Territory
by Emma Bull
Tor Books/Tom Doherty Associates, 318 pp, $24.95

Territory is set in Tombstone, but not only has that title been used more than once, the point of the title here is not to specify a location but to tell the reader what’s at stake, what people are laying claim to, fighting for, and shaping by their desires that some ways run together but more often clash.

Emma Bull’s IQ must be several standard deviations above the 100 point average. (Is ‘standard deviation’ an oxymoron?) It’s not just that she checked her facts and did her research; she brings Tombstone to life again, and anyone interested in this pocket of history, or comparable ones, such as Deadwood fans, have a treat in store. Here they are: the tubercular Doc Holliday, Wyatt Earp and his three brothers, Katie Elder, John Ringo, rustlers, stagecoach robbers, salon keepers and kept ladies, settlers, drifters, and the denizens of a small Chinatown. Of course there’s a twist. Silver ore was the underlying wealth of Tombstone; the silver that underlies and runs through this story and transfigures it is sorcery, available to some, used by a few, comprehended by even fewer. The real story here is, who has the power, how well do they understand it, and how do they use it? Doc Holliday has power but he is one who will not or cannot use it; he will nevertheless attract and be attracted to holders and wielders of power. Katie Elder has it; she recognizes it in others and her own forms a glamour about her. Wyatt Earp is a sorcerer, self-made; he mines it in others and uses it as a currency for buying power for his family.

Then there is Jesse Fox, who is on his way through Tombstone until he meets up with his sometime friend and mentor Chow Lung, who is a physician in Tombstone’s Chinatown. Jessie has strange dreams and experiences he can’t explain, and he doesn’t want to hear what Chow Lung has to say about it. Another sorcerer is in competition with Wyatt Earp, and Jessie Fox ends up tangled in their threads. Even his friendship with Chow Lung wouldn’t be enough to slow him in his tracks if his wishes were all that mattered, but newspaper woman and widow Mildred Benjamin exerts a different pull, and he stays.

This book is the first of several about this time and place and these people. There was one point of slight confusion for me, but it would be a spoiler to explain it here, and the author says that it will be spelled out in the next book. Emma is clearly enjoying this new series: her face lights up when she gets to discuss it; and my enjoyment as a reader lit up mine. There were moments when I was laughing out loud, and people nearby asked me what I was reading. I love the moment of utter jolt when Wyatt Earp acts like a sorcerer, departing from the familiar script. The other aspects of this book that render it truly novel are Emma Bull’s consideration of the women in the territory, particularly the Earp wives, and the world of the Chinese immigrants. I have never read a book that so clearly showed the differences between the men and the women, even in books when those differences are the focus of the story. (Ursula LeGuin, Sherri Tepper, take note.)

If this review reminded you at all of Will Shetterly’s The Gospel of the Knife, well, Bull and Shetterly have been members of the same writer’s circle of friends since forever, and collaborators on anthology projects for almost as long, so an overlap of themes is one of those occurrences that makes reading SF and fantasy literature a coherent pleasure. - Chris Paige