The island of Galveston had been baptized twice–once by water in the fall of 1900 and again by magic during Mardi Gras in 2004. Creatures were born of survivors’ joy and sufferers’ pain: scorpions the size of dogs, the crying clown, the widow who ate her victims. Galveston forever would be divided between reality and a city locked in an endless Mardi Gras.

World Fantasy Award winner (2001)

I probably should have started with the first two books in the trilogy but I’m just going through the World Fantasy Award winners and figured I would probably get into this book regardless. And I did. It’s not hard to pick up on the fact that strange gods and a perpetual behind-the-veil Mardis Gras were happening on the streets of a post-devastation Galveston in Texas. Indeed, the magical world invading the world has happened several times with varying degrees of recovery.

Gloria frowned into the Fords’ massive refrigerator. It had been eleven years since the Flood of 2004 had ended the industrial world, and with no spare parts available, refrigerators were becoming more precious—but of course the Fords had a giant two-door Frigidaire that would squirt out chilled water or ice cubes in two different shapes, regular cubes or the little half-moons Joshua liked better

We follow the story of Josh Cane, a young man with a chip on his shoulder due to the constrained circumstances of his life that are the result of his father’s loss of a pivotal game of poker. Add to this the fact that Josh lives in a world after the occurrence of a magical apocalypse wherein everyone has to work hard to survive, not only due to their physical circumstances, but also due to the perilous proximity of the magical Otherworld, and you have the makings of a pretty downbeat story. Stewart himself has described this book as: “…your Basic “Boy Meets Girl, Boy Loses Everything, Girl becomes her Own Evil Twin, Boy Is Framed For Murder and Sent Along With Sidekick To Be Eaten By Cannibals, and Things Get Worse When The Weather Turns Bad” story.” That about sums it up.

One out of every six Islanders died in the hurricane. Thirty-six hundred houses were destroyed. One man counted forty-three bodies left dangling among the trestles of an unfinished railroad bridge. Of the ninety-seven children in St. Mary’s Orphanage, three survived. The bodies of nine, still roped with clothesline to a drowned nun, were found washed up miles down the beach. By sundown on September 8th, it had become clear that there were far, far too many dead to bury. Casualty estimates went from fifty, to three hundred, to a thousand, to six thousand killed. Bands of Negroes were rounded up at gunpoint to load the dead and the pieces of the dead onto barges. By the time they got to open water it was too dark to work, so the blacks were forced to spend the night with the stinking corpses. When morning came they tied stones to the bodies and heaved them into the sea.

Josh’s mother was a pharmacist, but after the world changed, they became apothecaries, who made their own medications and healed people. But then they couldn’t make the insulin his mom needed. It was interesting to see how that weaved in with the magic world.

When enough magic gathered at a certain time and place, it could be catalyzed by strong emotion. From that reaction a precipitate would fall, a minotaur: a secret lover for the lonely, or, for the bitter or the dispossessed, a nightmare made flesh. […]  Terror and madness birthed scores of minotaurs: scorpions the size of dogs, the Crying Clown and the Glass Eater and the Widow in her black dress, whose touch was death and who ate her victims.

As Josh is slowly reaching adulthood in the poor part of town, he switches up having a social life to researching herbal remedies for his mother’s shop as the real medicines ran out one by one. Together they learned to make poultices from sage and plantain to ease the pain of cuts and bruises, brewed up damiana tea for old people with constipation, made chili pepper paste to ease arthritis, and experimented, cautiously, with morning glory extract for patients with asthma. His clothes were threadbare, but he kept them neat and clean.

He turns 18 in 2023, and that’s when he meets Sloane,  the daughter of the Grand Duchess. Sloane is a very sophisticated young lady, spending ages with natural looking makeup from before the flood and choosing clothes that will attract the right attention:

“How will you know if you have succeeded?” her godmother asked.

Sloane considered. “Only half the women will notice me, and none of the men.”

Society games and a lot of poker games. If you’re not a poker player, you might think of picking it up afterwards. The story of Sloane is contrasted with that of Josh, her childhood friend who has drifted from her glittering social circle into the slums of lower Galveston. While Sloane flirts dangerously with the power of Mardi Gras, Josh is accused of her murder and, along with his friend Ham, is exiled out of the charmed circle of safety that is Galveston and into the terrifying outside world. The journey of these three characters into their respective destinies forms the backbone of the story, with plenty of pleasing diversions and extraordinary secondary characters to flesh things out.

There are similarities to China Mieville (without the creepy, nightmarish horror) and Rupert Thomsen’s “Divided Kingdom” here, but “Galveston” is refreshingly original.