David Goodis - The Wounded and the Slain

So if the question is asked What’s it amount to? the answer comes sliding out easily: It’s just a merry go round that stops every now and then for some to get off and others to get on, and no matter how much you pay for your ticket, no matter how many brass rings you snatch, it’s only a matter of time before our place is taken by the next customer emerging from some womb to start the ride. So in the final analysis, it’s merely the process of being taken for a ride, and despite all the bright colors and the hurdy-gurdy music, despite the gleeful yells as the amusement machine goes round and round, the windup is a hole in the ground where the night crawlers get awfully hungry when it rains. (p. 180)

The Wounded and the Slain is a meandering and squalid crime novel that focuses on the depressed lives of its protagonists and staggers around in their beaten-down footsteps. The novel’s focus isn’t on whether the two can succeed, but rather whether they can change themselves enough to even attempt change.

James and Cora Bevan are unable to connect with one another and are miserable from their attempts to try. Cora has never been able to enjoy intimacy with James. The two were deeply in love, however, and each did their best to live with the other’s needs and inadequacies. Love wasn’t enough, though, and James soon finds himself stagnant and miserable in what he’d always thought would be a blazing romance, drowning, The way a moth goes for the blue-white flame, but it turns out to be an icicle that freezes him to nothingness very quickly. (p. 17)

James and Cora, acutely aware of how they’re perceived by those around them, have no ability to help themselves. Their lives have been dictated by their roles and their society. He works on wall street, acting and looking exactly as you’d expect. She forces herself to try and connect with him again and again, no matter how much it hurts her. Shaped by those around him, he’s a smoothly polished custom-tailored nothing (p. 230), she a meaningless ornament wearing a dress (p. 245).

The two of them are in Jamaica, taking a physician-recommended vacation that neither wants or believes can help. The city of New York was never their problem; the problem was the way that James, desperate to find something worth living for, first finds solace with a prostitute and then (when decorum and conscience forces him to break that off) loses himself in the accepted, understood stupor of alcohol.

James is not deluded. He knows exactly what he’s become, and his self-punishment – an endless cycle of recriminations that drive him to further immoral depths – soon causes him to resolve the seemingly normal people all around him, the healthy and wealthy and well-adjusted tourists that fill the Laurel Rock Hotel:

And yet, as he gazed down from the opened window, he knew there was something wrong with the picture. What you mean is, he thought, there’s something wrong with this party looking at the picture. This party doesn’t belong in that setting. That setting is strictly for sober-minded individuals who know how to behave themselves. And this party here, this weak-kneed, weak-brained gin-head – oh, yes, this perfect example of ruination, this absolute failure – (p. 31)

As a result, James does his best to leave the culture he’s known all his life and heads to the worst areas of Kingston that he can find. Barry Street is filled with robbers, killers, and vicious fights, and it’s there that James settles and proceeds to do his best to drink himself away while contemplating suicide and the many, many ways that he’s failed the trappings of his successful lifestyle.

This is where, almost as an afterthought, the actual crime portion comes into play. Don’t get me wrong, The Wounded and the Slain is a crime novel; it’s just that the crime, rather than being the motivator or crisis that the characters are put through, is a result of the characters, a symptom rather than a cause of their predicament.

James, almost accidentally forced into the role of murderer, has as little idea of how to play this new part as he did about how to play his old one. In an attempt to give his life agency and motive, he tries to cast himself as a willful slayer, a beast out for blood, but such a guise soon becomes unpalatable and dangerous in the wake of his actions.

Both James and Cora are dragged, perhaps willingly, into the depths of Kingston. There is a chance that they will find their answers there, but there is also a chance that they will not, and it is clear from the text and conclusion of the novel that Goodis is not a writer concerned with fleeting moments of personal revelation. He gazes, instead, at the agonizing yeas before and after those too-brief epiphanies, the dark times when it’s uncertain whether anything has been or can be accomplished, and, during their journey through those dark years and dark places, dirt stains and destroys the fastidious image that the Bevans have created and tried to pretend was their lives. As a Jamaican character says: And de lesson of it is, when dey leave de fine hotel and come down to play in de mud, dey get muddy. (p. 190)

The best way to describe David Goodis’s prose is passionate, albeit not in any typical definition of the word. Goodis writes freely, loosely, allowing ideas to flow into one other with a deadbeat energy that defies the dreariness of the events he depicts. He pays little attention to the supposed rules of writing. His story is, in large, part telling rather than showing, large segments of internal debates often written in either second or first person breaking up the vivid third person scenes of motion. In addition to his more character focused passages, Goodis is adept at flowing descriptive passages that bleed atmosphere and tone:

If it wasn’t opium it was hemp, and they had a way of treating it to make it extra-powerful, lifting the smoker very high above the earth, allowing him to soar up there with all the great ones, all the famous singers and dancers, all the champions and leaders. This special hemp they sold along Morgan’s Alley was a very pleasant habit when it was available. When it was not available, the loss of altitude was sudden, a sort of plunging, and so finally they had to take it all the way and jump off a pier. Or sometimes they ignited themselves with matches. Another popular method was wrapping a cloth very tightly around the head to cover the nose and mouth so one couldn’t breathe. It was the only thing to do when the hemp was not available to a user. (p. 205-6)

Make no mistake and never doubt it, The Wounded and the Slain is a miserable read. There is nothing romantic or idealized here, just ramshackle poverty and loveless life, senseless violence and misapprehended men. It’s not clear if Goodis’s protagonists have a chance of redemption at the end, but what’s never in doubt is that their lives up to those final pages were a frigid, multicolored hell and that there’s a very good chance that that’s all that there is.

Allan Guthrie - Hard Man

"It's okay, Davey," Pearce said to the kid. "The bad man's gone." He closed his eyes. He was a liar. The bad men were never gone. (p. 268)

Allan Guthrie’s third novel is tight, fast, and raw. Hard Man is, to put it bluntly, a book about stupid, violent people doing stupid, violent things.

Do you ever find yourself imagining the absolute worst way that something could play out? If so, I’m sorry to inform you that Guthrie is far better at it than you will ever be. We start off with a simple situation: married May Baxter’s pregnant, but not with her husband’s child. In order to escape her spouse’s violence, she flees back to her family. From that point on, things get worse in every possible way. Every gesture, action, and plan leads to things only spiraling even further out of control.

Hard Man is a book of two paces: the contemplative and the berserk. Things start for Gordon Pearce in the first of them. He spends his day in a passive daze, his only activity taking his three legged dog to the beach. He has no friends and no aspirations. Though he is no longer a young man, and though he’s most certainly a hard man, he’s still trying to come to grips with existence as a free man and with his mother now long gone, the (male) dog with her name an attempt to fill the hole that she left.

Balanced with Pearce is the tale of the Baxter family. Elderly Jacob Baxter is determined to force Wallace to stay away, which shouldn’t be too hard a task for him, his two sons, and his friend, Norrie. Unfortunately, Jacob’s can do worldview is curbstomped within the first few pages of the novel. On their walk to Wallace’s home, he’s confident that the Baxters cannot be stopped: They were all tooled up, they'd handle Wallace no problem, reputation or not. He was only one man against three, and those three were Baxters. (p. 4). Now, dragging himself away, he’s been humbled – but he’ll still do whatever it takes to stop Wallace.

Of course, there’s the fact that Wallace is far stronger than they are, the fact that the police are (after the Baxter family’s disastrous attempted assault) solidly on Wallace’s side, the fact that family friend Norrie is far more mentally impaired than he appears, and the fact that Jacob's eldest son might not be the bouncer that he claims he is. But Jacob resolutely ignores the warning signs. He has a duty to his family, and he’ll be damned if he doesn’t carry it out.

Jacob Baxter isn’t the only character who doesn’t quite grasp the way that things are. It’s a bit of a cliché to say that nothing is as it seems, but the phrase is rarely as true as it is here. Things look straightforward, but they are, of course, far more complicated than they appear. Climactic confrontations are often met with confusion, and dramatic reveals generally just succeed in making things messier and more confusing than they were moments before.

As the novel continues, and every plothread does its best to run off in its own direction as fast as it possibly can, things lean increasingly toward the latter of the two aforementioned pacings: the frantic. Hard Man is told from several point of views, and each of their scenes is brief, here, while the various characters act decisive in all the worst ways.

Guthrie does not spare his characters the consequences of their actions; instead, every mistake is magnified, its toll taken in injuries and tragedies. The cast is too small for a particularly high body count, but Guthrie bashes his pieces together again and again until there isn’t much left of their original shape, and the deaths that do occur are always utterly and mercilessly senseless.

Guthrie depicts his novel’s visceral violence with a clear, uncluttered prose style that’s packed with character and slang. Descriptions of beaches and people give the novel a Scottish flair that’s augmented with the language, shoving us in the center of the lowest, most dangerous neighborhoods of Guthrie’s neighborhood and never losing its wry humor:

Pearce's towel had flown off, dropped to the floor. He relaxed. Well, as much as he could, given that he was bullock-naked in front of a pair of strange men. Young men. Who clearly weren't here to ask after his health. At least they weren't naked, too. That would have been really uncomfortable. (p. 7)

The outside world around our characters is a distant thing. Civilization is present, but it's always nearby, never on the scene itself. Decent areas of town are only a few blocks away, and the scent of barbecues reaches us where we are, but we can never get there, and the only times the novel departs from its primary cast is to show briefly panoramic views of sin all around them, rapes and assaults taking place in newspapers and the streets around their homes.

In the midst of the book’s escalation, Guthrie takes one of the major plot threads and slams it into an imprisoned stasis. The change of pace and the situation, especially when balanced by the rest of the cast outside, is excellent, but it’s also here that the novel’s two weaknesses occur.

The first is comparatively minor, more a missed opportunity than a weakness in and of itself. At one point, a character is fed an obscene amounts of hallucinogenics. Unfortunately, the results turn out to be the same lackluster lines that we’ve all heard before in a dozen pot-baked comedies.

The more serious problem is the book’s supposed villain, Wallace. The build up against him is well done, and his mixture of innocence and depravity is captivating, but the few glimpses we get of the man’s core do little to answer our questions. Wallace is frightening precisely because of the contrast between his normality and his actions, but there’s nothing that we see of him, either in his point of view or outside it, to explain what could have led him to such sadistic heights, leaving one of the book’s most horrific scenes feeling almost out of character.

But such problems do little to damage the narrative as a whole. Hard Man is, to quote a certain Bay Area thrash band, good friendly violent fun. With emphasis on the fun. And on the violent.

Breaking New Ground: Crime

I know nothing about Crime fiction. If asked, I couldn’t even tell you what really distinguishes Crime/Noir/Mystery/Thriller/what have you.

Initially, that was only going to be the opening of several introductory paragraphs of my view of Crime fiction. I was planning to go through the clichés and the reasons I hadn't read it and all of that, but I realized that those two sentences really say it all. I don't know enough about Crime to say more, besides that I should read Chandler at some point.

But, if I don't know anything about it, how did I select books for this Breaking New Ground? Simple: I found a random crime blogger and asked them for a list. The Nerd of Noir was kind enough to comply, and I then picked random books off the list to start with.

Review.

Just for anyone interested in the genre, I'll post the rest of the given list (also check the comments for other recommendations):

Modern Noir:

Twisted City by Jason Starr

Hard Man by Allan Guthrie

American Skin by Ken Bruen

Pariah by Dave Zeltserman

Caught Stealing by Charlie Huston

All great, nasty, violent novels by authors with plenty of other great work. Worth looking into.

Modern Private Eye:

Saturday's Child by Ray Banks

The Guards by Ken Bruen

Darkness Take My Hand by Dennis Lehane

Right as Rain by George Pelecanos

Already Dead by Charlie Huston

Books that fuck with the private eye tradition or exemplify what can be done within the genre.

Modern Crime:

The Cleanup by Sean Doolittle

The Pistol Poets by Victor Gischler

The Wheelman by Duane Swierczynski

Yellow Medicine by Anthony Neil Smith

Deadfolk by Charlie Williams

Dark, criminal-centered novels but not "noir" dark. Some of them are pretty funny too.

Classic Crime:

The Wounded and the Slain by David Goodis

Friends of Eddie Coyle by George V. Higgins

Killer Inside Me by Jim Thompson

Last Good Kiss by James Crumley

The Switch by Elmore Leonard

All novels by crime legends that many modern authors will cite to you as major influences of theirs. 

Frank Miller - Batman: Year One

So far in comics, I’ve loved Watchmen and V for Vendetta, have been entertained by Y and Hush, thought the Killing Joke was very good, and have pretty much stuck with established opinion for all the Graphic Novels I’ve read. For Batman: Year One, however, it’s time to break out the dissenting opinions. Batman: Year One isn’t a bad story, but it’s not the titan that I’ve heard it was.

Though this story is supposedly the ultimate Batman origin story, the actual Batman origins portion of Year One is fairly weak. We begin as Wayne is returning from his training afar, when he’s on the point of beginning to clean up Gotham. But there’s no motivation. We don’t see Wayne’s parents killed, and we don’t see the resentment he’s built up over the years. Now, everyone obviously knows the basics and details of the origin story, but, without it being featured here, there’s no emotional core to the book. Batman’s here, and he’s pissed. There you go, that’s your character. Take it or leave it.

As for Batman’s martial skills, Miller creates a bizarre contrast between the realistic and the ridiculous. In the opening scenes, Batman kicks down trees. Later, he smashes a stone column. And yet, in his fight scenes, Batman is often in over his head and gets the shit beaten out of him at times. It’s totally fine to have an ungodlike Batman, and it’s (I guess) fine to have a stone smashing one, but, when they’re the same person, it’s just bewildering.

Unfortunately, Batman is a paragon of characterization when compared to Selina, catwoman. Selina is a whore who decides to leave her occupation and become Catwoman. Right there, you have the whole arc. There is simply no depth or motivation to the character at all. Worse, there’s no closure and no point to her existence. Alright, this is an origin story, so I suppose I should have expected some set up and all, but she quite literally affects the main plot in no way.

The best developed character – and, thankfully, the one Miller spends the most time on – is Jim Gordon. Gordon is the one straight cop in a city of criminals and crooked cop, and, to make matters worse, he’s held down by his wife’s pregnancy and his slowly developing affair with another officer. Gordon’s moral dilemma, and the odds stacked against him, draw the reader in more than Wayne’s bound-to-succeed struggles.

Still, there are some weaknesses here, too. The affair felt like it was taking us into interesting places, but when Gordon confesses the whole thing to his wife, we’re not even shown the following conversation. The overall plot, too, is both familiar and predictable, remarkable only for it’s over the top nature. Finally, Gordon is a martial arts master that makes Wayne look like a fool in tights. Not that this is necessarily a problem, but it’s just odd that the policeman is always much more confident in his fights than the super hero (not to mention that, as far as I’m aware, Gordon’s kung fu skills never come up again in the mythos).

Despite difficulties with character, Miller can get your blood pounding. The first portions of the book are more concerned with set up and detached stories than a building arc, but, later, things do kick into gear. When Miller brings his threads together, playing Batman off against the police, we are treated to some incredibly tense sequences. The ending, unfortunately, goes back to the model of the early stories, and, while it’s no doubt very traumatic for Gordon, it’s hard to even consider the possibility of a negative result.

A very large part of the story comes through thought. There’s generally nothing wrong with that, though it’s odd when the characters are narrating something incredibly obvious, such as when Gordon informs us he spilled his coffee a panel after he does so. The real annoyance with the style, however, comes when we’re hearing Wayne’s thoughts, which are, for some reason, written in a hard to decipher script.

The artwork has a rough feel that sacrifices detail for mood, or at least tries to. Ironically for something that, in its introduction, claims to be a far darker Batman, the artwork feels cheesy and cartoonish throughout:



This was a pretty negative review, I realize, and I should point out that Batman: Year One isn’t bad. It’s just that I was led to expect Watchmen, or at least The Killing Joke, and I got a basic origins story instead. Perhaps a large part of the appeal to hardcore comics fans is the difference in tone from other Batman works (which I’m just assuming there is from what I’ve heard, because compared to some of the other comics I’ve read – V for Vendetta, say – this was a walk through a sunny meadow). Billed as incredible, this isn’t so much bad as eh.

Graphic Novels

[This is a Breaking New Ground post]

Graphic novels are a bit different from Urban Fantasy in that, if I’ve ever truly looked down upon them, that period ended long ago. Still, for the longest time, they just didn’t seem like something I’d be interested in. Why would I want to read a book where half the imagining was done for me? It almost seemed like a worst-of-both-worlds between books and movies, where the images hamstring your own mental picture, while the lack of motion leaves said images static and unimmersive. Besides which, I just wasn’t sure that there were any stories told in Graphic Novels that I would actually want to read. From my ignorant outsider’s perspective, all I could see was pretty much super heroes. Now, I used to love super heroes – and perhaps I still do, because I think that The Dark Knight was several hours of sheer perfection – but I wasn’t convinced that you could make a convincing book out of a guy who beats people up while wearing tights and a cape.

Then, back in April, I read Watchmen. Well, that was the end of any real prejudice on my part. The story was excellent, and the super hero framework made it quite plain that it would never have succeeded in another form. At the time, I said (in my Reading in April post) that Graphic Novels were: “something I’m going to definitely try and do more of, now.” Months later, I’ve read followed that initial success with…nothing.

So, unlike the Urban Fantasy challenge where I’m trying to go from distaste to some degree of enjoyment or at least a position of knowledge, here I’m just trying to read some fun stuff. But, seeing as this was a challenge, I did decide to jump in at the deep end of my old apprehensions about Graphic Novels. It is, it seems, superhero time.

Now, I originally did the same thing as I did for the other Breaking New Ground post. The problem is, there I actually researched the books. Here, knowing nothing about the field, I figured out what to read by the highly scientific method of emailing someone I’d seen reading a book with pictures in it, specifying that at least some of the five had to involve super heroes. In the end, I decided that writing several hundred variants of she said to read this one. And this one! would get sickeningly old, so just pretend it says that under the pictures if you want.

Anyway, the five lucky novels are:



Review



Review.



Review.









Seeing as I doubt I’m going to really hate any of these, I’m not going to bother with the Breaking New Ground posts that are following the Urban Fantasy reviews and just stick to the tried and true schedule of reviews broken up by random musings.

And yes, I’m aware there are seven titles here. Blame the person who picked them.

Breaking New Ground: A Madness of Angels

[This is a Breaking New Ground post, and you should probably read the review first.]

A Madness of Angels, despite its flaws, was a really interesting book that had absolutely none of the flaws I was worried about Urban Fantasy having in spades. There was no (seriously worn) leather in it, there was no romance, and, while there was ass kicking, it certainly didn’t revolve around the werewolf/vampire/whatever dynamic that I was dreading that I would find. In fact, I found Kate Griffin’s London to be a wondrous and enchanting place, and I’m looking forward to getting back there as soon as I can in the already released sequel, The Midnight Mayor.

Oddly enough, though, I’m still as worried about Urban Fantasy as a whole as I was before I read the book. Yeah, it was good, but it wasn’t so much typical Urban Fantasy done well as atypical Urban Fantasy, at least if one defines Urban Fantasy as I (sort of) did for this challenge. Obviously this is far from the only atypical Urban Fantasy book out there, probably far from the most atypical one as well, but I’m still not reassured that I’ll be okay with most Urban Fantasy. Ah well, I guess I’ll have to overcome my fears and start the second book of the challenge.

If you’re on the fence about Urban Fantasy in general, I’d recommend giving A Madness of Angels a try anyway. Odds are, it will surprise you.

Kate Griffin - A Madness of Angels

"We be light, we be life, we be fire! We sing electric flame, we rumble underground wind, we dance heaven! Come be we and be free! We be blue electric angels!"

Fantasy’s a genre that yearns for the past, and your standard sources of magic include long forgotten ancient deities, long forgotten languages, and long lost artifacts, all generally found while escaping the dreary, wonderless, soul crushing nature of the modern world. A Madness of Angels doesn’t do any of that. The otherworldly setting in which we are immersed is nothing but everyday London, and sorcerers summon piping from the walls instead of chains of celestial energy. Kate Griffin doesn’t use reality as something to be escaped; she has, instead, found the wonder in every street corner of our everyday lives.

London is omnipresent in the narrative. We are told that the lifeblood of sorcery is the feeling and movement of the city itself, and the story pulsates with the rhythms of the city. The oddities and intricacies of urban life are perfectly rendered here, yet so bizarre as to be almost unrecognizable, while the magic flows from every pore of the landscape around it and feels like such a part of city life that you’ll probably find yourself looking for it next time you’re on the bus.

Griffin’s prose is well suited to the tale and to the city that surrounds it. This is a book of little things, and atmosphere is built with a menagerie of details:

The lift was clear glass, on the outer wall of the building, so I could see the city drop away beneath me. As on the London Eye that night, I was astounded by the beauty of its multicolored spectrum: not just the sodium orange of the suburban sprawl, but the white interiors of office blocks, green traffic lights, red aircraft beacons on the taller towers, purple floodlights washing over high walls, pooling beams of silver on enclosed courtyards, shimmering blues on fountains, or in the doors of clubs, the moving snakes of traffic, defined only by headlights, brakes, or indicators flashing on and off like an endless slithering column of eyes, and the reflected pinkish glare across the ceiling of the sky, except for where an aircraft’s guiding light sent out a cone of brightness, through the black scudding clouds heavy with rain as the wind carried them toward the sea. (p. 134)

The worldbuilding, and our grasp of it, is well balanced throughout the novel, something all the more remarkable because it’s the first in a longer series. This falls more to the wondrous side of the magical spectrum, rather than the heavily rule based, and the occasional explanation does take the form of: “Are you really going to ask such inane questions all the time? Mystic bloody forces, just accept them and cope!” (p. 283) All the same, magic is never used cheaply or incomprehensibly here, and, though we never know the true intricacies of the system, we soon know enough to understand the mechanics of the supernatural duels and confrontations and can even try to predict the character’s tricks, rather than just being along for a flashy but incomprehensible ride.

The opening scenes here are similar to your standard gosh, it’s a magic world! introduction…with the slight exception that the main character is not only aware of the world, not only knowledgeable about how it works, but just so happens to be ferociously competent in it. That character’s head – Mathew Swift’s, to be precise – is a very interesting place to be, in large part because it’s such a confused one. As the book begins, Swift is resurrected, after being deceased for two years. Swift isn’t the only thing that comes back, though. The electric blue angels of the telephone wires come too, and their myriad, flamboyant, and innocent consciousness is great when it is – quite literally – splitting headspace and narrative duties with Swift. The angel’s naivety, and their lack of knowledge as to what it means to be, well, human, leads to some of the novel’s best moments:

We were not exactly surprised; nevertheless I didn’t know what to do, what to say, how, exactly, I should behave. So we did nothing, waited to see if an emotion would strike, curious how we would respond to such news, whether we cry, or shouted or became angry or felt nothing at all. We hoped we would cry; it was the most human response. My eyes remained firmly dry, my mouth empty of any words. (p. 51)

Mathew Swift’s mind is a logical one, so his war against the Tower takes the form of individual acts of destabilization. Instead of going for the agency as a whole, he targets the Tower’s four lieutenants, planning to leave Bakker, the leader, defenseless and alone. Each of these mini quests is fully realized and engrossing. The lieutenants are menacing and interesting enough to function as great villains, and Griffin uses the one-thing-at-a-time nature of Swift’s plot to explore the world of her creation, from magical gladiators, to graffiti-guarded and bomb proof installations, and to phantom subway cars. The battles between Swift and his adversaries, particularly San Khay, were gripping and, most of all, ingenious in their use of the magic system.

And yet, the lieutenants alone never quite add up to a convincing Tower. When compared with the organizations that it’s trying to destroy, or the rest of the city, or even its own sub agencies, the Tower is woefully underdeveloped. Now, it could be argued that the entire novel is an exercise in using the parts to illustrate the whole (magical creatures are, after all, described by their ordinary building blocks), but the Tower fundamentally doesn’t fit into that system, because it’s standing in direct opposition to it. The Tower is all about centralizing magic, uniting all those disparate magicians and warlocks and sorcerers into one system, but the Tower itself feels as loose as anything it’s trying to destroy, just a collection of seemingly redundant agencies with an absolutely clueless figurehead on top.

The Tower’s leader, Bakker, is decently fleshed out as a character, but why he established the Tower, how he did it, why he believes it’s a force for good…none of these things are ever mentioned. The Tower is simply there, and it simply needs to be destroyed. Because. So, while the quest for that end is filled with interesting events, it’s hard to really throw yourself behind the journey without really caring a whit about the Tower itself and without ever seeing the characters really question the rightness of their actions.

Everything leaps into a sharper, more immediate focus when Hunger, a malevolent creature made of shadow that stalks Swift and is obsessed with experiencing life at all costs, comes on stage. The contrast between Hunger and the angels is a very interesting one. Hunger perpetually yearns for life and tries to learn and live by cataloging and consuming the blood and the chemistry of the living, attempting to build a whole out of the details of treasured possessions. The angels, on the other hand, live in a state of never ending joy, insatiable in their desire for media and new experiences, but strangely uninterested in the generalities of humanity or interaction, leading to a Swift that views all of his relationships with a degree of naïve perplexity. Unfortunately, Hunger’s strengths are dulled with repetition, and he’s lost some of his impact by the novel’s conclusion. The revelations about his identity and creation, slowly doled out throughout the climax, are also far easier to piece together dozens of pages before they’re given than they should be.

Getting into the home stretch of A Madness of Angels, I’ll admit that I was distinctly worried. As part one of a series, the book seemed poised to have the major villain dash off into the night so we could repeat the entire exercise again. I needn’t have worried. This is, as far as I’m concerned, exactly how book one of a series should end. The world is more than interesting enough that I want to go back to it, but there’s no missing crucial plot point that makes me think I’ve only gotten half the book.

The prose that is so good at describing the city at large occasionally runs into problems with action. The more supernatural confrontations flow very well, often, but when more traditional combat begins, wordiness can sap the urgency of the events:

“Duck!”

I ducked. I can respect formidable magical talent when I see it, and Old Madam Dorie, the old lady who smelt of curry powder and car fumes, had it in spades. She exuded skillful manipulation of primal forces just like her bags gave off the smell of mold, and if she’d said hop, I would have hopped. She, like my gran, had the look of a woman who talked to pigeons; and in the city, no one sees more than the pigeons.

I ducked, which is why the bullet from the sniper rifle…(p. 84-85)

It is, after all, hard to really get your blood up while you’re musing on exactly why you bothered to duck the sniper’s bullet.

A Madness of Angels’s flaws are all significant, and they prevent me from hailing the book itself as truly great. What was good about it, however, was more than enough to convince me that Kate Griffin was an absolute must read author. A Madness of Angels alternates between an engrossing gallop and a stuttering walk, but the book’s strengths carry it over the finish line with ease. I went into New York City a few days ago (London, sadly, was a bit too far) and walked around. As I did, I felt like I was viewing the same blocks through different eyes, the crushes of people and the roaring of the subways and the towering buildings infused with new life, all a change of perspective away. Are you interested in seeing the same sights, just with a tad more dazzle and quite a bit more jaw dropping magic coursing through them?

FURTHER READING

Breaking New Ground: A Madness of Angels

Urban Fantasy

[This is a Breaking New Ground post]

As far as I can tell, Urban Fantasy has three definitions. The first is any work in which magic comes into the real world. It’s already well documented that I’m a fan, so I won’t be doing that kind of Urban Fantasy. The second definition is anything where the city is a main character. Again, it’s quite obvious that I’m onboard, so we won’t be heading there. The final definition is, to quote Ms. Saintcrow:

Chicks kicking ass. Well, leather-clad chicks kicking ass. Leather-clad chicks kicking ass in an urban environment where some form of "magic" is part of the world. There. That’s about it.

That is the definition that, for the next few weeks, I will be using here on the Rack. It is a definition that, needless to say, doesn’t fill me with confidence and a let’s go! attitude. But it’s the definition that we’re stuck with, and, after all, if it did fill me with those things, I wouldn’t be reading it right now.

From what I can tell (as an outsider, mind you), Urban Fantasy is generally a first person affair, usually (in the subset of it that I’ll be looking at) narrated from a female perspective, has some manner unclothed and tattooed female body part on the cover, features moral ambiguity to a greater or lesser extent, usually has some sort of romance, and often seems to be the standard magic-in-hiding scenario that almost always seems to use the same vampires/werewolves/wizards or what have you.

None of those aspects are particularly odious in and of themselves, but together they make a product that I’m somewhat wary of. And that last sentence was me lying through my teeth, because several of those do cause serious problems for me. The biggest of them (besides the cover art) is the romance element. Now, I’m not adverse to romance in my fiction. I love well drawn characters more than I love anything else, and I understand that people (and characters) fall in love, have relationships, etc. That’s fine, as long as it’s only a part of their personality and story. When the main thrust of the tale is True Love, or any variant of said Love, I start looking for the exits. I remain doubtful that there’re characters great enough to keep me engaged with stakes no higher than their imminent copulation. So the fact that this genre has ties, no matter how tenuous, to paranormal romance is freaking me out a bit.

Ignoring the romance, I’ve got a bit of a problem with the paranormal part, too. Though there are exceptions, werewolves, vampires, etc, are all creatures that, at this point, cause me to do more groaning than screaming when they appear. I’m sure that not all Urban Fantasy relies purely on those particular supernaturals, but it seems that a rather large percentage of it does, and I’m sick of it even before opening to the first page, which is, needless to say, not a good sign.

But I think it’s time to change tracks here, as I could go on forever on why I haven’t read the books, but it’s a bit pointless to do so when I’m about to actually go read them. This won’t be the absolute first time I’ve been in these waters. Going by (some variant of) Saintcrow’s definition, I’ve read: Jim Butcher. Yeah, that’s really it. I enjoyed the sarcastic narration, the character of Harry, and the feel of the whole affair, but the blatant idiocy of half the cast made me drop the series after the second book, and I remain doubtful that I’m going to pick it up again.

So, what am I planning to read?


Griffin’s concept of “Urban Magic” seems like exactly my thing. Even better, the book is almost entirely devoid of the things that I can’t help but look for. The cover, for instance, has a cheesy-but-sort-of-cool guy on it, which makes me feel sort of safe, at least in the sense that it will be, at worst, bad in a cheesy way that I already understand. Griffin is well liked on Westeros, which has rarely steered me wrong before, not to mention the myriad good reviews she’s received.

UPDATE: And the challenge has been met.


A tattooed back? An Amazon blurb that includes: Until one moment – and one man – changes everything? Uh oh. The reasons that The Iron Hunt survived, despite triggering every safeguard and warning, are twofold. The first is that, a few weeks ago, Marjorie M. Liu and Kelly Armstrong had a conversation on Scalzi’s Whatever. Over the course of the conversation, Armstrong said: One thing I admired about [your writing] is the depth and richness of your writing. Your prose is very lush, but you still keep up the pace and the action, which is a rare combination. Good prose is definitely one of the main things I look for in a novel, so this was very comforting. The second reason came from the first half of the amazon marketing blurb that I quoted just above, which reads: Demon hunter Maxine Kiss wears her armor as tattoos, which unwind from her body to take on forms of their own at night. So those aren’t just overrated decorations? Alright, this all seems to have been given some thought, so I suppose it deserves a chance. Besides which, Thea (of The Book Smugglers) gave it a very promising review that reaffirms the excellent prose.

UPDATE: Challenge met.


The Mercy Thompson series features a shapeshifter as a protagonist, with the twist that the prime mythology that it draws from is Native American, rather than Twilight. I’ve also been told that Mercy is a realistic and well drawn character, and that romance (though present) is not the dominant aspect. On the subject of the series, Thea said: Seriously, this is one of the finest ongoing urban fantasy series’ around – Mercy is the ideal, genuine heroine, and Patricia Briggs’ gift for storytelling is damn near unparalleled, which sounds like damn fine praise to me.


Huston’s work is highly regarded on Westeros, coming up again and again in this thread. I’ve heard that his novels are gritty and fast paced, as well as possessing a fairly original take on the standard pantheon of supernaturals. On the review front, lovevampires.com (gulp) said: This book is the perfect antidote to the romanticised vampire.


Though not quite a fit for my definitions (being , from what I can tell, a near-future setting merged with magic, rather than a present day one) I’m counting Snake Agent here. The oriental basis for the magic sounded interesting, as did the overall concept of the book, and the positive reviews got me interested.

So, what does the whole list mean? Well, I’m determined to get through a minimum of five books from each new genre, and, while I reserve the right to replace one of them, those look like the likeliest candidates. I can’t promise a review of every book read for this, but I will, at the least, do a more informal post on them. So, without wasting any more time, I’m off to go kick read some demon ass fiction in my new leather pants.

Breaking New Ground

A few weeks ago, I had an experience that I’m sure every genre fan’s had more times than they can count. You mention that you read; they ask what; you say SFF. From there, whether they’re a reader or not, they’re likely to sneer. What I really hate, however, is those snap judgments that are dished out by people who have never read it. “It’s all just a Lord of the Rings rip off.” (I know, City of Saints and Madmen practically plagiarized the scene at Mt. Doom!) “Anything can happen, so it’s just stupid.” (Exactly, like that high-magic Song of Ice and Fire everyone’s talking about.) “It’s all just pointless violence, nothing but popcorn reads.” (Yeah, because Gene Wolfe’s known for his special effects.)

And yet, I do it too.

Romance? Boy loves girl; they fight about something; they make up. That’s it, same story every time, only differentiated by the amount of gratuitous sex. Paranormal romance? Cleaned up romance that’s meant for teen girls to swoon over, led by a book whose quality and popularity are so inverted I’m half convinced that the entire human race is just playing a joke on me by saying they like it. Urban Fantasy? Chicks in tight leather killing some stuff and fucking the rest, differentiated from Paranormal Romance only by the body count. Graphic Novels? Books for people who lack the imagination to make their own sound effects (pow!). Young Adult? I didn’t read it when I fell within the demographic, why would I start now when there are real books out there to read? Shared World? You just saw the movie/played the game and want to fit in with the grownups. Etc.

Now, I know that each and every one of those is just as stupid as hating fantasy because it’s all big manly barbarians saving wenches from dragons, but I have a hard time getting over my gut reaction to seeing bare tattooed backs on cover after cover. (Though I will point out that, before you all leave due to me insulting your favorite genre, the above examples were fairly sarcastic. Those’re all genres that I don’t understand, but it’s not to that pooh-flinging degree, okay?) So, what am I going to do about all of this? The same thing that I’d tell someone who won’t read epic fantasy due to the hooded figures on the covers: I’m going to get reading.

Now, I’m not doing Romance, whether Paranormal or vanilla. Sorry, I just can’t do it. Maybe another time. Nor am I doing Young Adult, or Shared World, simply because I’m not in the mood for those at the moment. What I am doing, however, is Urban Fantasy and Graphic Novels. So, in the next few days, get ready for more detailed posts on those genres, but I figured I’d announce the whole thing now.

I’m not going to turn the reviews themselves into pieces on what I think about the genre, because I’m a big believer that you should be able to read a review and have it make sense without needing every word I’ve ever written for context. Instead, I’m planning to write a short piece after each book to say, in a much less formal setting, what I thought of it and what I’m thinking of the genre as a whole at that moment.

This is, I should probably point out, not going to become the entirety of what I read. I’m planning on doing a minimum of five of each, without a set timeframe, and the mainstay of my reading is still going to be the same mixture of fantasy, science fiction, and horror, with a smattering of occasional literature, that it’s always been.

Just so I have a nice handy escape built in from the beginning, I’ll throw it out there that I have the ability to quit at any time. If the first twenty-two Urban Fantasies I read revolt me, there ain’t gonna to be no twenty-third, but at least I’ll have tried.

Anyway, I think it’s time to get this started. Which means I should probably open up that Graphic Novel on my desk…


Breaking New Ground: Urban Fantasy

Breaking New Ground: Graphic Novels

Breaking New Ground: Crime