City of Roses is a serialized epic firmly set in Portland, Oregon: a wicked concoction of urban pastoral and incantatory fantastic, where a grocers’ warehouse might become a palace, and an antique bank is hidden beneath a department store.
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.
Work proceeds apace: I have reached the part of the draft of the 46th novelette where I can loop back to finish the unfinished draft of the 45th novelette, and when that’s done I can skip ahead to what of the 46th novelette follows immediately thereafter to write that down and then, finally, settle back to finish what’s left of them both. And then? Revision, and polish, and cut to fit, and to press; and then, the third season will finally have begun.
Meanwhile: might I draw your attention to an avenue of support, for the city? There’s Patreon, for those who favor the tried and true, more commercial end of the market, but also Comradery, for the scrappy upstart end—
Harsh light on steel, his blade the length of it broadening from pointed tip to palm-width ricasso, there about the flatly cruciform hilt held lightly in both his gauntleted hands, hers a shorter, slender thing, needle-whip and wick about in her one hand netted by the glittering silver guard of wiry strands, thrust and thrust and slipping slice, and each assault brushed off by the merest twitch of his long impassive blade, that here and there tips forward, a simple riposte, wildly batted back, and every steely strike another clang wrung from some antique carillon.
She steps back, away, around, feet bare on polished concrete. Restlessly jagged slashes at the air. Her free hand in a fingerless cycling glove held up against her chest, her plain black T-shirt, her black tights, her wine-red hair. His bootheels click a stately tempo toward her, his blade held up and straight ahead, the flat of it parallel to the floor, tip of it squarely toward her eyes, one of his elbows crooked up at an angle, tight white tank and brown jeans and his cap of black hair shining. Jo springs right, jogs left her shoulder dipping, swing and up a thrust he bats aside with a slight twist, his sword still high, still flat, still stepping toward her, click and click as she scrambles back. “You let me control the field,” says Luys.
Another long step back and right again a straight hard thrust scraped off the tip of his blade turned to parry, to slice past, to poke at her. A leap back, her back toward the big white SUV parked near the wall, her blade up at an angle, guarded, “Like a goddamn tank,” she says.
“At least make me work for it,” he says, “my lady,” click and click, blade up, elbow cocked.
“Long, complex with a lyrical rhythm to it that’s intoxicating.”
