In Between

by R.A. MacAvoy

A new novella by the author of Tea with the Black Dragon, A Trio for Lute, and other fantasy classics.

Ewen Young is just another up and coming young artist leaving one of his art shows when he is accosted by three Chinese thugs. After he fends them off, they leave him with a message: tell your uncle Jimmy Young we were here and we could have done much worse to you.

The next day Ewen goes to visit his uncle, and finds him lying in a pool of blood amidst the smell of gunpowder. As Ewen rushes to him, the thug emerges from the shadows to shoot Ewen too. Uncle Jimmy has died, but Ewen has just started his journey through the In Between.

Genres: Fantasy

98 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2009

About the author

Roberta Ann (R. A.) MacAvoy is a fantasy and science fiction author in the United States. Several of her books draw on Celtic or Taoist themes. She won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer in 1984. R. A. MacAvoy was born in Cleveland, Ohio to Francis and Helen MacAvoy. She attended Case Western Reserve University and received a B.A. in 1971. She worked from 1975 to 1978 as an assistant to the financial aid officer of Columbia College of Columbia University and from 1978 to 1982 as a computer programmer at SRI International before turning to full-time writing in 1982. She married Ronald Allen Cain in 1978.

R.A.MacAvoy was diagnosed with dystonia following the publication of her Lens series. She now has this disorder manageable and has returned to writing. (see http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/non...)

Reviews

[deilann · Rating 2 out of 5]

Originally posted on my blog, SpecFic Junkie.

A completely forgettable novella with awkward writing at times, In Between didn't even leave me with a lot of thoughts. The whitening of East Asian religions did bother me, but not as much as the yawn-worthiness of the story itself.

Honestly, there wasn't much story at all. Just yanno, stereotypical Chinese-American family with a grandfather who wants all his children to be doctors and family members with an obsession for martial arts gets tied up in dirty business because of gambling debts. The protagonist gets shot in the heart, but gets revived, but then gets to go to the "In Between" place, which has to be explained away by multiple religious systems to make different characters comfortable.

Apparently this novella was included with another book, but with the writing, I'm not likely to pick up any other works from R.A. MacAvoy any times soon. It went something like this: Medium-length SVO sentence. Medium-length SVO sentence. Rinse and repeat. Maybe the reason I can't remember the story very well is because it lulled me into a sort of hypnosis.

[Dwagon · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hmm. I finished the book, and my first thought was: what just happened?

Anyway, this is a very short book. Read it for the atmosphere and general feeling of the characters. The characters feel real and interesting, like someone you'd like to meet. The atmosphere is every so slightly mystical. The writing is well-done. But its main weakness is that the plot is spare, and the book ends abruptly, too abruptly, with only a partial resolution. Overall, in keeping with MacAvoy's other work, but a bit more experimental.

[Melody · Rating 4 out of 5]

Odd but engaging little book. It's a lovely little fantasy though it's full of bloody deaths. It's a Buddhist parable and a mystery and a meditation on what's worth saving. It's goofy and sweet and funny, but underneath all of that runs a core of sincerity that keeps it from being a throw-away fable. I liked it better than anything of MacAvoy's since Tea With the Black Dragon.

[Meran · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was really a very short book, a novella maybe (I'm not sure what word count makes for a novella vs a novel, but the book was not very long.)

I liked it, wished the idea had been further developed... I do have other books by this author and will definitely read them now that I've read this one.

[Pamela Gibson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Because of delivery times, I received this a few days after the book 'Death and Resurrection' which includes it. The overall book D&R is very fine; the novella IB as a separate story was a signed limited edition.

[Gretchen Ingram · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a wonderful story but it seems a little like it's the middle part of a larger work.

[Daniel · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars. I picked up this novella after only recently finding out about it when MacAvoy's forthcoming Death and Resurrection showed up on amazon. This 2009 novella features the same main character, Ewen Young, as the forthcoming Death and Resurrection, though it's not clear from the blurb if Death and Resurrection is supposed to be an expansion, continuation, or reworking of In Between.

I would not be surprised if Death and Resurrection is a reworking of this story, because while In Between has a lot of great characters and there is much to like about it, the story seems to lack shape. There is the thread of a story underneath, with Ewen's uncle and the events that follow on from his situation, but for the most part it seems as if MacAvoy was just feeling out the characters here, getting a sense of them and the shape of their world. Details and new characters pop up far later in the story than one would really expect in a properly shaped novel. The ending, while not inappropriate, feels rather sudden. Still, at ~90 pages it's a quick read and I enjoyed it. I'm looking forward to seeing what she's done with the characters in Death and Resurrection when that releases next month.