Synopses & Reviews
Review
Praise for Ysabeau S. Wilces previous books:
This fresh and funky setting is rich with glorious costumes, innovative language and tantalizing glimpses of history.”Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
Review
Early reader reaction:
"Reading Ysabeau Wilce is like discovering a new language, dark and magical and far more fun than the one you grew up speaking. Califa and her denizens sizzle to life on the page in all of their blood-soaked, candy-colored glory; Prophecies, Libels and Dreams is a wonder."
Kelly Braffet, author of Save Yourself
The Republic of Califa differs from the American West Coast in a number of small details, of course: the egregores and praterhumans, the Magick and Gramatica, the peculiar dynastic struggles of the Pontifexa Georgiana and her decadent postbears. But all these are the subtle and minuscule discrepancies of a parallel yet proximate reality, easily overlooked by the casual reader. Where Ms. Wilce shines is in her use of the larger effectsthose of tone, style, and voicewhich make her world so much richer than our own.” Paul Park
Ysabeau Wilce is an original American fantasist. Unique in vision, rare in quality, Califa is one of the few truly American fantasy worlds, owing as much to the Wild West, San Francisco Bay and Mexican folklore as to Shakespeare, Dickens and Tolkien. Read and enjoy!” Ellen Kushner
Praise for Ysabeau S. Wilces previous books:
This fresh and funky setting is rich with glorious costumes, innovative language and tantalizing glimpses of history.”Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
Synopsis
A Norton Award winner's debut collection of sparking and baroque stories of alternate California.
Synopsis
Praise for Ysabeau S. Wilce's previous books:
-This fresh and funky setting is rich with glorious costumes, innovative language, and tantalizing glimpses of history.---Kirkus Reviews, starred review
These inter-connected stories are set in an opulent quasi-historical world of magick and high manners called the Republic of Califa. The Republic is a strangely familiar place--a baroque approximation of Gold Rush era-California with an overlay of Aztec ceremony--yet the characters who populate it are true originals: rockstar magicians, murderous gloves, bouncing boy terrors, blue tinted butlers, sentient squids, and a three-year-old Little Tiny Doom and her vengeful pink plush pig. By turn whimsical and horrific (sometime in the same paragraph), Wilce's stories have been characterized as -screwball comedies for goths- but they could also be described as -historical fantasies- or -fanciful histories- for there are nuggets of historical fact hidden in them there lies.
Ysabeau S. Wilce is the author of Flora Segunda, Andre Norton Award-winner Flora's Dare, and Flora's Fury, and she has published work in Asimov's, Steampunk , and Fantasy & Science Fiction. She lives in San Francisco, California.
About the Author
Ysabeau S. Wilce is the author of
Flora Segunda, Andre Norton Award winner
Flora's Dare, and
Flora's Fury, and she has published work in
Asimov's, Steampunk!, and
Fantasy and Science Fiction. She lives in San Francisco. yswilce.com