Is Our Writer’s Learning? Windmaster’s Bane

Continuing my efforts to find comps for Southern Discomfort, I reread an old favorite, Windmaster’s Bane by Tom Deitz, for the first time in close to 40 years.Like my book, Deitz’s deals with elves in Georgia, though in rural Etowah County rather than the small town of Pharisee (both fictional). It turns out the roads that run between Faerie’s realms and Earth include a long stretch running through the South (there’s some stuff about how this ties in with Cherokee folklore). High-schooler David Sullivan spots a faerie rade (a horseback procession) and unfortunately pisses off Ailill, the windmaster of the title. After besting Ailill in a riddle game, David assumes the fae will move on. Ailill, however, feels humiliated and wants payback. Things escalate from there until David has no choice but to journey into the otherworld with his friends and settle things.

Coming out a year before Emma Bull’s War for the Oaks, the mix of fairy lore with a real-world setting was a breath of fresh air when I first read it; rereading now, it holds up well, whereas Bull’s book, as noted at the link, didn’t work for me. The biggest flaw I see now is that Windmaster’s Bane has an all white, all straight cast. It’s not implausible that in 1986, David’s social circle doesn’t include any POC or gay people, but it still bugs me. Working on Southern Discomfort I realized I could plausibly keep Pharisee all white but that felt like a cop-out on my part, so I didn’t.

A second problem is that Ailill has no personality but evil. He wants to pay back David for besting him but he hates the rest of humanity too, itching to seize power in Faerie and launch a war against mortals — not that he likes the other sidhe much either. Given there’s a dog in the story, I’m amazed Ailill never gets around to kicking it.

Despite the similarity between this book and my elves-in-the-south story, Deitz wasn’t an inspiration for me (that was Mercedes Lackey’s Serrated Edge books about elves in California, even though I liked Deitz more). The book would fit as a comp but I’m not sure anyone would be impressed: the series wrapped up in 1999 and the late Deitz hasn’t had anything published in about 20 years. It’s still in print, but even so …

But I still enjoyed rereading it.

#SFWApro. Cover by Tim White, all rights to image remain with current holders.