Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Twelve Fair Kingdoms | 1981 | Suzette Haden Elgin | Buy |
| 2 | The Grand Jubilee | 1981 | Suzette Haden Elgin | Buy |
| 3 | And Then There’ll Be Fireworks | 1981 | Suzette Haden Elgin | Buy |
| 4 | Yonder Comes The Other End of Time | 1986 | Suzette Haden Elgin | Buy |
The Ozark trilogy, comprising Twelve Fair Kingdoms (1981), The Grand Jubilee (1981), and And Then There’ll Be Fireworks (1981), grew out of Suzette Haden Elgin’s interest in Ozark culture and folk traditions. The premise takes a science-fictional scenario, a colonial planet settled by human emigrants, and populates it with characters who practice Ozark-flavored magic and speak in a distinctive regional dialect. The books have a light, satirical quality quite different from the political seriousness of the Native Tongue trilogy.
The main character, Responsible of Brightwater, is a young woman charged with maintaining the magical balance of the planet’s twelve kingdoms. The trilogy’s humor comes partly from the collision between its genre-spanning premise and the very specific cultural texture of its Ozark setting. All three volumes appeared in the same year, giving readers the complete story in a single publishing season.
Yonder Comes The Other End of Time (1986), sometimes associated with this series, introduces different characters and a crossover with the Coyote Jones universe, connecting Elgin’s two main science fiction settings.