Reunion [Book Review]

My friend wrote a book. Writing an un-biased review isn't really possible.

Over the decade and a half that I've been writing this blog, I've mentioned my friend Jocelyn many, many times. For good reason: she was my best friend during the formative years of my youth. As most of those formative years were spent in gaming-related activities (at least, most of the best bits) and as this is ostensibly a "gaming blog," Jocelyn is intrinsically tied to my personal history.

Of course, it's more than that: the people that touch our lives always have some impact on our growth as human beings. As we get older, that impact (generally) becomes smaller, as it is measured against all the other individuals we've encountered in our lives over many years. But when you're young, and your life experience is as limited as the number of people you've actually met, long-term relationships have a tremendous hand in shaping one's developing personality. Or so I'd hypothesize as it was certainly true in my case.

So, the novel: Reunion by Jocelyn Lindsay. I would describe it as "YA fantasy fiction written for middle-aged Gen-Xers." Which probably sounds less than complimentary (on a number of levels), but it's an honest description and will certainly be right in the wheelhouse of some folks.

I don't read much fiction these days. Well, I don't read much anything these days, if you're talking about books. And, yet, as I say that there's a number of works of fiction stacked on my nightstand. Harold Lamb's Wolf of the Steppes. ERB's Tarzan and the City of Gold. Alistair MacLean's Where Eagles Dare. Miller's A Canticle for Leibowitz. Space Viking by H. Beam Piper.  A lot of old books...and, in the case of Leibowitz, some that I've read before (multiple times!).

Of course, there's also "new" fiction. Gail Simone's Red Sonja Consumed. Naomi Novik's A Deadly Education. Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell (hmm...actually, I recently shelved that one, having finally finished streaming the television adaptation of the book). These are...tougher...for me to get into. Not because they're poorly written, but because the direction these writers take are (quite often) not ones that hold much interest for me. It's not that they're young authors...all of them are about the same age as myself...it's just that...

I don't know. So much of it seems self-indulgent in a way that doesn't terribly appeal to me. Perhaps I care more about a good story and less about a characters' 'inner life' and thoughts. Or maybe it's just that the doorway into the protagonist's inner thoughts are so...mundane. We all have drama in our lives...things we bitch and moan about that really aren't worth the pain we cause ourselves hashing 'em...but do I read books to hear about other folks' drama? Just give me enough to understand the character and get on with the tale you're telling!

Reunion has quite a bit of this. The book is a slow burn with a lot of setup...the protagonist is coming back to a town she left behind twenty-five years ago, facing not only new (fantasy) dangers somewhat connected to the ones she fought in her youth, but also facing all the old friends and relations she cut out of her life, and dealing with both the fallout of those confrontations while enjoying the old camaraderie that rekindled friendships bring. 

As a middle-aged dude, it's a dance I've done myself, multiple times...although without the mosnter-fighting aspects. But I had coffee recently with a friend I hadn't seen in fifteen years. I went to a birthday party of a buddy I hadn't hung out with in 10. When my mom died, I got together with another friend that I hadn't hung out with since college (like 30 years ago). You live long enough, you experience this. Life is long and it meanders and we seldom retain the same tight bonds we did before jobs and marriages and kids. Seeing how our old buddies have changed...usually towards the decrepit end of the spectrum...reflects upon us our own mortality. Which has all sorts of different "feels" for different people. For me, it makes me wistful, melancholic and (often) maudlin...not my most flattering lights.

So...not my cup of team. Even so, I finished the book in just four or five days, the second half going much faster, with more energetic reveals and more active situations, despite interludes of characters taking the time to kabitz around kitchen tables. There is an ebb and flow to the book that feels very much like the life of a geezer in my age bracket...periods of reflection punctuated by high bursts of energy because shit needs to get done so I can get back to sitting on my ass and resting my aching back. Middle-aged superheroes. Yeah, if this is going to be a genre, at least I can understand it. And considering the declining rate of literacy in this country, perhaps it's the perfect genre for the aging literate types.

Now, for my regular readers, I'm going to make a gaming connection:

I've known this woman...Jocelyn...since long before she was a woman. No, we don't hang out anymore...she lives in Bellingham (where the novel takes place, natch) and the last time I remember seeing her in person was '96 or '97. But I know this author. And one of the most interesting things about reading her novel is seeing how the characters are all simply different aspects of her personality...all aspects I've encountered, years ago in our youth, through the playing of role-playing games, particularly Dungeons & Dragons. 

I can tell (mostly) which characters had their base behavioral pattern set down decades ago though our RPG play. And NOT because we were (like the 5E kids these days) trying to create "stories" and "original characters." Here is the thing that all the New School gamer kids don't seem to grok: our "original characters," back in the day, came NOT from creating an interesting backstory, but from playing ourselves in the avatar provided during the character generation process. You are ALWAYS playing yourself...but the act of playing ends up adapting your personality to the experiences of gameplay just as if you were living a different life.

When you roll up a fighter, you are still YOU...but you are you with muscles and armor and a high hit point capacity. When you roll up a magic-user, you are still YOU...but a you with limited (if powerful) magical resources, no armor, and few hit points. 

This shapes your personality. Forget alignment for the moment. If you spend adventure after adventure kicking ass on the front-line, how does that interact with and synthesize with your normal (real life) personality (i.e. the one largely shaped by your upbringing, parents, teachers, coaches, life experiences, etc.)? If you spend adventure after adventure in a supportive role, healing people (cleric types), how does that interact with and synthesize with your usual personality? From my experience (both for myself and what I've seen in others)...given enough time in a particular vehicle, your character's 'character' will change drastically, depending on what happens over the course of campaign play. It's not that you suddenly "invented" an OC out of whole cloth...it's just YOU, living out your life in a different body. And because of the sheer variety of PC options (not to mention possible game experiences) each PC can vary wildly from one to another, even though played by the same player.

It just happens. It's amazing. It's magical. And no backstory required.

So, I've seen the characters in Jocelyn's book before...Meg, Bianca, even Sam (although, she was a lot younger at the time)...at the gaming table. Other characters feel like they were probably drawn from people the author knows (Diana, for example, feels a lot like Jocelyn's mother to me...). Which, as a reader, I find fascinating...although I understand that this will be far less interesting to people who have no relationship to the writer.

Still...do all friends of a particular author feel the same when reading that author's book?

[side note: there is a character in Reunion named "JB:" a fat, balding, middle-aged jerk...who gets punched in the face a lot. I found that rather amusing...]

Reunion was published in September of 2024. It's seems obvious that it was a long time in coming (the book is set in 2015, and the characters are the same age as the author). As self-made rich folks are prone to say about their first million dollars, "Making the first is the hardest." Jocelyn just finished writing a follow-up Book 2 (Reverie) to what she's calling The Hellgate Chronicles, which is scheduled to come out in April. If you're interested in "modern day fantasy" in the vein of The Dresden Files, True Blood, or the various White Wolf RPGs, this might be your jam. If you just want to look into the mind of a fantasy nerd from the PacNW who actually grew up in the time period that Stranger Things portrays (unlike the Duffer brothers) you might find this an interesting window.

Of course, I'll be buying the next book in the series: the ending was compelling enough that I'd like to see what happens next. But I am hardly an un-biased reader/reviewer.

One critique (for the author, if she reads this): I kind of hated the inclusion of the sword. I understand the necessity to the plot, but I didn't like it. Sorry.

You can find blurbs and links to the book on the author's web site.

Happy Friday, folks.