ELSEWHERE

An intriguing hybrid fantasy that mixes life on the street with magic and glimpses of unworldly beauty. Not far in the future, Faerie returns to the sight of man while a once-conservative human city becomes Bordertown, where young elves and humans alike escape their various homes and rules. Bordertown is dangerous, filled with gangs from both species, rife with magic, drugs, violence. Still, it lures more and more youngsters, including thin-skinned, tough-talking Ron Starbuck, who reads Yeats and pretends to know what's going on. Ron says he's looking for his brother Tony, but—as he enters Castle Pup under the wing of the unreliable half-breed Mooner and then finds himself a weapon of revenge against the woman who owns the bookstore called Elsewhere—we learn that Tony only meant to come to Bordertown. Ron's need to understand his brother's suicide and to regain a sense of self drives him through a series of muddled choices that he makes, and then tries to unmake. Filled with action, shifting images, and alienated characters looking for a place to belong, the adventure holds attention but doesn't entirely satisfy. Ron's motivation eventually becomes clear, yet he moves among mysterious, unfleshed-out characters who are often no more than cryptic hints—as is much of Faerie. Still, the ideas fascinate, Ron's fate matters, and this in an unusual view of the streets. (Fiction. 12-15)