From School Library Journal
Grade 9-12-- Elsewhere is a bookstore in Bordertown, a polymorphous city in a fictional region where runaway teenagers flee in search of identity and a sense of belonging. Ron, looking for his older brother Tony, instead finds an extended family of elves, half-elves, and humans in the decrepit surroundings of Castle Pup. He takes a job at Elsewhere; his closest friend is Mooner, a charismatic but unpredictable half-elf biker. When fellow Castle Pup-ers deny Mooner the chance to transform their cooperative home into a glitzy night club, he commits arson and accidently burns to death. Ron survives but is blamed for the fire, and so flees to a rival gang. When he returns, it is to confront his accusers--and his own guilt. He also comes to terms with his hidden past: he is running from the knowledge that Tony commited suicide. An incredible cast of punkish characters resembling the strange creatures in the Star Wars bar will keep readers on their toes, but they will also be distracted and sometimes confused. Too little action and too much talk slow the pace of this metaphorical fantasy, overshadowing Shetterly's clever concoctions and the rich literary allusions that satirize social prejudices, violence, poverty, etc. Unfortunately, the author sometimes loses readers who are trying to make sense of this complex make-believe world and to discover how Ron fits into it. --Jack Forman, Mesa College Library, San DiegoCopyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews
An intriguing hybrid fantasy that mixes life on the street with magic and glimpses of unworldly beauty. Not far in the future, Faerie returns to the sight of man while a once-conservative human city becomes Bordertown, where young elves and humans alike escape their various homes and rules. Bordertown is dangerous, filled with gangs from both species, rife with magic, drugs, violence. Still, it lures more and more youngsters, including thin-skinned, tough-talking Ron Starbuck, who reads Yeats and pretends to know what's going on. Ron says he's looking for his brother Tony, but--as he enters Castle Pup under the wing of the unreliable half-breed Mooner and then finds himself a weapon of revenge against the woman who owns the bookstore called Elsewhere--we learn that Tony only meant to come to Bordertown. Ron's need to understand his brother's suicide and to regain a sense of self drives him through a series of muddled choices that he makes, and then tries to unmake. Filled with action, shifting images, and alienated characters looking for a place to belong, the adventure holds attention but doesn't entirely satisfy. Ron's motivation eventually becomes clear, yet he moves among mysterious, unfleshed-out characters who are often no more than cryptic hints--as is much of Faerie. Still, the ideas fascinate, Ron's fate matters, and this in an unusual view of the streets. (Fiction. 12-15) -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Book Description
When Ron runs away, he ends up in Bordertown, a grim city that lies between the real world and the world of faerie, a place where elf and human gangs stalk the streets side by side, and where magic works better than technology. If the city doesn't kill him, it just may teach him what it is to be human.


Card catalog description
Ron, a teenage runaway, comes of age among the punk elves and humans of Bordertown, a run-down city on the border between the real world and the magic world of Faerie.

ANNOTATION

Ron, a teenage runaway, comes of age among the punk elves and humans of Bordertown, a run-down city on the border between the real world and the magic world of Faerie.

FROM THE PUBLISHER