- Wood, Fenton.
The City of Illusions.
Seattle: Amazon Digital Services, 2019.
ASIN B082692JTX.
-
This is the fourth short novel/novella (148 pages) in the author's
Yankee Republic series. I described the first,
Pirates of the Electromagnetic Waves
(May 2019), as “utterly charming”, and the
second, Five Million Watts
(June 2019), “enchanting”. The third,
The Tower of the Bear (October 2019),
takes Philo from the depths of the ocean to the Great Tree in
the exotic West.
Here, the story continues as Philo reaches the Tree, meets its
Guardian, “the largest, ugliest, and smelliest bear”
he has ever seen, not to mention the most voluble and endowed
with the wit of eternity, and explores the Tree, which holds
gateways to other times and places, where Philo must
confront a test which has defeated many heroes who have come
this way before. Exploring the Tree, he learns of the
distant past and future, of the Ancient Marauder and Viridios
before the dawn of history, and of the War that changed the
course of time.
Continuing his hero's quest, he ventures further westward along
the Tyrant's Road into the desert of the Valley of Death.
There he will learn the fate of the Tyrant and his enthralled
followers and, if you haven't figured it out already, you
will probably now understand where Philo's timeline diverged
from our own. A hero must have a companion, and it is in
the desert, after doing a good deed, that he meets his: a
teddy bear, Made in Japan—but a very special
teddy bear, as he will learn as the journey progresses.
Finally, he arrives at the Valley of the Angels, with pavement
stretching to the horizon and cloaked in an acrid yellow mist
that obscures visibility and irritates the eyes and throat.
There he finds the legendary City of Illusions, where he is
confronted by a series of diabolical abusement park attractions
where his wit, courage, and Teddy's formidable powers will
be tested to the utmost with death the price of failure.
Victory can lead to the storied Bullet Train, the prize he
needs to save radio station 2XG and possibly the world, and the
next step in his quest.
As the fourth installment in what is projected to be one long
story spanning five volumes, if you pick this up cold it will
probably strike you as a bunch of disconnected adventures and
puzzles each of which might as well be a stand-alone short-short
story. As they unfold, only occasionally do you see a
connection with the origins of the story or Philo's quest,
although when they do appear (as in the linkage between the
Library of Infinity and the Library of Ouroboros in The
Tower of the Bear) they are a delight. It is only toward
the end that you begin to see the threads converging toward what
promises to be a stirring conclusion to a young adult classic
enjoyable by all ages. I haven't read a work of
science fiction so closely patterned on the
hero's
journey as described in Joseph Campbell's
The
Hero with a Thousand Faces since Rudy Rucker's 2004 novel
Frek and the Elixir; this is
not a criticism but a compliment—the eternal hero myth
has always made for tales which not only entertain but endure.
This book is currently available only in a Kindle edition. The
fifth and final volume of the Yankee Republic saga
is scheduled to be published in the spring of 2020.
January 2020 