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The Face of Time is one of the Camille Bacon-Smith fantasy novels, with the academic who wrote Enterprising Women turning her ethnographic knowledge of fan-fiction conventions toward writing in the form herself. The book is contemporary fantasy set largely in Philadelphia, with a demon-touched protagonist and a story structure that knowingly engages with the urban-fantasy traditions Bacon-Smith has been studying as a scholar.
Bacon-Smith's strength in The Face of Time is the careful Philadelphia setting and the patient interior work on her protagonist. The fantasy mechanics are competent rather than groundbreaking. Fans of Charles de Lint's Newford sequence or of Emma Bull's War for the Oaks will recognize the careful urban-fantasy register the book is operating in.
The book is uneven in places. The strongest sections demonstrate why the academic study of fan fiction matters for working writers.
Three stars. A pleasant urban fantasy novel with academic substructure. Recommended to readers interested in seeing what an academic of fandom does when she writes in the form herself. The Face of Time Camille Bacon-Smith novel is best paired with her academic work for the cleanest sense of her project.
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