14697. (Jon George) Faces of Mist and Flame

A very good show for a first nov­el: A young prodi­gy at Cam­bridge uses her dis­cov­ery of bod­i­less time trav­el to enter the mind of a young Amer­i­can sol­dier at the inva­sion of Guam dur­ing World War II. The sto­ry is told in par­al­lel with the clas­si­cal Greek myth of the Labours of Her­cules, and also draws on the native folk­lore of Guam. George pulls you into the sto­ry quick­ly and treats his char­ac­ters with sen­si­tiv­ity. I espe­cially respect this kind of work because it requires real research to pull off. Get­ting things right, his­tor­i­cally, psy­cho­log­i­cally, and cul­tur­ally, has not been a big goal in the big SF pub­lish­ing hous­es, late­ly, and this is an encour­ag­ing excep­tion. I found only a few choic­es of words that I would quib­ble with.

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