Auraria: A Novel (edition 2012)

I really liked the beginning of the book. It started off a bit quirky, a bit whimsical, a bit strange. But for some reason, my interest started tapering off somewhere around a third to half the way through, and I never really regained that feeling I had in the first few chapters. ( )

Paperback Via Author free for honest review

What to say about this book? I must admit I really had a very hard time reading this book and continuing to read this book. The concept of the mysterious lands and people was great, but I just didn't find it to be that much of a mystery read as I had hoped to get out of it. I guess I was hoping for more supernatural encounters along with more action/mystery. After the first 100 pages of this book, I was ready to just pack it in and call it a day...I did keep reading, but I found that I wasn't all "gun ho" over getting back to reading if I had to stop. The plot has great potential, I just thought it was a bit slow moving and action deprived. As for the characters...now those I did love. I loved James and his determination, Abigail was also a fun character, as were all the supernatural characters such as the moon maidens, the headless man, and the piano playing Mr. Bad Thing. I also have to give great compliments to Tim Westover for his writing. The descriptions and the words he uses were fantastic. Really, this is why I continued to read on after contemplating quitting the book. I just loved reading his work and how he wrote! I know that may seem like a contradiction, but I really did love the writing in the book, I just wished it had a bit more of some things too. Bottom line of my opinion? It was a nice book to have read, as the characters and the author were great, so they made up some for the slow pace and lack of adventure. I do recommend this book, but perhaps to a "audience" that is not as much into adventure or fast paced books. It is kind of a slow and steady read I would say. All in all, glad I read it, but it just wasn't a great book for me personally.

3/5 Stars! ( )

English teachers say that "most unique" is not proper English, which is a pity, because this is the most unique fantasy I have read in a long time. Perhaps I should say it is unusually excellent and excellently unusual. It owes almost nothing to conventional sword and sorcery fantasy, and though set in the Georgia mountains amid adaptations of real Georgia places (carefully explained in the "Note on Sources" at the end), it is not even very like other adaptations of Southern Appalachian folklore to fantasy fiction (such as Manly Wade Wellman's Silver John stories). It begins with a quintessential American activity (though one rarely used in fantasy) --a very conventional young man named Holtzclaw is going around buying up land in a very small Georgia town on behalf of a mysterious entrepreneur named Shadburn --just as the Marcellus shale operators are buying land in my little West Virginia town right now. But the town where Holtzclaw is operating is a former gold-mining town (Auraria) which is now a ghost town, and many of the inhabitants with whom Holtzclaw must negotiate are actually ghosts, from Mr.Bad Thing who plays the piano at the local restaurant (guests think it's a player piano, but it's not), to a sweet little girl named Emily who feeds Holtzclaw on wild mushrooms (one of which killed her long ago). There are other creatures who are odder than ghosts, like the Great and Harmless and Invincible Terrapin whose memories go back to the creation of that country, and the rabbit-eared moon maidens who wash gold from their fur into the local streams. (These last are not landowners but visitors, customers of the local Rain Princess Trahlyta.) After Holtzclaw somewhat unexpectedly succeeds in buying up the town property, it turns out that Shadburn (who grew up in Auraria) plans to build a dam and create a lake which will drown the source of the gold --he feels the local inhabitants' infatuation with gold is unhealthy. The dam is duly built and the town duly
drowned (like those under many TVA projects), with all the inhabitants moved to higher ground. There Shadburn builds a pretentious resort hotel , The Queen of the Mountains, managed rather ineptly by Holtzclaw, aided by Abigail (the lively and practical proprieter of the restaurant) and distracted by Lizzie Rathbun, a vamp and con artist who lures him into a scheme to run a glamorous lake boat which never truly gets finished. (Spoiler Warning) The climax of Holtzclaw's efforts at the hotel is a splendid society gala which dissolves into chaos when the guests riot to protest the performance of a singing tree instead of the expected human star. Meanwhile rains have brought on a flood; the lake boat is caught on the dam and dynamited by Holtzclaw under Lizzie's instructions (so she can collect the insurance). This destroys the dam, the lake is drained, the old town reappears, and Holtzclaw, after an unsatisfying brief return to the normality of Milledgeville (where he rejects Lizzie, now living well on the insurance money), returns to settle in Auraria with Abigail, and apparently lives happily ever after-- much more of a eucatastrophe than I actually expected. The beginning of this story is a marvellous exploration of the town's extraordinary inhabitants. The middle sequence with the dam and hotel sometimes has a bitter flavor, but the end is surprisingly satisfying. Apparently Tim Westover's only other work was a highly regarded collection of stories written in Esperanto. It might be worth learning Esperanto to read it. ( )

In a Nutshell

Westover's Auraria is like having a great novel, a night of ghost stories around a campfire, and a college course in Appalachian folktales all rolled into one.

The Whole Enchilada

We all love fairy tales and legends when we're kids, but as we get older the fairy tales--and I'm talking about truly compelling fairy tales, not the simple, syrupy plotlines so many bad romantic comedies are based on--seem to dry up. Some might argue that the Science Fiction and Fantasy genre can satisfy the grown-up desire for magic and wonder, but what you get from Sci-Fi/Fantasy isn't quite the same as what you get from Fairy Tales. Fairy Tales and Legends tend to be local rather than off-world (or alternate world), and the skeleton of the Fairy Tale is often familiar. In fact, it's this very familiarity which makes the Fairy Tale so alluring... The protagonist of the story could just as easily be ourselves--our house, our grandmother, our innocence, our own deep dark woods.

Tim Westover's Auraria is truly modern day Legend, a much-needed Fairy Tale for adults. Actually, I would argue that it's better than a Fairy Tale, because it takes storytelling to the next level. Westover takes time with his tale. This is no brief moral fable or cautionary tale peppered with obvious archetypes. His characters have depth, mystery, and motivation. His descriptions are so loving and vibrant that you can feel the moss between your toes, the icy wind on your fingers, and smell the moist, dark earth. But the most important ingredient of all is the awe and wonder. Auraria is filled with wonder.

Auraria's main character James Holtzclaw is a pragmatist, and certainly not someone susceptible to awe or wonder. As the book begins Holtzclaw has been sent by his mysterious employer (by the name of Shadburn) to the remote Appalachian town of Auraria. His mission is to buy up the town and all of its surrounding lands and farms. To accomplish this, Holtzclaw has been given, in addition to ordinary federal notes, "the strangest [gold coins] he had ever seen. Instead of eagles and shields, the coins were stamped with images of bumble-bees, terrapin, chestnut trees, and indistinct figures by a stream. The figures might have been bathing or even panning for gold; they were too small to tell. Shadburn had said the coins were minted in Auraria from local metal. The gold was returning to its source." But if Holtzclaw expects the purchase of Aurarian land to be quick and easy, he is sorely (and very luckily for the reader) mistaken.

Holtzclaw must spend weeks in Auraria in his effort to find each landowner. He walks miles each day, from farmstead to mine to mountaintop, unwittingly collecting the rich soil of Auraria in his shoes and his pants cuffs, in his hair and the creases on his face. Along the way he finds a frozen farm that never thaws, a never-ending house, fish that swim through a valley of mist; he eats dinner with a ghost, has conversations with the Great and Harmless and Invincible Terrapin, and meets the beautiful and mysterious Princess Trahlyta. During this time that Holtzclaw is methodically buying up all the land of Auraria, he is slowly but surely, if not exactly falling in love with the land, becoming inextricably bound to it. What happens when the land is all bought up, his job is done, and Holtzclaw finds he is unable to leave?

Tim Westover's writing style is a perfect complement to the story. He somehow manages to be fantastic and understated at the same time. The effect is that the prose is a joy to read, but in no way overshadows or distracts from the story or the characters. Additionally, Westover does a fantastic job of weaving what I imagine are actual old-Appalachian folktales seamlessly into the greater arc of his own unique story. The reader is left with a feeling of having read a great novel, listened to grandma telling ghost stories by the fire, and taken a college course in Appalachian folktales, all rolled into one delightful 390 page package.

I can promise that this book is like nothing else you've ever read. The names, the events, the characters and attitudes... All are a discovery and a delight. Westover's Auraria reminds us of why we fell in love with fiction in the first place: For the wonder and adventure that somehow seems both absolutely impossible, but also inevitably waiting just around the next bend in the road.

(More reviews and book news on my blog www.bkwurm.com) ( )

I am really looking forward to getting into this magical story! I'm not usually a setting reader, so I'll probably end up focusing on more of the story, but I'm still pretty excited to get immersed in a Georgia ghost town.