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    The Case of the Toxic Spell Dump
    The Case of the Toxic Spell Dump
    The Case of the Toxic Spell Dump
    Audiobook13 hours

    The Case of the Toxic Spell Dump

    Written by Harry Turtledove

    Narrated by William Dufris

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    About this audiobook

    In an alternate America that runs on magic, a potential environmental disaster plunges an overworked bureaucrat into a deadly conspiracy of evil gods and darkest sorcery

    David Fisher pushes paper for the EPA in a world that's a lot like ours . . . only different. In this California-and throughout the alternate United States-all gods are real, science doesn't exist, and magic rules everything, running imp-driven computers and creating anxiety-inducing bumper-to-bumper flying-carpet rush hours. Unfortunately, unchecked magic use can leave dangerous residues, creating hours of mind-numbing deskwork for David and his fellow bureaucrats at the Environmental Perfection Agency. Now a leakage at a toxic spell dump in Angels City is about to complicate David's life in ways he never imagined, unleashing vampires, werewolves, and soulless babies. Even the actual spooks at the CIA concerned. But looking too closely into what might be more than just an accident could have David stepping on the toes of some very nasty deities indeed, imperiling his future on the Other Side . . . and on this one, as well.

    When it comes to creating alternate histories-and worlds-no one does it better than the great Harry Turtledove. The multiple-award-winning master of the fantastic carries readers on a droll thrill ride through a richly detailed, ingeniously imagined fantasy reality where the impossible is mundane-and absolutely anything can happen.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateDec 12, 2018
    ISBN9781977332622
    Author

    Harry Turtledove

    Harry Turtledove is an American novelist of science fiction, historical fiction, and fantasy. Publishers Weekly has called him the “master of alternate history,” and he is best known for his work in that genre. Some of his most popular titles include The Guns of the South, the novels of the Worldwar series, and the books in the Great War trilogy. In addition to many other honors and nominations, Turtledove has received the Hugo Award, the Sidewise Award for Alternate History, and the Prometheus Award. He attended the University of California, Los Angeles, earning a PhD in Byzantine history. Turtledove is married to mystery writer Laura Frankos, and together they have three daughters. The family lives in Southern California.

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    Reviews for The Case of the Toxic Spell Dump

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    • 5/5
      Great fun, in the same vein as the Discworld books but with Turtledove's alternate world skills.
    • 4/5
      A semi-serious adventure up and down the LA basin and SF valley from Long Beach to Chatsworth in an alternate 1990s where magic is used instead of most technology and carpets on flyways are the means of transportation. Heavy, very heavy on the puns which along with the sly renaming of local features is the basis of the humor, as the actual story is a possible end of the world as they know it as seen from the point of view of the EPA (Environmental Perfection Agency) agent. The gods are real and you'd better hope yours can protect you.
    • 3/5
      Hmmm. I've read this several times before, in the original edition; I just reread it, in an ebook version from Netgalley (in return for a review). I know I've enjoyed it before, and it isn't a bad story - but the puns and wordplay got a little annoying this time. And it's very odd that his alternate world, where faith plays a much larger part in people's lives than here, many more names were Anglicized in the Los Angeles (or his City of Angels) area. The city itself, the "St. Ann wind", the "St. Monica Freeway"...and many more. Didn't keep the full names, either (no Ciudad de La Reina de Los Angeles). The concept is neat - in a civilization based on magic, there are at least as many pollutants as there are in our mechanical/electronic society, and some of them are much (much much) nastier. On the other hand, there are some extra means of dealing with them... Turtledove spent a lot of time coming up with magical equivalents of our everyday gadgets - telephones run by cloned imps, horological demons to wake you up in the morning (but sometimes they get misadjusted, and laugh at you while you're staggering around trying to wake up), commuting on flying carpets (that, in the numbers used in the City of Angels, fill the air with lint and threads so that sometimes it's hard to breathe...). Our hero is a bureaucrat, an employee of the Environmental Perfection Agency who's dealing with a surge in birth defects (vampirism, lycanthropy, and, most terrible, apsychia (children born without a soul)) around a particular toxic spell dump. And then things start to get interesting... Overall cute concept, mildly interesting setting, OK characters, OK plot - nothing wrong with the book as a whole (if you have a high tolerance for puns - not Xanth level, but not far off), but not a favorite. However, I've remembered it (not in detail) and reread it several times over the years, so it's got something going for it.
    • 3/5
      This is best described as an alternate earth book, not really fantasy or science fiction. In the 'Angels City' (LA) of this alternate USA, (set in what felt like the 1970's) magic works, but the leftovers of magic must be stored in waste dumps. This is a sometimes humorous mystery/action novel exploring this alternate earth. There's no doubt it was written to give the author a chance to pull out some really awful puns and other word plays, but it still made for a decent story.
    • 4/5
      My reaction to reading this novel in 1994. Spoilers follow.A fun fantasy that gives rein to not only Turtledove’s cleverness but tendency for puns as well. The puns here are complex. My favorite ones are Angeles City for Los Angeles, the SWAT or Special Wizards and Thaumaturges Team, and virtuous reality for virtuous reality. They fit a fantasy world much like our own world but where everything is done by magic rather than technology. Hence there are flying carpets rather than cars; microimps rather than microcomputers; spellcheckers have a new, more magical function; and the magical world is partially protected by the efforts of narrator-protagonist David Fisher of the EPA (Environmental Perfection Agency). I liked Turtledove’s sympathetic of a bureaucrat. Fisher is conscientious, smart, underpaid and generally tries to do some good while putting up with writing endless reports, weekly and pointless meetings, and he admits the EPA is sometimes paperbound. The charm of the novel is seeing Turtledove recreate Southern California with a magical cultural base rather than technology. It’s still a polyglot of various religions and languages, but it still has aerospace companies (though here it’s Loki’s Cobold Works designing a magic “Garada Bird” for spaceflight), crime, foreign restaurants, and traffic jams. One company pays the expense of maintaining a cult to worship Hermes – god of thieves – as protection The plot involves Fisher, whose regular job is to draw up environmental impact statements on such things as the effects of importing leprechauns from Ireland into the “thecosystem” or whether the original California Indians Chumash pantheon should be saved from extinction by subsidizing a cult, investigating leaks from the toxic spell dump and uncovering a supernatural plot to bring about the Third Sorcerous War. (The Second Sorcerous War was fought by an apsych-soulless-Aleman.) Some bloody Aztec gods are trying to make a comeback with the help of the fading Chumash deities (I lked Turtledove using a seldom-mentioned, native Californian magic system). It’s a story of intrigue and kidnapping, arson, and murder with the inevitable big melee between magic wielders at the end. The plot’s not the attraction – though competently done. It exists to string Turtledove’s central conceit and complex, long puns along. (I also liked the spook – literally -- Henry Legion of the Central Intelligence.) Turtledove also takes a shot – in the context of his magical milieu – at those who bash Western rational, scientific culture and suggests that Amerindian culture was static and inferior because it could not support as many people as modern culture can given the same resources.
    • 3/5
      The master of alternate history turns his hand to a tale of a reality where magic takes the place that technology inhabits in our world. It seems that a spell is leaking from the titular dump - but things are not all as they seem. An interesting read, amusing for its analogies with our world.