At Amberleaf Fair

192 pages

English language

Published Nov. 1, 1986 by Ace.

ISBN:
978-0-441-52009-1
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4 stars (1 review)

2 editions

odd and charming

4 stars

When I started reading, I thought this book was poorly written, but pretty soon I got into its rhythm and really enjoyed it. It's sort of a cozy mystery set in a sort of renaissance fair world with magic and adventurers, but with the excitement turned waaaay down. Someone gets ill, something gets stolen, a marriage proposal is turned down, a donkey gets loose. And yet somehow I cared about it all.

Meanwhile, in the background, there's all these weird little details scattered around that made me think that this fantasy world is really a sort of long-post-apocalyptic utopia-in-progress, a designed culture intended to become Anarres in a few dozen more generations. Everyone is obsessed with prices and exchange rates and money but their money itself is a kind of handicraft, and nobody seems to have more money than they need for a few little luxuries, and it seems like …