Review: Meet Me At the Crossroads by Megan Giddings, at Locus


As June wraps up, the third of my reviews from the May issue of Locus appears on the magazine's website. This review discusses Megan Giddings's third novel, Meet Me At the Crossroads. I reviewed Giddings's previous novel, The Women Could Fly, in the Guardian a few years ago, and was very impressed by what I found. Meet Me At the Crossroads, in which mysterious doors appear at various points on the planet, and reveal a strange, simultaneously dangerous and wondrous landscape when they open, is very similar in both its vibe and its quality. Like its predecessor, it is a gentle, slyly humorous fantasy that is primarily interested in how people live in a world where the numinous is possible.
[Giddings's] focus in Meet Me at the Crossroads is faith, and how people grapple with the numinous and unexplainable. And sometimes, how they do not grapple with it. Many of the people Ayanna encounters seek to explain and systematize the doors. A faith healer who claims to have been granted his powers during a trip through a door explains that they are a test of goodness – the people who die, he claims, are unworthy. Others rework their entire religious cosmology to account for the doors. The space beyond the doors is heaven, they claim, and this world is therefore purgatory. Many groups' approach to the doors is purely mercenary. Some cults use faith to compel members to go through the doors and return with materials that can be processed into drugs. Billionaires pay hand­some sums to venture through in what they claim is an expression of the indomitable human spirit, but is really a sop to their own ego. Commercial services emerge in response, selling the services of guides who refer to themselves as "door Sherpas."
Based on these two novels (and I should really get around to reading Giddings's debut, Lakewood), Giddings is setting herself up as a vital, original voice in fantasy. Fans of Kelly Link and Carmen Maria Machado should take note.

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