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.
Who built this great dyke? Dante says it was built by the builder—a tautological answer—although he also says, of the identity of this architect, this “engineer:” “qual che si fosse,” “whoever he was.” Who was he? Sayers, in her note to this passage, glosses the ‘maestro’ as God, which seems wrong:—why would Dante add qual che si fosse to God’s name? Which is to say, in the sense that God is behind all creation, in one sense He is of course the maestro, the builder. But the question is: who constructed this specific structure, this dyke?
For one who has experienced fortification spectra and rainbow auras, and seen souls rising from people’s heads, and fixed words begin to stream meaning, the uneasy question is this: what if it is merely neurological? What to make of the mystic loose from any system of thought or framework, who nevertheless has a seizure every time she passes through the same doorway? How easily it may be triggered, or even inherited. I cannot even look at a bevel, my mother has told me hauntedly. Lewis Carroll saw a pack of playing cards, but he might have seen the Supreme Face. What happens when the phenomenon has a name, an explanation?
Light from the fluorescent ceiling panels careens about the white kitchen. At the small table under a darkening window sits Ysabel in a white plastic chair. Tortoiseshell sunglasses, a can of Diet Coke, and a small plastic baggie lie next to the small thick book she isn’t reading. Her eyes are closed. One corner of the baggie holds a pinch of something golden.
A thin man whose dark-nailed hands glitter with silver rings pushes open the door, letting in the mutter of an active phone room. She doesn’t look up. His black T-shirt says Elegant Casualty. He yanks open the refrigerator, takes in a deep breath, blows it out half-heartedly. “You smoke?” he says.
“Who,” she says, looking up at him. “Me?”
“Do you?” he says, closing the refrigerator. “Because the idea of warmed-over tempeh goulash is not revving my motor.”
“Sometimes,” says Ysabel. “Did you want a cigarette?”
“No,” he says, looking down at his hands, over at the coffeemaker. “I don’t smoke. I just thought you’d maybe like to have something to do. When we go outside to talk.”
“Our reviewers loved the world-building and well-drawn characters.”
“—to explain how this is Emma Bull’s War for the Oaks plus Portlandia with a smattering of Little, Big and Chinatown.”
