Mini Review: Half the Blood of Brooklyn by Charlie Huston

One goal I have with this blog is to write a review for each relevant book I read. However, sometimes I just don’t have it in me to write a full review. Sometimes it’s because I simply don’t have anything to say, sometimes it’s because the book is in a series and it’s hard to say something I haven’t already, sometimes I simply get behind on writing reviews, and sometimes it’s a combination of all of the above plus life throwing in a solid punch in the gut.

Half the Blood of Brooklyn by Charlie Huston (Book Depository, Powell’s Books, Indiebound) is the third book in his Joe Pitt series, which are about a rogue vampire who is a private detective of sorts in the underground of New York. These books are good, fun, short and fast reads written with a unique style uncommon in the SFF genre (it’s a style much more common in mysteries and crime fiction) that stands apart from much of the urban fantasy-horror-vampire books that populate the shelves these days. The books are dark, blunt, and aimed for a mature audience. While there is an over-arching plot through the series, each books stands on its own plot arc.

In Half the Blood of Brooklyn, Pitt ventures beyond his usual haunt of Manhattan to Brooklyn where he meets with a new clan and gets particularly nasty. I read this while in the hospital where it provided an idea escape from the boredom, stress, worry, anxiety, and all the other mixed emotions I felt watching over my daughter. While Half the Blood of Brooklyn was a great book for the moment, I felt it was a bit lacking compared to some of the other books in the series, in spite of a few key moments that have been long anticipated. I think this is mainly because things felt a bit rushed. 7/10

Below is an excerpt from my review of Already Dead (Book Depository, Powell’s Books, Indiebound) which sums things up rather nicely.

Charlie Huston ... takes the prototypical hard-boiled, noir detective template and injects it into a world of vampires. The result is not the Buffy-inspired urban fantasy romp that dominates the fantasy market these days, but a true noir detective tale that happens to star a vampire struggling for independence in clan dominated underworld.

This classic noir story with … a hard-ass, flawed, moralistic rogue vampire proves to be a fast-paced, engaging read that I very much enjoyed.

Related Posts: Review of Already Dead, Mini Review of No Dominion, Interview with Charlie Huston

Review: The Last Page by Anthony Huso

The Last Page by Anthony Huso (Book Depository, Powell’s Books, Indiebound) is turning out to be one of the more interesting SFF debuts of 2010. While it hasn’t garnered the marketing push of some of the more memorable debuts of the past few years, The Last Page has been released to quite a bit of praise from reviewers with wide-ranging comparisons from Harry Potter to China Mièville to Brent Weeks and Daniel Abraham and such varied terms as Epic Fantasy, Steampunk, Urban Fantasy, Lovecraftian Horror, New Weird and Military Fantasy. The jacket description may hint at some of this and actually does a pretty decent job of describing the book, but it can’t capture the undeniable mood and raw talent that Huso invokes through The Last Page. I won’t claim it’s the perfect debut, but it’s one that stands out.

Set in a magically-powered industrial world of factories, military-industrial complex, zeppelins, and international commerce and rivalry The Last Page opens in sort of preparatory academy combined with university where we meet Caliph Howl, the reluctant heir to the throne of The Duchy of Stonehold. We are introduced to Caliph as an intelligent, crafty, vengeful, yet somewhat mediocre student, yet more importantly, we see him meet his mysterious lover, Sena. The remainder and larger part of the story is told primarily through these two points of view as Caliph inherits his crown, inciting a civil war and Sena seeks a book of great power as she at once rapidly ascends within and seeks her independence from the shadowy Witchocracy that she is a key member of.

Huso writes with a relatively dense prose – perhaps most analogous to China Mièville, but certainly independent enough to feel fresh. With this prose comes vivid description, and like early Mièville, the tendency to over-indulge a bit too often. Another suffering of this writing style is the occasional use of large, obscure words when simpler words that don’t require a visit to the dictionary would suffice. Though the positives outweigh the negatives by a fair margin – this style also provides a rich, layered read with visceral descriptions that perfectly set the mood.

As a result of Huso’s use of this style one cannot deny the incredible realization of the world. This isn’t traditional epic fantasy worldbuilding – the world is not fully described, only the details relevant at the moment. It paints a wonderful mood and leaves the mind craving for more. The dark, dirty setting of an industrial world powered by what can only described as magical power is adeptly shown. The inclusion of zeppelins invokes a Steampunk spirit without actually using a Steampunk setting. Politics, economics, international relations all come into play in a world that feels real rather than ideal. Huso doesn’t water-down the details – they are fully present and often confusing, but manage to further build the dark mood of the novel.

Huso creates a complex plot that never completely gels. On one hand I love the approach because it made me work for every bit of understanding and it reflects the lack of complete understanding of actual reality. On the other hand it was downright confusing at times which caused a fair amount of frustration. The biggest fault in this is a failure with his characterization – motives are either never understood or never revealed. Perhaps this reflects complexity of character that mirrors actual people, but it too often felt like Huso played his cards too close to his chest with confusion the result. This becomes a real issue with the conclusion of the novel – it isn’t developed fully, which increases the uncertainty too much and lessens the impact.

Much of The Last Page is a love story between Caliph and Sena, though I’d hardly call it a romance. It’s more of a revelation of two people attempting to discover what love is, two people who have commitments in their lives that at least seem more important than their love lives. In this Huso portrays a relationship between real people with actual lives which stands apart from much of what is seen in the fantasy genre. This love story takes place along side of the rest of the book – I suppose the question remains, was the love story the central part of the book or was just another complication in their lives? I suspect that Huso would be pleased with that sort of questioning, though the end of the book provides answer enough.

Along the way Huso seems to enjoy throwing out a few moral dilemmas of personal and political nature that are relevant to present time, though most boil down to the question of ‘is a little evil OK for the greater good’? He never gives a real answer, but asks the question in several ways to get the reader thinking. He also touches on economics and government intervention a bit, but only just. Nothing is remotely didactic, just questioning, because there aren’t tidy, sound bite answers to these sorts of questions.

One of the aspects that I enjoyed most about The Last Page is that Huso seemed to know just what I would anticipate. I suppose that it could be called subversion of genre tropes or reader expectations, but it felt much more natural. Particularly in the first half of the book, I would think something like ‘that guy will turn out to be the spymaster’ or ‘Caliph will do __’ or ‘___ will become ___’s closest ally’, etc. It seemed that each time Huso would set it up and shoot it down, subtly letting me know what I thought I’d figured out. This was a fun, pleasant surprise as I read and another example of Huso’s solid writing, particularly for a debut.

Though my thoughts on The Last Page by Anthony Huso are ultimately mixed with a healthy lean toward positive, I won’t hesitate to call it one of the most promising debuts I’ve read in the last few years. It invokes what I love best in fantasy – a wonderfully imaginative world, strange creatures, darkness, complexity, political and economic intrigue, real-world analogues, and characters I can root for. The Last Page largely stands on its own, but for me the ending left me confused and wanting and I’m pleased to know that it is merely the first entry in a duology, with The Black Bottle scheduled for release next year. I can’t wait. 7.5/10

Review: Shadow’s Son by Jon Sprunk

Assassins in fantasy are a pretty hot thing – not quite to the same level as ‘gritty’, but still quite popular. Shadow’s Son by Jon Sprunk (Book Depository, Powell’s Books, Indiebound) fits squarely into this assassin fantasy fad and should please many SFF fans. Sprunk’s assassins do indeed kick ass, are dark, tough and conflicted, making Shadow’s Son perhaps the closest thing fantasy gets to the perfect ‘beach book’.

From the first line:

A killer stalks in the shadows

the direction of Shadow’s Son is set. Caim is an assassin, and not (quite) the sympathetic, reluctant assassin so often seen. Caim is good at what he does, well paid and enjoys his work, though not in the psychotic way of serial killer. A seemingly simple job goes bad and Caim finds himself thrust into uncharted territory. The daughter of his last target holds the key to the mystery and Caim must confront his own past to survive.

Shadow’s Son has many things going for it, but for me the greatest is probably its length, or more related to what is typical of SFF books, its lack of length. The Pyr version comes in at a mere 280 pages, and the pace reflects this. Sprunk doesn’t waste words; he gets to the point, throws the reader lots of action, and in doing so doesn’t sacrifice characterization or description. In this he doesn’t read like the debut author that he is. In fact there are occasional flashes of really brilliant writing that leave me highly anticipating more of his work.

As I indicated above, Sprunk does his characters well. Caim comes across as a cold-hearted killer, yet not so cold-hearted that the reader doesn’t immediately find himself rooting for him. Sure he is a killer, but there’s the sense that the people he’s hired to kill, aristocracy in an oppressive culture, deserve what they get. As the novel moves forward, the walls that Caim have erected slowly crumble. Caim is balanced against the spoiled socialite daughter of his last target, Josephine. At first Josephine is nothing special, but just as with Caim, it’s interesting to see her develop a backbone and become at least a tolerable maiden in distress.

Of course it’s Josephine that brings me to my biggest criticism of Shadow’s Son – rape. Rape is a controversial character development tool often used in fiction. Some view it as insensitive, others lazy, and still more may delve into a nice lecture on the feminist perspective of rape. The world is brutal and imagined worlds are often set up to be no less brutal. Rape is both a historical and present reality, and perhaps something not out of place in a book about a patriarchal, medieval society focusing on the underworld of assassins. But rape as it is used in Shadow’s Son has very little relevance to character development, and as such, I think it feels out of place and unnecessary. The only way I imagine giving Sprunk a pass on this one is if we get a pregnancy out of it that has some plot relevance in future books of this planned trilogy. In that case, we should discuss Sprunk’s embracing of fantasy tropes.

In Shadow’s Son, Sprunk neither shies away from nor subverts tropes common to this flavor of fantasy. We have the faux-European medieval setting. We have the classic antihero – a sympathetic killer with a brutal and special past. We have the maiden in distress. We have secret societies, corrupt religious powers, and a hidden heir to an empire. Now I’ve said it before and I’m sure I’ll say it again: tropes are tropes for a reason. They are universal in both history and current society and they often seem to touch people at a deeper level. When done badly, a book can quickly unravel. But when done well the reading can be outstanding. Sprunk does them well – his tropes are wrapped up in impressive writing and a breathtaking pace. Things may be predictable, but it doesn’t really matter.

Shadow’s Son is Sprunk’s debut novel and the first in the planned trilogy of the Shadow Saga. It’s a fun, fast read in the fashion of dark fantasy that’s so popular these days and Sprunk wisely does not try to cram it fuller than needed. It stands well enough on its own for people to try out without fear of needing to read forthcoming sequels, but the ending leaves many questions unanswered and a sense of anticipation for the books to come. All in all it’s just the distraction I was looking for amid some of the heavier reading I’ve done of late, and book that I can see pleasing a lot of readers. 7.5/10

Review: The Traitor by Michael Cisco

Several ‘best of 2007’ lists include The Traitor by Michael Cisco and Jeff VanderMeer has said that Cisco is criminally underrated. This (along with the relatively modest page count of 152) really captured my interest, so I eagerly read The Traitor soon after purchasing a copy.

With first person narration, The Traitor tells the story of rare-named Nophtha, a soul-eater and member of a despised religious sect who works for an oppressive Empire. Noptha gives us some relative background and then jumps to his following of the dangerously eccentric soul-burner, Wite, a hunted fugitive and murderer.

Cisco fully realizes Noptha through his stark, repetitive, and even dull narration that maintains a poetic rhythm. Nophtha dances a line from justifying his actions to near insults of the reader and their inability to understand. The narration slowly builds to the end, where it becomes almost a manifesto of Wite’s, as written by Nophtha.

Ok, so here’s the real deal – Cisco is impressive with what he does; this is damn good writing. BUT, I did not like this book at all. As skillfully as The Traitor is presented, I simply could not get into it – this book bored me to no end.

You see one of the big reasons that I read is for entertainment. This isn’t the only reason, nor does it preclude me from appreciating a book for aspects that aren’t entertaining. Nothing about The Traitor entertained me. With all the wonderful realization of Cisco’s prose, it was dense, dull, and utterly uninteresting to me. By the time I reached the end of the book, where the crescendo should have me eagerly anticipating the climax and the perfect last line of the book, I didn’t care at all. I was left with joy that I had finished – that I no longer had to read this book.

Cisco is a writer who admits to challenging his readers – you have to bring something (perhaps as much as he brought himself) with you when reading his work. Some people will respond to this style of writing, some will not. I don’t shy away from a challenge in my reading (it’s one of the reasons why I happily chose to read The Traitor in the first place), but in this instance I was rewarded with a book that I did not appreciate.

I expect that many of you will enjoy The Traitor, even though it did not work for me at all. If it were a longer book, I’m certain I would not have bothered to finish. I wanted to like this book, and it probably deserves a better explanation as to why I didn’t like it, but this will have to suffice – I just found the book dull and completely uninteresting. Approach this book with caution; it’s not an easy read. My choice to stick to my rating system often caused difficulty and this book is one where I wish I had at least a two-score system that could adequately reflect the skill and success that Cisco does achieve with The Traitor as well as my complete aversion to it. 5/10

Review: Mythago Wood by Robert Holdstock

World Fantasy Award (1985) winning Mythago Wood by Robert Holdstock represents a departure from the traditional epic fantasy of its day with elements of science fiction and historical fiction while imbuing an atmosphere all its own. Defying easy categorization, it explores the mythos of humanity in a setting eerily recognizable and reminiscent of something more primal in origin.

Steve Huxley returns from the Second World War to his home in rural England, located at the edge of an untouched, wild wood that has long fascinated his family. His father, a source of familial strife due to his obsession with the wood, has died while Steve was away at war. Christian, Steve’s older brother, has since explored his father’s research into the wood and become more like his father than Steve could have imagined.

The Rhyope Wood is the source of a mysterious energy that creates people and creatures out of the myths of humankind (called mythagos) – particularly myths of British soil like Robin Hood, King Arthur and others long lost from modern memory. Through the proximity of the family home to the Rhyope, the wood’s influence brings obsession, love, pain and death, and ultimately inspires a journey into its ancient, haunted heart where the mythagos have myths of their own.

From the start of Mythago Wood Holdstock reaches into the primal heart of the reader, drawing them into his imagined ghost wood filled with myths remembered and not. The wood itself becomes a dominating character bringing about the realization of just how powerful of a force primeval forests were in ancient times. As someone who traces the majority of their ancestry to that part of the world, there is a sense of this coming being of my past – these mythagos are my own.

Having inspired such a deep connection remarkably early in the book, Holdstock proceeds to tell an inspired tale – a modern myth all its own. Solitary Steve reflects often and subtly on the familial rivalry dominating his past and present while he is seemingly destined to love one of the forest’s mythagos, as did his father and brother before him. The resulting modern sibling rivalry follows the path of myth, as ancient as the myth they both pursue.

Much can be taken from the many of the aspects of Mythago Wood – in some ways it reads as a series of myths, tales, and parables framed by more myths, tales, and parables. Questions are presented, rather than asked and reflected upon more than answered. Contemplation is the result – hopefully lacking the compulsive quality of the book’s characters.

The haunting beauty of Mythago Wood is wonderfully realized as it penetrates to primeval heart of the Britain. The World Fantasy Award it won is well deserved and this timeless tale is as relevant today as it was 20 years ago. 8/10

Bone Song by John Meaney

Bone Song is a genre-bending blend of dark/urban fantasy and hardboiled crime enshrouded in noir. Think Dirty Harry in a city created by the bastard love-child of Jeff VanderMeer and China Miéville – it’s close, but still a disservice to Meaney’s creation.

The city, Tristopolis, is the familiar urban center – we have skyscrapers, cars, roadways, police, upper and under classes, and crime. However, this eerie familiarity is lost in the bizarre world Meaney creates. Humans are not the only sentient beings – we also have various types of wraiths, werebeasts, zombies, and others in a world powered by necroflux generators – think the opposite of bioenergy. The bones of the dead literally power the lives of living in a world where life and death mean even more (and less) than in our own. Simple appliances might be operated by an enslaved wraith, autopsies are performed by specialized people who read the bones of the dead, and sorcery is another fact of life.

The horrifically realized world takes a back seat to the story – which is pure hardboiled crime. A mysterious organization piercing the ranks of the elite is killing celebrities to get their hands on their priceless bones before natural death confuses the issue. Lieutenant Donal Conner is assigned to protect a visiting Diva from this shadowy threat. His ultimate failure leaves him nearly dead from a sorcerous ensorcellment and recruited into a secretive task force investigating the killers all the way to the pillars of society.

Told mostly in the first person from Donal’s point of view, the plot drives the story forward, with strong characterization of the main characters and adequate characterization of secondary players. We see the world through the perspective of the locals, with little in the way of explanation and leaving lots of questions – in a good way. Donal is the stereotypical good, but not necessarily nice, cop – he’s got years of experience, lives a lone and insular life, and has long since gotten over the guilt that comes with killing someone. In a clever touch, Donal is a fan of fantasy novels and is seen reading a fantasy serial set in a world very different from his own, but sounding rather similar to ours.

It’s rare to find something that feels new, yet Meaney manages to succeed powerfully with Bone Song. A fantastic and unique world is created, yet only glimpsed at by the reader. The backdrop of a hardboiled crime plot cleverly disguises stories of human interaction, trust, mistrust, loyalty, morality, acceptance, and love while delivering a great mystery. My only complaint is that the ending felt a bit rushed and abrupt, while ultimately succeeding.

Bone Song is a dark and creepy delight for genre fans that I strongly recommend: 8/10.

The Scent of Shadows by Vicki Pettersson

I’ll be honest – I didn’t have very high expectations when I started this novel. This book fits squarely into that sub-genre residing between horror and fantasy, with a touch of erotica, starring vampires, werewolves, and other baddies with an ass-kicking femme fatale with a dark past and problems in her love life getting thrown into a truly shocking and horrifying situation. These books just aren’t my thing – often too cliché, predictable, and gratuitous for my taste. So, it was very pleasant surprise that I enjoyed this book.

The Scent of Shadows is not a vampire book or a book about any monster we’ve read about before. Pettersson takes her time to introduce something new – basically a supernatural race of good guys and bad guys fighting it out behind the scenes of us mere mortals. We don’t have pantheon of gods and monsters – just a bunch of super-humans battling in the age old good versus evil struggle, and what better place for this battle than Las Vegas. Fans of Vegas will enjoy this new side of Sin City from an insider’s point of view.

Joanna Archer is the definition of a disturbed, independent woman with a number of issues to work out. Subconsciously searching for the man that raped and left her for dead when she was a child, Joanna has become removed from family and friends, having only her camera and martial arts as support. Let’s cut to it – bad things happen and in the process she learns that she is more than human – she is a born superhero that has been long hidden from both the good guys and the bad guys. The good guys are in danger of loosing it all and Joanna is the key to their survival or elimination.

In a bit of strange effort, Pettersson has attempted to combine this good versus evil struggle with comics. The activities of the Zodiac Troup 175 (yes, that really is what they are called) are mirrored in comic books – two sets, one for the shadow and one for the light (and you can’t read the opposing team’s comics). This sets up one of the more amusing and scenes in the book where our beautiful femme fatale squares off against a bunch of comic store geeks. The problem is that this aspect of the story was half developed at best – it needed to be fully fleshed out or left out altogether. As written it amounts to basically nothing but filler.

Yes, this book is as clichéd as it sounds. It’s predictable too. The writing is inconsistent – the first sentence of the book alone was almost enough to make me stop reading. The thing is that in spite of all that, I couldn’t put the book down. Pettersson sets the mood and grips you, not letting go. I wanted to know what happened next – I needed to know. Joanna turns out to be a fascinating character, and even with what little we see of others, they have a bit of depth as well.

The Scent of Shadows is a book that can’t be put down, and I really enjoyed reading it. However, with the shortcomings mentioned above, and a few not mentioned, it only partially succeeds. Fans of Kim Harrison and Laurell K. Hamilton will likely not only not notice, but absolutely love this book. For me, it gets 6.5 out of 10. I really wanted to rate it much lower, but I can’t deny that I enjoyed it and literally couldn’t put it down. As I said initially, it was a pleasant surprise.

Of course a book like this is literally made for sequels. While it stands well on its own, much is left unresolved for future adventures. The Taste of Night will be this continuation, being released shortly after The Scent of Shadows.