OCTOBER 11, 2012 10:06AM
K is for ... (31 Days of Halloween, Oct. 11)
KREWES!
It was Salon itself which brought Sean Stewart's Galveston to my attention back in the year 2000. I had yet to move to New Orleans, where I would live through two consecutive Mardi Gras. The conceit of Galveston involves an apocalyptic hurricane - an uncomfortable thought post-2005 - which transforms the Texas island of Galveston. Weird, wild magic takes over. The island is overrun with hybrid creatures and other fantastical horrors, and its inhabitants become increasingly dependent on a feudal system governed by Krewes. At the top of the chain of power, in a delicate balance, a mad trickster god named Momus opposite a witch named Odessa the Recluse.With this highly imaginative world-building, you would think Galveston would become a turgid, bad prose 8-novel urban fantasy series (see the upcoming letter "U"). But Sean Stewart made it an understated, literary Magic Realism romance between a low-born resident and the heir to Odessa.
Recommended.
In case you aren't familiar with the Mardi Gras social clubs known as krewes, I will let these pictures speak for themselves, and then imagine a world where these floats and their weird characters are alive. I never missed the Zulu parade in my Big Easy years.
Comments
Very cool that you got
to spend a few years in New Orleans. As for a world where those floats
and characters come to life, I believe there are "enhancements" that
could replicate that possibility ....
Sounds like my kind of story. R
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