This is a must read. ( )

Finder: I think this was a great book because it was not specific to a certain genre. It could be classified in any genre. It is a great book.

The Borderlands is a city between worlds, The World which is where we (humans) reside and the Elfands. Sometimes people arrive on purpose but often people arrive on accident, the ones who are unconsciously looking for an escape. But, it is not a paradise, Bordertown can be a harsh, unforgiving place to live and those that reside there have to find their niche or Bordertown may eat them alive.

Orient is a "Finder", a human with the inexplicable psychic power to find anything, so long as he knows it exists. Tick-tick is his partner, best friend and savior. She is also an elf. When Orient is brought in by Officer Sunny Rico to help find the distributor of a terrible new drug what he finds is something worse than he could imagine.

This book had some contradictions for me. Although I found the plot and characters interesting, the story seemed to drag a bit, especially in the last couple chapters. It left me with a slightly melancholy feeling which is not necessarily a bad thing, it just means that I had to have been invested in the story.

After I started reading this book I discovered that it is an older novel than I expected, written in the 1980s (my generation!) I wish I had picked it up as a teenager, I think I would have loved it! I also discovered that is based in a world which is apparently shared by a few other authors. This book could be read as a stand alone or, I assume, as part of that series. I do plan to pick up the Borderland books, Elsewhere and Never Never by Will Shetterly which have a cross over character in this story.

Overall I did enjoy the story. I thought that the premise was quite imaginative, the cover was fascinating (it's why I picked the book up in the first place) and the characters were very sympathetic and likeable. Certainly one I'd be happy to recommend to young adult readers of urban fantasy. ( )

One of my favorite authors and books. Anything by Emma Bull is gorgeous but the Character Orient and the people and world he inhabits is stunning. ( )

Take a shared-world fantasy setting (the Bordertown stories), throw in a detective story with a dash of elfpunk, and add some engaging characters and you have an enjoyable book to read. I expected the hard edge that lurks behind the Bordertown short stories and, to be honest, I missed it a bit. I think the book would have been better if it could have kept that brittleness.

That being said, I found Ms. Bull's writing up to the task, she brought the characters alive for me without tilting into cliché, and made me care about what happened to them.

Is this a young adult book? I'm not sure; it could go either way. ( )