Skyler White

and Falling, Fly — (2010) Publisher: In a dark and seedy underground of burned-out rock stars and angels-turned-vampires, a revolutionary neuroscientist and a fallen angel must pit medicine against mythology in an attempt to erase their tortured pasts... but at what cost? Olivia, vampire and fallen angel of desire, is hopeless... and damned. Since the fall from Eden, she has hungered for love, but fed only on desire. Dominic O'Shaughnessy is a neuroscientist plagued by impossible visions. When his research and her despair collide at L'OtelMathillide — a subterranean hell of beauty, demons, and dreams — rationalist and angel unite in a clash of desire and damnation that threatens to destroy them both.

and Falling, Fly

When I finished and Falling, Fly, the first words out of my mouth were, "Wow, what a mindf*ck." The cover art, while a beautiful example of its kind, seems to imply a fairly standard urban fantasy. and Falling, Fly is anything but.

Skyler White unfolds this story through the eyes of two main characters, Olivia and Dominic. Olivia lives in a world of sensual depravity; she believes she is a fallen angel and a vampire, doomed to spend eternity as a lonely predator unless she finds a loophole in her damnation. Her chapters are narrated in the first person, present tense. Dominic is a neuroscientist who has visions of past lives but believes they are hallucinations or seizures. He seeks a cure for his condition, and later for Olivia's plight; he believes they both suffer from mental illness, not ancient curses. His chapters are written in third person, past tense. Olivia and Dominic show us two sides of White's bizarre world, two ways of looking at things. Who's right, the true believer or the rational scientist? and Falling, Fly raises plenty of questions about these characters and their troubles, and leaves many of them unanswered.

The early chapters remind me of a cross between Anne Rice 's Interview with the Vampire and Elizabeth Hand 's Black Light. Like Interview, the book explores the loneliness of eternal beings, and the question of what makes one "saved" or "damned." Like Black Light, and Falling, Fly takes us on a trippy tour through a debauched setting peopled with jaded celebrants. And like Black Light, it sometimes drags a bit; even when you realize that the "meanderingness" of it is intentional — creating a hellish atmosphere and expressing the characters' ennui — it still gets a little draggy. This happens in both points of view. Olivia's vampiric bacchanalia and Dominic's departmental politics feel equally empty.

But when Olivia and Dominic meet, and Falling, Fly really takes off, pardon the bad pun. The two have opposite worldviews but in a few significant ways are more alike than different, and there is an instant "click" between them. Perhaps their feelings develop into love a little more quickly than is realistic, but it's not a problem here; their connection brings a much-welcome splash of color into the previously bleak atmosphere. Nothing will be easy for this couple; they face persecution from other damned souls as well as the conflict that comes from their competing worldviews. He thinks she's crazy, she thinks he's in denial, people are trying to kill them both, and the worst danger of all is that their lifelong goals, if achieved, would separate them forever.

and Falling, Fly reaches an ending that satisfies and yet leaves the reader's brain buzzing. What it reminds me most of, finally, is Caitlin R. Kiernan 's The Red Tree. The two novels have completely different plots, but both keep you wondering which events were "real" and which took place solely within the characters' minds, and both probably have to be read twice if you want to catch everything. I always appreciate a novel that makes me think.

I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the beautiful writing. Here's an example:

In my midnight midtown apartment, the demon of despair regards me in the red wink of my answering machine. Adam called again while I was out. I watch the diabolical electric blinking. Modernity is keen to alert us to what we've missed: calls, turns, TV programs. The city is ablaze with missed connections. I pull the blackout drapes closed against mine: Maria, Evie, Adam...

The names are also fun; I couldn't help but notice that the mortals have religious names and the angels have names from literature. I can't claim to have figured out why yet, but it's yet another thing my brain is buzzing about... —Kelly Lasiter

In Dreams Begin — (2010) Publisher: "Close your eyes tightly — tightly — and keep them closed..." From a Victorian Ireland of magic, poetry and rebellion, Ida Jameson, an amateur occultist, reaches out for power, but captures Laura Armstrong, a modern-day graphic artist instead. Now, for the man or demon she loves, each woman must span a bridge through Hell and across history... or destroy it. "Every passionate man is linked with another age, historical or imaginary, where alone he finds images that rouse his energy." W. B. Yeats Anchored in fact on both sides of history, Laura and Ida, modern rationalist and fin de sicle occultist, are linked from the moment Ida channels Laura into the body of celebrated beauty and Irish freedom-fighter Maud Gonne. When Laura falls — from an ocean and a hundred years away — passionately, Victorianly in love with the young poet W. B. Yeats, their love affair entwines with Irish history and weaves through Yeats's poetry until Ida discovers something she wants more than magic in the subterranean spaces in between. With her Irish past threatening her orderly present and the man she loves in it, Laura and Yeats — the practical materialist and the poet magus — must find a way to make love last over time, in changing bodies, through modern damnation, and into the mythic past to link their pilgrim souls... or lose them forever.

In Dreams Begin

For better or for worse, I have a habit of comparing books to other books. It helps me sort out my own thoughts, and it makes recommendations easier, of the “If you liked X, you’ll like Y” variety. A complex book like Skyler White’s In Dreams Begin is hard to pin down. When a comparison finally did come to me, it was this: Reading In Dreams Begin felt like finishing Robert Holdstock’s Lavondyss and A.S. Byatt’s Possession on the same day, then going to bed and having a strange, sensual dream.

Like White’s previous novel, and Falling, Fly, In Dreams Begin features two point-of-view characters. One is Laura Armstrong, a graphic artist in modern-day Portland. The other is Ida Jameson, a Victorian woman with an interest in the occult. On Laura’s wedding night, she’s spirited back to the past by one of Ida’s experiments in spiritualism, and into the body of Ida’s friend Maud Gonne. When Maud has her fateful first meeting with William Butler Yeats, it’s really Laura behind Maud’s eyes, and a passionate attraction sparks between the two. Laura is torn between her waking life with her new husband and the romantic dreams (or are they dreams?) that take her back every night to Maud’s body and Will’s love. The timelines don’t run at the same speed, though, and Laura returns each night to find months or years have passed in Will’s time.

Ida has a fascinating character arc of her own. Manipulating people and events toward her own ends, Ida could be seen as the villain of the piece. It’s hard not to feel sympathy for her, though; she sees herself as unloved, ugly, clumsy, and always second fiddle to Maud. Her role in the novel’s events turns out to be far more complicated than it appears at first glance.

Skyler White introduces each chapter with a quotation that fits the events about to transpire; some of the quotes come from Gonne’s autobiography, some from Yeats’s poetry and letters, some from other writers such as James Joyce and Dion Fortune. These quotes could, if looked at just the right way, suggest the uncanny goings-on featured in the novel. She ties her own prose in with Yeats’s poetry, too, both by using a lyrical style and by invoking images from the poems in her scenes (for example, one memorable scene echoes the “And bending down beside the glowing bars” stanza in “When You Are Old”). Skyler White’s style was already beautiful and distinctive in and Falling, Fly, but in this sophomore effort she has improved. Here is an example of In Dreams Begin’s prose:

Through the provincial streets to its tiny cemetery, Maud had walked, a priestess or a secret witch cloaked and hooded with Ida, her familiar bird, wing-in-elbow beside her. But inside Georges’ little burial chapel, Maud shrunk to an Irish crone, her ritual robes a weathered shawl wrapped over curling shoulders and the hollowed-out hole where her heart had been, and Ida, her carrion bird behind her.

In Dreams Begin explores topics such as art, beauty, fidelity, and the nature of love. It’s an intensely sensual story; readers who hate sex in their fantasy novels had best stay away, but readers willing to surrender to In Dreams Begin’s spell will be rewarded with a thought-provoking read. As in and Falling, Fly, White finishes the novel with a conclusion that will have you scratching your head, saying “Oh!” as pieces fall into place, and maybe thumbing back to earlier scenes to reread them with new knowledge in mind.

In Dreams Begin can be read as a standalone; you don’t have to have read and Falling, Fly to follow it. If you have, though, some moments will take on an extra layer of meaning.

This is one of the best, and most brain-tickling, books I’ve read this year. For a poetry geek like me, In Dreams Begin is a seductive dream indeed.  —Kelly Lasiter