There's nothing like the feeling I get when I discover a new writer. It's like opening a door to a brave new world. Sometimes I have to admit I don't like what I find on the other side, but then there are those rare moments when I get there and don't want to leave. Discord's Apple from Carrie Vaughn drew me in from the opening chapter and didn't let me go until I finished the book just a few hours later.
This is the story of Evie Walker, a successful comic book writer from Los Angeles, and her trip home to Hope's Fort, Colorado, to help her father Frank face his own mortality. It's also the story of Alex, a stranger who has truly seen it all who is looking for something he can't seem to find. Together, Evie, Frank, and Alex face new challenges as the mysteries around them deepen and things really hit the fan.
Let me start by saying that, though I love Colorado authors, I'd never read anything by Vaughn. She lives in Boulder, Colorado, which is only a couple of hours away from me in Colorado Springs. Evidently she's been writing about a werewolf named Kitty for a while now in a series of urban fantasy novels - the latest of which is called Kitty Goes to War. So how have I managed to miss her?
Discord's Apple was paced amazingly well. From the subtle beginnings of Evie's drive into the tiny town of Hope's Fort to the way she slides characters from myth and legend into play alongside the heroes of the comic book Eagle Eye Commandos, the plot builds and beckons the reader ever forward and back from present to past and back again.
But not since reading Dan Simmons' books Illium and Olympos, which managed to weave the Trojan War and Greek gods together with a far flung science fiction, have I seen those stories made relevant. Vaughn masterfully tangles the tale of Sinon, the liar who encouraged Troy to open its gates, with a different spin on the Greek gods that grants Sinon the curse of immortality.
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