2016 read #16: Wizard of the Pigeons by Megan Lindholm.

Wizard of the Pigeons by Megan Lindholm
298 pages
Published 1986
Read from February 26 to February 28
Rating: ★★★½ out of 5

It's interesting to read novels from the early stretch of a famous writer's career, before they published their breakout hit -- or even, in Megan Lindholm's case, before she became Robin Hobb, whose Elderlings books have been recommended to me by seemingly every fantasy fan I know. Wizard of the Pigeons further interests me as a pioneering novel of modern urban fantasy, published a year before War for the Oaks and Jack the Giant-Killer (though two years after de Lint's Moonheart -- which, alas, no library in Suffolk County has). I dig the early urban fantasy scene, despite the early emergence of the subgenre's corniest cliches, and I was eager to get my hands on another primary text from the formative years.

Some general spoilers ahead.

Right from the start, Pigeons distinguishes itself from its near-contemporaries. In the hands of Emma Bull or Charles de Lint, our viewpoint protagonist would be the spunky waitress who helps the titular wizard secure a free breakfast, easing the reader into the magical world of Seattle's homeless population through her wide-eyed discoveries, before realizing some measure of her own internal magic and saving the day -- a formula that scarcely seems to vary all these years later. Instead, Wizard is our point-of-view, and the spunky waitress turns out to be a neurotic mess whose proclivities play right into the plans of "gray Mir," Wizard's enemy and shadow-self. More generally, Pigeons attempts to tell a more adult story than Oaks or Jack. Rather than putting pooks in punk bands and calling it a day, Lindholm/Hobb attempts to craft an urban setting that feels magical, breathing with its own brick and soot life, its architecture unraveling into countless alternative Seattles, and a normal, everyday Seattle populated with watchful windows and trusting pigeons and knives shamed by violence. And rather than motivating our hero with an external call to adventure, with a promise of fun and excitement amidst the dangers, Lindholm/Hobb attempts an allegory of PTSD and coming home from 'Nam knowing no skills but stalking and killing and rage. I have my generation's innate impatience for Vietnam allegories -- Wizard's claim that there was no other war like Nam only makes me think of Marines hopping island chains through the duration of the War in the Pacific -- yet I have to remind myself that Pigeons was published in 1986, and this sort of thing was still fresh ground back then, rather than the endlessly regurgitated Boomer self-congratulation it is today.

That doesn't mean I came away feeling like this was a especially convincing or well-handled allegory. Wizard's passivity and reluctance to confront his internal store of violence and hurt is an interesting direction for a central character in a fantasy novel, yet I couldn't quite shake the impression that the text could be read as an implicit criticism of those with PTSD -- to paraphrase, "Stop cowering and confront your demons!" Especially since all Wizard seemed to need to shake him out of his self-destructive course was a good, tender lay (or, as it's called here, "women's magic"), plus that late '80s/early '90s staple, a good ol' confrontation with a serial killer. Similarly, early on in the novel, Wizard's attitude toward ordinary, non-magical homeless people seems to border on contemptuous. If only those bums knew these few weird tricks and scavenged properly, they wouldn't need to dig cans out of Dumpsters!

Pigeons is a bolder story than the other early urban fantasy I've read, and deserves credit for its narrative risks and the gravity of its thematic material. It's also nice to read an early urban fantasy novel that isn't just about fairies playing music festivals (not that I would object to another such novel right now -- seriously, I wish Bull had written a sequel to Oaks). The magical Seattle here is so much more interesting than any realm of Faery squeezed in to fit the streets of Ottawa or the Twin Cities. But I felt the serious thematic material was fumbled somewhat in the telling. The ending is affecting and redeems the book from some of my quibbles, I think, but for a while my opinion of Pigeons was touch-and-go.