Battle for the Oaks
By Emma Bull
Fans of Stephanie Mayer will find a better reading paranormal adventure in this book and to top it off, it is set in Minneapolis!
This tightly written story features Eddi, a vocalist and guitarist who is picked as the “mortal” who will make the war between the Seelie and Unseelie courts a truly fatal war.
A band break-up and a lover who is no longer loved, lead Eddi down Hennipen Avenue late at night.
Herded by a large black dog with glowing eyes, she ends up with phouka, a guard dog in every sense of the word. Phouka wears the form of a dog (talking of course), but prefers his humanlike guise, that of a well built chocolate brown man who has the flair of an Elizabethan courtier, the defensive skills of a kung fu warrior and the biting tongue of the most sarcastic teenager speaking to a parent.
Her role, as explained by the Phouka, is this: She has been chosen by the Seelie court as their “talisman.” Her presence on a battlefield of the fey will assure that the immortal fairies can and will die during a battle, as long as she is present.
Minneapolis has become a city up for grabs. The “good” fey want to keep Minnehaha Falls, the creek that forms them and the rest of the area for the light side of the spectrum; the unseelie wish to take the land and spread the blight of unhappiness and sorrow throughout the area.
A confrontation between the two courts of immortals is set to begin on Midsummer’s Night, but since being chosen, Eddi is a target of the Unseelie court who will try to remove her before the conflict begins, hence the Phouka guard…he is to keep her save so she can guarantee the death of immortal fey.
During the first battle, with Phouka as a guard, Eddi takes a totally unexpected stance in the war. She saves the life of a brownie, Hairy Meg, because she couldn’t let her “just be killed.” In addition, her careful, duplicitous but truthful answers to both the Seelie Queen and the Queen of Air and Darkness, the Unseelie queen, make her an unpredictable force in the whole mix.
Add to this, the formation of a kick butt rock band, including two of the fey who love music, an absolute genius on the keyboard/synthesizer and Carla, Eddi’s best friend, rocking the drum set, you find yourself amazed and drawn into the web of Fairyland where music and dancing are equal to magic.
A final powerful confrontation featuring the power of mortal music and voice against the magic of the dark fey brings the novel to a stunning close.
The author and husband, Will Shetterly, have included a short “movie treatment” they had worked up for the novel, which by the way, has not been optioned.
In the spirit of the closing words…This book should go on tour!
