Book Review: The Dragons of Heaven by Alyc Helms
In the darkened streets of San Francisco’s Chinatown, Missy Masters is struggling to take up the vigilante-hero mantle of her retired, estranged grandfather, Mr. Mystic. Missy shares his stubbornness, his intimate connections with Chinese culture, and his uncanny ability to cross into a realm of shadows and exert limited control over the creatures within. Just as she literally straddles worlds, Missy also dances a line of pretending to be an aged, but expert, male superhero while training to advance beyond her actual novice abilities. She aspires to the strength and moral right that her grandfather embodied while battling against memories of his emotional distance, his personal secrets, and the prejudices common of his generation. Typical of masked superheroes, she has two lives, the separate worlds of Missy Masters and of Mr. Mystic. And she has past experiences, a world away in China, that have led her to be the woman and vigilante of the present.
Mining the Genre Asteroid: Mary Renault
Jo Walton’s Among Others works as an interesting reading list of novels and authors that the author herself read and thought about growing up. Much of the matter of the book is her protagonist reading, and thinking about the many writers whose work she discovers. One of those writers mentioned by Mori that she discovers in the course of growing up and reading is somewhat different than the more familiar science fiction and fantasy authors in her self-created curriculum: Mary Renault. Mary Renault was a mid-century British writer. In 1948, after her novel Return to Night won an MGM prize worth $150,000, Renault and her lifelong lover Julie Mullard immigrated to South Africa, where they remained for the rest of their lives. Starting in the 1950s, Renault turned from writing contemporary fiction, to ancient historical fiction. The King Must Die (1958) is the second of her ancient historical fictional novels, and the first that tackles a character straight out of ancient myth and legend: Theseus.
