Best 1991 Adventures (4)

By: Joshua Glenn
May 24, 2020

One in a series of 10 posts identifying Josh Glenn’s favorite 1991 adventure novels.

Emma Bull’s cyberpunk sci-fi adventure Bone Dance.

In a climate change-modified Minneapolis (or so one suspects), our androgynous protagonist Sparrow hustles by maintaining and repairing salvaged artifacts dating back to the “Big Bang”… that is, approximately the time we’re living in now. Like Robert Heinlein’s Friday, Sparrow seems to be badder than your average bad-ass, but exactly who and what she is we don’t understand. not at first. She traffics mostly in precious books, movies, and audio recordings. However, in the war between the Americas, we learn, the decisive weapon were figures with mind-control powers — known as the “Horsemen” — and it’s information on these that Sparrow seeks, in order to get rich quick. Weird things happen. As the story begins, Sparrow can’t recall the previous two days; she’s bruised and battered — what happened? She consults a Tarot reader — the book’s ten sections are named for Tarot cards, and is abducted by a dead man animated by what appears to be a loa, one of the “invisibles” of Louisiana Voodoo. (A nod, perhaps, to William Gibson’s Count Zero, published a few years previously?) The “Horsemen,” we discover, are not what Sparrow thinks they are; and the Voodoo-based community she encounters are rebels who need someone like her.

Fun facts: Emma Bull’s best-known novel is War for the Oaks (1987), one of the pioneering works of urban fantasy. Bone Dance was nominated for the Hugo, Nebula, and World Fantasy Awards.

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Best 1991 Adventures (4)

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