Customer Reviews

War for the Oaks

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4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(11)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

"War for the Oaks" is the story of Eddi McCandry, who starts the story out playing guitar in Minneapolis bars. Coming home from the breakup of her last band she finds herself drafted into the oldest of wars. The conflict waged by the Fay of the Seelie court, the house of light, against the creatures of darkness and the queen of night herself. Her part is to be that mortal who enables the elves to kill each other, so that the battle will have a final conclusion.

Emma Bull's elves are not the sweet folk that inhabit child's fairy tales. Instead they are the harsh, often cruel yet beautiful folk that frightened our ancestors years ago. Their manners have no human equivalent and they are cold, passionate, harsh, tender, noble and terrible almost at random. Into this world Eddi finds her way, guided by the whimsical Phouka who can be dog or man at will, and who dresses himself from an invisible closet of finery.

In between the battles and conflicts Eddi assembles a new band composed of her close friend Carla on drums, Dan Rochelle on keyboards, mumbling Hedge on bass and Willy Silver on lead guitar. Together they become part of the magic and form the base for Eddi's own powers, which she has acquired from her new place in Faerie. But it will take all the band's power, all that the Seelie court has to offer, and a bit of pure luck besides to win the battle for Minneapolis. Especially when nothing is quite what it seems. For if the Fay never lie, they still can twist the truth to the quick.

"War for the Oaks" is considerably more than a fantasy tale. It is also a fine romance. The elves understand the form of love, but they have little grasp of the content. Human feelings are a world apart from them. Eddi McCandry must confront them over this weakness and teach several of them the significance and power of human feelings. This is romance without ever being exaggerated or cloying, and is what makes the novel so compelling.

Emma Bull is not a prolific author. She has, I believe, four novels to her credit and a fair number of short stories. Perhaps, because of her pacing, her work is carefully polished. Settings and characters breathe with remarkable life, and her narrative has tremendous flow. She draws equally well from legend and her own creativity. Her only flaw in "War for the Oaks" is that she is not quite sure of herself in her climactic scenes, which causes some slight confusion. For a novelist in her early phases this is a mere quibble. "War for the Oaks" is one of the best fantasy stories of its time, and has already become a classic of the genre.

I read this book about three years ago, back when it was still out of print, and I was very excited when I heard it was being reprinted. I can't exactly decide whether I like the cover, but it's certainly better than the old one.

Eddi McCandry is the guitar player for a lousy band. They're not really going anywhere, and neither, particularly, is her life. One night, everything changes: the band splits up, she breaks up with the lead singer, and she gets chosen to be the mortal talisman for a war between the Seelie and Unseelie fey.

This is all okay, though, because she gets to put another band together, and they're good. Really good. Especially the other guitarist . . . and let's not forget her bodyguard, the phouka . . . Oh, yeah, she needs a bodyguard because the Unseelie fey are trying to kill her, in between band rehearsals and battles . . .

One thing that really made me laugh about this book was the setting. It's the eighties. Eddi's clothing, which is REALLY COOL by the standards of the book, sounds like something off of Saved by the Bell.

This is definitely a book for fantasy-punk geeks: the music mentioned includes bands such as Boiled in Lead (Celtic Rock) and David Bowie (self-explanatory); the fashions, albeit eighties, are the same; and the general demeanor of the book is rather Borderlands-y. (Which makes sense, considering Emma Bull was one of the co-creators of the original Borderlands series.)

However, even if you aren't a fantasy-punk geek, you can still read it. It's engaging and has very likable characters; the plot takes a couple of not-precisely-as-expected turns; the description of the fey is interesting and fits fairly well with the expected fantasy fey-canon (she didn't try to rewrite the Sidhe as bloodsucking ugly vampires, for example).

So, to end, elements of fantasy, realism, eighties-punk, romance, and humanity make it accessible and readable by anyone. Even those who don't remember the eighties.

There are no dragons here, but you won't miss them. Instead you'll find a superb tale of faerie, music, and romance. Emma Bull and Steven Brust (also a well known fantasy author) were at one point two components of the band Cats Laughing, and Bull uses her musical knowledge and experience to great advantage here. Her descriptions of practice sessions and performances will resonate with any music fan, and she skillfully weaves this into a major component of her tale of Eddi, selected by the Seelie to invoke the boon of mortality on the battles of the faerie world. To protect Eddi until the time of the battle, a phouka is assigned to guard her, at times a formidable dog, at other times a whimsical human trickster. Though quite predictable, there is a slowly building romance between the two, and this defines both characters to a depth that is rare in fantasy, as each impacts on and reacts to the other, and wind their way into the reader's heart.

The world of faerie is seen at a distance (even though the major characters are directly involved in some of the faerie battles), never fully explained or examined in detail, and this very indistinctness adds flavor, a bit of mystery, and charm to what is really a story of and about some of our deepest emotions. The final battle between Eddi and the Queen of Air and Darkness is extraordinarily different, drawing on the 'magical' emotional state that sometimes occurs between the makers and hearers of music, rather than swords, spells, talismans, or some hidden bit of arcane knowledge so common to the climax of most fantasy.

Different, powerful, skillfully told, this book is a charmer.

Eddi McCandry's boyfriend--an unrepentantly immature creep--ruined their band and drove her to walk out. Disgusted and needing something new and exciting, Eddi makes the mistake of walking home alone in Minneapolis on a dark night.

The world changes dramatically for Eddi who discovers she is gifted and Sighted -- and that the Faerie need her to give a tangible mortality to the war between the Seelie and Unseelie. What ensues is a whirlwind mix of laughter, fear, rage, jealousy, regret, romance and courage in which Eddi discovers how to truly Make Music, faces the Queen of Faerie and the Dark Mistress of the Unseelie, and, finally finds herself.

Foremost among an engaging cast of characters is The Phouka, Eddi's bodyguard, pain-in-the-neck and defender; he dances the spectrum from childish to philosophical and back again, alternately infuriating and charming his charge.

The book is so vividly written it takes the reader almost no effort to envision the scenes; don't be surprised if you catch yourself laughing out loud, wiping away tears, or feeling your pulse race. Bull is a talespinner of great skill and leads the reader in and out of the worlds of Man and Faerie as some faerie piper might lead children in dance.

This one belongs on your "Read this Now!" list. War for the Oaks is the cream of the Urban Fantasy crop

Anyone who likes urban fantasy should go "back to basics" and pick up this defining classic of the subgenre. I've read several books that borrow zillions of plot elements from _War for the Oaks_, but never reach the same sort of exhilarating heights. Yeah, yeah, we all know the story: young woman wanders the city at night and meets a mysterious stranger, so on, so forth. Now sit back and see it done right!

Eddi McCandry has just quit her boyfriend's abysmal band, and now plans to break up with the boyfriend as well. But before she gets the chance to talk to him, she gets recruited into a war between the Seelie and Unseelie Courts, for the heart and soul and magic of Minneapolis. You see, the Fair Folk can't wound each other in battle unless there is a human there to lend mortality. The Seelie Court needs Eddi in order to make their sparring a war rather than a mere sport.

What follows is a romp of an adventure, as Eddi juggles her new band, Seelie matters, and two very different Faerie men. One will dazzle her with beauty and charm; the other will surprise her with courage and devotion. I disagree with the reviewers who griped about the love story. First of all, the romance is sweet and intense, and *feels real*, which means something in a world where main characters seem to fall in love solely because one of them is the male lead and the other is the female lead. The relationship unfolds naturally, and I had goosebumps on my arms and a tear in my eye when I read the stormy-night love scene. Second, the romantic subplots do a great job of showing the differences between the human mind and the Faerie psyche.

Ever notice how, in some urban fantasy novels, the faeries are just like normal people, except that they have prettier hair and don't know how to use household appliances? This is not one of those novels. One of Emma Bull's achievements with this novel is that she sheds some light on the way faeries think. What do faeries think of love? Why don't they like being thanked? Using scraps of lore, Bull creates a vivid view of Faerie culture.

And along the way, she also takes us on a wild ride through the land of rock music, showing us the way a band forms, and eventually, ideally, becomes like family. She captures the exhilaration of performing music, and the magic the music evokes. And as an added bonus, Bull is pretty darn good at writing rock lyrics. I wonder if those are actual songs I could find recordings of, if I knew the name of her band.

I have been hearing about this book for years. Somehow I never managed to find it. I had nearly forgotten about it when I ran across the new edition-- an impressive-looking trade paperback with glowing Neil Gaimon blurb on the cover. I picked it up with a great deal of enthusiasm.

War for the Oaks belongs to the Urban Fey fantasy subgenre. Think Tom Deitz or Charles de Lint. The not-conventionally-pretty heroine is recognized for her true talent by the Seelie Court, and along the way finds magic, true love, and extreme danger.

Sound familiar? It should. The War for the Oaks suffers at least a bit from its status as a forerunner. Since publication the theme has been picked up, copied, made more complex and generally just evolved. What must have seemed revolutionary in 1987 loses a lot of its gloss and charm for a first-time reader in 2004.

This is not to say that War For the Oaks is without its own merits. Bull is a skilled writer. Eddi is an endearing character. The ups and downs of band dynamics and bad boyfriends are extremely well done. The problem with the book is largely that the Fairy part lacks depth-- the plot feels too simple and too easily resolved. Many of the resolution plot points were predictable more or less from the beginning.

The strong ugly duckling wish fulfilment element of the novel will most likely make it a satisfying read for younger fantasy readers or readers who like their Fairy Tales unmixed with heavy politics. Readers with a taste for darker or more complex fantasy world may well find this book just a little bit lacking.

There's any number of dreadful modern 'faerie' stories kicking around and generally getting underfoot at the moment, but this was one of the first. And it's brilliant.

I read this book and I wanted to go to Minneapolis (not a particularly easy ambition, I live in Chelmsford, England) -- Bull's book is as much a hymn to Minneapolis as it is a modern fairy story.

And what a story it is, Eddi McCandry is a Musician. A musician of the kind that once upon a long time ago would have been stolen away under the hill by the Fairys, but things like that don't happen any more do they? Well, yes, sort of -- in the book Eddi is `adopted' by the Seelie Court to be used as their talisman in their war with the Unseelie court for the soul of Minneapolis.

Meanwhile, Eddi is trying to get a band together...

It's hard to describe the story without it sounding slightly ludicrous. Hell, it is slightly ludicrous, but Bull's writing makes it work, her characters are fascinating and well fleshed out, the plot rocks, she writes about the sensation of making music like nobody else and the whole thing just works.

It's a real shame about the dross that came after as others tried to dance to her tune.

You would think that really liking a book would make it easier to review After all, I should be able to go on for pages and pages about how wonderful it is. The problem with that theory is that wouldn't really be a review. That would be me raving about the book, and while that's all well and good, that's not what I want to do.

So, just so I can get it over with, let's start with what I didn't like about War for the Oaks.

The first thing that comes to mind is that I really wanted to know what the Pookah's name was, but that's really just me nit-picking.

I guess the main thing that I had a problem with was some of the characterization. Yes, the main characters were characterized well, but I felt that there was room for improvement with the characterization of some of the band members. Bull herself even says in the back where she's talking about the screenplay she wrote for the story that one band member in particular is a very interesting character and so she gave him more room in the screenplay. I would have to agree that he seems like an interesting character, but I wish he had gotten more development in the book. For probably about 75% of the story he was just there, not really doing much other than playing the instrument with the rest of the band. There was room to do more with him.

The other thing that bothered me slightly was the way that the Seelie Court (Seleighe Court, Bright Court, Summer Court, whatever you prefer) approached Eddi. While I get that they were desperate and that they are Fae and think and react differently than humans, I was shocked by their abruptness. However, I think that a lot of that is that I like to think that the Seelie Fae are shiny, happy, friendly creatures when most theories have them as cool and unsympathetic. What makes them Seelie is that they don't actively seek to hurt. They may occasionally help, but humans are still mostly amusement. It still jars me a little when I see that sometimes, though.

Other than that, though, I can't really think of anything else that I didn't like. Perhaps I would be able to come up with something if I wracked my brain for a few hours, but then this could just turn in to a rant about the book, and I don't want that either.

One thing that I particularly liked was Bull's idea of Sidhe warfare. It makes sense that having eternal (or close to it) lives, they would view war differently from humans. It is, after all, a moment's entertainment, and rarely something to be taken seriously. I loved how they danced around each other (sometimes literally) when they weren't on the battlefield, taking care not to upset the all important status quo. The party in particular amused me greatly because of the way the Seelie and Unseelie Fae were reacting to each other.

I also really liked how the Fae War didn't completely overtake Eddi's life. In so many fantasy books when the protagonist is swept off to deal with the problem plaguing the Fae folk, their lives become completely about that, but no one seems to have missed them when they return. In War for the Oaks, Eddi continues to struggle with her everyday, real life too, worrying about paying her rent and buying groceries. It made the book seem so much more realistic, if that's a word that can be applied to a fantasy novel.

All in all, I thought that Bull did a wonderful job of weaving the two worlds together and drawing the reader in. The story had substance and the plot was strong and engaging.

I would recommend this book to anyone who likes fantasy or supernatural novels.

Looking at the reviews, people really seem to like this book and for the life of me, I can't figure out why. Where to start?...I feel like so little happened in the first third of the book that you could jump right in after that and not really miss anything- a couple of sentences could have told you everything you needed to know up to that point.

I didn't find that she made me really care about any of her characters and considering how weak I thought the overall story line was, it's just deadly if you can't make people empathize with your characters.The only one that I really enjoyed reading about was the phouka. Eddi doesn't seem all that exceptional as a person and you never really get a convincing explanation as to why she's the chosen one. Really, it sounds like they could have picked just about anyone(and the Unseelie Court pretty much did as evidenced by their choice of loser Stuart!). The character of Willy could have been fascinating and exciting but he just ends up as a semi-minor totally underdeveloped character.

The book was written in the late 80's, an era that was totally full of cheese and it comes through in the book big time. I could get past how dated the story felt but by the end, it just felt silly. A band that does mostly covers is supposed to save the world (or at least the greater Minneapolis/St. Paul area) and the Seelie Court through their music and general charisma? Really? Wow, why don't we solve all the world's problems that way? It was just goofy. Bull obviously knows how to weave sentences together into beautiful passages but the story is poorly executed so I wouldn't recommend this to anyone. It was just a let down.

I've come to the conclusion that any story with a phouka (alternately spelled pooka) is better for it. Harvey (with James Stewart) made brilliant use of this creature. Emma Bull does the same in War for the Oaks. Originally published in 1987, this book is set in Minneapolis where Eddi McCandry is trying to make a living as a rock and roll musician. When the novel starts, Eddi's prospects in the music department are not so good. To make matters worse, she is soon recruited by the Seelie Court to help them make war. That's right, Eddi is drafted into a faerie war. In order to keep her safe (until she has to risk her life in battle), the phouka is dispatched as her bodyguard.

There is something kind of awesome about a book that can combine rock music with something as fantastical as faeries. Bull does it wonderfully. Each chapter title is a song. Music excerpts abound throughout, sure to entertain even those of us unfamiliar with music of that period. Bull also spends a lot of time describing the process of making music--what the band sounds like on stage, how rehearsals go, etc. Instead of being boring or draggy, they're really interesting and show how very much effort goes into this process.

At times the plot seemed a little predictable, but I'm still not sure if that's just because I've been reading quite a few fantasy books lately instead of from anything in the writing. It doesn't really matter though because it's not a bad predictability. Rather, it's the kind that leaves a sense of satisfaction because it feels like the plot is going along as it should be.

Bull's writing style was down to earth without being stale and her characters will not easily be forgotten. The phouka, in particular, is a favorite for too many reasons to enumerate here. So, if you haven't guessed, I strongly recommend this book. If you like music, if you like phoukas, if you like fantasy, if you need something to read, if you believe in magic--this book is for you.