Site Update: Update to the Review Page

I reworked the review page because it was getting a little unwieldy as it approached one hundred entries. I grouped the entries it into five broad sections: novels, collaborations, shorter works, non-Zelazny works inspired by Zelazny and a small section as well as news of interest such as the Locus award nomination for the Collected Stories. When I get a little more time, I'll see about putting them in a sortable table.

Because the new format might not make it clear what the newest review is, I added a link to the most recent one at the top of the page.

Roger Zelazny Book Review: Lord of the Fantastic

Since I'm running out of books and stories by Zelazny himself, I'm going to look at something a little different today.  Lord of the Fantastic was a tribute to Roger Zelazny, collecting a number of stories and personal reminisces from the people who wrote them. The stories are all "inspired by" Zelazny, and Wikipeidia calls it a festschrift, or an anthology that memorializes someone's art, usually written by colleagues. I liked it more for the remembrances than for the stories, though some of them were pretty good. The thing it reminded me of the most was a wake, where those assembled tell stories about the good times they shared with the departed, and thereby keep him alive in their memories for a little while longer.

I guess I was in the mood to write this review because of the conversation going on over in the post about the Locus Awards. I write this blog in part as a tribute to Roger Zelazny, and Chris said that similar factors went into the creation of The Collected Stories.

The book opens with an introduction by Fred Saberhagen, who unfortunately did not also a contribute a story to the collection.

The first story is "Lethe" by Walter Jon Williams.

I can clearly see the Zelaznian touches in the story. The story opens with a man named Davout, whose body is being broken down by nanorobots and whose mind is being uploaded in preparation for later reconstitution elsewhere. The narration suggests that this is in no way an unusual procedure, but rather just the way things are now.

He awakens on Earth and learns that there was an accident and that all hands were lost, among them his partner Katrin. The story goes on and we learn that Davout and Katrin had sibs, or slightly modified clones of themselves. (We have Fair Katrin, Dark Katrin, Red Katrin, Davout the Conquerer, Old Davout, and Davout the Silent) Sibs would upload their experiences to be shared with their sibs.

I like how the people in this culture supplement their spoken communication with mudras. It's a neat detail and makes this society seem more alien.

I like it. Davout remembers how he met Katrin:

On their first meeting, attending a lecture (Dolphus on "Reinventing the Humboldt Sea") at the College of Mystery, they looked at each other and knew, as if angels had whispered into their ears, that there was now one less mystery in the world, that each served as an answer to another, that each fitted neatly into a hollow that the other had perceived in his or her soul, dropping into place as neatly as a butter-smooth piece in a finely made teak puzzle - or, considering their interests, as easily as a carbolic functional group nested into place on an indole ring.

They started a relationship and formed a partnership, but their interests covered many disciplines, they cloned themselves so each set could collaborate on one area of study. I thought that was a nifty detail.

Davout is talking with one of Dark Katrin's sibs, Red Katrin, about the possibility of getting ownership of the downloads of her mind that Dark Katrin had made. I had two thoughts about this. 1.) The whole thing reminds me of Isle of the Dead and 2.) This exchange,

"Recent court decisions are not in your favor."

"I'm very persistent. And I'm cash-rich."

sounds like something Sandow would have said.

Also, gratuitous green eyes!

she signed, and turned on him a knowing green-eyed look.

It features a lot of what I like about Zelazny's work, the examination of what possible advances in human achievement will do to the human condition.

...I remember experiencing the download of a master sitting zazan once, and it was an experience of a similar cast."

"It may have been the exact same sensation." Sourly, "He may have just copied the zen master's experiences and slotted it into his brain. That's how most of the vampires do it - award themselves the joy they haven't earned.'

"That's a Calvinist point of view..."

Red Katrin observes, "...I can't help but think that surely after a person is a century old, any problems that remains are her fault," which is another line that could come from any number of Zelazny's characters.

Davout is not adjusting well, and he wonders if he should subject himself to the Lethe procedure of the title, something advocated by Silent Davout, which will replace his memories with facts, and remove the emotional connection.

Later, I will go mad, he sometimes thought. It seemed something he choose, as if he were a character in an Elizabethan drama who turns to the audience  to announce that he will be mad now, and then in the next scene is found gnawing bones dug out of the family sepulcher.

I like that bit, because it seems like it's there as an homage to Zelazny, whose degree was in Elizabethan and Jacobean drama.

I like it. It's a nice story and a nice tribute.

"The Story Roger Never Told" by Jack Williamson

In this story, a young Roger Zelazny is mistaken for an agent of an alien race, specifically, agent 850-28-3294, and I have to wonder if that is someone's Social Security number.

This story didn't really work for me, but again, the remembrance was nice.

"The Somehow Not Yet Dead" by Nina Kiriki Hoffman

Isle of the Dead presented a universe in which godlike terraformers reshape worlds to their clients' bidding. In Nina Kiriki Hoffman's tale of ghosts and science, a new player takes a hand in the process.

The intro above implies that this is set in the Isle universe. I don't know that this is the case, while there are certainly similar concepts at work, I didn't notice anything specific tying it to that setting, and Sandow was the only human world-shaper. Still, there is nothing preventing it and this could be set after Isle and Italbar.

It's neat though. The main character is trying to adapt humans to life on a life an alien planet. He tests the adaptations on himself first before propogating them to the rest of the colonists. The last time however, he went too far, and when he tried to eat the alien peaches, they killed him. He was buried three days ago. Then why is up and about, walking and talking? That's the question that drives the story.

It's nice. It's another almost-Zelazny story, and any number of passages would fit in seamlessly with his work

"Hi, Dreen," I said, I stooped, picked up a fallen peach, brushed green-tan dirt off of it, and bit. My mouth filled with an array of flavors and textures - mango, persimmon, peach ice cream, cinnamon applesauce; firm juicy flesh inside an envelope of fuzzy skin. The faint fizzy aftertaste of an intoxicant. "Oh god. You can't believe how good this tastes, Cranston."

I like the resolution to the story, too, that death and incubation in the soil of the world are the final stages in adapting to it.


"Calling Pittsburgh" by Steven Brust

Ah, Stephen Brust. When I make requests for authors like Roger Zelazny, the names that come up most often are Stephen Brust and Neil Gaiman. I like Gaiman, but Brust's work never clicked with me. It's close enough to Zelazny's stuff in some ways that the areas where it's different just make it into something I'm not interesting in reading. And he was apparently a good friend to Zelazny and seems like a decent fellow. I just don't like his stories. (Not that I dislike them especially either, though.)  I suppose he'll have to console himself by reading letters from his millions of fans while sitting in his hot tub full of champagne.

The concept is neat. There is a very high stakes card game going on, with entire cities being wagered. I also liked the note at the end from Brust, where he recounts Zelazny's sage advice that his short stories are simply the last chapters of novels he hasn't written. (This always reminds me of Kurt Vonnegut's fifth rule of writing: Start as close to the end as possible)

That's as far as my notes go, so I'll return with part two in another day or two.

Roger Zelazny Book Review: The Engine at Heartspring's Center

I'm not sure if I want to do another Croyd Crenson post, so while I chew over that, I'll put up this review of The Engine at Heartspring's Center.

The Engine at Heartspring's Center is one of those stories that keeps slipping away from me. I look at my list of stories I haven't reviewed, and I think "What a great title! Which one is that again?" and then I check it out and say, "Oh. Right. The one with the Bork. Why can I never remember that?"

Probably because I first encountered it in The Last Defender of Camelot Collection, which also features a story called Halfjack, which  also opens on a beach and features a half-human character named Halfjack, which is a much better name than the Bork, and there are some concepts are so similar in how I visualize them that I always mix up the two stories. (Also, "Bork" is close enough to "Borshin" that I also think of the creature of that name from Jack of Shadows.)

I can't think of a single Zelazny book or story where he had a weak opening paragraph, and the first lines of Engine are characteristically great.

Let me tell you of the creature called the Bork. It was born in the heart of a dying sun. It was cast forth upon this day from the river of past/future as a piece of time pollution. It was fashioned of mud and aluminum, plastic and some evolutionary distillate of seawater. It had spun dangling from the umbilical of circumstance till, severed by its will, it had fallen a lifetime or so later, coming to rest on the shoals of a world where things go to die. It was a piece of a man in a place by the sea near a resort grown less fashionable since it had become a euthanasia colony.

Choose any of the above and you may be right.

The story opens on the Bork walking on the beach of the euthanasia planet, poking things with its stick. He runs into a woman fleeing two men and rescues her.

"What is the matter?" he asked, his voice smooth, deep, faintly musical.

"They want to take me," she said,

"...Well?"

"I do not wish to go."

"Oh. You are not ready?"

"No, I am not ready."

"Then it is but a simple matter. A misunderstanding."

He turned toward the two.

"There had been a misunderstanding," he said. "She is not ready."

"This is not your affair, Bork," the man replied. "The Center has made its determination."

"Then it will have to reexamine it. She says that she is not ready."

"Go about your business, Bork."

The man advanced. The machine followed.

The Bork raised his hands, one of flesh, the others of other things.

"No," he said.

"Get out of the way," the man said. "You are interfering."

Slowly, the Bork moved toward them. The lights in the machine began to blink. Its skirts fell. With a sizzling sound it dropped to the sand and lay unmoving. The man halted, drew back a pace.

The thing that I like about that scene is how they address him, "This is not your affair, Bork," "Go about your business, Bork." as if he were an animal or just an unthinking machine.

I think it was a better story back in the day. Most Zelazny stories age quite well and certainly don't seem like they were written at any specific time, but I think this one is an exception to some extent. Even in the era of Raymond Chandler, the double cross by the pretty girl wasn't unknown, but now it seems to be the norm. Modern audiences are more savvy about these kind of things and when reading the story for the first time, I couldn't help but think that the big surprise would be if she were anything but a mole.

It's still an engaging read, and the dialogue crackles with the characteristic Zelaznian flare.

"Charles Eliot Borkman," she called.

That name again.

He halted once more, tracing lattices with his stick, poking out a design in the sand.

Then, "Why did you say that?" he asked.

"It is your name, isn't it?"

"No," he said. "That man died in deep space when a liner was jumped to the wrong coordinates, coming out too near a star gone nova."

"He was a hero. He gave half his body to the burning, preparing an escape boat for the others. And he survived."

"Perhaps a few pieces of him did. No more."

"It was an assassination attempt, wasn't it?"

"Who knows? Yesterday's politics are not worth the paper wasted on its promises, its threats."

"He wasn't Just a politician. He was a statesman, a humanitarian. One of the very few to retire with more people loving him than hating him."

He made a chuckling noise.

"You are most gracious. But if that is the case, then the minority still had the final say. I personally think he was something of a thug. I am pleased, though, to hear that you have switched to the past tense."

"They patched you up so well that you could last forever. Because you deserved the best."

"Perhaps I already have lasted forever. What do you want of me?"

"You came here to die and you changed your mind—"

"Not exactly. I've just never composed it in a fashion acceptable under the terms of Item Seven. To be at peace—"

"And neither have I. But I lack your ability to impress this fact on the Center."

The euthanasia centers make me think of the Ethical Suicide Parlors in Vonnegut's Welcome to the Monkey House. The woman, Nora is eventually moved by the Bork's decency and humanity and her ruse becomes the truth. She had been dispatched to bring him in, but takes her own life instead.

The ending hearkens back to the beginning.

Let me tell you of the creature called the Bork. It was born in the heart of a dying star. It was a piece of a man and pieces of many other things. If the things went wrong, the man-piece shut them down and repaired them. If he went wrong, they shut him down and repaired him. It was so skillfully fashioned that it might have lasted forever. But if part of it should die the other pieces need not cease to function, for it could still contrive to carry on the motions the total creature had once performed. It is a thing in a place by the sea that walks beside the water, poking with its forked, metallic stick at the other things the waves have tossed. The human piece, or a piece of the human piece, is dead.

Choose any of the above.

It's a pretty good story. I think my biggest problem is that The Man Who Loved the Faioli examines similar themes of love and loss in a much more compelling way. It's not a bad story by any means; merely one overshadowed by its older brother.

Roger Zelazny Book Review: Concerto for Siren and Serotonin

There's Been a Lull in my Zelazny book reviews lately, but here's another, at long last.

Concerto for Siren and Serotonin is the third Croyd Crenson Wild Cards story.  I'll touch briefly on the second one, Ashes to Ashes before looking at Concerto.

On reading the title, I couldn't help but think of Merlin's "Concerto for Cuisinart and Microwave" spell in Knight of Shadows.

Croyd Crenson, the Sleeper (first story here) wound up being one of the more popular characters in the Wild Cards shared world, to the extent that the Wild Cards website features a Croydwatch cataloging his appearances. Someone on a message board I frequent pointed out what should have been obvious. Croyd is popular because he can be plugged into any story, because he can exist in any time frame, and he can have whatever appearance the author prefers and whatever powers the plot requires. Even though there is a reference to Croyd in almost every book in the series, Zelazny himself only wrote four Sleeper stories, The Sleeper, Ashes to Ashes, the multi-part Concerto for Siren and Serotonin and The Long Sleep.

Ashes to Ashes was pretty terrible. I would be very much surprised if it came into being any other way than Martin asking Zelazny for a Wild Cards story and Zelazny hammering this one out as fast as he could type it. It's got a few clever bits (like Croyd checking his "cash cache" upon rising, or the bit where he inadvertently uses his power to impart hypnotic suggestions through speech alone.)

"Just what the hell is going on here?"

Croyd turned and beheld a uniformed officer who had just crossed to their island.

"Go fuck yourself!" he snarled.

The man began unbuckling his belt.

"Stop! Cancel that," Croyd said. "Buckle up. Forget you saw us and go walk up another street."

It reminded me of the similar bit in Preacher, though it came a full ten years earlier.

I also liked the exchange between Kid Dinosaur and Croyd. KD is a prepubescent Ace with the power to turn into dinosaur of the same mass as his normal form. He's skipping school to follow Croyd around.

 "Hey, how come you're not in school?" Croyd asked.

"School sucks."

"Now, wait a minute. I had to quit school in ninth grade and I never got to go back. I always regretted it."

"Why? You're doing okay."

"There's all that stuff I missed. I wish I hadn't."

"Like what?"

 "Well. .. Algebra. I never learned algebra."

"What the fuck good's algebra?"

"I don't know and I never will, because I didn't learn it. I sometimes look at people on the street and say, `Gee, I'll bet they all know algebra,' and it makes me feel kind of inferior."

The story as a whole is pretty weak, though, and all the swearing seemed gratuitous. I mean, my commentary here is peppered with all sorts of profanity, so it's not like it's something that bothers me, but it does feel out of place in an Roger Zelazny story.

Concerto is much better. The Croyd with the faceted eyes is the iconic representation of the character.

Hey kids! Stay in school!

It's a funny format. The story is divided into eight chapters woven throughout the book.

I

We open with Croyd waiting for someone who is hiring Aces. He meets a man named Mazzucchelli, who wants Croyd for something more than mere muscle.

"With that understanding, I want to hire you. It's a little more subtle than breaking heads, though. And it isn't any sort of simple burglary either."

"I've done lots of odd things," Croyd said, "and lots of subtle things. Some of them have even been legal."

I like that Mazzucchelli takes Croyd's special circumstances into account:

"When you go to sleep you turn into a different person, right?"

"Yeah."

"Well, if that happens before the job is done, that new guy's still got a contract with me."

"So long as he gets paid."

"We understand each other."

He flirts with Water Lily, his waitress and comes across as kind of a dick.

II

The chapter opens with Croyd following James Spector, aka Demise, an Ace who can kill people by making eye contact with them.

"Yo, Demise!" the man called. "I need to talk to you!" Demise stared, trying to place him. But there was nothing familiar about the man, not even his voice.

The man came up and stood before him, smiling. "I just need a minute or two of your time," he said. "It's important. I'm in a big hurry and I'm trying for a certain measure of subtlety. It isn't easy."

"Do I know you?" Demise asked him.

"We've met. In other lives, so to speak. My lives, that is. Also, I believe you might once have done some accounting for my brother-in-law's company, over in Jersey. Croyd's the name. "

"What do you want?"

"I need the name of the head of the new mob that's trying to take over operations from the kindly
old Mafia, which has run this town for half a century or so."

"You're kidding," Demise said, taking a final drag on his cigarette, dropping it and moving his toe to grind it.

Croyd is kind of a brutal moron, but I think that's a feature, not a bug, because I think that's how fourteen year-old boy with a drug addiction and super powers would go about solving his problems. He strong arms Demise, who gives him the little information that he has after some rough persuasion by Croyd.

III

Croyd enters the Jokertown Clinic asking to be put to sleep. Finn, the centuar doctor assists him

"I don't know how much of this is in the file," Croyd told him, "but I've a terrible fear of going to sleep-"

"Yes, there is something about your paranoia. Perhaps some counseling-"

Croyd punched a hole in the wall.

"It's not paranoia," he said, "not if the danger is real. I could die during my next hibernation. I could wake up as the most disgusting joker you can imagine, with a normal sleepcycle. Then I'd be stuck that way. It's only paranoia if the fear is groundless, isn't it?"

"Well," Dr. Finn said, " I suppose we could call it that if the fear is a really big thing, even if it is justified. I don't know. I'm not a psychiatrist. But I also saw in the file that you tend to take amphetamines to keep from falling asleep for as long as you can. You must know that that's going to add a big chemical boost to whatever paranoia is already present."

Croyd was running his finger around the inside of the hole he had punched in the wall, rubbing away loose pieces of plaster.

Dr. Finn helps him get to sleep and that ends the chapter.

IV

Croyd wakes a super strong albino.

Artist's depiction

He follows up on his clues and arrives at Club Dead Nicholas. I couldn't help but think that this is how investigations usually go in role-playing games and Mike Hammer novels, a little bit of investigation, but mostly smashing heads until somebody gives you the name of the next man in the organization.

Zelazny's observations enrich the story: Croyd rode the elevator to Aces High, regretting the absence of a power of flight on such a perfect spring evening.

He hooks up with a woman named Veronica and then goes on to investigate Danny Mao in much the same fashion he conducted the earlier investigation. Specifically, he beats people up until they tell him what he wants to know. At one point he rips the nose off of some guy there and ends the chapter telling him to "keep your nose clean."

Croyd's kind of a jerk

V

Croyd continues his investigation, such as it is, arranging an appointment with the next name on the list, St. John Latham.

"Who is the head of this new family? That's all I want to know."

"Why?"

"Perhaps someone wishes to arrange a meeting with that person."

"Interesting," Latham said. "You wish to retain me to arrange such a meeting."

"No, I only want to know who the person in charge is."

"Quid-pro-quo," Latham observed. "What are you offering for this?"

"I am prepared to save you," Croyd said, "some very large bills from orthopedic surgeons and physiotherapists. You lawyers know all about such matters, don't you?"

Latham smiled a totally artificial smile. "Kill me and you're a dead man, hurt me and you're a dead man, threaten me and you're a dead man. Your little trick with the stone means nothing. There are aces with fancier powers than that on call. Now, was that a threat you just made?"

Croyd smiled back. " I will die before too long, Mr. Latham, to be born again in a completely different form. I am not going to kill you. But supposing I were to cause you to talk, to stop the pain, and supposing that later your friends were to put out a contract on the man you see before you. It wouldn't matter. He would no longer exist. I am a series of biological ephemera."

"You are the Sleeper."

"Yes."

"I see. And if I give you this information, what do you think will happen to me?"

"Nothing. Who's to know?"

Latham sighed. "You place me in an extremely awkward position."

"That was my intention,-Croyd glanced at his watch, "and I'm on a tight schedule. I should have begun beating the shit out of you about a minute and a half ago, but I'm trying to be a nice guy about this. What should we do, counselor?"

Latham gives him the name, and Croyd calls Veronica to tell her that he thinks he's almost done, and they can take some time off together, but she's really sick.

While Croyd is walking home there, he is attacked by a guy with some knives, this coming almost simultaneous with a drive by. Croyd overpowers the attacker and and makes lemonade out of his lemons.

Croyd moved forward and stuffed the man he held into the car. He did not fit through the window easily, but Croyd pushed hard and he went in nevertheless, losing only a few pieces along the way. His final screams were mixed with the roar of the engine as the car jumped forward and raced off.

He goes to collect his payment, and gives them the name he was hired to find. I like how the chapter ends.

The expected question followed: Where could she be found?

"This I do not know," Croyd replied. "Chris asked me for a name, not for an address. You want to hire me to get that for you, too, I suppose I could do it, though it would be cheaper to use your own talent."

This drew some surly responses, and Croyd shrugged, said goodnight, and walked out, stepping up his pace to the blur level as the muscle near the door looked about, as if for orders.

It was not until a couple of blocks later that a pair of such street troops caught up and attempted to brace him for a refund. He tore out a sewer grating, stuffed their bodies down through the opening and replaced it, for his final bit of subtlety before closing the books on this one.

VI

He heads back to his apartment, where there is no Veronica, but there is a Bengal tiger, which Croyd smacks with a table, whereupon it turns into an origami tiger.

Then after this, he sees his name in Lights in Times Square, with a message to call Dr. Tachyon. Croyd kind of meanders through town, being attacked by men wearing the face of Senator Hartmann, Croyd questions one of them and when he is not satisfied with the answers, he responds thusly: 

"This is a political statement," Croyd said as he raised the gory Hartmann and tossed him after the others. "See you in November, motherfuckers!"

which made me chuckle.

Croyd sees a number of people in surgical masks and one of them tells him about a new outbreak of the Wild Card virus.  He runs into the joker called Snotman (*sigh*) and tells him his story.

VII

This chapter begins where the previous one ended. Snotman falls ill and eventually passes out, so Croyd finds a place for him to sleep it off. Snotman begins changing as he sleeps, and Croyd realizes that the joker has somehow become reinfected with the Wild Card virus.

Croyd grows more paranoid, a condition that is not helped by the arrival of authorities outside his refuge.

VIII

Croyd flees, barely coherent.

He hurled chunks of concrete, broke streetlights, and dashed from alley to doorway. He crouched within parked cars. He watched the choppers go by, listening to the steady phut-phut of their blades. Every now and then he heard parts of appeals over some loudspeaker or other. They were talking to him, lying to him, asking him to turn himself in. He chuckled. That would be the day.

He breaks into a Wild Card museum, tearing open the armored vehicle previously used by the superhero the Turtle and falling asleep within.

The story doesn't work that well as a stand alone work, but it wasn't written as one. As a Wild Cards story and a framing mechanism, I think it's pretty decent. It's by no means great, but it's decent pulpy fun.

Take me out to the Ball Game

We took Lily out to the ball game on Friday night, along with her favorite little cousin. Lily spent the day with Aunt Lori and when we called ahead to say we were on our way, we were informed that they were so excited that they were waiting out for us on the front porch.

We made it to the stadium. It was for the Iron Pigs, the local minor league team. I had gone to a couple minor league games in Florida, but those were in tiny stadiums with bleachers. This was an honest-to-god ballpark with outrageous food prices and all.

Lily didn't really enjoy the game. She didn't have a nap earlier that day, and her bad mood was only exacerbated by the fact that she was too small to ride on the big inflatable slide when we got to the playground. She started crying these big blubbery tears and I felt terrible for her.

Her mood improved a little and we ran into my friend Frederick and Jen's friend Karen. Another of my friends was going to go up to the game, but she got sick and had to cancel and Eric had been up there the previous night. It seems like everyone I know found their way up there last week.

Lily conked out in the 7th inning, our team was losing and we looking at the sold out crowd thinking about how traffic was going to be, so we took off early. As we were putting her into the seat, she woke up briefly and asked about the fireworks, which were going to be held after the game. We told her that they were put off until July 4th weekend, and she seemed to accept that as she settled down to full sleepiness. 

Lily's cousin was sleeping over with us, so when we got home, we put Lily to bed, and Chris and I played some video games. I downloaded Little Big Planet as part of Sony's "Sorry for giving away all your personal information" campaign, and it is really a super fun game. Lily enjoyed designing the little sack girl and making her smile, and Chris and I had a wild time running through each level.

When the time came to take them home, what's usually a fifteen minute trip took almost an hour and a half, because of an accident that closed a big chunk of the highway. Both kids were really good though, even though they were bored and miserable.

Lily woke up in a good mood on Sunday morning (!) and decided that she wanted to clean her room (!!). She did that for a while, then she took off for church with Jen and then we all hung around the house for a bit until it was time to go to another cousin's birthday party. She had invited us to her surprise party last weekend, and strangely, didn't seem too surprised when she saw us!

The party was nice enough. There was one little girl there who was acting like a little monster, though. Lily has two cousins from this branch of the family, the one who was turning five, and one who is not quite three. I always try to keep an eye on the smaller kids at these kind of things. The little monster girl's balloon popped, so she just took one from the two-year-old, who was playing contentedly with her own balloon. I didn't want to discipline someone else's kid (and I didn't know to which adult she belonged), so I just grabbed an extra balloon and gave it to Lily's cousin. I did resolve to keep a close watch on this kid however.

That paid off when she started going through the bags of personal stuff we had on the blanket we were using. Lily was closer and she said to the little kid "That's my toy. Do you want me to show you how to use it?". The kid didn't respond to her, but kind of tried to hide the toy behind her back. I came over then and Lily said to me, "That little girl has my toy." The girl saw that she had attracted some grown up attention and wisely decided to drop Lily's toy back on the blanket. That was the end of it, but it really pisses me off when young kids try to bully even younger kids.

Lily realized that Baby Bear was missing, but Jen called around and somebody had turned her in at the store where we lost her, so all was well in the end.