City of Roses is a serialized epic firmly set in Portland, Oregon: an urban fantasy mixing magical realism with gonzo noirish prose, where duels are fought in Pioneer Square, and union meetings are beseiged by ghost bicycles.
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—
Twenty or thirty floors below the river a sheet of noontide gleaming, bridges marching out into the brightness till, far-off, the great arch of the northern freeway, laden with crawling traffic, and off to the left a cluster of towers, stepped red brick, high and white with darkly narrowed windows, glassy and green-clad, topped by a slanted deck of solar panels, and away beyond them all one lone tower of coppery pink glass framed with pinkly amber stone, stood up tall against the green hills beyond. “It is a matter of some delicacy,” says Agravante, somewhere back behind him. “Hence, the apartment.”
“My lord?” Pyrocles turns away from that wall of glass, the city below, his brow quizzical. “There is some issue with the construction?”
“No, no,” says the Viscount, shaking his head, white locks brushing the shoulders of his slate-grey suit, “all is well here, finally. No; our matter is for elsewhere, and tonight– but its delicacy dictates that our meeting not be marked.”
Pyrocles in his pale blue blazer looks about the empty room, the sweep of glass, the stretch of glossy dark wood floor to the clean bare kitchen island there, between him and Agravante. “How would it be that meeting m’lord in his new tower might go unmarked?”
A nod from Agravante then, and something of a smile. “It’s always been a source of some small consternation, that you are sworn to Southwest, yet live three blocks north of Burnside.”
“An accident of geography, m’lord,” says Pyrocles, “the garage, is–”
“Of course, your garage,” Agravante holds up a hand, “I do not mean for you to lose your garage. But you are one of my, grandfather’s, finest and most true of knights. You deserve an address within the demesne,” and that upraised hand swings wide, encompassing the space about them both.
“Just a glorious bit of writing, I can’t recommend it highly enough.”
“I think it’s the only time I’ve fallen in love with a city through a novel.”
