Please may I borrow your character?

I can tell you exactly how I came to read this book. In my endless search for new fantasy fiction I came across a book club which intends to spend 2011 discussing fantasy written by women. Intrigued (and presumably at a loose end) I added all the proposed titles to my Amazon wishlist, planning to take a look at them and delete any I didn't fancy. Of course, I immediately forgot all about them.

Then Christmas happened.

Luckily I was only given two of the twelve. This one was a present from my lovely brother-in-law Ruaidrhi.

"Wow," I said. "This looks...um...interesting. Have you read it?"

"No...It was on your wish list," said Ruaidrhi.

"I don't think so," I said. (I probably laughed at his obvious mistake.) "I've never seen this book before in my life."

"It definitely was," said Ruaidrhi.

"Are you calling me a liar?"

"Are you calling me a liar?"

And so on over Christmas dinner until I remembered about the book club and apologised profusely.

So that's how I came to read it. The harder question to answer is why I finished it, particularly as I had made a New Year's resolution to firmly lay aside any books I started that were badly written, obnoxious, boring or derivitive. I have always been a slave to bad books and have wasted many hours of my life reading things out of pity, duty or a misguided hope that they may, eventually, get better.

So why did I finish this? I wasn't particularly enthused by the blurb:

The Aetherials live among us, indistinguishable from humans. Every seven years, on the Night of the Summer Stars, Lawrence Wilder, the Gatekeeper, throws open all gates to the Other World. But this time, something has gone wrong. Wilder has sealed the gates, warning of a great danger lurking in the realm beyond them. The Aetherial community is outraged. What will become of them, deprived of the home realm from which their essential life force flows?

Nor by the hippyish aesthetic of the exiled fairies. Nor the gay-half-brother-incest. No, the reason I kept reading this novel was the fact that Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer appears in it under the alias of Sam Wilder. I'm not joking.

He has spiky bleached hair (sort of). He's a killer (sort of). He is madly in love with the heroine, despite her revulsion for him. They have lots of inappropriate sex. He dies and comes back to life (sort of). He calls her 'pet', 'sweetie' and 'love' ALL THE TIME. He's witty and insightful (sort of). He's a bad boy, oh yeah (sort of).

Unfortunately for the reader Sam doesn't quite have the courage of Spike's convictions. Only the tips of his hair are bleached, he killed a man by accident and he's only really a bad boy because the author tells us he is. It's never very clear why he's desperately in love with the heroine, who's not particularly engaging; nor is their relationship as transgressive as it's clearly meant to be. And his lines, while better than everyone else's still aren't that funny or sharp. But it's always nice to see a familiar face so I kept reading.

I can't recommend this book and so I have no compunction about making one more complaint, which is also a massive spoiler. We are told repeatedly in this book that Aetherials can't die. They sort of disappear 'into the spiral' and can come back again if they want. When one of the supporting characters is rendered brain-dead in a car accident he is therefore fairly easily fetched from the otherworld and popped back into his body. How nice.

Then, at the book's climax, in an act of supreme self-sacrifice Spike (sorry, Sam) dies (oh no!) saving the world and the heroine Rose is prostrate with grief. How can this have happened to her? It's so unfair! They were so happy! He was so hot! It's difficult to be bothered to read the last few pages waiting for Sam to turn up again, as he obviously will, and difficult to care very much that he does.

The good idea this book has is that the Aetherials live in a rural community that has become renowned for its folk traditions. The Aetherials' rituals are shared (up to a point) by their human neighbours and tourists as charming festivals with elaborate costumes and drinking and (probably) morris dancers. The Aetherials can only keep their way of life going by pretending it's a quaint excuse for a piss up. It is hard not to long for a bit of local pageantry described here with masks and feasts and processions through the woods at midsummer and just a shame that the magic at its centre isn't more satisfying.

Buy a copy of Elfland for your very own.