Discord’s Apple by Carrie Vaughn
This is a very well done urban fantasy with the unusual twist in that it takes place in a dystopian future with gas rationings and road blocks, where terroist attacks disrupt daily life everywhere in America.
There are two stories here, one of which is Evie, who has gone home to Hope Springs, Colorado, to visit her dying father. The other is the story of Sinon of Ithaca, fierce warrior better known for his role in convincing the denizens of Troy to accept the wooden horse. Vaughn combines these stories through a magic store room, where lost treasures of the world await their true owners.
Sinon and Evie’s stories get wrapped up with other myths of legend, as various gods and demigods come to the store room to gather things that belong to them (or not). The end of the world may or may not be nigh, and Evie has to decide whom to help.
What I liked about this novel was the setting. I liked the feeling of being in a small town where everyone knows you, juxtaposed with the paranoid future American where it’s considered patriotic to report strangers to the police. I liked the tidbits of the history of the store room, and the small history of the town and Evie’s family. I also liked Sinon’s story, because he’s a less-well-known figure of history/legend. I’m generally not a fan of more famous figures being interwoven into the story, for example, Arthur and Merlin (though there’s a great scene with the sword that made me laugh.) It didn’t break the story for me, however.
Vaughn’s a great writer, and I loved the character development of Evie, especially with her relation to Tracker, the heroine of the comic she writes scripts for. She was a plausible, believable character, as was Sinon. Sinon’s relationship with Apollo was also creative and well done, with some gritty realism you don’t usually get from mythological rewrites. The only thing I didn’t like was the ending. It seemed as if everything happened so quickly that I wasn’t sure what really happened. Also, Evie and her father fought valiantly agains something that they eventually just succumbed to without a second thought. I didn’t have a good sense of why they made that decision, and I didn’t have a sense of whether or not it was a good decision.
There’s a faint romantic subplot which I liked, though it was only a faint thread in the story and not a major component. The characters were well done, and I liked the setting, and I would have really, really liked this book if the ending had been clearer and more logical.
