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Unquenchable Fire #2
Temporary Agency
When I was fourteen, a cousin of mine angered a Malignant One. It was a big case, a genuine scandal. Maybe you remember it. At the time, when it ended, I just wanted to forget about the whole thing. But a couple of years have passed and I guess maybe it's time to think about it again.
Thus begins Ellen Pierson's story of how she helped her cousin Paul contend with the Malignant One running a temp agency in the office building where he worked.
Ellen's story is a bright and moving tale set in the same fabulous, fantastic America as that of Rachel Pollack's award-winning Unquenchable Fire. Funny and frantic, poignant and powerful, Temporary Agency is an enduring fable from a writer whose work, in the words of Orson Scott Card, "like a river in flood, resists the well-channeled ways, cutting its own channel through the fictional terrain."
Thus begins Ellen Pierson's story of how she helped her cousin Paul contend with the Malignant One running a temp agency in the office building where he worked.
Ellen's story is a bright and moving tale set in the same fabulous, fantastic America as that of Rachel Pollack's award-winning Unquenchable Fire. Funny and frantic, poignant and powerful, Temporary Agency is an enduring fable from a writer whose work, in the words of Orson Scott Card, "like a river in flood, resists the well-channeled ways, cutting its own channel through the fictional terrain."
202 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1994
8 people are currently reading
324 people want to read
About the author
Rachel Pollack
205 books343 followersRachel Grace Pollack was an American science fiction author, comic book writer, and expert on divinatory tarot. Pollack was a great influence on the women's spirituality movement.
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Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews
October 21, 2016
Lesbian witchpunk sci-fi( can we make that a thing?) at its finest. A short, easy read that still manages a decent level of world building and character development. I found the protagonist very likeable, which made up for some of the holes in the plot. I read this without knowing it was a sequel so perhaps some of the aforementioned plot holes would have been supplied by reading this book's predecessor, Unquenchable Fire. I appreciate that the author didn't shy away from the graphic/gory, and that she didn't make a fuss about the protagonist being gay. So many older so called queer sci-if books feel the need to explain lesbian character's sexual preference on a virus that has killed all men, post-apocalyptic gender segregation, or advancements in reproductive technology that have made men irrelevant.
September 26, 2017
I find the contraction "cosplay" irritating mainly b/c no matter that I know its definition, I can't help reading it as "co-splay," which brings to mind the kind of mob orgy described at the (second) climax of Pollack's nimble & quite resonant scifi novel. In fact, one could say this book -- I haven't read UF#1 -- neatly bridges the gap betweeen cosplay & co-splay, with the 90s anachronisms working in its favor, for me at least. Gave it a mildly haunting Never Let Me Go feel.
June 1, 2023
While I do enjoy Unquenchable Fire, I think I do prefer Temporary Agency. The world feels more fleshed out in a way. Which makes sense, as this one takes place some undefined time after. There is a part of this one where it is mentioned as taking place three generations after the Revolution, and the timing is not defined even that well in Fire, but it just feels like the world has settled a bit more after the upheaval of the Revolution. Or maybe it's that Agency feels more encompassing of the world. In Fire, everything is focused on Jennie Mazdan, as she is carrying a being who will eventually be revered alongside the Founders, though we only get glimpses of Valerie. We definitely get the full feeling that the Bright Beings are manipulating Jennie for their own ends. Everyone else is just stage dressing ultimately. Even Valerie, since she only directly appears on a few pages.
in Agency on the other hand, while we do have a viewpoint character, it is more of an ensemble cast. the other characters are not there just for their interactions with Ellen.
in Agency on the other hand, while we do have a viewpoint character, it is more of an ensemble cast. the other characters are not there just for their interactions with Ellen.
August 17, 2017
review of
Rachel Pollack's Temporary Agency
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - August 17, 2017
The last, & only other, bk I read by Rachel Pollack was Golden Vanity ( https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... ). After learning that she's a Tarot card reader, I concluded my review w/:
"I'm sure Pollack's a boon to the Tarot world but she's also a boon to the SF world. I just hope she writes more SF before she goes to her reward in the great rotsville of tomorrow. I look forward to reading it all."
After reading Temporary Agency I'm not in such a hurry to read everything by her but I did like it - just not as much as I liked Golden Vanity. Given how overwhelming my copious bk review notes can be I'm happy to say that I wrote very few in this instance.
One of the 1st things that got my attn was this:
"Some people say — I read this in a book, actually — that the Bright Beings, the Malignant Ones and the Benign Ones, go back to the beginning of the universe. According to this Sacred Physics book, the Big Bang Story that broke open the cosmic ylem egg showered out the Beings along with all the quarks and tachyons and all the rest of them. The Beings came from a kind of impurity in the ylem, a sort of aesthetic flaw in the original story." - p 3
I 1st remember encountering the word "ylem" as the title of a Karlheinz Stockhausen composition (composed December, 1972). In the liner notes for the Deutsche Grammophon record of the 1st London version of that it's stated:
"Theory of the oscillating universe: every 80,000,000,000 years the universe explodes, unfolds, and draws back together again. The word YLEM is used by some people to designate the periodic explosion, by others to designate the essential material." - Deutsche Grammophon 2530 442
The world of Pollack's novel is a New Agey one in wch magik is the norm. Here's a taste of that:
"As a government agency, the SDA displays portraits of the president in all their offices. You know the kind — an official government photo of our nation's leader smiling blankly in his official bird costume and sacred headdress, with painted-in guardian spirits hovering in the background, like Secret Service agents." - p 70
"And I remember the incredible excitement when the president ordered the Spiritual Development Agency to drive out the Ferocious Ones." - p 5
The SDA being a rough parallel to the FBI.
"they drew those huge lines out from the corners of the building, changing the Pentagon to a giant Pentagram." - p 5
I'm reminded of the Yippie exorcism/levitation of the Pentagon.
The story concerns a young girl who goes thru a sortof spiritual trial-by-fire when her cousin Paul disovers that he's been dating a "Ferocious One", one of the powerful products of "a kind of impurity in the ylem".
"When Lisa finally lifted off the man, he went limp again, draped across the drenched bed. Only now Lisa took the flowers she'd bought and placed them on the man's genitals, where they — clung. That was the word Paul used. The flowers seized the man's crotch like some animal feeding on his discharges.
"Despite everything, Paul said, he was sure he didn't make any noise. He didn't gag, or shout, or anything. Lisa just stood there, naked, with her back to him and said, in a friendly voice, 'How was that, Paul? Was it what you expected? Was it scary enough? Or should I have laid rats on him instead of flowers? I could still do that if you like. I just thought this might be more fun.'" - p 19
Have you ever been on a date like that?
Our hero (or heroine if you prefer), Ellen, & her family become threatened by the Ferocious One.
"'Why are they sticking microchips in us?'
"'It's . . . it's to monitor what happens.' She looked so scared she could hardly talk. 'They said this way they could intervene if . . . if anyone . . . anything should threaten us. They'll know before it happens, they said.'" - p 60
Likely story.
Even if the "changing [of] the Pentagon to a giant Pentagram" wasn't inspired by the Yippies, the following has got to be inspired by consumer-protection crusader (& one of my favorite presidential candidates) Ralph Nader:
"Timmerman had begun his career with a highly publicized attack on Sacred Motors, charging that the hood totem for their Nightleopard car failed to establish soul configurations for safe journeys." - p 113
I can relate. The bean soup I tried to make from my Pinto tasted terrible. Even Monsieur Mangetout cdn't eat it.
In Pollack's world, even churches are now sacred spaces:
"A few blocks from Timmerman's office stood a Teller's Hall, one of those huge stone and stained-glass buildings from before the Revolution, a 'church' as it was called, converted to sacred space by Marion Firetongue, so that a statue of the Founder now stood just inside the doorway." - p 158
Eventually Pollack gets into Manchurian Candidate type territory:
"They were going to have to do something else, the old touching wasn't going to be enough, they couldn't count on the TV cameras simply picking up the liberation of a few people, they wanted to reach everybody who was there, really send out a message. And the world had to see. That was the point. Looking down at the floor, I noticed that the TV cameras from the networks were unmanned, set up on signal-controlled rotating platforms." - pp 179-180
There're rituals, ceremonial magik:
"I took out a silver jar from the bottom of the bag. The jar held dirt, and as I held it up I thought I could see Alison smile under her mud mask. The two of us had made this particular relic together, travelling out to the Forbidden Beach for sand, then setting it out on the floor of my apartment where we squatted down and pissed on it until we could form a brown paste." - p 191
SO, Ellen & Alison get evicted for constantly being covered in mud & for pissing on the floor of their apartment (SOME PEOPLE!), free love gets replaced by alt.right slavery - but becoming a Manchurian Candidate gets spread by TV & instead of STDs we get TVMCs & everyone dies except for the werewolves who live happily ever after.
OK, OK! That has nothing to do w/ anything. I just wrote that for the fun of it. I was being HECKish. This bk was fine, somehow I just didn't care, I reckon I wasn't in the mood or sumpin'.
Rachel Pollack's Temporary Agency
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - August 17, 2017
The last, & only other, bk I read by Rachel Pollack was Golden Vanity ( https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... ). After learning that she's a Tarot card reader, I concluded my review w/:
"I'm sure Pollack's a boon to the Tarot world but she's also a boon to the SF world. I just hope she writes more SF before she goes to her reward in the great rotsville of tomorrow. I look forward to reading it all."
After reading Temporary Agency I'm not in such a hurry to read everything by her but I did like it - just not as much as I liked Golden Vanity. Given how overwhelming my copious bk review notes can be I'm happy to say that I wrote very few in this instance.
One of the 1st things that got my attn was this:
"Some people say — I read this in a book, actually — that the Bright Beings, the Malignant Ones and the Benign Ones, go back to the beginning of the universe. According to this Sacred Physics book, the Big Bang Story that broke open the cosmic ylem egg showered out the Beings along with all the quarks and tachyons and all the rest of them. The Beings came from a kind of impurity in the ylem, a sort of aesthetic flaw in the original story." - p 3
I 1st remember encountering the word "ylem" as the title of a Karlheinz Stockhausen composition (composed December, 1972). In the liner notes for the Deutsche Grammophon record of the 1st London version of that it's stated:
"Theory of the oscillating universe: every 80,000,000,000 years the universe explodes, unfolds, and draws back together again. The word YLEM is used by some people to designate the periodic explosion, by others to designate the essential material." - Deutsche Grammophon 2530 442
The world of Pollack's novel is a New Agey one in wch magik is the norm. Here's a taste of that:
"As a government agency, the SDA displays portraits of the president in all their offices. You know the kind — an official government photo of our nation's leader smiling blankly in his official bird costume and sacred headdress, with painted-in guardian spirits hovering in the background, like Secret Service agents." - p 70
"And I remember the incredible excitement when the president ordered the Spiritual Development Agency to drive out the Ferocious Ones." - p 5
The SDA being a rough parallel to the FBI.
"they drew those huge lines out from the corners of the building, changing the Pentagon to a giant Pentagram." - p 5
I'm reminded of the Yippie exorcism/levitation of the Pentagon.
The story concerns a young girl who goes thru a sortof spiritual trial-by-fire when her cousin Paul disovers that he's been dating a "Ferocious One", one of the powerful products of "a kind of impurity in the ylem".
"When Lisa finally lifted off the man, he went limp again, draped across the drenched bed. Only now Lisa took the flowers she'd bought and placed them on the man's genitals, where they — clung. That was the word Paul used. The flowers seized the man's crotch like some animal feeding on his discharges.
"Despite everything, Paul said, he was sure he didn't make any noise. He didn't gag, or shout, or anything. Lisa just stood there, naked, with her back to him and said, in a friendly voice, 'How was that, Paul? Was it what you expected? Was it scary enough? Or should I have laid rats on him instead of flowers? I could still do that if you like. I just thought this might be more fun.'" - p 19
Have you ever been on a date like that?
Our hero (or heroine if you prefer), Ellen, & her family become threatened by the Ferocious One.
"'Why are they sticking microchips in us?'
"'It's . . . it's to monitor what happens.' She looked so scared she could hardly talk. 'They said this way they could intervene if . . . if anyone . . . anything should threaten us. They'll know before it happens, they said.'" - p 60
Likely story.
Even if the "changing [of] the Pentagon to a giant Pentagram" wasn't inspired by the Yippies, the following has got to be inspired by consumer-protection crusader (& one of my favorite presidential candidates) Ralph Nader:
"Timmerman had begun his career with a highly publicized attack on Sacred Motors, charging that the hood totem for their Nightleopard car failed to establish soul configurations for safe journeys." - p 113
I can relate. The bean soup I tried to make from my Pinto tasted terrible. Even Monsieur Mangetout cdn't eat it.
In Pollack's world, even churches are now sacred spaces:
"A few blocks from Timmerman's office stood a Teller's Hall, one of those huge stone and stained-glass buildings from before the Revolution, a 'church' as it was called, converted to sacred space by Marion Firetongue, so that a statue of the Founder now stood just inside the doorway." - p 158
Eventually Pollack gets into Manchurian Candidate type territory:
"They were going to have to do something else, the old touching wasn't going to be enough, they couldn't count on the TV cameras simply picking up the liberation of a few people, they wanted to reach everybody who was there, really send out a message. And the world had to see. That was the point. Looking down at the floor, I noticed that the TV cameras from the networks were unmanned, set up on signal-controlled rotating platforms." - pp 179-180
There're rituals, ceremonial magik:
"I took out a silver jar from the bottom of the bag. The jar held dirt, and as I held it up I thought I could see Alison smile under her mud mask. The two of us had made this particular relic together, travelling out to the Forbidden Beach for sand, then setting it out on the floor of my apartment where we squatted down and pissed on it until we could form a brown paste." - p 191
SO, Ellen & Alison get evicted for constantly being covered in mud & for pissing on the floor of their apartment (SOME PEOPLE!), free love gets replaced by alt.right slavery - but becoming a Manchurian Candidate gets spread by TV & instead of STDs we get TVMCs & everyone dies except for the werewolves who live happily ever after.
OK, OK! That has nothing to do w/ anything. I just wrote that for the fun of it. I was being HECKish. This bk was fine, somehow I just didn't care, I reckon I wasn't in the mood or sumpin'.
September 18, 2024
Ellen Pierson's cousin's life is being controlled by a Malignant One, a government sponsored demon. Calling on a demon hunter and using a great deal of personal strength, Ellen is able to fight back.
Pollack's short novel is self affirming: the America of her imagination is one where magic is part of the everyday and this spiritual battle becomes real and hard fought.
Ellen is a well written character, far from perfect and often equally bored and irritated by her partner. She is self centred, which means the characters she interacts with are deliberately not well defined. The plot is baffling, but engaging and the novel provokes uncomfortable thoughts about society and the media.
Pollack's short novel is self affirming: the America of her imagination is one where magic is part of the everyday and this spiritual battle becomes real and hard fought.
Ellen is a well written character, far from perfect and often equally bored and irritated by her partner. She is self centred, which means the characters she interacts with are deliberately not well defined. The plot is baffling, but engaging and the novel provokes uncomfortable thoughts about society and the media.
September 3, 2023
Lesbian Witchpunk SciFi (term copied, not my own) - short, no nosense when it mentions lesbian sex - a very enjoyable and solid good read.
And funny. :)
„That night I was determined. I was going to make the evening a true landmark for the Revolution. I did pretty well, too, going through three surgical gloves and a good two feet of dental damming clingwrap.“
And funny. :)
„That night I was determined. I was going to make the evening a true landmark for the Revolution. I did pretty well, too, going through three surgical gloves and a good two feet of dental damming clingwrap.“
July 28, 2023
A wild and weird book. I remember waking up in a hotel room after a jet lagged sleep with Rachel Pollack standing at the foot of my bed. Nothing untoward, she'd come in with my room mate but it was a great meeting. The good old days of Wiscon.
April 18, 2024
A quick read. Quite enjoyable and rattles along. Spiritual lesbianism is prominent so as an elderly straight male, I suspect I'm not really the target demographic. I would say light reading for train journey or similar.
March 25, 2019
Unexpected. A very imaginative story. A lot more sex than I normally want but done tastefully.
April 24, 2022
May and December
elevate your relatives
good gals can be creeps.
elevate your relatives
good gals can be creeps.
January 15, 2024
I picked this up without realizing it was a sequel. Either way, it's a fascinating world with complicated belief systems. I really enjoyed it.
March 30, 2024
Muito bom spin off mas não é uma sequência
December 13, 2007
Before I picked up this book a friend of mine said she wanted to ask me after if I considered it urban fantasy and I think that question shaped my reading of the book. The short answer is no, I don't think it's urban fantasy. I'm not even sure a fantasy tag is appropriate. It felt more like scifi (which it definitely is not).
I don't normally think of myself as someone who focuses on world building, but I think because I went into the story trying to determine whether it should be included in a genre I paid more attention to the setting this time. Unfortunately, I thought the world building was weak. I believe Pollack was actually playing with someone else's world (I think there's a mention of that somewhere in the book) so I don't know if a) the original world was weak; b) she assumed people were already familiar with the world; or c) she was afraid to change anything since the original world was not hers. Or some combination of the above.
The world was basically modern day but most things had some version of the word "sanctified" somewhere in the title and there are now supernatural "beings" (Beneficent, Malignant and Benign).
Merely adding a version of the word "sanctified" is not enough to build a world. And if everything now has to do with the being in some way, what happened to the regular police and services? Do humans no longer commit any crime except under the influence of the Malignant ones? We don't know, we're never told. And if we do have these great beings, how did the entire planet not go bat shit crazy over religion? No matter what, your religious persuasion (including lack of religion) the appearance of these beings would present a challenge.
The world is never well defined so things that are supposed to be shocking aren't necessarily. So there are Beings in the Pentagon (this is the opening of the book). And, so, therefore? It's a problem because why? The author says so?
One of the reasons I hesitate to even call this is fantasy is that I don't understand the system of magic. There are enactments (rituals) for nearly everything from going on-line (to keep away snoopers) to going downtown. But unless actually in the presence of a being, these enactments don't seem to have much of an affect and as far as I can tell there's no cost to the caster. Usually magic exerts some toll, often physical exhaustion. Here, there's nothing unless a being is directly involved. The enactments consist almost entirely of either asking beings to intervene or asking them to stop interfering. Is there black magic? We don't know. You can work with a Malignant one and that's bad because they can turn on you and do horrible things to you, but there's no suggestion that it will harm your soul. There's no real reason it's any different than working with a shady human or the mob except possibly the Malignant one can accomplish more.
Everything in this book seemed like it was held at two or three removes. It's told in the first person but the opening quarter consists of the main character relating something as told to her. The magic isn't person, it's all about appealing to an outside force.
And even though I think the author was clearly trying to remove any squick factor about who the main character ends up with it still felt pretty creepy.
I don't normally think of myself as someone who focuses on world building, but I think because I went into the story trying to determine whether it should be included in a genre I paid more attention to the setting this time. Unfortunately, I thought the world building was weak. I believe Pollack was actually playing with someone else's world (I think there's a mention of that somewhere in the book) so I don't know if a) the original world was weak; b) she assumed people were already familiar with the world; or c) she was afraid to change anything since the original world was not hers. Or some combination of the above.
The world was basically modern day but most things had some version of the word "sanctified" somewhere in the title and there are now supernatural "beings" (Beneficent, Malignant and Benign).
Merely adding a version of the word "sanctified" is not enough to build a world. And if everything now has to do with the being in some way, what happened to the regular police and services? Do humans no longer commit any crime except under the influence of the Malignant ones? We don't know, we're never told. And if we do have these great beings, how did the entire planet not go bat shit crazy over religion? No matter what, your religious persuasion (including lack of religion) the appearance of these beings would present a challenge.
The world is never well defined so things that are supposed to be shocking aren't necessarily. So there are Beings in the Pentagon (this is the opening of the book). And, so, therefore? It's a problem because why? The author says so?
One of the reasons I hesitate to even call this is fantasy is that I don't understand the system of magic. There are enactments (rituals) for nearly everything from going on-line (to keep away snoopers) to going downtown. But unless actually in the presence of a being, these enactments don't seem to have much of an affect and as far as I can tell there's no cost to the caster. Usually magic exerts some toll, often physical exhaustion. Here, there's nothing unless a being is directly involved. The enactments consist almost entirely of either asking beings to intervene or asking them to stop interfering. Is there black magic? We don't know. You can work with a Malignant one and that's bad because they can turn on you and do horrible things to you, but there's no suggestion that it will harm your soul. There's no real reason it's any different than working with a shady human or the mob except possibly the Malignant one can accomplish more.
Everything in this book seemed like it was held at two or three removes. It's told in the first person but the opening quarter consists of the main character relating something as told to her. The magic isn't person, it's all about appealing to an outside force.
And even though I think the author was clearly trying to remove any squick factor about who the main character ends up with it still felt pretty creepy.
October 29, 2014
I knew of Rachel Pollack from her work on the Vertigo Tarot and Doom Patrol, but I had absolutely no idea what to expect when I cracked this open for the first time years ago. Happy to say that the reread holds up; Temporary Agency is a unique and fantastical tale that manages to work in a few keen and witty observations about the world we live in.
The story takes place in a timeline in which manifestations of celestial beings happen on a regular basis. Because of this, neopagan concepts and knowledge of ritual magic have are as commonplace in their world as pocket computers and internet literacy are in ours. Urban fantasy doesn't quite reach this far - you want to call it witchpunk or some such, but adding 'punk' to other words is a terrible practice and should be discouraged whenever possible.
The structure is unusual - half the story occurs during the storyteller's youth, and the latter half skips ahead a decade or so - but the jump serves to illustrate how perspectives change as we change, how our daily rituals can keep us sane or drive us mad. It's a quick read, and if anything about the above appeals to you, you should definitely check it out.
The story takes place in a timeline in which manifestations of celestial beings happen on a regular basis. Because of this, neopagan concepts and knowledge of ritual magic have are as commonplace in their world as pocket computers and internet literacy are in ours. Urban fantasy doesn't quite reach this far - you want to call it witchpunk or some such, but adding 'punk' to other words is a terrible practice and should be discouraged whenever possible.
The structure is unusual - half the story occurs during the storyteller's youth, and the latter half skips ahead a decade or so - but the jump serves to illustrate how perspectives change as we change, how our daily rituals can keep us sane or drive us mad. It's a quick read, and if anything about the above appeals to you, you should definitely check it out.
February 28, 2013
I enjoyed this from start to finish. Set in a alternate modern day sometime after a neopagan revolution brings Bright Ones into the world, it's a fun read that's also a bit gross when the angels start making people tear their own skin off. Best of all the book is short, and I appreciate that. Much rather have something be too light than have an author waste my time with 100 pages of world building.
July 28, 2011
I like the concept that Pollack goes for but I find the meticulous descriptions sometimes get in the way of the action or the character's emotions. I get a little lost in the rituals, which although they're unique and interesting, end up detracting from the second half of the text. All I want is to see what happens with the entities at that point.
August 8, 2011
Interesting premise, but something just did not click with me. Maybe it was what, to me, felt like dissonance between the idea of beings with significant power who could be "controlled" by human actions that I saw as only superstitious and not spiritual.
November 7, 2015
Just reread this again recently and it remains one of my favorite books in the genre. Pollack creates a unique spin on her own concept of "shamanic noir" with likable characters and creative world building. I need to read the first novel next but this one does stand alone. Highly recommended!
September 26, 2007
This was a good read. Fantasy combined with futuristic realism co-exist in the life of a young woman making her way in the world.
Want to read
February 19, 2013I never knew there was a sequel to Unquenchable Fire. I doubt there is an e-version out there though...
December 8, 2025
read in the 90's, and just reread it. Great and original alternate reality fiction.
Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews