Juniper Wiles has retired from acting and is living a life of art and amateur sleuthing in Newford when a faerie prognosticator warns her that something big is going to happen at an upcoming ComicFest (because the name ComicCon is trademarked, duh) and her presence is requested. According to the seer, a remarkably youthful-looking Mother Crone, things will be bad if Juniper is there at the time, but things will be worse if she's not. So, reluctantly, Juniper allows herself to be drawn back into the world of her defunct television series, interacting with intrusive fans and reconnecting with former costars (some of whom she'd prefer to leave in the past) in order to reduce whatever catastrophe is pending.

And then, right at the tail end of her first panel discussion with the former cast of her cult teen detective show Nora Constantine, security informs her of a ... problem. Specifically, a man dressed like Indiana Jones has been found in a restroom with the top of his skull missing ... as well as his brain.

That's not a normal occurrence, even at ComicCon -- er, ComicFest.

Soon, a handful of corpses are discovered in a similar condition. Juniper, who can see and talk with ghosts, gets some details about the murder from the deceased Indiana Jones, which leads her to a dramatic samurai moment on the convention floor. But ... the killer and eater of brains is not, it turns out, the actual villain here, and soon nearly all ComicFest patrons and guests are magically frozen in time ... with a few exceptions, several of whom are, conveniently, Juniper's friends and allies. Without time to think, Juniper follows the real villain through a sort of slimy "flesh tunnel" into another realm, one from which she cannot easily return. And it's then she realizes that, oops, she is no longer at ComicFest, which means the Very Bad Thing that Mother Crone predicted is now likely to happen in her absence.

From there, there's a lot more action, some involving a remote compound of drug runners, sex traffickers and the actual king of the mountain (who's not what you'd expect), and some involving a hairless, parboiled witch with very bad intentions. There are katanas and rocket launchers in play, as well as a wired-up sprite, killer elementals, runaway teens, a technicolor desert and a forest of ent-like tree spirits who really just want some sort of monarch to call their own.

It's a good thing Juniper has some powerful allies, most of whom -- in case you haven't already been reading this series -- aren't entirely human.

Juniper Wiles Does Not Want to Be Queen is another fine installment in the three-part (so far) Juniper Wiles series as well as the larger, ongoing series of Newford tales. As usual, author Charles de Lint creates beautiful, believable worlds, where fantasy is solidly grounded in our modern reality, one where bad things happen and good people sometimes pay the price, but where there are still good people to be found who will do their best to help.

If I have one complaint, it's about Newford itself, and the growing awareness of its human residents of the mythic elements that call the city home. Where once the faerie world was subtle and familiar to only a few open and creative-minded people, it seems in recent books like most of the city is in on the secret. In this book, for instance, there's a scene where a couple of faeries openly work their colorful magic while standing among a crowd of SWAT officers, who don't bat an eye. It's just something that happens there now, and there's less of a sense of wonder when wonderful things occur.

Newford now is in many ways more like Bordertown -- by which I mean the excellent series of urban fantasy novels and short stories set in a city where the mortal and fey worlds touch, written by the likes of Terri Windling, Ellen Kushner, Emma Bull, Will Shetterly, Midori Snyder and, of course, de Lint, and not the crime drama starring Jennifer Lopez and Martin Sheen nor the short-lived animated sitcom, neither of which I have watched -- than the Ottawa it originally reflected. Then again, Newford is not my creative sandbox, and this is the direction de Lint chose to take it. I would most certainly have this Newford than no Newford at all.

That one niggle aside, Does Not Want to Be Queen is a thoroughly enjoyable book, yet another satisfying visit to a city that, after so many years, feels a bit like home, with residents I would be proud to call neighbors and friends. Juniper Wiles has been an unusual but welcome addition to the usual cast of characters, adding a bit more of an action element to the tales. If you aren't already reading these books, you should probably get started.

[ visit Charles de Lint's website ]