★★★★☆ Urban Fantasy battle

Ivy, Angelica, Bay

C.L. Polk

I picked up C.L. Polk's Ivy, Angelica, Bay because it is a finalist for the 2024 Best Novelette Hugo. For my money, the greatest service provided by awards like the Hugo and the Newbery is to point me at good stories I would otherwise have missed. This was such a case. It would not get my vote for the Best Novelette — that honor goes to Nghi Vo’s On the Fox Roads, but it wins the silver.

As the story begins our first-person narrator, Miss l’Abielle, whose mother has recently died, arrives home to find a waif on her doorstep. The story takes place in a world very like ours. Indeed, there is a reference to a new movie that is pretty obviously /The Empire Strikes Back/, which would place us in 1980. (However, Miss l’Abielle has a rotary dial phone at home — those were pretty much gone by 1980.) Miss l'Abielle, we quickly learn, is the magical protector of a neighborhood called Hurston Hill. And the appearance of this waif is the first sign of an assault on Hurston Hill. So we get a rousing battle, mostly conducted through magic, politics and money, and subterfuge. I throughly enjoyed it, especially the subterfuge. I like folks who fight sneaky (in stories, at least)!

There was one false note for me — this sneer:

She could pull the whole thing down and rebuild it to suit her, the way some people will take a grand old house built by artisans and craftsmen and discard everything that makes it beautiful to put up vinyl siding they don’t have to paint.

If you like old stuff, that’s fine. If you think liking old stuff makes you better than people who don’t share your kink, that’s not fine at all. (Sorry. It sometimes feels to me as if I’ve been sneered at by reactionaries all my life, and I’m out of patience with it.)

This was a good, exciting story. It was well executed — the action begins immediately and draws you in. Lots of cool, unpredictable stuff happens.

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