An unlikely heroine on a perilous quest -- #Fantasy #Review #Vancouver @AndrewCownden

Blurb

Vancouver is falling down—crumbling into sand. To save it, Astrid O'Brien boards a bus to a parallel dimension, there to confront the demons of the city, and to answer the question: Are we who we're told we are, or who we decide to be?

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Excerpt

A three-storey building had collapsed into a pile of sand, and no one seemed to care. And that made Astrid angry. She wanted to walk up to every one of them and shout in their faces and make them look, show them what they’d lost, show them what they never knew they had. She was ready to start a fight with the entire city.

“Will you be careful?”

It sounded like Emily’s voice, but it was smaller, weaker, and much, much older than Astrid had ever heard it before. Her aunt was standing at the base of the dune, a tiny bundle of scarves before a mountain of sand, arms folded around herself. She was weeping.

“Promise me you’ll be careful? Where you need to go … I can’t come with you. I can’t be there to protect you. So I need you to promise me, Astrid. Please. Will you be careful?”

If there had ever been an anchor in Astrid’s life—some dependable constant that assured her the world was a thing that could be understood—it had been the unflappable fortitude of her Aunt Emily. Seeing her now, looking so uncertain and afraid, Astrid felt herself become fully untethered and set adrift into an unfathomable universe. Words faltered in her throat.

“I’ll try,” she answered.

Emily winced against tears. She bowed her head. “Alright,” she said. “Then this is what you have to do.”

 

Review by Lisabet Sarai

Astrid Falls begins with a challenge from the author:

The events of this book did not happen and its characters do not exist. However, the place in which they did not happen and do not exist is the City of Vancouver, which the author insists is a very real place full of very real people. Now, any work of fiction set in a real place must, by necessity, displace some of the real to make a space for the unreal. Consequently, the Vancouver of this story, although quite close to the real thing, is by no means authentic. The author, therefore, advises you, the reader, not to trust a single word between the covers of this book (especially not the footnotes*).

The asterisk leads to a footnote, which adds that especially one should not trust anything in parentheses.

This sly introduction captures a good deal of the tone of Astrid Falls. This is a serious novel masquerading as a light-hearted fantasy. While chronicling the efforts and misadventures of the hapless Astrid O’Brien, who might or might not be the Chosen One destined to save the universe from annihilation, Astrid Falls confronts issues like racism, community, environmental destruction and the meaningless alienation of modern life.

Twenty-something Astrid is an unlikely heroine: awkwardly tall, so pale-skinned that the sun fries her to a crisp in minutes, afflicted with anxieties that lead her to avoid people to the greatest extent possible. She works as the only clerk in an umbrella shop (a fine occupation during Vancouver’s rainy season), has been going to college (but didn’t have the energy to register for the current semester), lives with her father (but barely talks to him) and can’t even remember what her mother does for a living. Addicted to social media but fighting that compulsion, she’s largely isolated from humanity.

And yet, it appears, it is her job to save humanity. To her credit, she takes this bizarre and obviously doomed quest seriously. Indeed, it finally gives her a mission in life. Struggling against apparently insuperable odds, she acquires a following of individuals as broken and lonely as she is. As the city literally crumbles into piles of sand, she and her hapless entourage struggle against insidious evil as well as their own prejudices.

The book overflows with startling and original ideas. It swings widely from irony through slapstick to horror. We’re not allowed to forget that the fate of the universe hangs by a thread, even when Astrid and her band of reluctant heroes and heroines seem trapped in absurdity. Meanwhile, almost every page features the not-to-be-trusted footnotes.

The story is a bit dizzying. I couldn’t quite decide how much of this was deliberate, how much a symptom of the author’s effervescent imagination. The book has the distinctive hallmarks of a first novel: occasional rough edges and breathless sincerity.

Overall, I hugely enjoyed Astrid Falls. It also left me with issues to ponder, as I think the author intended.

I do wish I were familiar with Vancouver, though. In the introduction, Andrew Cownden challenges the reader to research the truth behind the footnotes. However, no amount of research can substitute for personal experience. As multi-layered and challenging as I found the book, I suspect I’d have appreciated it even more if I, like Astrid, called the city home.

About the Author

Andrew Cownden is an actor and writer living in Vancouver, Canada. ASTRID FALLS is his first novel.

Website: https://www.andrewcownden.com/

Twitter: https://x.com/AndrewCownden

Mastodon: https://mastodon.social/@AndrewCownden

IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm2834364/

Andrew Cownden will be awarding a $10 Amazon/BN gift card to a randomly drawn winner.

 

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