Review by D. D. Shade   —   July 22, 1998

I'm sure most of you are familiar with large, metropolitan, inner cities. You may have visited New York, Washington DC, Chicago, Detroit, or Los Angeles. What was your impression as you walked through the streets or rode public transportation in these giant cities? Huge conglomerations of tall buildings and narrow streets with corner grocery stores or bars. Streets lined with cars ranging from Junkers to Jaguars. People hanging out on corners at just about any hour. Rows of town houses pushed together so hard they look like they're going to burst.

My first visit to Detroit, the Motor and Motown city, left me amazed at the filth and squalor forced upon the poor and homeless. A recent trip to Ocean City, Maryland, found the boardwalk strewn with litter from hungry vagrants searching the garbage barrels for bits of food and Aluminum cans to trade for a few pennies. Last summer my wife and I made a trek to Atlantic City, New Jersey. Here we found numerous empty buildings where the homeless sleep. Closed and boarded rooms that when passed gave off the fumes of rotting garbage, urine, and human feces.

And in the midst of the blight, the children of the city wander in search of daily bread. If I've offended any big city dwellers, let me offend the rurals as well. I live in a tiny, historic town in Delaware called Middletown. Even there, in the midst of the corn fields, we have our own little section where boards substitute for glass in windows and people go hungry and sleep in abandoned buildings. One need not visit a major city to find the less fortunate.

What's he getting at, you wonder, and is this a Sunday sermon? No, it's just that Megan Lindholm has forever changed how I think about discarded, disenfranchised human beings. What do you see when you stumble upon the denizens of the shadow world? Homeless helpless bums, drunks, bag ladies, scum, junkies? Do you stare straight ahead and not see them at all because you are embarrassed to be asked for change? Does it bother you to be stopped on a busy day and be asked for a dollar? The man, who hands you a card that says he is a mute war veteran, do you buy his 29-cent pen for a buck or step around him? I have done all of these things and cannot say I come forth every time I am asked for a couple of bucks. But when I see people less fortunate than I, I find myself wondering about their history and if somehow they are central to the order of things. Not in some "There will always be poor so there is nothing we can do" attitude" but more about how the eradication of poverty and homelessness should be our most important goal. And as I hand a man a couple of bucks and engage in some small talk, I realize that he's not so different and that the line that separates us is very thin.

Such individuals are whom Megan Lindholm calls the "children of the city." And when Megan Lindholm sees them she sees Wizards. Powerful Wizards, whose job is to look after the city and for so doing, the city looks after them (an intricate and complex system that would take too much space to explain as it is slowly revealed through the book). Every Wizard has a special gift and only one gift. It might be to offer comfort, protect the Pigeons, grant a simple wish, speak the truth, dance to music no one else hears, or to know if danger is near by listening to children's jump rope songs. Whatever the gifts, there are prices to be paid for the magic. They can be taxing or trivial but the price for not paying is high.

This is the story of a reluctant Wizard who must find his magic again to save the city of Seattle. It is also the story of a man's search for himself. A search to find out what it means to be called Wizard. A homeless, Vietnam veteran who's forgotten his past (and name) and lives only to feed the Pigeons and survive another day. This is a man who receives real fortunes from the Gypsy mannequin who moves her arm over the spread out cards for a nickel. A man who can sit by people on the bus and tell them the truth of what they need to do to be free of what is troubling them. A man who not only talks to the mummies in an antique and novelty shop, but listens to the stories of their lives. A man who has mastered the art of blending in and getting lost. He must not have more than a dollar in his pocket at a time, there can be no women, and he must feed and protect the Pigeons. Seattle is his city. He knows it by heart. Every street, building and free handout. Soon he will put his life on the edge to save Seattle. He will fight the unknown unseen and unappreciated. And he will do it with love.

Megan Lindholm's book, Wizard of the Pigeons, is also a book of wisdom. Here are some examples:

• Children are people whom you will one day have to face. Therefore they should be treated with respect.

• When you are mugged, it's not your money or your life that is taken; it's your freedom. The freedom to take a long walk in the evening on streets that should be yours.

• There is only one rule about violence. Do whatever you must do to make it go away.

• Giving involves taking. You cannot give of yourself until you allow others to give to you.

• You cannot become a Wizard until you've given away, lost, or are willing to lose all that you have.

I was shocked to discover that John Clute and John Grant had little to say of Megan Lindholm in the Encyclopedia of Fantasy. She came to my attention through a few references in Orson Scott Card's How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy. Locus Magazine has not ignored Wizard of the Pigeons. In 1985 Wizard of the Pigeons was recognized in the Locus Recommended Reading List and in the 1986 Locus Reader Poll - Best Fantasy Novel (rank 17^th). The book won the same two awards in 1986 and 1987. However, Wizard's rank in the reader's poll went from 17 to 8.

Wizard of the Pigeons is a lost book. Not just because it's hard to find in used bookstores or because Amazon.com and other web resources can't easily find a copy - Wizard is lost because Megan Lindholm has decided to change her voice. Megan Lindholm equals Robin Hobb. As I read the interview with Ms. Lindholm in Locus Magazine several months ago, I learned that because her books were not selling well (or perhaps she said, "overlooked"), she felt she needed to completely change her voice. Not being a writer, the idea of changing one's voice is a concept that is difficult to understand. I have read the "Farseer" trilogy and found them to be fantastic books. Megan Lindholm is a great writer in any voice. However, for me "Farseer" lacked the Lindholm gift of dealing with everyday life and to make magic out of ordinary things as she did in Cloven Hooves (another Lindholm book I plan on reviewing). And I'll even be brash enough to say that I was disappointed to discover that "Farseer" follows the typical fantasy novel - a very un-Lindholm thing to do. So, although I'm happy to have Robin Hobb, I will grieve for the loss of Megan Lindholm.

One final word, perhaps my disassociation between Megan Lindholm and Robin Hobb is merely the difference between traditional and contemporary fantasy. If so, then I guess contemporary fantasy is my bag.

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