From rec.arts.sf.reviews Thu Aug 29 15:28:30 1996 Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.reviews Path: news.ifm.liu.se!solace!news.stealth.net!vixen.cso.uiuc.edu!newsfeed.internetmci.com!news.kei.com!uhog.mit.edu!news!news From: kxl@smi.stanford.edu (Kevin Lauderdale) Subject: Review: Shade and Shadow Message-ID: Followup-To: rec.arts.sf.written Keywords: author=Kevin Lauderdale Lines: 77 Sender: wex@tinbergen.media.mit.edu (Graystreak) Organization: Intelligent Agents Group X-Newsreader: (ding) Gnus v0.94 Date: Mon, 19 Aug 1996 20:54:57 GMT Approved: wex@media.mit.edu Lines: 77 Shade and Shadow by Francine G. Woodbury Review Copyright 1996 Kevin Lauderdale The scene: Oxford University, present day. The department of ... Magic. Francine G. Woodbury's SHADE AND SHADOW takes all the charm and ferocity of the academic setting and twists it through the rabbit hole by giving us a world where magic not only exists, but where it is an academic discipline. It's something you study, do research into, and for which you have teaching assistants. There are classes in Comparative and Practical Magic. There are Assistant Professors of Magic, and if you're lucky, a magician friend might put an anti-traffic-accident spell on your car. Raoul Smythe is an Assistant Professor of Magic, who finds himself the under suspicion in the murder of his department chair. While the police investigate, he is put on administrative leave, freeing him up to conduct an investigation of his own, assisted by his best friend, reporter Max Bolton. In fiction, the best way to explore any sort of society is through a mystery. If you have a mystery, you have a legitimate need for someone -- a detective, busy-body, or, as in this case, a prime suspect working against time -- to go many places and see many types of people and ask questions. Woodbury makes good use of this convention and seamlessly brings magic into the rest of the world as know it. Despite what the cover says, this is not, strictly speaking, a "fantasy" novel. There are no elves in Woodbury's Oxford. There are however, punk rockers, cleaning ladies, and real estate agents. "It's a Teutonic druid ceremony," an administrator tells Raoul of the memorial they're attending, "so remember, no cold iron." Like the best alternate history, you cannot help but feel that, yes, this *is* what the world would be like if we had magic. This is the world of THE OXFORD BOOK OF COMMON SPELLS. One of Raoul's colleagues' office looks like every professor's office you've ever been in except that it has "plastic models of the Egyptian, Babylonian, and Etruscan calves' livers used for divination." Woodbury elegantly explains how magic works in this society. There are no "As you know..." conversations. Instead the structure of her world is brought out naturalisticly in conversations with "lay people." She presents magic as being like music. Some people are just born with the talent, like Mozart, others attain it through hard work, and others just never gain the ability. Woodbury is equally graceful with mundane matters. This is a murder mystery that just happens to be set in an magic universe, not vice versa. The magic is well-woven into the story, but it doesn't have to be there. For Woodbury, magic isn't a literary crutch. She knows how to plot and pace, and she knows relationships. Part of the story involves our hero starting a relationship with the a young lady. The subtleties and false-starts of new romance are deftly portrayed. Though this book isn't as long or detailed as a P.D. James mystery, Woodbury is quite good at the same semblance of verisimilitude. Woodbury also knows the lingo. Not everything is a "spell." Woodbury has geases and cantrips as well. A whole generation of readers grew up playing DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS, and they know the difference -- as does Woodbury. This isn't just a single murder mystery. There are mysteries within mysteries. I suppose then that it was inevitable that I would correctly guess the solution to some of them. That's a problem with this genre. If you show a gun above the fireplace mantle in act one, you must use it by the end of act two. We see this all the time in television and film, as well as books. If there's anything even slightly out of the ordinary, you can bet that it will play an important part. In consequence, several of SHADE AND SHADOW's plot elements which are supposed to surprise us, instead telegraph their purposes to us almost at their first appearance. Granted, it's more difficult to spot the out of place in an alternate universe, but it should be impossible. Any woman who feels sick to her stomach at the beginning of a book will turn out to be pregnant by the end. Only in Anne Perry's books does a character have a cold, and the sneezing will NOT just happen to distract the bad guy at a crucial moment allowing the hero to escape. Francine Woodbury is no Anne Perry, but she's better than most at her... uh, craft. Kevin Lauderdale