City of Roses is a serialized epic firmly set in Portland, Oregon, only with more sword fights: a wicked concoction of urban pastoral and incantatory fantastic, where aspirants are knighted in Forest Park, and the Devil keeps a morgue in an abandoned big-box store.
Well, sort of: even as the season out there wanes, and pumpkin spices ever so slightly begin to waft, we’re on the verge of launching the third season of the epic: Summer. —The first draft of no. 46 should be done this month, which means revisions and finalizations of no. 45 might begin this month, as well; I am confident if not certain that it will be released in October: the first novelette in vol. 5, The Greene Chapel; the beginning of, well, Summer.
In the September 1978 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, there is a review column written by the science fiction author, editor, and critic Algirdas Jonas “Algis” Budrys. Budrys offers a brief summary of the “tried and true elements” of urban fantasy:
the desuetudinous old rooming house and its counterculturish residents, the bit of old wilderness rising atop its mysterious hill in the midst of the city, and the strangely haunted, bookish protagonist who gradually realizes the horrible history of the place where he lives.
Perhaps all men, by the very act of being born, are destined to suffer violence; yet this is a truth to which circumstance shuts men’s eyes. The strong are, as a matter of fact, never absolutely strong, nor are the weak absolutely weak, but neither is aware of this. They have in common a refusal to believe that they both belong to the same species: the weak see no relation between themselves and the strong, and vice versa. The man who is the possessor of force seems to walk through a non-resistant element; in the human substance that surrounds him nothing has the power to interpose, between the impulse and the act, the tiny interval that is reflection.
Where there is no room for reflection, there is none either for justice or prudence. Hence we see men in arms behaving harshly and madly. We see their sword bury itself in the breast of a disarmed enemy who is in the very act of pleading at their knees. We see them triumph over a dying man by describing to him the outrages his corpse will endure. We see Achilles cut the throats of twelve Trojan boys on the funeral pyre of Patroclus as naturally as we cut flowers for a grave.
Gloved in pinkened mail the metal slipping scrape against porcelain smear of a stain she shifts she grabs the pipe there bracing grunt and push back slap and groan his hands her hips her jeans about her knees his knees her belt a-flopping jangle keys or change in a pocket ringing snort and slap and slap again and “shit” she says and “there– like that– you” head hung low her hair quite short and spiky black the apron slung about her neck hung loose the ties undone her arms are folding pushing back against the bulk of him plowing groaning “skotosch” he says, or something like it, “hwikaz, witting” tossing his head that beard of his jutting “sulnthaz!” he roars, “Suntchazi!” jerking hammering clenching squeezing shaking her head she’s “no” she’s “not” she’s “dammit, dammit” as she slaps the slaps the white-tiled blood-smeared wall she’s hunching back against he shakes his shaggy head his brown hair whipping free of his loosening ponytail stuttering working a stilling slap and hitch and “don’t” she blurts as he’s leaning back his undone head eyes closed his mouth a-gawp his body rocking with the force of her shoves back again and again and her bare hand slapping “shibal” she spits and “shibal!” and he opens his eyes, seize and slam and meaty slap she coughs or sobs a grunt her breath a hiccup caught a tremor shivering shake her knees her hips her mail-gloved hand about the pipe and her pealing cry.
“…like Little, Big crossed with Revolutionary Girl Utena.”
“I think it’s the only time I’ve fallen in love with a city through a novel.”
“…a flicker of sharp impressionistic scenes skittering atop a deeply imagined alternate present.”
