Fantasy in Brief

THE FIFTH SACRED THING by Starhawk (Bantam; $21.95, 496 pp). The author of three nonfiction books on feminist spirituality, Starhawk stirs her eco-feminism here into a very savory soup: a cautionary fantasy tale that features just about everything under the New Age sun: wicca, crystals (though in this case they run computers), the laying on of hands, and a mixture of Catholicism and Judaism, Native American traditions, ancient mezo-American dieties and good home-grown organic cooking.

The story begins in mid-21st Century America, where a repressive religious right allies with a major corporate bureaucracy to compel the populace to follow a neo-Nazi creed called The Four Purities (Moral, Family, Racial and Spiritual). No non-Aryans, non-Christians need apply. Not all is lost, however, for centered in San Francisco is a group that reveres the Five Sacred Things: air, fire, water, earth, and spirit. These peaceful souls celebrate diversity, live in harmony with the Earth and honor their ancestors. The story, of course, centers on the clash of these two ideologies and on Madrone, a lesbian healer from San Francisco who brings hope to the “Southlands.”

The story may sound like yet another pedantic treatise on How to Live Correctly, but Starhawk’s brisk narrative is a ripping good read. There’s humor and real heart in this book and though there are obvious parallels between it and Margaret Atwood’s “The Handmaid’s Tale” and Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World,” this is not as stark and hopeless. The old hippies of Haight-Ashbury give the whole book a sunny, laid-back bonhomie, unmistakably Californian, and frankly a relief from the often sterile, humorless terrain of dystopian fiction.

DAYS OF BLOOD AND FIRE by Katharine Kerr (Bantam $11.95, 416 pp). Set in the Celtic-flavored fantasy kingdom of Deverry, this is Kerr’s seventh book, and the start of a new series. While there are the requisite Elves and Dwarves and magicks (cq) and sprites and hordes of demons, Kerr’s ruggedly earthy world is so well-thought out and well-traveled that we never lose our bearings. At the center of the tale is the very fay Evandar, who struggles with his evil younger brother for dominion. Their feud upsets the calm of Deverry, as does a mad sorceress who throws Deverry into war. Kerr writes with comfortable familiarity, clearly delineating her characters and the nature of their world. Though the early Celtic names alternate between simple ones like Jill to tongue-twisters like Gwerbret Aberwyn, the story soars from grand Wagnerian landscapes to the cozy friendliness of a family who raises ferrets to catch rats in the civic granaries. Kerr never lets small, friendly details slide, even though many of the novel’s questing heroes and heroines grandly aspire to change the world.

THE BOOK OF THE MAD: THE SECRET BOOKS OF PARADYS IV by Tanith Lee (Overlook Press: $19.95, 216 pp).

A blurb on the back of this book hails it as “a drama of mythical proportions that none of the players can comprehend.” Well, that may go for the readers, too. This is a dense nightmare of three parallel manifestations of a city: Paradis, Paradys and Paradise. Characters in one manifestation are always threatening those in another, and all seek real paradise, which they define as a release from their current lives. Lee’s writing is beautiful and evocative even when she is describing dark horrors and careless, monstrous crimes enacted in dim alleyways, homes and the white-washed confines of an asylum. This is Gothic writing at the extreme end of weirdness. But it works because its dream-drenched, spaced-out characters are compelling as they flit ghost-like on their errands. Reminiscent of the ominous black voids in Symbolist paintings, Lee’s images pull the reader in with mysterious ephemera on the edges of sight. But just like ephemera, they can also be too wispy to grasp.