Welcome to the Bordertown reread. Today’s post looks at the second of the anthologies published in this shared world, Bordertown. Unlike Borderland, which I read for the first time just before starting this series of posts, I’ve read Bordertown before, many times.  I don’t remember exactly if it was this book or Elsewhere that was my way into Bordertown, but I do remember that once I got there, I never wanted to leave.

“There’s always been places that called to people.” So says Orient, in “Danceland,” the novella by Emma Bull and Will Shetterly that opens Bordertown, the second of the anthologies set in the shared world of the Borderlands. Bordertown, the city on the edge of the Borderlands, that half-magic place between the Elflands and the World, is one of the places that calls to people. The kind of people it calls to, and what they become when they arrive there, is what Bordertown is about.

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Welcome back to the Bordertown reread. The topic of today’s post is one of my favorite volumes in the series, the second of Will Shetterly’s Bordertown novels, Nevernever. As the copyright page points out, certain parts of this novel appeared in substantially different form as “Danceland” in Bordertown and as “Nevernever” in Life on the Border. So even if this is your first time through the books, if you’re reading them in order of publication, you’ve seen bits and pieces of this story before.

“Substantially different form” is correct – important parts of the events described in the two shorter works are completely new in Nevernever. Even when they remain faithful to their earlier incarnations, you see the story from a different perspective, and that idea—that even when you think you know how a story is told, that you know the ending and how to get there, sometimes there are pieces of the story that you haven’t quite seen—is an important one here. And if you’re rereading, like I am, part of that experience is almost always made up of noticing things for the first time. Stories change and make themselves different, depending on who you are when you read them.

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This is another post that isn’t quite what it says on the label. The anthology, Life on the Border, is the other Bordertown book I hadn’t managed to get my hands on during my initial encounters with the series. So this wasn’t a reread for me, but a first read.

You can see things differently, without the haze of nostalgia. As a refugee from Minneapolis (the winters, people), I laughed a little to see it described as one of the hotspots for today’s youth culture in the introduction. There are things that change between writing and reading. It wasn’t Prince I saw play “Purple Rain” at First Ave., but Amanda Palmer. But that shift in perspective doesn’t make things less, it just makes things different. And my laugh was an ironic one because, while it wasn’t a Bordertown book that sent me to Minneapolis in the first place, the choice to move there was influenced by a book by one of the Bordertown writers.

The thing that allows for nostalgia in the first place is change. The recognition that you are different, and the past is not a thing that can be gone back to. Contemplating change is an excellent thing to be doing when reading Life on the Border, even if you are reading it for the first time.

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Welcome back to the Bordertown reread. On the agenda for the day is the first of the novels set in the shared world of Bordertown, Will Shetterly’s Elsewhere. Elsewhere is the story of Wolfboy, whom we met in “Danceland,” the novella by Shetterly and Emma Bull that opens the anthology Bordertown. Except the Wolfboy we meet in Elsewhere isn’t Wolfboy yet, he’s just Ron, and he’s just made his way across the Border.

Confused now? Excellent. Let’s begin.

“You get a second chance in Bordertown. You should think about what that means, and what you want.” So Mickey, the owner of Elsewhere Books, tells Wolfboy (when Wolfboy is still Ron) on the train into Bordertown. Ron is not particularly good at listening. And he needs a second chance, and a third one, and many others, because he’s really good at saying something wrong, or snarky, or mean at the worst possible moment. We’ve read “Danceland.” We know exactly how much trouble Ron’s mouth gets him into.

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Welcome to the Bordertown reread, where I’ll be looking at each of the four original Bordertown anthologies, and the three novels set in that space between the Elflands and the World.

Or at least that’s what this will be most of the time.

Borderland, the first anthology in this shared world, was published in 1986, and was not the first Bordertown book I read. In fact, I had never been able to locate a copy until recently, so this isn’t a reread, but a first read.

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When I was in second grade, I received the Narnia books for Christmas. My parents’ room had a walk-in closet, and I remember sitting in that closet, my back pressed against the wall, my eyes squeezed shut, trying to will myself into Narnia. It didn’t work.

Yet even if it had, even if snow had crunched under my hands, and bark prickled against my back, I knew I wouldn’t have stayed in Narnia forever. That was how the story worked—you went, you had adventures, you returned. I imagined myself adventuring in Narnia, but not living there. I never thought about living in any of the places I imagined myself into as a child. Wondrous as they were to visit, they didn’t seem the sorts of places that might be home.

If I could have gotten to Bordertown, I would have stayed.

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