Gossamer Axe (1990)

this tale made me want to take up metal - the subculture sounded completely unappealing but the intensity and devotion of the participants...compelling.

red-haired superwoman discovers the power of heavy metal music just as she's about to give up hope, takes on faerie to win her lover back. a teenaged Emma probably would've loved this in her early days of identification with Vanyel et al. ( )

Christa is a Celtic harper from the sixth century. While studying music and magic with her lover, Judith, she stumbled into fairyland, the realm of the Sidhe, and she and Judith were trapped for centuries. Christa managed to escape, but Judith was left behind. Christa has lived for centuries, trying to find a way to rescue her beloved.

In Denver in the 1980s, Christa makes a living giving harp lessons, until one of her students, Melinda, introduces her to heavy metal. Christa is instantly attracted to the raw power of the music, and realizes it may be exactly what she needs to get revenge against the Sidhe. She puts together an all-girl heavy metal band called Gossamer Axe, with herself on lead guitar, and hers is a magic guitar containing the sentient soul of her old Celtic harp.

Christa realizes the importance of the friendship of her new band mates, as they help each other overcome their own individual traumas and weaknesses, becoming a close sisterhood. There is also Kevin, a guitarist who turned down a major record deal, and spends his days teaching music he has lost all passion for - until he meets the red-headed harper, Christa.

The premise of Gossamer Axe is rather funny, even absurd - a sort of Xena: Warrior Princess meets Jem and the Holograms. The melding of old Irish magic with 80s metal bands, spandex suits and girl power, really shouldn't work as well as it does, but Baudino pulls it off, creating a novel that is magical, moving and unique. ( )

This one took me by surprise. I've been passing over it on my friend's speculative fiction shelves for years now, then for some reason picked it up the other day and got hooked a couple of chapters in.

Christa is a bisexual woman who escaped from the Celtic Otherworld 200 years ago, and is still trying to figure out how to free her inamorata from that unchanging, sterile place. She puts aside her harp and picks up an electric guitar to achieve her aims.

Certain elements are predictable: the antagonists, particularly, are uninspired. But the way Baudino handles the musical aspects, the world of rock and how it is for women, magic, cultural distress (for Christa), community and friendship--it's textured, fascinating, very well done.

As for authenticity (for the ancient Celtic part), she gets a lot right. My main complaint is that the Celts didn't celebrate the solstices and equinoxes as she has them do--Christa really is more modern Wiccan than ancient Celt in some ways--but regardless, the book holds together nicely. It is what it is.

A very pleasant surprise. ( )

Jump into an adventure accompanied by a feisty, magical, rock n' roll Celtic dyke. ( )

http://nhw.livejournal.com/1104000.html

The premise of the book sounds, frankly, awful. Christa, born in sixth-century Ireland but exiled to 1980s Denver, assembles an all-female heavy metal band (called "Gossamer Axe") to blast open the mystical portals and rescue her girlfriend from the twilight realm where she is imprisoned. To do this she reincarnates her magical harp as an electric guitar.

Yet it's actually rather good. Of course it is rather earnest about paganism, feminism and magic, but the only point where the writing is cringingly embarrassing is in the early sections where Christa is converted from Irish harp music to heavy metal. Apart from that, though, the various romantic and personality plot threads are compelling, and the Irish bits are not overdone. The whole thing is written with a genuine passion which in the end is easier to respect than mock.

It won the 1990 Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Science Fiction & Fantasy, and was also chosen as one of the "top 5 gay/lesbian/bisexual/transgender genre works of all time" by Gaylaxicon 2000's "The List" panel. (I wonder what the others were?)
( )