Greg Bear’s
The Unfinished Land is not your standard-issue fantasy adventure, even if it does feature a young naïf who travels across a magical, quasi-living landscape, guided by and encountering a range of strangely powered beings, all on the way to a series of revelations about the true natures of said landscape, beings, and naïf. There are also, to be sure, swords and soldiers, mobile forests, dragon-equivalents, a wizard, and conflict among gods or godlike entities for the highest of stakes. The quest-journey and the conflicts are mostly a framework to support something else, a kind of puzzle: what exactly is this land, what is its relationship to ours – the recognizably actual-historical world beyond its shores?
The year is 1944, and the daimons are rising. With the Inner Guard thrown into disarray by the German blitzkrieg, the daimon-born nefilim of the Scorpion Court gather in Paris, scheming to restore their rule over the mortal realm. Working as a double-agent, Diago Alvarez infiltrates his family’s daimonic court, but soon finds himself overwhelmed by his kin’s multiple deceits. Meanwhile, Ysabel Ramírez hunts a Psalm that will assist Operation Overlord, the Allies’ invasion of Normandy. Her objective takes her to Paris into the heart of territories controlled by Die Nephilim and her power-hungry uncle, Jordi Abelló, who seeks the same Psalm in his quest to wrest control of Los Nefilim from her father. When their paths cross, he abducts her and leaves her to the mercy of his Nazi followers. But Ysabel is as cunning and bold as Jordi. She knows only one of them can survive to one day rule Los Nefilim, and she’s determined to be the one to succeed her father as queen. Trapped in