Territory

TERRITORY; Emma Bull; New York: Tor, 2007, 318 pgs. Science Fiction/Fantasy

Emma Bull is well-known for her modern urban fantasies, but in this truly unique offering, she is in Tombstone with the Earps, Doc Holliday, and the Clantons. Jesse Fox, a well-spoken, good-hearted sometime horse trainer and mining engineer, has arrived in Tombstone with no intention of staying, drawn there by his old friend Chow Lung, a doctor of Chinese medicine. Lung knows Fox to have mystical powers that Fox disavows, but when someone uses those same powers for dark purposes and strikes against Jesse's friends, he is drawn in. Observing the action is Mrs. Mildred Benjamin, a widow who works as a typesetter and then a reporter for the Tombstone Nugget, but she becomes involved as well when her feelings for Jesse deepen and she begins to see things she can't understand--Wyatt Earp in two simultaneous incarnations, for example. Territory is very rich reading--a treasure for those who love the West and her history, as well as for those who appreciate exquisitely well-drawn characters, considerations of the nature of free well, romance, and a seething, unsettling mysticism. (Fair warning: towards the end of the book you will need to pay close attention to keep all the players straight, and to not be disappointed by where the action does not conclude.)

LW