the city on the other side

Fairyland has figured heavily in my pleasure reading for almost as long as I’ve been reading. First, because it is and was a staple of English-language fantasy (a favorite), and secondly because it was the sort of thing I didn’t have to hide from my mother (she never really took to fantasy, but fairies were okay because it’s classic myth!). But complicated feelings about fantasy aside, I read some really fabulous fairy stories as a young one, and I know kid me would have loved Mairghread Scott and Robin Robinson’s The City on the Other Side.

In The City on the Other Side, a young girl stumbles into a pitched war between two fairy kingdoms, and the fate of San Francisco itself hangs in the balance!

Sheltered within her high-society world, Isabel plays the part of a perfectly proper little girl—she’s quiet, well-behaved, and she keeps her dresses spotlessly clean. She’s certainly not the kind of girl who goes on adventures.

But that all changes when Isabel breaches an invisible barrier and steps into another world. She discovers a city not unlike her own, but magical and dangerous. Here, war rages between the fairies of the Seelie and Unseelie Courts. Only Isabel, with the help of a magical necklace and a few new friends, stands a chance of ending the war before it destroys the fairy world, and her own.

From Mairghread Scott and Robin Robinson comes a colorful fantasy graphic novel set in early twentieth century San Francisco.

Isabel is a young girl growing up in post-1906 earthquake San Francisco. She lives a sheltered and privileged life, though not necessarily a happy one. She’s admonished not to be a bother, to be silent, and to stay clean. Meanwhile, she’s shuttled between two distracted and/or absent parents. So of course, she ends up in the middle of a fairy war!

One of the strong points in this story is Isabel’s development. Isabel finds purpose and lives through more action in the course of her adventures in fairyland than she has seen in her whole life, and it changes her. She develops her voice, decides who to trust, comes up with plans (even if they’re bad ones), and speaks up to those she loves. In the end she finds a way to live in both worlds.

Another great element of the story is the art. The art in a graphic novel tells just as much (if not more!) of the story as the words on the page, and this book has PHENOMENAL art. Robin Robinson has illustrated fairy creatures of all stripes and looks and mythological traditions. The fairy that can travel through walls and the ground? Super cool! Fairyland also has a direct counterpart in the real world, and the parts where they are overlaid with each other or set side-by-side are wonderful.

On the list of weaker story elements, I’d put the character development of Isabel’s parents and the set-up for and consequences of the fairy war (we see lots of broken down buildings, etc., but the true reason for the war wasn’t revealed until too late in the story). I would also have liked to see more historical elements (rather than just dress), since the story is set quite far in the past.

In all, The City on the Other Side is an enjoyable, beautifully-illustrated middle grade graphic novel featuring protagonists of color, a fairy war, and a race to save the world(s).

Recommended for: fans of graphic novels and fairy art, and readers ages 8 and up who are looking for a quick, fun read.

Fine print: I received a copy of this book for review consideration from the publisher. I did not receive any compensation for this post.

roadtrip status: legendary

I’m known for starting off jokes or stories with “There was this one time…at band camp…,” stolen from the gross-out comedy American Pie. I’m going to tell you right now, I’ve never seen American Pie. Oh, I think I watched about half of it once (the second half, if you were wondering) while on a water polo road trip, because our options were that or a VH1 dating show repeat. Television programming in hotels at 2am in the heartland of America isn’t the most, how shall we say this?, edifying of experiences. I’ve also never been to band camp. But I stick by the “there was this one time…” beginning, precisely because it sets you up for the kinds of zany adventures that are my life. Otherwise known as the reason that this blog is subtitled “a series of un-lucky events.”

So there was this one time…

When I was going to study abroad for a semester in Sevilla, Spain. I had two days to get a Schengen Visa on my passport. This is the sticker that lets you get around most of Europe as a student, and to stay for over 3 months. What, you say? There are MONTHS to apply for those things! How did you let time slip past you?! All shall be explained, grasshopper.

Here’s what happened: I decided to study abroad TWICE. In the same year. Yep. My college didn’t have a study abroad coordinator or anything official like that, so I was doing all the research about programs by myself. And I couldn’t decide between a summer program in Viña del Mar, Chile, and a semester in Sevilla, Spain (where my high school Spanish teacher had studied). I related this to my mother, and she asked, “Why don’t you do both?” What a novel idea! So that’s how I found myself with plans to travel to Chile for May, June and July, and then to take off to Spain in August.

Dilemma time. You can’t (or couldn’t, at that juncture) send off your passport for the European Visa certification more than three months ahead of travel. But I was going to be GONE, and needing my passport (in my possession at all times, thankyouverymuch!), for that entire time period! So I called and emailed and cajoled the people at the Spanish consulate in San Francisco, and finally someone said: “Come next Tuesday. I will do it for you that day.” Hurrah! But wait… Turns out that next Tuesday is just 48 hours before my flight to Chile. And turning up in person meant traveling 800 miles each way. We pondered. We conferenced. We compared options. Plan A) I book a flight to San Francisco and navigate the city by myself, getting to consulate at 7am, then hop on plane back home. Plan B) My mother and I team-drive our way to California and back.

We chose Plan B. Mapquest says the drive is 13 hours. Realistically, it’s more like 16. Driving through mountains in southern Oregon and northern California is treacherous, and no matter what they say, sometimes you can’t avoid getting stuck behind a semi-truck doing a steady 40 mph. We set off in the late afternoon, leaving enough time to take short breaks and make it to the consulate (to wait in line) by 6am. We were NOT going to miss our appointment.

Night driving and mother-daughter road-tripping commenced. It actually wasn’t too terrible on the drive down. We both of us guzzled coffee like it was going out of style, and were at the ‘barely keeping our eyes open’ stage by the time we hit San Fran. At 5am. My mother suggested we find the consulate and then get more coffee. It sounded like a decent plan to my sleep-deprived senses. We walked by the office, found a little coffee place on the corner (open!), sat down…and I fell asleep over my book. My mother shook me awake an hour later, and we went to stand in line (second! Not bad.). Three hours later, I had handed over my precious passport and an exorbitant amount of money, and been assured that I would have my it back in time for my flight.

Now for the trip home! Ha ha. We were on a bit of a high at the success of the mission, and my mom suggested a short jaunt down to Fisherman’s Wharf and (maybe) food before the drive home. So we got on a trolley car and set off. I saw my first publicly-smoked joint on the ride over, and then we had a lovely lunch on a patio overlooking the Bay. Well, what you could see of the Bay. It was foggy and a bit damp, but I was used to that as a Seattlelite.

THEN we set off. Bad decision. We should have used that extra bit of energy and adrenaline to start off the endurance test that was the drive home. Oh, it was torture. Each of us would drive for about an hour at a time, just barely keeping our eyes open and our wits about us, tumbling into a doze as soon as we got out of the driver’s seat. At one point, in far northern California, we were both so tired that we pulled off to the side of the highway and slept for three hours in the shade of olive trees. The sun eventually woke us when the car became too warm. And on it went…driving until bleary-eyed, then an all-to-brief reprieve. Repeat until home.

We got home with twelve hours to spare, and wonder of wonders! the passport was ready. I can’t remember what we talked about on that trip, although I do vaguely recall some admonitions about staying safe in South America. I’m just amazed we didn’t scream at each other or drive off the road from pure exhaustion. I later got on the plane safely, and study abroad was amazing and untroubled as far as travel went (Sort of. That story’s for another time.).

Why, perchance, do I mention this several-years-past feat of mother-daughter driving? Because we’re doing it again. Extreme version. I move from Atlanta to Seattle in mid-August, and my mom and I are driving it together. Should be…interesting. 2700 miles of interesting. I welcome any suggestions of silly and fun places to stop along the way. After all, we’ll need something to talk about!