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In 1985, the sudden death of Dinah Jefferies’ fourteen year old son brought her life to a standstill. She drew on that experience, and on her own childhood spent in Malaya during the 1950s to write her debut novel, The Separation. The guns piled high on the hall table when the rubber planters came into town for a party, the colour and noise of Chinatown, the houses on stilts, and the lizards that left their tails behind. The object list for this zone contains just a ring, a monitor, and a broken copy of the Crabmeat badnik. However, there is unreferenced data that suggests that the Ball Hog badnik was planned for this zone already. The Ball Hog object is based on its original front facing design, and can still be restored and loaded with all of its art and code in the ROM. This sequel, “The Hidden Palace”, to “The Golem and the Jinni” is on steroids……and as enchanting as can be. Fast-forward to the final months of the Second World War, Florence is sent on a mission to find out what happened to Rosalie. Florence’s mother has not heard from her sister, Rosalie, and her last known location was Malta. Yet, the relationship between Florence and her mother is strained, added to the fact that the war limits travel and Florence has had her own journey to recover from. Over time, Florence gradually accepts her mother’s wishes and I enjoyed how the two family members fused together on the island. The Williamsburg Bridge under construction circa 1900-1906 - image from the Library of Congress via Untappedcities.com
From the shoreline came a note of surprise, small but edifying. He pushed with the other foot, and then again, moving outward from the shore, curving slightly to the right; he leaned left, found his balance, and swerved to an upright halt. He looked around, pleased with himself, then took off again: one foot and then the other, finding a rhythm, building speed, the wind whistling past him as he curved out toward the center of the pond… Lastly we meet Toby, a messenger boy who is the child of one of Chava’s coworkers at the bakery. Fascinated by the oddball Chava, Toby and his brand of Baker Street Irregulars curiosity and ingenuity will eventually play a very consequential part in the tale. Wealthy socialite Sophia Winston, left with a debilitating physical chill from her brief affair with the jinni in the first book, breaks free of the strictures of New York high society and travels to the Middle East in search of a cure, protected by a pair of retired Pinkerton detectives. There Sophia meets a female jinni, or jinniyeh, called Dima, who has the unique ability to touch iron and a fascination with the stories she’s heard of the iron-bound jinni who lives in America. Dima promises Sophia a cure to what has ailed her for so long, but for a price.And there were a lot of subjects I researched that I ended up not using at all, because it was part of the stuff I pulled out. At one point, there was going to be a bunch of stuff on silent film, so I spent a month watching silent films. And now I’m like, “Okay, well, that was a month I lost, but that’s okay. I saw a lot of interesting silent films!” It’s always a crapshoot, whether it’s going to get used or not. Speaking of palaces, not all are hidden. The newly opened Pennsylvania Station, a glorious structure, is seen as a kind of palatial caravansery, a roadside inn for travelers from all over, where information was exchanged and commerce was conducted. It is a favorite spot for Ahmad on his urban peregrinations. He does not tell Chava about it, however, which makes Penn Station a bit of a hidden palace for him. Enough, certainly to merit being shown on the cover of the book. The ancient city of Palmyra, which we visit in Sophia’s wanderings, had once been a center of trade, and had a caravansary, but was mostly a ruin at the time of her visit. Palatial buildings are not the only old-world structures that echo in early 20th century Manhattan. The famous arch in Washington Square Park, erected in 1895, which was featured on the cover of The Golem and the Jinni, is reminiscent of the famous arch of Palmyra. The Greenwich Village arch is encountered again in Book Two. Cleopatra’s Needle, a two-hundred-ton obelisk, originally built in Egypt in the 15th century, was transported to Central Park in 1881. Sophia’s father visits it often.
Big rings that lead to special stages have not been implemented completely yet, but code and art for it exists in the ROM. He made her feel so young and inexperienced sometimes, so very unsure of herself. He’d lived for centuries, but she knew next to nothing of his earlier life, only a scant handful of facts. Likely he could tell her tales to fill a year’s worth of nights—so why didn’t he? Did it pain him too much? Or did he think that the stories would pain her? She knew that he’d had lovers, knew that he’d lived in a manner that humans would call immoral; that much, at least, he’d made clear. Did he think her too naive to hear the details? Worse, was he right to?Chava is a golem, a woman made of clay, who can hear the thoughts and longings of those around her and feels compelled by her nature to help them. Ahmad is a jinni, a restless creature of fire, once free to roam the desert but now imprisoned in the shape of a man. Fearing they'll be exposed as monsters, these magical beings hide their true selves and try to pass as human—just two more immigrants in the bustling world of 1900s Manhattan. Brought together under calamitous circumstances, their lives are now entwined—but they're not yet certain of what they mean to each other. This level contains the Spikes badnik instead of the Caterkiller badnik. Caterkiller doesn’t seem to exist in the ROM yet. Yes, this a fantasy book, and the magic powers of these supernatural creatures are a central part of the story, but just as important are the real, historical communities where Chava and Ahmad live. The amount of research done for the story is truly amazing. Very, very reductionistically, let us encapsulate the doings and cast of the first volume. An artificial woman, a traditional Jewish golem named Chava, is created in Europe, voyages to New York City circa 1900, and becomes a free agent, learning to fit in among humans. Meanwhile, in the same time and place, an ancient jinni, Ahmad, is freed by a human from his bottle imprisonment. Chava and Ahmad find each other in the lonely, swarming metropolis and become bosom buddies, more or less by default of having no other companions who could understand their peculiar existences. We experience the mundane and supernatural lows and highs of their lives in this lushly rendered era. But then the evil wizard who created Chava, Yehudah Schaalman, threatens their restless contentment until he is defeated in a slam bang climax. The Golem and the Jinni took place over about a year, but The Hidden Palace covers more like 15. Why did you want to move your timeline forward so rapidly this time out?
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