City of Roses is a serialized epic firmly set in Portland, Oregon, only with more sword fights: an urban fantasy mixing magical realism with gonzo noirish prose, where duels are fought in Pioneer Square, and river gods retire to comfortably shabby apartments.
The existence of the murals had leaked out of the rail yards by the late 1940s. “Art blooms in strange places but in all Portland perhaps the strangest is under the Lovejoy ramp to the Broadway bridge,” the Oregon Journal offered in passing.
A reporter at The Oregonian took a wrong turn coming out of downtown one evening, dodged an oncoming freight train, and unexpectedly found himself “surrounded by birds and animals” as well as “a fantastic half-tree, half-human that grappled with the night.”
This is a truly magnificent passage and we see in it Eddison’s similarities to Tolkien, Peake, and earlier pre-genre fantasy writers who understood landscape—and the artful rendering of it in literary form—to be absolutely integral to making their fantasy worlds, in some sense, real or real-seeming, and a key aspect of the verisimilitude so many fantasy writers use at the same time to denaturalize readers’ from their own world, rendering “reality” in new, critical perspectives. The scene begins with a moment in the changing of the seasons that quietly transitions readers from the big reveal at the end of the first chapter, and from there pulls the reader almost as a camera might move slowly through a forest in the opening scene of a film, lingering on tiny images and small happenings that each seem so delicately real and together prove the hapticity of this fantasy world.
Now that nos. 45 and 46 are complete and in the world, a number of elements of this new season, Summer, the third season of the epic, might well be coming into focus. —Head over to Chapbooks, and scroll down to the brand new section where the third season chapbooks will be collected, and you’ll notice that no. 45 is the first installment of vol. 5, the Greene Chapel—and that no. 46 is the first installment of vol. 6, Eleleu Ie.
“Put that away,” says the XO.
“She has a name, you know,” says Moody, elbows on the table, delicately fingering the pommel of the poignard balanced on its blade-tip before him, turning it slowly about, the long and tapered edge of it gleaming, and the wire wrapped about its handle.
“You named your knife,” says the XO. He’s in the doorway there, looking out from the dim little cabin onto a porched bit of yellowing deck, the placid river just beyond, greyly green. His anorak dappled in chocolate-chip camouflage, the furred hood of it laid back, a ruff about his shoulders.
“Boat has a name,” says Moody.
“It’s a boat,” says the XO. “They’re coming. Put it away.”
“Lucinda,” says Moody, twirling the knife about again. “Why are we on a boat, anyway.” His black T-shirt plain, his worn jacket of army-surplus green.
“I’m not gonna ask you again, dammit,” says the XO.
“A few manners go a long way,” says Moody, tilting the knife back and forth, the tip of it dimpling the table’s dark veneer.
“Long, complex with a lyrical rhythm to it that’s intoxicating.”
“Our reviewers loved the world-building and well-drawn characters.”
“It’s serial fiction done right.”
