The title character in “Lord Demon” by Roger Zelanzy and Jane Lindskold is a Chinese-type demon, and all the human characters he deals with are Chinese Americans. Some of them are major characters, though the demon is of course the central one.
Good book, by the way. It turns out that in the magical realms of the demons, Feng Shui techniques can have some real impressive results (like summoning dragons).
chortles evilly
Read 'em and find out…
No, that’s nasty, an apalling number of them seem to be out of print.
You hit on one of the devices used, another is to set the story up wholly in the alternate mythos, and the third is that each creature is affected pretty much by it’s own mythology. For spitting on the ghost to work, it would have to be a Chinese ghost. And it could only haunt someone who was Chinese or had some connection to China. This also tends to go along with the idea that the farther a creature is from its native habitat, the weaker it is.
Your second paragraph is why I tend to avoid genre novels most of the time, and why I will never waste shelf space on anything by Dennis McKiernan. If you’re going to rip off Tolkien, be honest about what you are doing and do it well…
Good luck, and if you should come across a copy of Charles de Lint’s “Mulengro: A Romany Tale”, I’ll swap you a copy of “Leopard’s Daughter”…
I just thought of another: Steven Brust’s “Jhereg” series. The main character is human in a land where humans are an oppressed minority.
Brust is def one of my very favorite authors. I think he is one of the finest fantasy writers in America today. Yet I must point out that Vlad, while human in a largely Dragaerean society, is basically a character based on white European model, and so therefore a poor example for this particular thread.
However, the stories are terrific.
It still brings up another reconciliation device I forgot.
Invent your own mythos. Done with wildly varying success by a whole buncha people. Brust is pretty good at it.
I’ve just finished the third book in Michelle West’s Sun Sword series, and I really am enjoying it, if you’re looking for something epic…and they are at least in print. Oh, and “The Paladin” by CJ Cherryh has just been rereleased, so there’s some small hope it may reappear in your bookstores soon.