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A little girl grows up knowing in advance ninety-five percent of the people and places she encounters, and the things that happen to her. She gradually learns that not everyone else is that way, and that the five percent that's strange to her isn't going to get filled in as she grows up. Then she meets five dog-shaped gods, they defeat a villain, and she discovers that this was all set up by her future self, to prevent a terrible injustice that happened the first time around.
And that's just in the first twenty-five pages of a 170-page novel.
(This book is a sequel to a book I haven't read ("Marianne, the Magus, and the Manticore"), and perhaps that part is spelled out in more detail, or something, in there. But I liked it very much at the high density with which is happens in here.)
The rest of the book is equally fresh and fantastical, with odd dream worlds where the structure of the streets changes every night (sort of like Dark City come to think of it, although also unlike) and odd things appear inside washing machines, or where small seal-like creatures build tall sand-castles and wait for someone to come along and tell them what to do, or...
And in the end Prince Charming marries the Fair Maiden, and we're only slightly afraid of what the Maiden might be planning to do with the potent and dangerous pendant around her neck. Which is about as it should be.
(I first read this book I don't know how many years ago, and just today I found it in a stack of books and read it again. It's short, sharp, and very enjoyable. Someday I'll have to get the book that it's a sequel to.)
This web page is licensed under a
Creative Commons License.