The Good Fairies of New York by Martin Millar

Another in the urban fantasy sub-genre, “Good Fairies of New York” is better (IMHO) than “Tithe”, but I can honestly say I don’t like the style. Urban fantasy blends stories of “the fey” with gritty realism. The thing is, I don’t really want my fairy stories blended with gritty realism. In this tale, Morag and Heather, two pseudo-lesbian Scottish fairies who have a penchant for getting in trouble, land in the apartment of a ne’er-do-well New Yorker named Dinnie after a binge of alcohol and magic mushrooms. They crash through Dinnie’s window, throw up, fight and pass out. Dinnie is an overweight, unemployed squatter who likes porn and has an unrequited crush on the girl across the street, a bohemian named Kerry who is seriously ill with Crohn’s Disease. The story zig-zags across New York and overseas, adding in fairy groups of all kinds as a kind of a “war” builds up, although in the end that becomes very secondary to the other plotlines. Where it works: The introduction by Neil Gaiman compares Millar to Vonnegut and there are similarities. Dark humor is well blended with stark social satire (homeless people die in doorways each day and no one seems to notice, much less care). The “good fairies” are anything but. These anti-hero protagonists are so self-absorbed that every good deed ends up deepening their troubles and causing grief for others. The best line in the book came on page 205, “They are just under the thrall of an evil King. Much like the United States.” Where it doesn’t work: The wild swings from one scene to the next with little or no natural flow was present in “Tithe” as it is here, and I don’t know if it is a hallmark of this type of literature, but it makes reading the jagged text very challenging. Random use of sexuality seems designed for no other purpose than to titillate (and makes it completely inappropriate for younger readers) and the copy I read was in great need of an editor, as it had blatant typos. Although this novel was stronger than my first attempt, I can’t say this most recent urban fantasy has made me like the genre any better. I’m told Charles de Lint is the master here, so I may try one of his books before giving it up entirely. Maybe. If it’s really short.