Mar 112015
 

Cover of Finn Fancy Necromancy by Randy Henderson. In the style of an old woodcut, we have a haunted-looking house with a surreal scarecrow and a being with a bird-like face.Wall Street Journal: Randy Henderson’s “Finn Fancy Necromancy” is a magic-politics story too, but set in present-day Washington state and much more of a romp than the two above. Its hero, Finn Gramaraye, has just finished a 25-year penal stretch in the Fey world for dark necromancy, his place in this world held for him by a changeling.

The return does not go smoothly. The transfer of memories from the changeling doesn’t happen. Finn finds himself a quarter-century out of date. He’s happy to be reunited with his Commodore 64, he talks in old teen slang, and words like “online” baffle him.

More important, the Arcana Ruling Council (that’s his side) still suspect him, and on the other side are a consortium of Feys and feybloods, susquatches, waerwolves, brownies. Someone is trying to restart the Fey-Arcana wars, using Finn as a pivot. In the final showdown he has to rely on gnome mercenaries and bloodwitches too, though the real dangers lie in his own family—just as if he was a “mundane,” or “mundy,” like the rest of us.