Customer Reviews

Stealing the Elf-King's Roses

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Stealing the Elf-King's Roses is another great book by Diane Duane. She is widely known as one of the best Star Trek novelists, but even non-fans of that series can enjoy her books. This particular one has lyrical prose, interesting situations and an intriguing setting. It all adds up to something that I'm very glad I read.

I've always been a Diane Duane fan, and when I saw this book, the premise really intrigued me. This is a combination fantasy/science fiction book. It has parallel worlds and some sort of psychic powers (though some may seem Lee's power as more magical than psychic), but it also has the Elves and the magical "glamour" of their world. Elves make all the other races uncomfortable because they have what seems to be a magical, perfect beauty that has some sort of psychological effect on the other races. There is actually a practical reason behind all of this which is addressed in the story in a very intriguing fashion.

Duane's world-building is marvelous. There are numerous universes that share a lot of common traits, with other traits being completely different. They all occupy the same space, just in a different world. Travel and commerce between these worlds are commonplace and made possible by a substance called "fairy gold," which powers the gates between the worlds, and which the Elves control. The two main worlds in the story, the first being Lee's world, a sort of modern-day setting with a few differences, such as different creatures wandering about, weird version of cars, communication implants and stuff like that. The second world is Alfheim, home of the Elves, who are a very secretive race. As the story unfolds, you see that they actually have a reason for being so secretive, but that things may have to change in order to avoid a calamity. While Duane does a good job portraying the differences between Lee's world and our own, she really outdoes herself with Alfheim, making it a truly beautiful place with a strange veneer of unreality about it. It's breathtaking, eerie and a place that you really like visiting.

While the book certainly has a great concept, Duane makes it more than that. The characterization is simply wonderful. Lee and Gelert's friendship is very touching but there's no hint of any romantic feelings between them. He's happily married (or whatever the wolf-like equivalent would be in this world) and she's just coming off of a bad relationship. But it's clear that they love each other as only good friends can. They're willing to do whatever it takes to protect each other. Gelert is even willing to do something that could easily be considered a suicide mission (and with his "wife's" insistence!) to save Lee. The dialogue is great and Duane makes Gelert one of the most human wolves that you'll ever see. There are times when you will lose track of the fact that he's a wolf because he sounds so human, but then he'll do something like drink his champagne from a dog dish or something like that. He's that believable. In fact, while I really liked Lee, I thought Gelert really stole the show and I'd love to read more about him.

The other characters are well-done also. The Elf-King is suitably regal yet he's a "human" character as well, with understandable motivations and a wry sense of humour at times. Most of the other characters don't have a great deal to do and are minor, but they all have some sort of hook that makes them just that much more than two-dimensional. The book is told from Lee's point of view, so all of the characters are coloured by her perception of them. This gives some of them an extra dimension, such as Matt, who is her ex-boyfriend and their contact in the District Attorney's office.

I can't end the positives in this review without talking about the prose. I just love Duane's writing. It not only carries you deep within the story, but it also makes you feel like you're actually taking part. The descriptions of Alfheim, as already stated, are just great. The dialogue, especially between Gelert and Lee, is snappy and there's not a wasted word in the whole bunch. I took forever to finish this book, mostly because I was just reveling in the language used. Sometimes an actor is given a compliment by being described as "somebody you'd love to watch just read the phonebook." Well, Duane is somebody who I'd love to read the phonebook that she wrote.

The only negatives in this book are a couple of slow spots in the middle. One spot is while we're waiting for the UN delegation to be formed to go to Alfheim and investigate some of the potential problems. Another is some of the traveling that is done on Alfheim between two of the cities. It almost seems like a lull in the action, and while the book is very interesting it's not action-packed. It doesn't need these lulls. In fact, there isn't a whole lot of action (such as fights, etc) in the book at all. This doesn't stop Duane in the least, though. She keeps increasing the tension until it's at the breaking point. The climax of the book is simply marvelous, with Lee having to make a very tough decision that could affect everything in all the worlds connected by the gates.

I'm really torn here. I love the fact that this book is completely self-contained, with no "to be continued" or anything like that. I want this to be a stand-alone book. On the other hand, I would love to see these characters again. I have faith in Diane Duane that, if she's going to write a sequel, it will be just as good. And if she doesn't, I am thankful to her that she's created this book. Read it. Experience it. You won't regret it.

Must agree with previous reviewers. The cover art is appalling. I would never have picked it up if I hadn't recognized the author.

Duane's notion of Justice as a real, touchable force was intriguing (and don't we all wish that's the way it worked in our world.) There's also a marvelous eye-opening visit to an alternate world which shakes the complacent reader. The main characters are so real they step right off the page. Gelert in particular was a pleasure.

The legend /metaphor of the roses, however, was confusing and took way too long to develop. There are pages of painfully convoluted explanation, but I still came away unsure of what actually happened. Also, the character of the Elf-King himself could have been better drawn; Duane's characters are usually better imagined. His actions and motives are merely explained, and not slowly discovered in any way which really involves the reader until the final battle, so Lee's emotional commitment to his interests was a little baffling.

And Duane loses one star for using the increasingly common practice of assuming any name used for a fantasy or science fiction character MUST have six apostrophes in it. Ple'ase! It's not nec'essary!

On an earth much different than our own, people are able to transport themselves from one place to another and one universe to another by using the gates which are constructed in part from fairy gold. The elves control the distribution of fair gold just as they block anyone from any of the diverse universes from traveling to Alfheim, the elfin world.

Lanthanomancer Lee Enfield and her partner Galert, a madrin (a wolfhound the size of a horse that talks and is very intelligent) use their sight and scent to see below the surface at crime scenes and while interrogating perpetrators. The duo is so good at what they do that they are sent at their government's bequest into Alfheim to find out why elves are killing elves. Before they know it they are caught in a civil uprising that unless stopped, could mean a massive war throughout the known universes.

Dianne Duane, long known and respected for her excellent work, has gifted her readers with a unique view of the Fay that make it seem as if another species has been discovered by the author. Her protagonists are a superb working team whose personalities mesh so well they are better together then apart in a kind of the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. STEALING THE ELF-KING'S ROSES is a fascinating mixture of political and inter-dimensional travel inside a fantasy science fiction plot.

Harriet Klausner

Stealing the Elf-King's Roses (2002) is a standalone Fantasy novel. It's good to have Duane writing heroic fantasy again. While I enjoyed her science fiction, media novels, and Young Wizards series, I think she only realizes her full potential in a universe with wider constraints of her own devising.

This novel is another classification headache, much like "The Three World Trilogy" by Lawrence Watt-Evans. Multiple universes exhibit different physical and moral laws. Some of these laws allow powers that we would classify as magic. And one of the universes is Alfheim, the home of the Elves.

It seems that intercontinual trade exists between six universes within the sheaf and, according to the papers, a seventh has just been discovered. A crucial element in the trade is Fairy Gold, which has properties that reduce the power requirement for intercontinual gates. Alfheim is the only source for this metal and strictly controls the supply.

The point of view follows Lee Enfield, a mantic in forensic lanthanomancy, as she and her partner Gelert, a madra or fayhound, investigate the death of an Elf at Eighteenth and Melrose in Los Angeles. Obviously Lee's LA isn't the La-La Land that we know. And the story becomes even stranger as it progresses.

Lee and Gelert discover with their lanthanomantic powers -- her Sight and his Scent -- that the victim had been shot by a human, but that a second Elf had observed the murder, with some satisfaction, and had then just faded away. In addition, the shooter himself left a fading pyschospoor that puzzles Gelert.

The shooter is quickly caught on an anonymous tip and the authorities are trying to restrict the case to just the proximate killer. Lee and Gelert, however, are fighting to widen the case and soon turn up information to support their lanthanomantic evidence.

It soon becomes obvious that Elves are being murdered in the universes outside Alfheim and other Elves seem to be contracting or performing the murders. Conspiracy theories bloom like desert flowers. On the basis of these findings, the other five trading partners force Alfheim to accept a joint investigating committee and Lee and Gelert are pushed onto the committee.

Then events, and landscapes, really turn strange. Duane takes us into Fairyland in more than one way. Pay attention to the fairy tales researched by our heroes; they are your only hints.

Welcome back, Diane, and when are you going to tie up all the loose strings? The madrin are only one of several mysteries left unexplained. That seventh universe is especially intriguing.

-Arthur W. Jordin

I wanted to enjoy this book more than I did. Diane Duane is one of my favorite authors, but this story just didn't measure up to her others. I think the problem is she's trying to mix fantasy and sci-fi, and that's hard to pull off. I did enjoy some of her original ideas, but the overall story wasn't engaging.

My guess is that this world is something she's been thinking about for a while. It has the feel of the first book of a series, as there are so many characters and ideas introduced but not sufficiently explored. I'm curious who the other powers besides Justice are, and if there are specialists in those fields.

Minor spoiler: The one thing that really got to me was that, for a system so concerned with justice, the justice system in this world seemed too prone to abuse. Why would you combine the functions of investigator and prosecutor into one role? Besides requiring far too much training for one individual, it seems like it unfairly biases the system towards the prosecution. Does the defense attorney also get to send in investigators, or is she dependent on her opposition providing exculpatory evidence?

If you're a fan of Diane Duane, you might enjoy this book just to read more of her, but you may also be disappointed. But if you want to check out Diana Duane, start with one of her other stories (like "Door into Fire" or "Book of Night with Moon", or even "The Wounded Sky").

Fantasy has always turned on the willingness and ability of a small group of people (sometimes only one) to "change the world," and Diane Duane (one of my favorite writers), in her ongoing Young Wizards series, has always proceeded on the principle (reversing Arthur C. Clarke) that "any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology." Here she gives us what may be her ultimate example of these truisms to date. Liayna "Lee" Enfield lives in a world that calls itself Earth, but it isn't *our* Earth. Here office-type high-tech is even techier than ours, "smart houses" are apparently so commonplace that even a private investigator can afford to own one, and people commute in aerial vehicles called "hovs." It isn't paradise: crime exists, right up through murder, and there are traffic jams and air pollution--but there is no word or concept for genocide, and world wars are apparently unknown, though nuclear weapons have been invented. Worldgates connect it to five other "alternate Earths," including one where space travel is so commonplace that aliens routinely visit Earth--and one, Alfheim, which is the home of both the Elves (immortal, incredibly beautiful hominids) and the allotropic ("fairy") gold that powers the Gates; there's even a fivefold UN and Interpol. It's also a world where God and Christ (though referred to in those terms) are both female, and where a human (Lee) can partner with a "madra"--a 40"-tall intelligent canid (his people were originally from Alfheim, though why they left is never explained) who, though he doesn't have hands, can speak English by way of an implant and even drive a hov, which automatically modifies itself to suit him when he gets behind the controls. And where, though no one uses the word "magic," the living Power of Justice visits the courtroom after arguments have closed and both pronounces and enforces the verdict (in the very first chapter we see a dishonest entertainment promoter literally transformed into a large weasel, apparently with its human mind still intact). Lee and her partner Gelert are psychically gifted "mantics"--private detectives of a kind, but also authorized to argue in court, usually for the prosecution--who have the ability, respectively, to See and Scent what has happened in a given locality within a certain window of time, and, as we eventually learn, to also See and Scent hidden truths about what's going on there *now*. When an Elven communications-industry exec is murdered in Ellay (their version of Los Angeles), they expect at first that it will prove to be just another investigation. But before long it morphs into a complex mosaic of conspiracy, economic and racial jealousy, and interworld moral contagion, fuelled in part by the recent discovery of "our" Earth (called Terra), and they find themselves not only saving the Laurin (the Elf-King) from a palace coup but having to help him literally restructure his entire world and race. The alternative is the destruction of Alfheim by the other worlds, contaminated by leakage from a reality (our own) where genocide is a political tool. And if that is allowed to happen, says the Laurin, "everyone in all the Worlds, everywhere" will die too.

Though the spine label describes it as fantasy, "Roses" reads more to me like sf; Elves in her Alfheim use blasters, hold jobs like humans (often even in the human worlds), and don't seem vulnerable to "cold iron," and even the Laurin's ability to "worldmaster"--anything from controlling the weather to literally summoning back the prehistoric ocean to destroy his enemies--is described by him as "how kingship works here...Those of us who could understand the World well enough to make the weather do what the crops needed, lived to breed descendants who could make it do that even better" (in other words, evolution at work), and is apparently as much a psychic process as Lee's Sight. Lee's version of Earth, particularly, is sketched with dozens of bits of techie throwaway so casually inserted into the stream of the story that the reader scarcely notices them--which, of course, is the best way to build a world: make it seem natural.

Lee, Gelert, and the Laurin eventually do triumph over the conspiracy and the leaking contagion, averting transdimensional war (you'll have to read the book to find out how), and in the end all the worlds (perhaps even ours) are changed in many profound ways. And here we see that this reality, though it's science-fictional, may well be a part of the same one that the Young Wizards inhabit, and that Lee may have unwittingly served as the tool of the Powers That Be. The slightly abrupt ending leaves room for more explication of the changes she and the Laurin have effected, and I sincerely hope that Duane goes on to write more in Lee's Universe.

First, let me say that Diane Duane is one of the top science fiction/fantasy writers today. This is not her best work. If you want to try her best, check out "Book of Night with Moon" or "Door Into Fire."

In this multi-dimensional world, the equivalent to our real world has psychic/magical powers. One of those is Justice which allows one with that power to speak with the voice of the dead. It certainly solves crimes. That, in itself would be an interesting and thrilling novel, but Duane has to add the second dimension, Alfheim, the Elf World. Elves are getting killed and someone's covering up. Finally, we add the complication of the Elf King. It's too much---definitely doesn't realize any of the various storylines' potential. Further, Duane's heroine's self-esteem was just plain sad. Ladies, you'll see what I mean when you read this. At the end, I had the strong urge to yell "Get a clue, sister!" into the book.

Still, "Stealing the Elf King's Roses" is well-written and worth a read if you like the rest of Duane's books. I wouldn't mind seeing a sequel in this world with a bit more focus.

A long time Diane Duane fan, I wasn't as satisfied with this book as her other work, but it was full of very interesting concepts, and I loved the two main characters. The end plotting is a little weak, but the world building is a very enjoyable.

The cover art does NOT fit the story, but didn't really bother me as artwork. It is annoying that it isn't indicative of the story though.

This book looks like it might make a good intro to futher adventures of the main characters, who make a good investigative team. An odd mix of cience fiction and supernatural mystery, but it has a lot of potential. This book doesn't make full use of the potential, but I'm curious to see more of this universe.

This book has some riveting concepts: justice as a being who shows up in court, prosecutors who do thier own investigations, and an affectionate and protective but non-romantic relationship between work partners. It kept my attention until near the end when it became a major letdown. It seemed like it was finished way to fast, without a real good explanation of why it was ending that way. In fact, when I finished the last page, my main response was "Huh?" It seemed like Duane just wanted to finish it to meet a deadline, instead of taking the time to carry the extreme characterization and detail to the end for a longer but much more coherent novel. I was rather disappointed.

This book reads like a sequel -- as if you had accidentally started reading with the second book of a trilogy, perhaps. The setting is a very complex sheaf of alternate universes. The universe in which we exist enters the story only as a brief way-stop near the end of the story. The other universes seem to be structured so that they are the realities whose psychic echoes inspire our mythologies. There's a Midgarth, which might be the source of the Norse myths, for example; and there's Alfen, home of some arrogant, immortal, and impossibly beautiful people. On the other hand, there's a Xiahon, which if it's meant to match a mythos, went right over my head. Indeed I suspect there are a lot of Duane-readers who don't have the background to recognize even as broad a clue as "Midgarth".

All of what must be a very rich back-story is introduced in true SF style: never by direct exposition, only by passing references in the narrative. In reading SF, the pleasant riddle of figuring out what kind of world you're in, on your own without lectures from the author, is part of the fun. But here, I really wanted some exposition. Or, preferably, that hypothetical first volume of the series, a prequel with a simpler plot and a more leisurely exploration of the worlds of the "Five-Geneva Pact.".