PositiveLocusThe decision to invoke a supernatural agency in service of Tubman’s decidedly non-supernatural near-miracles would be a risky one, were The Water Dancer presenting itself as a straight historical novel, but Coates has an acute sense of what fantasy can do, and he integrates it seamlessly into a narrative that is has its share of brutality and horror, rendered with gritty, unflinching realism ... for the most part Coates handles his magic with restraint ... the stolid strategist and rescuer Micah, and of course Harriet herself, are complex, thinking characters, capable of surprising us with plot twists that eventually snap together with the efficiency of a thriller. Add to this Coates’s elegant, balanced, and almost rhythmic prose, and it might be tempting to conclude that the novel doesn’t really need much magic. Once we realize that Conduction is a kind of outpicturing of the power of story and memory, it’s equally hard to imagine that the tale could be as powerful without it. The Water Dancer may not exactly be a fantasy novel in its lineaments, but it’s certainly a novel that knows what fantasy is good for.