Conference noted::sf

899.0. "Gael Baudino's Gossamer Axe" by LUGGER::REDFORD (All isms are wasms) Mon Aug 06 1990 04:40

    "Gossamer Axe"
    ROC Fantasy, 1990
    
    Sometimes you get engrossed in a book that's so bad that when you 
    come up for air you could kick yourself in embarassment.  Another 
    five or six hours of your life wasted.  Hey, you could have been 
    reading "The Emperor's New Mind", but no, you were taken in by a 
    novel about a Celtic harper who rescues her lover from the Sidhe 
    by means of heavy metal.
    
    Christa Cruitaire lives quietly in Denver, taking on a few harp 
    students.  Little do her students realize that she's actually 
    from sixth century Ireland.  As a student harper she and her 
    lover Judith dared to enter the World Beneath the Hill and were 
    trapped there for centuries.  Christa broke free from the spell 
    of the Sidhe in 1800, and was able to steal the harp of the 
    master bard in the process.  Since then she has been 
    wandering the earth.  She keeps herself young through the power of 
    the harp and is toning up her musical and magical skills for a 
    battle to free Judith.  
    
    One of her students, who is usually a spandex-clad bassist, takes 
    her to hear Yngwe Malmstein (who is a real-life guitar hero from Sweden).  
    Here, she realizes, is a musical power that the Sidhe cannot match.  
    Immortal grace and skill can't stand against twenty thousand watts of metal 
    madness.  She quickly learns guitar and puts together an all-girl band, 
    Gossamer Axe, to make the walls of Faerie come crashing down.
    
    On the back page it mentions that Gael Baudino is in fact a 
    harpist, does live in Denver with her lover Mirya, and is a 
    minister of Dianic Wicca.  Not any ordinary Wicca, mind you, but 
    Dianic Wicca.  I should have guessed from all the invocations of 
    the Goddess.  By the time I read that Christa was not just an ace 
    guitarist, eternally young and beautiful, a beater-up of jerk 
    boy-friends, and also fantastic in bed, it was too late.  I was 
    caught in a teenage girl's romance fantasy and had to finish it.
    Heavy metal versus Elfland - it's so high concept that maybe it's 
    already been optioned in Hollywood.  Well, be warned.
    
    /jlr

    Didn't Emma Bull do the sex 'n' elves 'n' rock 'n' roll bit in her
    first novel?
    
    Ray

    re:.1
    
    Yup. WAR FOR THE OAKS. I hestitate to recommend it too much, as
    I'm biased (Em's a dear friend of mine), but whatthehell: read
    it, it's great.
    
    --- jerry

    Just so you all don't think that Mr. Boyajian's TOO biased, I'll
    mention that the "New York Review of Science Fiction" picked it as one
    of the 10 best of the 1980s and that it seems to be on a lot of Great
    Fantasy lists...
    
    Ray