Finder (novel)

infobox Book |
name = Finder


image_caption = Cover, 1st hardbound edition
author = Emma Bull
cover_artist = Richard Bober
country = United States
language = English
series = Borderlands
genre = Fantasy novel
publisher = Tor
release_date = February, 1994
media_type = Print (hardbound & paperback)
pages = 317 pp (first edition, hardbound)
isbn = ISBN 0-312-85418-8 (ISBN 0-312-86291-1 pb)
preceded_by =
followed_by = Finder is a fantasy fiction novel written by Emma Bull and published in 1994.

etting

The Borderlands setting of Finder is the collaborative creation of several authors, including Will Shetterley---Emma Bull's husband. It posits the abrupt intrusion of Elfland, a walled territory of unspecified extent, into the everyday World. Erratic leakage of magical effects across its edge has left an abandoned zone, The Borderlands, including at least one abandoned settlement: Bordertown. Though not so large a place as Minneapolis, where the author's War for the Oaks is set, this context puts Finder into the urban fantasy category. Bordertown is populated by misfits from both World and Elfland, living in a near-anarchy that includes volunteer collectives running restaurants, grouchy artisans making paper, and assorted artists making odd adornments, all sympathetically described.

Character & Plot Summary

The main point-of-view character has renamed himself 'Orient', in the sense of 'align directions', on arrival in Bordertown. He is nicknamed "Finder" for his magical gift that lets him---or compels him to---locate things and people. His working partner is Tick-Tick, an elf woman whose gift for making and fixing technical things was as disturbing to her parents as Orient's talent was to his. A mysterious death opens the plot, making it something of a murder mystery as well as fantasy, and Orient's collaboration with volunteer cop Sunny Rico and her working partner Linn, also an elf, adds a police procedural element. Romance creeps in as Orient and Sunny cope with the plot's sequence of disasters.

The opening death appears to be a drug-related killing, the drug in question being aimed at elf-wannabees from the human population. It does indeed make those who take it look more elf-like, if not so healthy as most elves, but then kills them. However, when both Tik-Tik and Linn fall ill along with many of the elvish residents of Bordertown, the drug-affected humans are understood to be carriers for a virulent mutation of a known minor disease of elves. Discovery of just who has let this plague loose and with what motivation takes the plot to its close.

ample Dustcover Review

"Between Finder's crystal glitter of fairy dust and its hardboiled copshow edge there are some very real people, with stories that mean something and lives that matter. EMMA BULL IS "REALLY" GOOD."- Neil Gaiman, author of The Sandman (Vertigo)