The Wandering Land

Jamie Killen

Five people, connected only through their art, stumble out of Tucson and into an Irish village that changes every time they see it–but not always enough for them to escape safely. Will they solve its mystery and escape its charms alive, or are they doomed to remain there forever, as wanderers into Fairyland tend to do?

“The Wandering Land” is heavily based on myth and legend, especially but not exclusively Irish myth and legend, but there’s nothing cutesy about it. It’s a highly self-aware text about art and the act of creation, that takes the reader into some dark places, historically and psychologically. Told from multiple points of view, with jumps and skips as the characters fall in and out of the village that exists somewhere on the boundary between their individual imaginations, their shared art, and the “real world,” the story may be too fragmented for readers looking for a simple easy read, but readers into world myth and its retelling in modern form will probably enjoy it. It reminded me a bit of the “Bedlam’s Bard” series by Mercedes Lackey and Ellen Guon, which I enjoyed tremendously as a teenager and was one of the series that got me into fantasy, but “The Wandering Land” is more adult and horror-tinged, less easy-reading and YA. An interesting read for someone looking for some contemporary/urban fantasy that’s a little more cerebral than the norm.

You can get a free preview of “The Wandering Land,” plus many more books, in the Where Women Rule Giveaway, but you’d better hurry, ’cause it ends July 3. Check it out here!