Customer Reviews

Territory

5 star:		(24)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

There are now less than a handful of authors whose hardcovers I will pick up without reading at least to Chapter Two. Emma Bull is one of that handful. She's only produced a few books in her literary career, but I find her writing to be as finely honed as Damascus steel--with a terrible beauty to match. If I had checked and realized that "Territory" was a Western, I might not have even read it.

That would have been a big mistake.

Most people who know my book habits would describe me as a voracious reader. If I like a book, I'll devour it in one sitting. In this case, I took a week to drink in the setting and the people and to occasionally read back.

"Territory" takes place in Tombstone, AZ, circa 1881. The town is barely in its toddler stage, born of greed and men's need to find a new life.

Bull's point of view characters are Mildred Benjamin, a recent widow, who works as a typesetter for the local paper and writes serial fiction on the side. Jesse Fox is an Eastern educated drifter who started out training to be a mining engineer til he discovered he had a talent for horse training. Fox has been told by a Chinese physician, Chow Lung, that he has a gift for magic and should use it. Til now, Fox has postponed that suggestion.

Mildred and Fox both discover there is dark magic afoot in Tombstone. More than once magician is fighting over the land rights. For certain, they know that one of those dark magicians is Wyatt Earp, brother to the Deputy US Marshal, Virgil Earp.

Along the way, we experience Western life firsthand. Ironically, fire breaks out in one of the hotels while the town's mayor is away trying to purchase a fire wagon for the town. The mining company is fighting folks with claims in town (including Mildred Benjamin) so they can acquire more space. As an aside note, President Garfield is assassinated. News comes via the telegraph--not the 'up close and personal' media of the television.

There's a mystery woven tightly into this fantasy landscape. Characters are well-written and the descriptions literally take you there--to the point of tasting smoke and dirt when the fire first breaks out. The story's spin is one that's not commonly told--and an interesting one. "Territory" is hard to put down, but I found myself doing that and re-reading a bit earlier than I'd left the book because I actually did want to make this one last. This is one of the best fantasy novels I have read in a long time.

"Territory" is not the first fantasy depiction of Tombstone, AZ during the OK Corral era. "Spectre of the Gun" (an original "Star Trek" episode) had Captain Kirk and his landing party inadvertantly cast in the role of the Clantons and McCourys.

History purists: "Territory" doesn't quite match the historical accounts; however, we all know that history is written by the victors. Clanton (who survived the OK Corral unsuccessfully tried to prosecute Wyatt Earp and companions for murder. There are two sides to the story and Bull's version definitely paints Earp with a dark brush.

I first discovered Emma Bull shortly after her fantasy novel, War for the Oaks, was released in the 1980s. In WftO, the protagonist was a rock-and-roll musician (not the then-common folk/earth mother) who is unwittingly brought into a war between opposing forces (both fairie). I've read that book so many times that I can recite whole passages from it.

Emma Bull's Territory is set in the months before the famous "shootout at OK Corral." In this novel, the two protagonists are unwittingly caught in the crossfire between two opposing forces -- the Earps and those who want to wrest away their control over the mining boomtown. As in WftO, the characters are people who don't quite accept the roles society expects for them: a young widow who's a typesetter at the newspaper and a horse tamer with an unacknowledged magical gift.

And it is absolutely marvelous.

Emma Bull is a brilliant storyteller who simply does everything right. She creates characters who, after only a few pages, you believe are real, and whose fate you care about desperately. The setting captures the climate, in both the weather and political senses; you're brought into a world of social proprieties, in which people are loathe to call friends by their first names, even during emergencies. The story... well, I'm rather blown away by Bull's ability to write around the "known facts" of the Tombstone era. Nor could I put the book down.

If you're a fantasy fan, you may fret a little bit about reading a "western." If you're a western or historical fan, you might be concerned about adding unrealistic-sounding fantasy to this story. Please don't worry: Bull's inclusion of fantasy and magic is simply one of the "issues" that her characters have to deal with, not Merlin charging in on a white steed, guns blazing, in an anachronistic manner. It works.

If you're looking for a novel into which you can fall head-first and escape your own mundane life for a few hours, please do pick up this book. Highly recommended.

I've never yet passed up an Emma Bull novel, and after this one, I'm glad I haven't. Ms. Bull has written fantasy here but it doesn't resemble any other of her books, but then she has never written the same type of book twice. I was almost to the end of the book before I fully realized what was happening, so subtly was the fantasy woven in. On the surface the book is about Tombstone, Wyatt Earp, and Doc Holliday. The historical research is spot on--it's the fantasy that gives the whole story its twist. The historical characters are not who they seem to be. I read the book over the better part of two days and was disappointed that I had finished so quickly. I've heard that this is the first of two books--I only hope she gets the second one out soon. We haven't seen the alternative story of the gunfight at the OK Corral yet!

The front flap of Emma Bull's Territory states: "Wyatt Earp. Doc Holliday. Ike Clanton. You think you know the story. You don't." I realized when I opened the book that I must be one of the only people in America for whom this tagline doesn't apply. I'm not sure why, but I don't believe I've never read a thing about the events in 1881 that led up to the famous "gunfight at the O.K. Corral" in Tombstone, Arizona, and I've never seen any of the movies either. My only previous exposure to the subject would have to be the Star Trek episode in which the Enterprise gang is forced to reenact the incident.

So what an introduction! Territory is a highly original work that takes the known historical facts about Wyatt Earp and the feud that tore the town of Tombstone apart, and uses them to take us into a fully realized alternate reality.

Jesse Fox is a horse trainer and drifter who finds himself drawn to Tombstone after a run-in with a horse thief. There, Fox meets up with an old friend, a Chinese doctor by the name of Chow Lung. Jesse has always known that he's a little bit different. In fact, he has a horror of ending up locked away in an insane asylum like his sister, a fear that long ago caused him to walk away from a potentially lucrative career as a mining engineer. But it turns out Jesse's arrival in Tombstone is no accident. Using supernatural means, Lung has summoned him on urgent business that will force Jesse to confront the truth about the strange abilities he's tried so hard to deny.

When she married a dreamer, Mildred Benjamin left behind her comfortable life in Jewish society in Philadelphia to come out west. Recently widowed, Millie is determined to make it on her own, and finds work as a typesetter and cub reporter for a Tombstone newspaper. She likes Jesse Fox, but there's something just a little bit freaky going on here ...

As the plot unfolds, Territory becomes many things: a detective story, a historical novel, a western, a magical fantasy -- even an exploration of power, why people seek it, and how they compel others to do their bidding. Emma Bull constructs this story with such craft and sensitivity that each surprising element seems perfectly plausible, never far-fetched or tacked-on. The characters are fresh and three-dimensional, with fictional ones jostling elbows easily with historical ones like Wyatt Earp, Doc Holliday, and and John Ringo.

The book ends on a cliffhanger, and the stakes are nothing less than cosmic. I've heard a sequel is in the works -- faster, please!

Reviewer: Elizabeth Clare, co-author of the historical novel "To the Ends of the Earth: The Last Journey of Lewis & Clark"

Emma Bull's latest novel is a great blend of modern fantasy technique with an Old West setting. Set in the boom town of Tombstone, the novel gives the reader an intimate portrait of the time and place. You learn great historical tidbits about things like the population of Chinese immigrants, the town's newspapers and the various saloons. Emma also breathes life into historical figures like Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday, not to mention characters that normally get left out of the stories, such as the wives of those central figures.

If that wasn't enough, she also describes the desert countryside surrounding Tombstone with loving detail. If you've never seen the life in a desert, she shows you where it's hiding and reveals the changes that seasons bring to that seemingly-unchanging landscape.

And then Emma goes that little extra step: she layers magic into the story. The manner of its introduction and its impact upon events begins so subtly that by the time you're sure that a particular thing is magical or a certain element is fantastic, you're already deep into believing the reality of the characters and setting. You've been transported to a world not that much different than our own. The landmarks are familiar but the territory is unexplored. Emma then takes you on a tour and shows you a good time while doing so; she is a masterful story-teller.

This book sat in my house for weeks and weeks unread. I had purchased it because I'd enjoyed some of Ms. Bull's other works (most notably "War for the Oaks"), and because it was receiving such critical acclaim. I hadn't actually read it because it sounded absolutely ridiculous. Wyatt Earp? Magic?

Surely this was trying too hard to write something original, I thought to myself. A Western/Fantasy? There had to be a reason why it hadn't been done before.

Go. Read. It.

It was AMAZING.

Emma Bull is absolutely magnificent. Her touch is so light and unobtrusive - never slapping you in the face with ZOMG, MAGIX that I had not one iota of trouble suspending disbelief. I sank quickly and happily into the narrative, half in love with all of the characters at once.

Does anyone else get that light ringing in their ears when they look up from a favorite book? It's like you are so wrapped up in the story-telling that you actually trick your mind into believing it's listening in on conversation or gunshots or horses' hooves, and when you look up from the book to digest a particularly gripping scene or to roll a keen turn of phrase around in your mouth you are suddenly struck by just how silent your house is? Or by just how much the light has faded while you were in another world?

Territory is made up entirely of moments just like that strung like pearls on a necklace.

This is one of the finest fantasy books I've read in years. I can't recommend it highly enough.

In the hands of a less-skilled author this could have been disastrous. I don't know if I hope or fear that she's started a new sub-genre. But wow, this book absolutely delivers. I am looking forward to part two!

I was doing some driving the other day and ended up listening to this book for a very longish trip and in fact I sat in the driveway for half an hour so I could finish it. The book is about 13 hours and 45 minutes long. It also has a cliff hanger ending and a sequel is in the works.

Territory narrated by Michael Kramer and Kate Reading-- Kramer reading the male point of view chapters and Reading the female point of view chapters. Kramer does an excellent job voicing the male characters, from the southern drawl used for Doc Holliday to the laconic Johnny Ringo and the Chinese inhabitants of Tombstone. Where it becomes necessary for him to voice a female character he does a fine job without over acting. Reading also voices her characters well. She uses a down to earth style with Mildred and the Earp wives. Her male voices are also believable. If I had any problems with any of them it was the Germanic accent of the store owner which didn't exactly strike true.

As for the story, it is an engrossing retelling of events in Tombstone in the spring and summer of 1881 with a fantasy twist. I am eagerly looking forward to the sequel.

What a delight to be in the hands of a master storyteller! Characters are engaging and the book does not get in the way of the story, but pulls you in. Off now to buy everything else she has ever written.

LATER: Well, this will teach me to write a review before I've finished the book. I still very much like "Territory", but the voice of the book is more like a voice I am used to reading in Young Adult fiction, and in some places it does get a little silly. The level of attention, for example, that the heroine dedicates (or the author dedicates) to what she wears every day is a bit tiresome. The treatment of the Chinese character Chu is paper thin, ham handed and even a little offensive. I do like the idea of opening a window on the women's world of a town like Tombstone, but that idea never seems to go anywhere. We spend time gettng to know the Earp women, but for no particular reason.

There seems to be a shift in the book from more serious fiction to lighter, younger, sillier stuff somewhere in the middle. The strength of the beginning is what kept me turning pages to the end. If I could change my star rating, I'd give it a 3.5 or 4.

I then went back and read "War for the Oaks", which I think is the author's debut novel written in 1987. It is clumsy, and demonstrates a lot of the same flaws as this much more polished later book -- self-conscious and bad handling of non-white characters, a heroine who spends too much time in the mirror worrying about her clothes, and overuse of devices (in "Territory" it is Chu who swears in every sentence; in "War for the Oaks" it is the phouka who interjects "my sweet" or "my primrose" in every sentence). "Territory" is much better.

Emma Bull is one of those writers about whom my main complaint is that they don't write enough. Her last novel, Freedom and Necessity (with Stephen Brust) appeared fully a decade ago. So I was delighted to see Territory on bookstore shelves this summer.

This is a fantasy set in the Old West, indeed, in Tombstone, Arizona, in 1880, in the months leading up to the Gunfight at the OK Corral. Bull focuses on three characters. Mildred Benjamin is a young widow making an independent life for herself as a newspaperwoman and as a writer of early "pulp" Western stories. Jesse Fox is a horse trainer, previously from San Francisco, who has wandered into Tombstone on the way to Mexico - or so he thinks. And Doc Holliday - well, we know who Doc Holliday is: a dentist, a card player, a Southerner, and a friend of the controversial Wyatt Earp.

Through the eyes of these characters we learn the dicey political situation in Tombstone. Much of the trouble is centered on Wyatt Earp and his brothers. Wyatt wants to be Sheriff, but has no formal position. Virgil is City Marshal. And there no account brother Morgan is on the other side, more or less, and as the novel opens he has just participated in an attempted stagecoach robbery that left two people dead. Doc Holliday manages to create an alibi for Morgan, but in the process becomes a suspect himself. Over the next few months tensions rise between the townspeople, the Earps, and the cowboys, some of them rustlers, who live outside of town - people like the McLaury brothers, John Ringo (supposedly an ancestor of the SF writer of that name), and the Clantons. And the truth about the stage robbery becomes fuzzy as the main suspects all meet violent deaths before they can be arrested.

All this is for the most part historical record. What makes this story a story is the personal experience of the main characters. Mildred is the most engaging, the best depicted. As a woman, she has a different view of the conflict, especially once she befriends the Earps' wives. And her budding career as a reporter gives her a still different angle. Jesse Fox, meanwhile, has his own secret, one he is loath to admit to himself. He can do magic. His friend Chow Lung, a Chinese doctor, urges him to accept his abilities. And in so doing, he realizes that there are other magic users in Tombstone - including very likely both Wyatt Earp and at least one of Earp's enemies. Finally, Doc Holliday is probably the least well realized main character - perhaps because he is historical. His viewpoint serves mostly as an inside look at Wyatt Earp's "camp".
At this level the book follows Jesse's arrival, his investigation, with Chow Lung, of the murder of a Chinese prostitute, and his subsequent realization that the girl was a victim of the political eddies in Tombstone. Meanwhile Mildred moves from typesetter to reporter at the Nugget as she gets interested in the nasty doings of a mining company. At the same time she is romantically drawn to both Tom McLaury and Jesse Fox. And her knowledge of the situation of the Earp women puts her squarely in the anti-Earp camp. Meanwhile Doc Holliday is trying to escape Earp's orbit, urged by his common law wife Kate. But Earp's hold - magical, perhaps? - seems to prove too strong.

The book is quite a delightful read. Mildred and Jesse are engaging protagonists, if, as I mentioned, Doc Holliday is a bit thinner. The fantastical element is modest but well-integrated and well portrayed. I had just one major issue: as the end approached, I realized that the remaining pages were not possibly enough to contain the actual gunfight. And, indeed, the book rather suddenly stops - at a not unreasonable point, with certain crucial information just revealed, but not, it turns out, at the end of the story. Yes - once again we have a book that is only Part 1 of a series (of only two books, I believe) - with absolutely no indication of this fact in the book, or on the cover, or anywhere unless you poke around the author's web page. I will certainly be happy to read the conclusion to this story - but it would have been nice to know going in that Territory is only the first half.

What a beautiful book! I read a lot of fantasy--and this book is as far above most as the stars are above the earth! Beautiful writing, delightful characterizations. The young widow Mildred is a typesetter at a newspaper--but she wants to make it as a writer. She's even had a story published. She befriends the outcast wives of the Earp brothers--that part of the story alone was worth an entire novel. The intriguing character of Jesse Fox has magic, but doesn't actually believe in it, until events force him to pay attention and learn. Jesse's friend, the magician Chow Lung strongly believes that Jesse should learn--and Lung pays the price for his involvement. This book had many unexpected elements. I loved how introspective the characters were, especially Mildred. Her relationships with others--her boss, the Earp women, Jesse Fox--said so much about her kindness and humanity. Her interactions with Jesse compel him to reveal and renew those characteristics in himself. I would DEVOUR any prequel, sequel, companion novel or related short story to this gorgeous book. It reminds me a little of "New Amsterdam" by Elizabeth Bear. (Amazon says this book is "unavailable". HUH? )THIS is where fantasy can take us, if the authors are willing to take some literary risks, and break the molds. I actually missed the characters of this book when it ended--even the villians. This is a book that I will read again. Needless to say, I cannot wait for the second volume.