Category: Fantasy Publisher: Red Hen Books
ISBN-10: 1939096022
Type: Fiction
Pages: 352
Copyright: 2017
ISBN-13: 9781939096029
"In Crosstown, fantasy and folklore wake up in the bed of science fiction... and it works!"
--Bruce Holland Rogers, World Fantasy, Nebula, and Pushcart award winner.
Zethus is a sorcerer—a self-described spiritual thug for hire. He makes his living in CrossTown, a place where the manyworld hypothesis of modern physics manifests itself, where possibilities and probabilities overlap. Caught up in a web of intrigue as he investigates the death of his master, Corvinus, and pursued by agents that want to erase all knowledge of Corvinus’s work, Zethus discovers that the key to his master’s murder lies in the last project he had pursued before his death. The roots of this project lie deep in the past, at the origin of CrossTown’s fractured reality. Once he understands the stakes, Zethus must make the dangerous journey to the cradle of history. The price he must pay to find the answers he seeks will threaten everything he holds dear—including his own humanity.
“…CrossTown is full of thrilling action, of hidden agendas, of narrow escapes. It is, in short, a lot of fun. But it's also a new version of one of the stories we need to tell ourselves again and again: The hero, wearing one of his thousand faces, seeks the elixir, in one of its thousand forms, and ends up being surprised, elevated, bereft, and consoled. And we, as readers, take that same journey through heights and depths to arrive at contemplation. This is a novel that offers its own answer to the question of what we are to do with the gift, the privilege, of our human birth…”
--Bruce Holland Rogers, from an Introduction to CrossTown
Now a Finalist for the Endeavor Award! https://locusmag.com/2018/07/2018-endeavour-award-finalists/
Excerpt
Beware the road outside your front door, for it is both old friend and passing stranger.
-Excerpt from CrossTown.
Professional Reviews
Wayne Ude
CrossTown is a fascinating mix of mystery, science fiction and mythology/folklore/magic. Loren Cooper let us travel with the flawed sorcerer Zethus as he searches for answers through layers of realities, all connected by a range of multi-level roads crossing within, above, and below the town of the title. At one point, we encounter the powerful and frightening Fae of Irish tradition; at another, a community of vampires and other creatures of the night; at still another, a future world of high-tech weaponry--and more. The result is a wonderfully woven whole thanks to the story-telling, the pace, and the character of Zethus himself. Here's hoping for more adventures in this fantastic and believable world.
--Wayne Ude, award-winning author of Maybe I will Do Something: Seven Tales of Coyote, Becoming Coyote, and Buffalo and Other Stories.
Midwest Book Review, February, Fantasy/SF Bookshelf
An impressively original and deftly scripted novel by an author with a genuine flair for imaginative and narrative driven storytelling, "CrossTown" is an expressly and unreservedly recommended as an addition to community library Science Fiction & Fantasy collections, and a 'must' for the personal reading lists of all dedicated fantasy/mystery fans.
Kirkus Book Review
A story of murder and revenge set in a world where anything is possible.
Zethus is a sorcerer for hire in CrossTown, a place where the world’s infinite possibilities are all available to those who know how to walk the branching Roads to alternate realities. With the help of his Legion of captured spirits, he takes on jobs like banishing troublesome ghosts for pay. But he should have known that a job that offered one golden hour just for meeting with a mysterious messenger was too good to be true. The job tangles him up with the world of Faerie, setting a remorseless hunter on his trail. And then there’s the bounty the Whitesnakes’ cult has placed on his head. Oh, and the little matter of his mentor, Corvinus, being viciously murdered. Sorting out this whole tangle of plots and double-crosses, not to mention saving his own skin, will take Zethus on a journey through the darkest and wildest Ways in CrossTown—and require him to confront some uncomfortable truths about himself. The atmosphere is one of hard-boiled mystery, but the reader isn’t given enough information soon enough to make any educated guesses about the identities or motivations of any of the bad guys. The result is a plot that feels like one thing after another rather than a logical progression toward the truth.
This book attempts to tackle some provocative ideas about the nature of power...
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Reviews for "CrossTown"
Reviewed by Greg gdwelker@verizon.net
1/19/2018
Wow! An amazing mix of detective story ala Harry Dresden, world walking ala Zelazny, and characters like Spider Robinson's CrossTime Saloon. A system of magic that is coherent and believable, a concept of alternate worlds and possibilities that matches current high level theoretical physics, and characters that you can believe in a hope to see more of in other works. And just when you think that you have it all figured out - that this is a magic using, world walking detective story, Cooper blows us away by revealing the true scope of depth of both the character, the book, and her imagination and insight. Truly a book that I did not put down once I began to get hints of where this was going. I want more!
Right from the first chapter I was into the story. It's always difficult to introduce the world to a new fantasy world, but Cooper does it very smoothly. You are immediately in the middle of a mystery (with Vincent Van Gogh hiring a sorcerer for a... magical pest-control). Rather than make the reader struggle to figure out what was going on, Cooper is very good at giving a little more information in every paragraph as Zethus (the sorcerer and first person narrator) enters a dark and foreboding house...
I found Cooper's descriptions to be very beautiful, but since I felt like the first chapter is meant to give off a sense of dread and fear, the atmosphere felt a little muddled. Still, you have to recognize that there is a lot of talent going into this novel. As well as the general descriptions, the action/magic scenes were all very compellingly written. It was very easy to be drawn into this story.
I don't know if we need another over-confident, sarcastic protagonist set in modern-day fantasy (I think we can all agree the trope is a little played out), but the world and laws of magic (and the mazing Van Gogh cameo) certainly do add a lot of originality. I'm very curious about where this story is going...
CrossTown is a story about a flawed sorcerer trying to find out who killed his master, Corvinus. The character of Zethus is well-developed, and the story itself is interesting. With Faeries, Vampires, and Snakes (oh my!) there is a bit of everything in this story. It isn’t a fast read; it seems you must think about the worlds and what is going on within that world. If you like complex stories, this is the book for you.
I had a hard time getting into the book. It was confusing in the beginning, but got better as the story went on. There are a lot of things to keep track of in the story, so if you get interrupted often, as I did, it’s hard to get back into the story. Lots of description, sometimes to the point of losing what was happening in the story. It is more of a science fantasy than a straight science fiction.
Reviewed by L.L. Baker
12/7/2017
Sometimes, a reader comes across a book that does not so much take them from their troubles for a brief time but invites them in to shelter by the fire of its words. The story requires savoring as it cannot be appreciated fully by flying through the text. CrossTown by Loren W. Cooper is a story meant to savor. It borrows from many of the elements held dear by readers of speculative fiction from the myths of faerie, sorcery, nanotechnology, and more on the cross-currents of science and fantasy that combine into the story of a man forced on to the path of redemption by opposing forces.
Zethus, a self-described “spiritual thug for hire,” is a sorcerer who must find the truth of who worked to harm his master and why they sought to harm him in the first place. The setting is a fascinating backdrop of faeries, vampires, ghost, spirits, the technologically enhanced and the things that go bump in both darkness and light.
Personally, stories that can take old themes or myths and reframe them in an inspired way to tell their tale will always find a receptive audience in this reader. The author does an excellent job weaving the old with the new to tell an inspired, original story. If this sounds like the kind of story that would call to you as a reader, I highly recommend you seek it out. One can only hope there will be future volumes that tell of Zethus’ later adventures.
"CrossTown" by Loren W Cooper.
As a fan of everything fantasy, supernatural and general fiction I’m always excited to find a new author or book. I do have to admit it took me a while to warn up to this one but once I did I quickly fell into the routine of curling up and not putting it down until I finished it. The story starts off a little bit confusing for my taste so I am hoping there is story before this one. If not, one is needed just to clarify a few things. Otherwise, it is a good read for letting one’s mind wonder. For my person reading scale a solid 3.5 stars.
Reviewed by Pam LaCroix
10/24/2017
CrossTown itself isn’t just the setting of this action-packed novel. It’s almost a character that grows, warps and folds on itself physically and temporally. One of the neighborhoods is described as designed by “the architect Escher.” I couldn’t stop mental images of hands drawing themselves and stairways appearing to ascend and descend at the same time. With its diverse population of sinister, mythical characters it seems a universe that parallels Wyoming’s Hole-in-the Wall of the late 1800’s.
Zethus, the primary character, is a powerful sorcerer whose ruthless morality continues to surprise. As he travels through this fictional world he encounters beings even more threatening and dangerous than his CrossTown neighbors. He navigates the physical and temporal pitfalls of his quest with equal parts cunning and thoughtlessness. How he evolves as he delves deeper and deeper into the mystery is every bit as important as the solution to the mystery.
Cooper proves himself a capable manipulator of possibility, probability and reality. The story is fast-moving, exciting and thought-provoking. I happily recommend CrossTown to all lovers of time travel, fantasy, science fiction and alternate reality.
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