early in my career, and still today honestly, Tara being this newbie thrown out into the world and having to impress everyone by doing everything herself just resonates. She’s got flaws in being too sure of what she’s doing and it does lead her into trouble just as often as into a correct answer. She’s a great character to center this book around.What Didn’t Work for MeThis thing was an ambitious debut for Gladstone and in juggling the plots, there was one that wasn’t hit out of the park for me on this first book. Cat has a plot around having something missing that leads her into a vampire addiction, but Cat’s deal never really gets too fleshed out beyond that and beyond being a parallel to the current situation if it goes wrong. That makes Justice’s role in the finale with the Gargoyle fight and with De Novo in the Temple of Justice feel a little ex machina to use some pseudo-Latin. Cat just felt a little under-developed compared to Tara and Abelard.OverallOverall, this is honestly one of my favorite book series. And this was the book that got me hooked on it and paying attention to what else Gladstone wrote.Sure Cat could use some additional fleshing out, but that didn’t keep me from flipping pages into the night to see what came next even on my re-read.So, this is a great book and you should definitely check it out.

Got this one through Netgalley. Was so excited when approval came. Jim C. Hines has been one of my favorite writers since I stumbled into a signing one pay day and picked up all the Libriomancer books. The Buffy X Golden Girls comp just sold it EVEN MORE #Bookstodon #SlayersOfOld #UrbanFantasy(comment on Slayers of Old)

'The City We Became' is a wonderfully written contemporary urban fantasy that redraws the map of good vs. evil to reflect the state of early 21st century politics.https://app.thestorygraph.com/reviews/623bf75b-20e0-4835-bf02-9f57fd0b8c82#fantasy #urbanfantasy #nkjemisin #thecitywebecame #books #bookstodon @bookstodon

A musician who's just normal and having to deal with getting plunged into the supernatural? I am really enjoying this one. And the music references are turning into quite a playlist. #UrbanFantasy #Bookstodon(comment on War for the Oaks)

I'm reading War for the Oaks based on seeing it on Seanan McGuire's Personal Top 10 #UrbanFantasy list (https://reactormag.com/seanan-mcguires-personal-top-10-urban-fantasy-books-for-adults/)I am really enjoying this, the way musicianship characterizes Eddi, the absolute unhinged chaos energy of the Phouka, I'm glad I'm giving this a read.#Bookstodon #WarForTheOaks

Earlier today I talked about attempts to take a look at some of the foundations of sci fi and urban fantasy literature.The Onion Girl is the first of Charles de Lint's stories that I've read. There's a lot of milieu and found family here. I enjoyed it but it might not be for those looking for faster paced works.CW on the Book for sexual assault, family abuse, drug use, and 1990s depictions of sex workhttps://alexanderkeane.com/posts/revisiting-classics-the-onion-girl/#Bookstodon #UrbanFantasy #Review

@Da_Gut The urban vs modern divide is actually one of the things I'm working through as I read, I see this thing or that referred on one side or the other.My favorite that I read because of this list so far is Tanya Huff's Keeper series. That was a fun one. Loved the keeper cats.Actually reading my first de Lint right now. Liking Newford so far.