Alas, No Checkmate

The Rook
by Daniel O'Malley
Published by Little, Brown and Company
3 Out of 5 Stars

To open your eyes in the middle of a downpour, beaten and bruised, surrounded by dead bodies wearing latex gloves and realizing you have no idea who you are, how this happened, or whose body this is has to be a tad disconcerting. This is exactly the situation facing the new consciousness inhabiting the body of Myfanwy Thomas at the beginning of The Rook. 

Fortunately, the former occupant of Myfanwy's body knew her memories would be wiped clean and thoroughly prepared for this event. In the pocket of her coat, the new Myfanwy finds a letter offering advice from her predecessor: how to obtain money, where to go, of whom she should be wary. It also offers her a choice: she can take on a new identity and live her own life, or she can resume the life that had belonged to Myfanwy Thomas. The complication is that the life of Myfanwy Thomas comes with unbelievable power, but also with at least one powerful (and unknown) enemy. Myfanwy learns that, prior to the betrayal that led to her subsequent amnesia, she was a Rook, a high ranking agent of the Chequy, a secret organization of superpowered individuals charged with protecting the British Isles from supernatural threats. She also learns that she her particular gift is the ability to control the actions of others. The new Myfanwy must uncover a traitor in their midst if she's to learn who took her memory and why.

Holy shit, has it been a long time since I picked up a book with such a kick ass beginning! However, the problem with such a beginning is that the narrative must continue to rise and kick substantially more ass from that point forward. Alas, The Rookdoes not. The momentum and intrigue created by the beginning started to taper off within 100 pages as I began to realize that, despite an awesome premise, the best part was already over. 

The first issue that I had with the novel is that it is difficult to pin down the tone. The beginning, despite a few welcome flashes of humor, seems serious and I settled in for what I presumed would be an intelligent supernatural thriller. Once Myfanwy returns to the Chequy, however, the humor becomes more prevalent and broad. At times I felt as though I were reading something more akin to Monty Python or Christopher Moore, which would have been fine if this tone had been consistent throughout. The supernatural threats seem better suited to the sort of thing one would find in young adult literature: inventive, sure, but their almost cartoonish qualities lessen the suspense as one realizes there's no real menace here for either our heroine or Britain itself. The abrupt shift in tone from potential thriller to "wink, wink, nudge, nudge" cleverness lost my interest early on.

Another factor that decreased my enjoyment of the novel is the manner in which Myfanwy's amnesia is handled. To have a superpowered agent for a secret organization bumbling around with no memory would normally offer for some delightful possibilities. However, because Myfanwy knew ahead of time that she would lose her identity, she had time to prepare. And, boy, did she prepare. She wrote an entire series of letters to her new self and even put together a handy-dandy purple binder outlining every intricacy of the Chequy. Using these letters and the purple binder, the new Myfanwy is seldom caught off-guard. In fact, she becomes so good at pretending to be the old Myfanwy that one can forget for entire chapters that she has amnesia. The letters are presented throughout the book in standalone chapters that serve as info-dumps or side stories that have nothing to do with the present day narrative. I began to dread the sight of italics because I knew it was another letter that would only slow down the momentum of the novel. The entire amnesia conceit simply serves as a framework for these letters; the novel may have been better off without both.

Despite these flaws, the novel has some admitted flashes of brilliance and humor. Plus, Myfanwy is a very likable heroine. It suffers from "too much," though, as it tries to be all things at once. Just a read through the reviews that describe it as a Jason Bourne-meets-Ghostbusters-meets X-Men-meets Harry Potter-meets The Vampire Chronicles can pretty well sum up how much is going on within the narrative. Unfortunately, it doesn't juggle the mix well enough to pull it off. 

Can't Say That I Was Moonstruck

Moon Called

by Patricia Briggs

Published by Ace

2 Out of 5 Stars

Move on. Nothing new to see here.

That's my biggest complaint about Moon Called. For someone new to the fantasy/supernatural world, it's probably entertaining enough but it definitely has the smack of "been there, done that" for the seasoned genre reader. I would have loved it 10 to 15 years ago.

Moon Called does have a few things going for it, especially the fact that too often books like this are just an excuse to have "things that go bump in the night" bump uglies in the middle of the night (*cough* Sookie Stackhouse *cough*). Usually they're just sex with fangs and fur--and nary a plot in sight. Not so in Moon Called. Nothing throbs, nothing is exposed, and there is a plot, albeit a fairly standard mystery.

The other thing the novel has going for it is the addition of Native American mythology to the supernatural genre. Sure, there are werewolves, vampires, gremlins, witches, and all the standard *yawn* European characters, but Mercy Thompson provides an unexpected dash of something new. Part Blackfoot Indian, Mercy is a skinwalker, a shapeshifter who can take the form of a coyote. So many possibilities here for something unpredictable and refreshing and . . .

That leads me directly to the other letdown of the novel. Mercy could be so bad ass, so awesome and instead she just serves as the observer through which we see the werewolf and vampire culture. It's possible to go entire chapters and forget how extraordinary she should be. Her character serves to provide info dumps on the supernatural world around her and, no matter how many times she claims to be her own agent and not a part of the werewolf pack, she sure seems like their bitch. Mercy's an in-the-wrong-place-at-the-wrong-time character, seldom shaping events or making choices on her own.

I do respect some of the choices made by Briggs and there are a few interesting spins on some fairly standard world-building, but in the end it's not enough to make me sign on for such a lengthy series.  

Riotously Fun

Midnight Riot

by Ben Aaronovitch

Published by Del Rey

3 1/2 Out of 5 Stars

Peter Grant is a Probationary Constable in London who, despite his dreams of being a detective, possesses a propensity for detail and a knack for paperwork that makes him the perfect candidate for the Case Progression Unit (a department that does the endless paperwork on behalf of "real" detectives). Before he's doomed to a pallid indoor office complexion and a life of carpal tunnel syndrome, he receives a breakthrough in a significant case. Only one problem: it's from a ghost. And thus begins Peter Grant's introduction to the world of Detective Chief Inspector (and wizard) Thomas Nightingale, sole investigator of the mystical and magical threats to the Queen's peace in London, and the Folly, headquarters for the study of the unknown. Suddenly, Peter's tendency to be distracted by seemingly insignificant details at a scene (on one memorable occasion he was distracted during a New Year's Eve celebration at Trafalgar Square, ignoring drunken fights while reading the plaque on the bum end of a statue lion) serves a relevant purpose. He's more sensitive to the vestigia, or magical residue, left behind by the supernatural, and this makes him the perfect candidate to apprentice with Nightingale.

Midnight Riot is riotously fun to read. It's treading on familiar territory (a super secret agency entrusted with explaining the unexplainable to those in power, but keeping it hush-hush from ordinary people), but Aaronovitch creates a world that is engaging if not entirely original. As a protagonist, Peter Grant is both naïve and a charming smart ass, with emphasis on charming--a concept that a lot of authors in this genre have difficulty pulling off without the character becoming insufferably smug and more interested in firing off one-liners in the heat of battle than kicking ass (Harry *cough* Dresden *cough*). It's also refreshing to have a protagonist with a diverse racial heritage as his background and family situation bring a little more to the table than one normally expects in this type of novel.

So why only 3 stars? Well, it's really more of a 3 1/2 star read. Midnight Riot is entertaining in a quickly forgettable way, which is all it purports to be. And, in that, it almost entirely succeeds. However, despite an inventive premise for the supernatural killer (which is hinted at pretty broadly on the U.K. cover of the novel, but I won't reveal anything here as mum's the word on the cover and blurb of the U.S. edition), some of the pieces don't quite fit together smoothly and there are some pretty giant leaps in Peter's logic that allows him to connect events. Also, there are really two intertwining narratives: the supernatural serial killer and a territorial dispute between the Mother Thames and Father Thames, water deities with no love for one another. Because Aaronovitch has to jump between these two narratives, neither really gets the full exploration it deserves. His concept of the water deities and the hierarchy involved is fascinating enough for a novel all its own.

It also bothered me how quickly Peter could forget that which should have been important. In the end (no spoilers, promise), his friend Leslie is in grave danger and yet Peter seems to rather nonchalantly walk away from the situation and returns to his parents' home. That plus a rather awkward segue into a brief story about vampires certainly leads to some hiccups in the narrative flow.

These, however, are rather minor irritants in a light novel that, because of the strength of its characters, I thoroughly enjoyed. It's because of these characters (Peter Grant in particular) that I look forward to reading Moon Over Soho.

The Mystery is Why Did I Read the Whole Thing

The Mystery of Grace

by Charles de Lint

Published by Tor Books

2 Out of 5 Stars

**Some mild spoilers ahead**

On the front of this novel, Alice Hoffman is quoted as saying “No one does it better.” That’s not true. A lot of people do it better. Alice Hoffman, for example. Or Robin McKinley. Or Neil Gaiman.

Altagracia "Grace" Quintero is a self-described gearhead covered head to toe in tattoos, and she gets pissed when people judge her for her ink instead of her character. She loves classic hot rods (which she rebuilds), rockabilly and surf guitar, and Ford Motor Company (and she's a bad MoFo with a FoMoCo tattoo running down her leg to prove it). It's not important that you remember any of these things because she'll repeat them, over and over again. Oh, but other than her referring to her grandfather as "abuelo", you will have to remember that she's Mexican-American, which begs the question as to why this was important, unless it's so that de Lint can show off his limited and stereotyped surface knowledge of Mexican culture and the American Southwest. He must have watched a special on the Travel Channel.

Grace has just met the man of her dreams--John. Sure, he's pretty straight-laced and doesn't have any ink, but what he lacks in body art, he more than makes up for in . . . well, I'm not sure. It's just one of those "eyes locked across the crowded room" scenarios that leads to them going to bed together. But here's the problem for Grace: she's dead. Yup, kicked the bucket, pushing up daisies, groundhogs are bringing her mail, she has shuffled off this mortal coil. She's only allowed two passes back to the real world each year (Halloween and May's Eve) and, wouldn't you know it?, she doesn't meet her true love until she's all corpsified. Ain’t death a bitch? The rest of the novel is about these existence-crossed lovers trying to figure out how to be together. John, as he waits for the months to pass by, develops a stalkerish interest in—you guessed it—classic hot rods, rockabilly and surf guitar, and FoMoCo. Grace, as she waits, decides to rebuild a car in the afterlife. The afterlife Grace finds herself in isn’t heaven or hell, but seems to be a purgatory where people who die within the area in which Grace lived cross over, along with the building in which they died. So the landscape is constantly shifting, but everything else is pretty much just like life. The dead play cards, read books from the local library, listen to music at the local record shop, and basically wait for their two “get out of jail free” passes back to earth.

So what was my problem with this novel? Oh, there were so many. Weak characterization; long, tedious passages (the afterlife has never been so boring); conversations that offer shortcuts to exposition; and the fact that the last 1/3 seems to belong to a totally different novel. Some plotlines are just dropped altogether (for example, John just disappears off the page part of the way through the book after de Lint has spent so much time developing this relationship upon which the entire plot seems to hinge). This may be my first and last de Lint novel as I have the sneaking suspicion that the best thing about his novels is the cover art.

The Nightlife Isn't All It's Cracked Up to Be

Nightlife

by Rob Thurman

Published by Roc

2 Out of 5 Stars

I have come to the conclusion that I should not buy urban fantasy books that were first published as mass market paperbacks.  I can only assume it's the publishing world's version of "straight to DVD" or a SyFy original movie.
  
Nightlife isn't terrible, but it isn't great.  It's been-there-done-that territory for me and just wasn't worth my time. The plot is somewhat original:  The Auphe (apparently another name for elves) need a human/Auphe child to help them open a gate to the past.  The problem?  Auphe aren't the Keebler elves:  they're hideous, monstrous creatures who only live for violence and destruction.  Not exactly what a woman wants to cozy up to for a night of passion.  So the Auphe find a drunken gypsy whore who will do anything for money.  Apparently they had to wait centuries for a woman depraved enough to sleep with anything that could provide adequate coin as payment for the experience (on which I call "bullshit" as this is the stuff of pure fiction--Hugh Hefner manages to find such a woman every fifteen minutes).  Anyway, 9 months after this crime against nature occurs, little Caliban, named for the offspring of witch and demon in Shakespeare's The Tempest, is born.  Cal and his half-brother, Niko, escape their terrible childhood together and spend the rest of their lives on the run from the Auphe. 

What's not particularly original about the novel is the execution.  The characters are stereotypes to the urban fantasy genre.  Niko is some sort of concrete jungle ninja; he walks around packing enough steel that he's at serious risk of shish kebabbing himself every time he sits down. He must also be as stealthy as a drawer full of silverware.  Despite being so deadly, he's gorgeous and has blonde tresses that would be the envy of Lady Lovely Locks and the Pixietails (how's that for an obscure 1980's toy reference?)  Cal, the supernatural part of the duo, is like Harry Dresden's younger brother.  He's snarky and sarcastic in a not particularly clever manner.  And this is problematic for me because I'm sick of this ultra-hip, pop-culture spouting, always quick with a quip in the heat of battle, "I'm such a smart ass, but I just can't help it" persona of the protagonists in these types of novels.  It gets grating after a while, which is why I finally gave up on the Dresden Files and it's a big part of the reason as to why I'll be giving up on the Cal Leandros series.  This smug glibness seems to be a literary sleight-of-hand for distracting the reader from a lack of character development, which is fun at first but gets tiresome after the second or third novel of this type.

Another reason Nightlife didn't particularly hold my attention is because it begins with the resolution for what should be the novel's climax and, sure, the opening certainly gets your attention, but by the time you make it to what should be the most suspense filled part of the novel you realize, "Oh, hey, this has looped back around to the beginning. Damn!  I already know what's going to happen."  It's as anticlimactic as the Anthony Weiner scandal (c'mon, we all knew that was his junk).  This foreknowledge certainly makes the last 1/4 of the novel tiresome. 

Again, I can't say the novel isn't worth reading; in fact, it might be okay for those new to the genre.  I've read so much of this stuff that I know I've become jaded and from now on, if it wasn't first issued in hardback, I'm going to take a pass on this genre.