Friday, November 24, 2017

Fiction Review: Elusive by J.M. Bailey

Elusive: A Forever Journey

2015
  • CreateSpace
  • 196 pp. 

J. M. Bailey rounds out her Elusive trilogy in a very satisfying third act that leaves space for future sequels.  Our hero, Anna, and the Sas-kay she lives with must eventually collide with the human world, and they do, when Anna's troubled but beloved husband comes to find her and when Anna sees a chance to steal some human luxuries and makes the foolish presumption no one will chase her.  This trilogy is the best fiction I've read about contact with sasquatch and one human's effort to bridge a divide many centuries old.  The sasquatch, which are a variant of an ancient human race in this take, sometimes seem a little too "modern-human" in their thoughts, and they have a couple of abilities that no real primate does, but their emotions and superbly portrayed, and in these novels they work as a believable culture of hominids devoted to avoiding our own.  It will surprise no one that Anna ends up in a position where she has to choose the direction of her life,  and I won't spoil the suspense there.  What makes the choice difficult is that Anna herself has evolved from the profane and sometimes self-centered woman of the first book to someone who thinks about the welfare of others -  human and non-human.  Bailey is a sasquatch-hunter herself and an excellent writer, and she works in all kinds of detail about the natural world of the Pacific Northwest and where these creatures would fit into it.  


No comments: