Odd job

BLOND AMBITION Kennedy’s debut fantasy clocks in at 400 pages.

Photo: Emily DeWan for BorterWagner

James Kennedy awaits the publication of his first novel, The Order of Odd-Fish (Delacorte, $15.99), but he already has a solid sense of his readership.

“My niece tore through The Order of Odd-Fish when she was in second grade,” he says. “The first two blog reviews I found of the book were from a junior high girl and a dapper bearded neuroscientist; both positive.”

It’s not exactly a marketing exec’s dream demographic, but it speaks to the odd space Kennedy’s debut occupies, as well as the ever-expanding readership of young-adult fantasy novels. Thanks largely to the Harry Potter Phenomenon, and the huge successes of the Lemony Snicket and His Dark Materials series, adults devour these books at a rate perhaps surpassing kids.

The heroine of Odd-Fish is Jo Larouche, an orphan discovered by her Aunt Lily in the recluse’s laundry room, with the note: “This is Jo. Please take care of her. But beware. This is a dangerous baby.” After spending 13 years with her aunt in California, a series of bizarre events pluck Jo and Lily out of California, plunging them into the mysterious and fantastical Eldritch City, where Lily, it turns out, is a knight in the Order of Odd-Fish. The Order serves as a sort of Knights of the Round Table for the baroque Eldritch City, with quests that are pointlessly pointless and giant cockroaches that serve as butlers. Jo spends her early days in the city investigating its nooks and warrens with her new friends, but it’s clear from the beginning that she has an ominous, numinous destiny from which her Aunt tries to protect her.

A Michigan native, Kennedy, 35, has lived in and out of Chicago for the past 10 years. He began writing Odd-Fish in 1998 while living in Japan, where he was teaching English, and sold the book six years later during another two-year stint in Japan.

“Eldritch City’s continuous colorful festivals, rituals and contests were certainly inspired by the festivals I’d seen and participated in,” he says, from his Humboldt Park apartment.

A work of mischievous imagination and outrageous invention, Odd-Fish shouldn’t be labeled as another entry in the long line of titles hoping to cash in on Pottermania. There are no child wizards or trolls or griffins. Though certainly a fantastical coming-of-age story, Odd-Fish recalls the more rigorous world-building of J.R.R. Tolkien or C.S. Lewis, absent the standard fantasy fare. As Kennedy says, he wanted the “freedom granted to fantasy without using its well-known archetypes.”

That doesn’t mean, however, that Kennedy isn’t somewhat indebted to J.K. Rowling. “Of course, Rowling changed everything,” he says. “Not only is she very funny, but the first time I read Harry Potter, I had this tremendous feeling of liberation—here was someone who dared to tell a satisfyingly long, socially rich story, and yet at a level that everyone could understand. It really was something new.”

Kennedy brings a florid sense of humor to the novel—Colonel Korsakov, a knight of the Order, takes his cues from a talkative digestive tract—that contrasts with some of its darker themes. While a ridiculous and unsuccessful supervillain wanna-be Ken Kiang tries to undo Jo, a much more nefarious fallen knight of the order, the Belgian Prankster, poses a very real threat.

“Deep stories have real suffering in their hearts,” says Kennedy. “As a child I’d think to myself, which Star Wars character would I like to be? But no matter whom I picked, I’d recall that character went through some horrible ordeal. I remember being thrilled and terrified by this—that if I wanted to be in a story, then agony was unavoidable.”

At work on his next book, The Magnificent Moots, Kennedy hasn’t ruled out the possibility of another entry in the Odd-Fish odyssey.

“I have scattered hints about what the next book will be about throughout Odd-Fish,” he says. “I certainly can’t wait to get back to writing about that world. I have unfinished business there.”

The Order of Odd-Fish hits stores August 12.