Chrysanthemum: Nope.
Quinen: And why not?
Chrysanthemum: The sunset was pretty. It’s hard to find pretty things nowadays. It’s all hidden.
Quinen: I think that makes them even prettier.
Urban Reverie
is a Web Serial Novel written by Joaquin Kyle Saavedra, with the cover art by Adel Ocampo. It updates every week, serialized on Wordpress, currently on its second arc. It is set within the Universe of the Oeuvre, on the Material Plane of the Mund.
The story focuses on the lives of Chrysanthemum and Quinen, living in a City of Adventure known as Throne City, as they try to survive in a cutthroat world. Chrysanthemum is a strange, amnesiac girl with glowing pink hair, who seems to have qualms about the modern life in the Third Age. Quinen, on the other hand, is a rebel. Given the moniker Warlock after a certain incident that caused him to be kicked off of the Collegium, a Wizarding School that floats within the city.
The work has been called as New Weird extensively by the author, but also fits in the category of Urban Fantasy. It has Cyber Punk and Urban aesthetics, with Magick powering computers and the plane of information known as the Datascape being a power source the Mages can use, allowing Technothurgists to exist. It's a weird mish-mash of Sci-fi and Fantasy tropes, bordering on Science Fantasy.
Read the first installment here.
The Reverie is not limited to just Chrys and Quin, though. There is also the Thousand Wisdoms Bestiary filled with stories about the various mythical creatures that exist within the Constructed World.
Tales focuses on shorter stories set in the world, but not limited to Throne City.
The Codex entry is the Cosmic Codex, an ethereal, Great Big Library of Everything of sorts made to show the more technical aspects of the Worldbuilding for the Oeuvre. The origins and the aspects and information about the Cosmic Codex is generally unknown.
Urban Reverie contains examples of:
- Arcadia: Avalon is this. With laws of physics governed by Contracts made between Siddivata (Faery Kings) and Anthropomorphic Personifications of various concepts and objects.
- Badass in Distress: Quinen when the Dissonance of his Magick Transported him into Avalon itself, where he was promptly captured by the Wild Hunt.
- Blue-and-Orange Morality: The Siddivata. They don't have morality, after all, since they're living stories.
- City of Adventure: So far, Throne City, capital of the Kingdom of Shen. From Tales, it seems Algol has this feel as well.
- Fantastic Racism: It seems like this is the case for the anthros (the most Human race) against the other Sapients. Seeing how the races are treated and how you only see most of them in the Slums area.
- Great Big Library of Everything: The Cosmic Codex, although where it actually IS is up for debate.
- Magitek: It feels like the Mund RUNS on this. Everything seems powered by Transmogrifiers, which are actually engines that "transmogrify" Tass, or solidified creational matter, into Diwa, which can be then converted into forms of energy, be it Electrical, Mechanical, and others.
- Reality Warper: It seems like the Dean, Hakumatheia, is capable of this. He is, after all, the most powerful Magicker in the Collegium.
- Sufficiently Analyzed Magic: It seems like this, but it feels like it's the other way around, with Science in the world being more like Magick.
- The Fair Folk: The Divata, essentially. The Siddivata are essentially the barons and lords, and they rule within Avalon over their lower subjects. All the Divata run on fulfilling a Narrative. They are made complete by a Story that they embody. As put bluntly by Uthurja:Uthurja: The Siddivata are not people. They’re stories.
- The Wild Hunt: Present and Eldritch.
- Urban Fantasy: It's about fae-like girls and Magickers fighting against demons from parallel worlds within a city that has looming skyscrapers and stacked squatters abodes.
- New Weird: With a fantasy world driven to the point of Cyberpunk because of Magical Technology that harnesses the underlying subatomic particles that govern Magic, this seems to perfectly fit in.
