who wishes to right an old wrong. There are also
strong romantic elements, which recur in most of
her other titles.
The protagonist of The Dark on the Other
Side(1970) has an unreliable psychic power that
tells her that one of the two men in her life is de-
monically possessed, but unfortunately neglects
to identify which one. A coven of witches de-
cides to use magic to discourage a newcomer in
the community in Prince of Darkness(1970), but
they are defeated by the power of romantic love.
The Crying Child(1971) has a variety of standard
supernatural events—strange sounds in the
night, a ghostly child, and other manifesta-
tions—but the individual scenes are not drawn
together well.
Witch(1973) is quieter but much more effec-
tive. A woman moves into a house supposedly
haunted by the ghost of a witch, and her scoffing
eventually turns to belief. With House of Many
Shadows(1974) Michaels seems to have settled
into a formula. There is another haunted house,
whose apparitions urge a new resident to resolve
an issue from the past. There is reincarnation in
The Sea-King’s Daughter(1975), but it is periph-
eral to the plot, which involves an entirely natural
danger.
Wait for What Will Come(1978) is much bet-
ter, another atmospheric story set in a remote
house whose new resident hears of a family curse
that involves a legendary sea creature. The Walker
in Shadows(1979) is also a traditional ghost story,
but quite well handled, and again the main dan-
ger comes from the living rather than the dead.
There are ghostly intrusions and witchcraft in
The Wizard’s Daughter(1980) and Someone in the
House(1981), the latter an intermittently inter-
esting story set in a haunted house, but Michaels
seemed to be losing interest in her supernatural
themes, which became less relevant with each
new novel. Here I Stay(1983) is another ghost
story, Be Buried in the Rain(1985) involves some
minor psychic powers, and the much later Other
Worlds(1999) invokes the spirits of the dead, but
Michaels has clearly retreated from the supernat-
ural, leaving behind a dozen very well-written but
unremarkable books, only a few which rose above
the ordinary.
Miéville, China(1972– )
Modern fantasy fiction presents an interesting
problem for new writers who wish to do something
innovative. Because its readership is perceived as
being very conservative about variations from the
standard themes of quests, quasi-medieval settings,
court intrigues, and heroic warriors, most new fan-
tasy fiction is remarkably similar to what has al-
ready been published. China Miéville managed to
blend the traditional with the new in his innova-
tive first novel, King Rat(1999), and he has con-
tinued to do so ever since. King Rat is an
extrapolation of the story of the Pied Piper of
Hamelin transposed to modern London. The pro-
tagonist is a young man unjustly accused of mur-
dering his own father who is rescued from jail by a
man with superhuman strength. He discovers the
existence of warring inhuman powers hidden from
the human race and learns of his own destiny
among them.
It was an auspicious debut, and his second
novel, Perdido Street Station(2001), is even better.
The setting is the city-state of New Crobuzon in a
world where humans and inhumans live side by
side. Miéville avoids the standard creatures of fan-
tasy; there are no elves, fairies, goblins, or dragons.
There are instead humanoid insects, a race of flying
birdmen, and a legal system that uses magical trans-
formations of an individual’s body as a form of pun-
ishment. The plot is complex and involves a crime
lord who wishes to be immortalized as the subject
of a piece of art, a stolen government experiment in
magic that results in a dangerous beast, and other
complexities, although it is often the city itself that
holds the reader’s interest. Miéville created an en-
tirely new kind of fantasy world, to which he would
return in his next two novels.
Most of the story in The Scar(2002) takes
place on the oceans surrounding New Crobuzon.
Bellis Coldwine sails off into semivoluntary exile
after committing dubious acts in the city and has
various adventures at sea before becoming a cap-
tive of a virtual nation of pirates who have created
a floating continent of ships lashed together into a
single enormous mass. There is an almost bewilder-
ing number of characters, creatures, and unusual
settings, but Miéville weaves it all into a single, co-
herent, and very impressive story.240 Miéville, China