Santa Olivia
Jacqueline Carey
Grand Central Publishing
May 2009
Jacqueline Carey has quickly become one of my favorite, fantasy authors, and there is a reason for that. Carey, best known for her Kushiel’s Legacy series of books has the uncanny ability to take our world and twist it, creating a fabulous new world full of things that are eerily similar to what we know, but strange, new, and different. Her talent lies not in convincing you that this other world is living and breathing and exists, but in making you care so deeply about it because in reality this world could be what your own was if things were only slightly different. There is some sort of secret delight in seeing how our world gets turned at right angles into the stories that Carey produces, and what sort of threads are woven together into the tapestry of some new, unique re-imagining of familiar stories.
Carey’s latest work, Santa Olivia, is a departure from her world of Terre D’Ange, and is instead a modern book, an urban fantasy. Before I received the book in the mail, I dubbed it Carey’s X-files book, after my much beloved show, and within a few pages you know why. The story seems nearly ripped from the headlines of the past few months, the world is plagued by a pandemic that streams across the border between the US and Mexico, and the town of Santa Olivia, Texas is caught in the middle. Weakened by illness, and caught in a mysterious conflict between the US and a ghostlike Mexican general named El Segundo, Santa Olivia is soon cut off from the world, it’s people informed that they are no longer citizens, they are non-entities, lorded over by the US Army who establish a base nearby and rename the town as Outpost. A town with no name, with no country, with no hope, for years the citizens of Outpost eek out an existence under the watchful eyes of the local general, barely piecing together the days with no hope of relief, their one comfort taken in the boxing matches that are the passion of the soldiers and the townspeople alike.
Loup Garron is born into this environment, years after Outpost was taken over and freedom was just a memory. Her lonely mother happened upon her father, a deserter from the Army, a genetically modified experiment on his way to Mexico to join the others of his kind. Their brief and passionate union created a child that no one thought could exist, a girl with all of the powers of her strange, inhuman father. Sadly, before her birth, her father was forced to leave to join his own kind, leaving Loup, (a name her father requested due to her mother’s belief that he was a sort of werewolf). Raised by her loving but overworked mother and her doting and over-protective brother, Loup is very different from the other children of Outpost. Stronger, faster, and more agile than any child of her age should be, Loup also knows no fear. Incapable of feeling that emotion, Loup is forced to learn and understand the social cues and consequences of what having no fear means, and is schooled by her brother to always be careful, to never show off her powers, and to always be mindful of just what her father was. If the Army overseeing Outpost ever got wind of Loup, she could easily be taken and tested on by them, never to be seen by her family again.
Outpost is a hard town, and life there is harsh and unforgiving. Though Loup can’t feel fear, she can feel hurt, injustice, and anger, and like many of the other children her age she chafes at the restrictions of the town, of the Army who controls them, of the two warring families who take advantage of Outpost’s unique situation, and at the fact that the people of Outpost are never, ever able to leave and see the greater world. Their existence has been eradicated and denied, and their movements are carefully monitored. As Loup and her friends age they begin to yearn to do something, anything to give hope to the mindless existence they all live in. And they realize they have hit upon it with Loup’s strange and unique gifts. Taking the persona of the patron saint of the town that had once been Santa Olivia, Loup begins a mission to right the perceived wrongs of Outpost, and to help her people find the faith to persevere despite the oppression. Knowing her quest might end with the very thing her brother Tommy feared the most, Loup decides to make a statement and to become the one thing her community has never had…a hero.
Compared to the 600+ brick monstrosities that are Carey’s normal MO for her Kushiel books, Santa Olivia is a smaller, much more compact read, lacking the epic scope of Carey’s fantasy books. One of my normal complaints about Carey’s work is that it is long and drawn out, overly pedantic, with scenes and side stories I feel are useless in the face of the bigger story. But Santa Olivia suffers from none of these drawbacks. Carey keeps a tight story for a change, leading you easily from before Loup’s childhood through the entire story of her growth and journey into adulthood without anything unnecessary and cluttered. She leads us from point A to B in the most efficient of storytelling ways. Perhaps because her world is so limited, specifically to Outpost, this aided her in keeping the story focused on where it should be, on Loup and her friends, rather than adventures in strange lands far away.
Though it lacks the wide sweep of adventure, it makes up for it in a tight story revolving a close-knit circle of characters, in a situation that could come straight out of a AP newswire today. The idea of a pandemic from Mexico effecting the world, the US over reacting to the threat by overstepping personal and Constitutional rights for the idea of the “greater good”, to the point that they create great evil…this is what we are living and breathing everyday in this country. And Carey takes these ideas and creates a scenario that says, “what if this happened”. It isn’t uncomfortable, and in no way does it stand there pointing fingers. That isn’t what this book is about. But it deftly handles the sensitive subjects without prejudice, with understanding. While we want to hate those who oppress the people of Outpost, we also recognize that they are men doing a distasteful job because someone else made a distasteful decision, and while they aren’t happy about it, they are doing it. The situation is so very complicated, but it is also very real, even in terms our own world.
Carey as an author has a reoccurring theme through her books, and that is that is that people can rise to great things because of their force of will, not because of anything particularly special about them. Even if there is something special that they possess, it is less that specialness and more of what is in their spirit and heart. In essence Carey is writing about a ‘werewolf’ character, a superhero with inhuman strength, never once do you ever see Loup as fantastical or larger than life. She is a girl who is different, yes, but in many ways Loup has the same sense of the world and herself that her peers, the Santitos have. She is a pragmatic, no-nonsense child of a troubled town, and in that you realize that Carey has turned the traditional story on its head. Rather than being from another planet or directly part of the human experiments herself, Loup is a girl who is as much shaped by where she was born and the community she was at as any strange powers or cataclysmic events. Loup as a heroine is one of them, one of the people of Outpost, and thus is one of us as well. Her strangeness almost becomes an afterthought in the journey she must face and the destiny she creates for herself as a symbol to her people.
Outpost is a hardscrabble town; much of what had been civilization at one point in time has given way there to basic necessity and sheer survival. And out of this comes an unlikely cast of characters within the book who might come off as somewhat shady or distasteful in another light, but in the hard luck work of Outpost and around Loup herself they find better qualities. The priest of the town who isn’t really a priest, but takes on the mantel of one to try and do some good in the town, aided by the nun who isn’t a nun either. The boxing coach who is paid by the General to train local boys to box against the Army’s champs is a man who can come and go as he pleases, but chooses to side with Loup when he realizes just how little hope the Army is willing to give to anyone, including himself. The promising prizefighter, son of one of the local powerful families, who uses his station to get what he wants in the tired town, but yearns to be free in the greater world. He eventually comes to love Loup as a friend and kid sister, aiding her in her quest. The world has forgotten about these people and cares little for their little lives, but Carey makes you love them, even though by no means are these people perfect. They are rough, tough, leathery people, worn by the injustice done to them, but they yearn for something better, to be something better and do something better, and through that we come to enjoy them as much as we care for Loup.
Her description of Outpost, the dry and parched desert town, with ghosts of memories of a world that has long past the town by is particularly poignant and poetic. Nothing in the town is new if it doesn’t come from the Army, and few have ever ridden in cars, let alone gotten their hands on a working one. Besides, where would they go? Clothing is patched and frayed, old equipment is used and reused using technology years out of date by the rest of the world’s standards. All communication with the outside is cut off, and for the people of Outpost they don’t remember a world before, a wonderful world that they let slip away as the Army descended. These ghosts of there past act as painful reminders of just what they have given up, and the oppression they feel everyday at their lost lives. It wonderfully creates the atmosphere dying for someone or some thing to give them hope that there can be something better someday, some hope of a life beyond their dusty town. Her setting is perfect for the story she is telling, and while it lacks the polish of graceful and gracious Terre D’Ange, it is no less familiar or powerful.
This is a very different book from the Kushiel series, and Loup is no Phedre no Delauney. Where Phedre is a beautiful and graceful woman, full of elegance and manners, Loup is a child raised on the streets of a ragged town. Liberal use of the swear words, especially the F-bomb is common amongst all of the characters, reminding us that this is a book happening more in our world than in Terre D’Ange. However, if Carey gave up her graceful touch on Loup’s language, she didn’t lose it on Loup’s heart. Loup’s touching romance with her fellow Santito, Pilar, is handled not only tactfully but as a matter-of-fact, with the occasional lewd references, mostly in jest, but with none of the recrimination that one would expect in many corners of Texas today. It is almost indicative of where Outpost exists. They could care less who you sleep with. Perhaps it is merely a result of Loup’s utter lack of fearlessness about the matter. It lacks the uncomfortable that such a relationship would have in perhaps another story or with another author and becomes an afterthought in the full fleshing out of the tale.
Overall for Carey’s first, non-straight-up-fantasy novel, I believe Santa Olivia is a roaring success. Poignant, sweet, thrilling, and heroic, you find yourself at the end wondering if this will be the start of a whole new chapter for both Loup and Carey, with her ‘werewolf’ girl out to save the world. We don’t know, but I certainly hope that it is.
Rate this wormy book: I rate this a MONSTER read for anyone who loves Carey’s work. It is engaging and a fast read compared to her others books, with a character that is just as engaging as Phedre no Delauney, but who is at the same time VERY different. At the end you are cheering for your girl, and hoping that she makes reappearance again for more.
Friday, May 22, 2009
Friday, May 8, 2009
A Time to Run
A Time to Run
Barbara Boxer and Mary-Rose Hayes
Chronicle Books-2005
I love living in California…and Barbara Boxer is one of the big reasons why.
Not only is the esteemed Senator from California a woman I respect and admire, but now she’s an author too! I’ve loved a lot of the work Senator Boxer has done for my state, (as well as Senator Feinstein-note how California has TWO female US Senators people). It is this experience that Sen. Boxer has drawn on to bring us her first, fictional work, A Time to Run, the story of a first time, junior Senator from California, her improbable rise to such a powerful office, and the crucial juncture she stands at as she is faced with key evidence regarding the current nominee for the Supreme Court.
Ellen Fischer is placed in a predicament. She is the foremost voice for the liberal wing of the Democratic Party and is not happy with the Presidents current choice for the Supreme Court, a highly Conservative law professor by the name of Frieda Hernandez. On principle Fischer knows she should lead the challenge against the nominee, but knows that in the next week she has the bill that is near and dear to her heart coming up for a vote. Having run on platform trying to create legislation that protects children against abuse, and to create a system that better ensures childhood welfare and stability, she knows that any rabble rousing on her part against the President’s choice could nix the bill. But she is not happy with Hernandez, knowing that is she gets onto the bench could cause all sorts of harm to the liberal cause.
As luck would have it, an old friend of Fischer’s stops by. Greg Hunter is a star reporter, and is in the pocket of Fischer’s political nemesis, a Cheney-esque Republican politico by the name of Carl Satcher. Ellen Fischer had beat out Satcher for her seat, and there was no love lost between the two, nor between herself and the man who had been a very close friend of both Fisher and her late husband, Josh. But Hunter is contrite, he comes bearing gifts, he has apparently found, in his investigations, evidence that Frieda Hernandez abused her daughter Flora as a child. Knowing this cuts at the heart of Ellen Fischer, he passes the information to her, asking that she keep his name out of it, and do with the information what she will.
Fischer is left with the decision…should she bring this information out to light in the floor debate the next day, or should she look into the charges further? Time is running short, and she has to do something before the call for a full Senate confirmation vote the next day.
From here the story focus shifts from that of a political debate to the story of just how Ellen Fischer, her late husband Josh, and Greg Hunter all know each other. The story is less about what Fischer will do with the information and much more how she and Greg Hunter got to this point. Ellen Downey we discover was once a bright-eyed Berkeley student, a displaced kid from Long Island, who befriends the two big men on campus, Josh Fischer, a thoughtful and passionate young up-and-coming lawyer and politician, and Greg Hunter, a handsome journalism student who has his eyes set on becoming something bigger and better than his family’s blue collar roots in Ohio. Ellen is drawn to both men, Greg who is the wounded soul who finds comfort in Ellen’s easy honesty, and Josh, the son of Holocaust survivors, who wants desperately to right the type of wrongs that entrapped and killed much of his own family. Ellen herself is a bit of the bleeding heart, she becomes involved with a group called the Children’s Alliance, a mentor group for the young, hardscrabble kids of Oakland, trying to teach them how to read, and to give them something more to do in their life than just run the streets with gangs.
Despite having an idyllic few months in 1974 before graduation, the threesome does eventually break up after graduation. Though she has a one-night stand with Greg, Ellen’s heart belongs with Josh, while Greg takes a job in small town papers in the Midwest. Josh becomes a defense lawyer, under the guiding wing of Congresswoman Lester from Oakland, who is grooming him to be her successor. When Ellen discovers she can’t have children, she throws herself into her passion of mentoring and saving the children of Oakland. After eight years, the three find themselves brought together again, when Greg returns to San Francisco to take a job at the Chronicle. It is there that he reunites with a college flame, Jane, and her rich father, who has connections with the very powerful Senator Carl Satcher. Despite their friendship, Ellen, Josh, and Greg all find that the choices they make in these years, and the places they decide to keep their loyalties have serious repercussions in the future to come, decisions that ultimately would cost Josh his life, Greg his career and family, and would put Ellen into the Senate seat that she now holds…the one that could have such heavy consequences for Frieda Hernandez.
Despite being advertised as being as catchy as The West Wing, (one of my three favorite shows of all time), A Time to Run, while being interesting and fun, is hardly as snappy, hard-hitting, or thoughtful as Aaron Sorkin’s political drama. While it certainly has a lot of political backstabbing running amuck through it, I had the feeling of it being a tad too Pollyanna-ish, as if Ellen Fischer somehow stood above the fray of the dirt of Washington politics. Perhaps I’ve been watching too much The X-files, (the first of my three favorite shows of all time), and I’m a bit cynical when it comes to backroom deals, or maybe Dick Cheney and Karl Rove have just left a bitter taste in my mouth, but I sort of felt that there wasn’t enough bite to the really dirty things going on there. I wanted to really hate Greg Hunter for being the spineless shit that he was, instead I felt a bit sad for the guy. Sure, he’s a pathetic sack of crap, but he had some real reasons why he’s a pathetic sack of crap.
And perhaps there’s a lesson there about how I shouldn’t hate the Bush/Cheney era politicians because they were humans too…but I’m not listening if there is that lesson.
I did find Ellen Fischer endearing, much as I find Senator Boxer, a person who in real life I think I’d get along with a lot. Red headed, loves to sing, is passionate about helping kids; she and I could be friends. And that is what keeps the book engaging, even when the plot sort of runs a bit mushy on you. Ellen Fischer is an endearing person, and you cheer for her when she helps kids as desperate as Derelle, one of her aids who Fischer helps as to get off the streets as a girl. You want to see more of these types of people in real life, and I liked her desperately. She made me want to go up to Oakland and start mentoring kids, (which isn’t half a bad idea for me).
The rest of the supporting cast, (save for Derelle, who I adored as well), sort of falls a bit flat, Greg and Josh in particular seem to run into this problem. Josh you want to like because he is the love of Ellen’s life, despite his faults. But Boxer never allows us to really see Josh as himself; rather we see much of Josh through Ellen’s eyes. Those rare times we do see Josh as himself, he feels so strikingly unrealistic, and he’s almost too good to be true. He is slightly insecure, but painfully noble, yet with his one big mistake that could damage everything, he is almost a cookie cutout of a political Greek tragedy waiting to happen. I wanted to like Josh, but he felt he was just too hard to hold on to as a character.
Greg also felt flat to me, a man who sort of dug his own grave, and rather than being truly a slimy git came off as being a sad, pathetic jerk who was so screwed up he should have been on meds. Greg is no Danny Conchanon from The West Wing, the man torn in his loyalties, wanting to tell the truth to the people, but is desperately in love with the Press Secretary, CJ. And you almost feel that Greg sort of wants to be that way. Rather he’s a selfish prat who always sort of wanted what Ellen offered, but was too much of a self-centered jerk to do it right, and instead chose a different path and screw anyone who came in his way, including the people he loved most. And he never, ever once sees it that way. He always only thinks of himself. I’d have rather hated the guy for being a jerk playing political hardball, than a pathetic sack of crap that just couldn’t keep from screwing up his life.
And maybe that is the point of the book. Rather than being a political thriller, A Time to Run is more a character study in how three people’s lives lead up to this moment. I recognize that not everything in Washington is going to have the high-impact drama of a Hollywood film, or even a television show. Often the backroom deals and evil power plays are situations just like these, with real people having to deal with real issues. Despite this, Senator Boxer’s book seemed to be just a bit too light and fluffy when it came down to it.
Not that this affects her in my eyes politically. I plan to keep voting for this woman until she stops running for office! And this was her first book out, and as far as first books go, it’s not so bad. Hopefully there will be others from our esteemed Senator, especially about Ellen Fischer. If I felt the novel was lacking oomph, I found Ellen to still be as engaging and endearing a person as I find the good Senator herself.
Rate this wormy book: I rate this with a FAT worm. It’s not a high-stakes political thriller, but it is an entertaining read. I highly recommend it to anyone who is considering becoming a commie community organizer, like myself!
Barbara Boxer and Mary-Rose Hayes
Chronicle Books-2005
I love living in California…and Barbara Boxer is one of the big reasons why.
Not only is the esteemed Senator from California a woman I respect and admire, but now she’s an author too! I’ve loved a lot of the work Senator Boxer has done for my state, (as well as Senator Feinstein-note how California has TWO female US Senators people). It is this experience that Sen. Boxer has drawn on to bring us her first, fictional work, A Time to Run, the story of a first time, junior Senator from California, her improbable rise to such a powerful office, and the crucial juncture she stands at as she is faced with key evidence regarding the current nominee for the Supreme Court.
Ellen Fischer is placed in a predicament. She is the foremost voice for the liberal wing of the Democratic Party and is not happy with the Presidents current choice for the Supreme Court, a highly Conservative law professor by the name of Frieda Hernandez. On principle Fischer knows she should lead the challenge against the nominee, but knows that in the next week she has the bill that is near and dear to her heart coming up for a vote. Having run on platform trying to create legislation that protects children against abuse, and to create a system that better ensures childhood welfare and stability, she knows that any rabble rousing on her part against the President’s choice could nix the bill. But she is not happy with Hernandez, knowing that is she gets onto the bench could cause all sorts of harm to the liberal cause.
As luck would have it, an old friend of Fischer’s stops by. Greg Hunter is a star reporter, and is in the pocket of Fischer’s political nemesis, a Cheney-esque Republican politico by the name of Carl Satcher. Ellen Fischer had beat out Satcher for her seat, and there was no love lost between the two, nor between herself and the man who had been a very close friend of both Fisher and her late husband, Josh. But Hunter is contrite, he comes bearing gifts, he has apparently found, in his investigations, evidence that Frieda Hernandez abused her daughter Flora as a child. Knowing this cuts at the heart of Ellen Fischer, he passes the information to her, asking that she keep his name out of it, and do with the information what she will.
Fischer is left with the decision…should she bring this information out to light in the floor debate the next day, or should she look into the charges further? Time is running short, and she has to do something before the call for a full Senate confirmation vote the next day.
From here the story focus shifts from that of a political debate to the story of just how Ellen Fischer, her late husband Josh, and Greg Hunter all know each other. The story is less about what Fischer will do with the information and much more how she and Greg Hunter got to this point. Ellen Downey we discover was once a bright-eyed Berkeley student, a displaced kid from Long Island, who befriends the two big men on campus, Josh Fischer, a thoughtful and passionate young up-and-coming lawyer and politician, and Greg Hunter, a handsome journalism student who has his eyes set on becoming something bigger and better than his family’s blue collar roots in Ohio. Ellen is drawn to both men, Greg who is the wounded soul who finds comfort in Ellen’s easy honesty, and Josh, the son of Holocaust survivors, who wants desperately to right the type of wrongs that entrapped and killed much of his own family. Ellen herself is a bit of the bleeding heart, she becomes involved with a group called the Children’s Alliance, a mentor group for the young, hardscrabble kids of Oakland, trying to teach them how to read, and to give them something more to do in their life than just run the streets with gangs.
Despite having an idyllic few months in 1974 before graduation, the threesome does eventually break up after graduation. Though she has a one-night stand with Greg, Ellen’s heart belongs with Josh, while Greg takes a job in small town papers in the Midwest. Josh becomes a defense lawyer, under the guiding wing of Congresswoman Lester from Oakland, who is grooming him to be her successor. When Ellen discovers she can’t have children, she throws herself into her passion of mentoring and saving the children of Oakland. After eight years, the three find themselves brought together again, when Greg returns to San Francisco to take a job at the Chronicle. It is there that he reunites with a college flame, Jane, and her rich father, who has connections with the very powerful Senator Carl Satcher. Despite their friendship, Ellen, Josh, and Greg all find that the choices they make in these years, and the places they decide to keep their loyalties have serious repercussions in the future to come, decisions that ultimately would cost Josh his life, Greg his career and family, and would put Ellen into the Senate seat that she now holds…the one that could have such heavy consequences for Frieda Hernandez.
Despite being advertised as being as catchy as The West Wing, (one of my three favorite shows of all time), A Time to Run, while being interesting and fun, is hardly as snappy, hard-hitting, or thoughtful as Aaron Sorkin’s political drama. While it certainly has a lot of political backstabbing running amuck through it, I had the feeling of it being a tad too Pollyanna-ish, as if Ellen Fischer somehow stood above the fray of the dirt of Washington politics. Perhaps I’ve been watching too much The X-files, (the first of my three favorite shows of all time), and I’m a bit cynical when it comes to backroom deals, or maybe Dick Cheney and Karl Rove have just left a bitter taste in my mouth, but I sort of felt that there wasn’t enough bite to the really dirty things going on there. I wanted to really hate Greg Hunter for being the spineless shit that he was, instead I felt a bit sad for the guy. Sure, he’s a pathetic sack of crap, but he had some real reasons why he’s a pathetic sack of crap.
And perhaps there’s a lesson there about how I shouldn’t hate the Bush/Cheney era politicians because they were humans too…but I’m not listening if there is that lesson.
I did find Ellen Fischer endearing, much as I find Senator Boxer, a person who in real life I think I’d get along with a lot. Red headed, loves to sing, is passionate about helping kids; she and I could be friends. And that is what keeps the book engaging, even when the plot sort of runs a bit mushy on you. Ellen Fischer is an endearing person, and you cheer for her when she helps kids as desperate as Derelle, one of her aids who Fischer helps as to get off the streets as a girl. You want to see more of these types of people in real life, and I liked her desperately. She made me want to go up to Oakland and start mentoring kids, (which isn’t half a bad idea for me).
The rest of the supporting cast, (save for Derelle, who I adored as well), sort of falls a bit flat, Greg and Josh in particular seem to run into this problem. Josh you want to like because he is the love of Ellen’s life, despite his faults. But Boxer never allows us to really see Josh as himself; rather we see much of Josh through Ellen’s eyes. Those rare times we do see Josh as himself, he feels so strikingly unrealistic, and he’s almost too good to be true. He is slightly insecure, but painfully noble, yet with his one big mistake that could damage everything, he is almost a cookie cutout of a political Greek tragedy waiting to happen. I wanted to like Josh, but he felt he was just too hard to hold on to as a character.
Greg also felt flat to me, a man who sort of dug his own grave, and rather than being truly a slimy git came off as being a sad, pathetic jerk who was so screwed up he should have been on meds. Greg is no Danny Conchanon from The West Wing, the man torn in his loyalties, wanting to tell the truth to the people, but is desperately in love with the Press Secretary, CJ. And you almost feel that Greg sort of wants to be that way. Rather he’s a selfish prat who always sort of wanted what Ellen offered, but was too much of a self-centered jerk to do it right, and instead chose a different path and screw anyone who came in his way, including the people he loved most. And he never, ever once sees it that way. He always only thinks of himself. I’d have rather hated the guy for being a jerk playing political hardball, than a pathetic sack of crap that just couldn’t keep from screwing up his life.
And maybe that is the point of the book. Rather than being a political thriller, A Time to Run is more a character study in how three people’s lives lead up to this moment. I recognize that not everything in Washington is going to have the high-impact drama of a Hollywood film, or even a television show. Often the backroom deals and evil power plays are situations just like these, with real people having to deal with real issues. Despite this, Senator Boxer’s book seemed to be just a bit too light and fluffy when it came down to it.
Not that this affects her in my eyes politically. I plan to keep voting for this woman until she stops running for office! And this was her first book out, and as far as first books go, it’s not so bad. Hopefully there will be others from our esteemed Senator, especially about Ellen Fischer. If I felt the novel was lacking oomph, I found Ellen to still be as engaging and endearing a person as I find the good Senator herself.
Rate this wormy book: I rate this with a FAT worm. It’s not a high-stakes political thriller, but it is an entertaining read. I highly recommend it to anyone who is considering becoming a commie community organizer, like myself!
Monday, May 4, 2009
Storm Front
Storm Front
Jim Butcher
April 2000
Roc Publishing
You remember a few months back I posted about Black Magic Woman, how I really wanted to like it because my friends loved it, blah, blah.
Yeah…seems this keeps happening to me.
I’m a huge fan of the film noir/pulp detective story. I’ve read Chandler and Hammett; I’ve seen every film noir known to man. I’ve listened to every episode of both Philip Marlowe, (not as good as the original), and Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar, not to mention a few other notable radio shows. I love the genre a lot, and it is clear that Jim Butcher loves it a lot too. His first outing with his wizard detective, Harry Dresden, is a more modern, and slightly altered retelling of those same sort of dark, blood drenched detective stories from our grandparents era, where the detective always gets drug into a seemingly innocuous case, only to end up being beaten up, threatened, nearly killed, and getting involved with the way wrong dame.
Dresden is a wizard. We don’t know how he figured this out or when he started practicing, but we do gather that there is an art to it, and that there are other wizards who more or less follow a code of conduct run by the mysterious White Council. We don’t know much about any other wizards, save for Morgan, a particularly pissy one who has it out for Harry. Seems back in the day Harry had a run in with dark magic and someone dying, but we don’t know any of the details of that either, only that the White Council was divided in what to do about it, so they split down the middle and decided to put a doom on him. Mess up again and we will have pissy Morgan kill you.
I suppose this tends to put a cramp in anyone’s style.
So Harry spends his days trying to keep a low profile, which is a bit difficult to do when he advertises himself as a “wizard” for hire. Apparently business as a paranormal expert isn’t so great, because he also does a gig working with a special unit of the Chicago police department that specializes in his type of thing…strange and paranormal, think X-files without the hotness of Mulder. Oh wait….
Anyway, as luck would have it, Harry gets jobs from both of his gigs in the same day, which is a boon this his bank account. One is a woman who is searching for the husband she suspects has vanished on her. She insists he hasn’t left her, but nervously pays Harry a large amount of cash to track down his whereabouts. Karrin Murphy of the CPD also calls him in on a case on the mysterious and gruesome death of a prostitute and her john, a man who happens to work for the largest criminal syndicate in town. The death screams it was done by vicious magical means, and of course all eyes turn to Harry, the guy who advertises himself as the wizard. And it isn’t just the police that are giving him the stink eye; it is Morgan and the White Council as well.
Now Harry is under pressure to figure out not just how the murders were committed, but by whom and for what purpose. His search sticks him in the middle of a turf war between criminal groups surrounding a strange new drug called “Third Eye”, the deaths of those who attempt to aid Harry in his search, and a really bad first date with a woman that Harry’s been attracted to for a while.
Not to mention an embarrassing incident with him running around naked with soap in his eyes.
For a first run for Harry Dresden, Storm Front is not a bad book. The action is tight, the plot makes sense, and it has the sort of gripping violence that makes a nice, old fashioned, pulpy ‘who-dun-it’. If you take the supernatural factor out of the story, it’s an OK crime story, of a guy who is over his head trying to figure out what in the Sam-hell is going on around him.
That being said, it is still an urban fantasy, involving a wizard, and magic, and supernatural aspects that are brought up, but then never really delved into. And I think that is where the book started failing for me pretty quickly. I admit it’s my own personal quirk that I love to know stupid details like why wizards exist, how they operate, what is the role of the supernatural in terms of the rest of the world. Perhaps it’s the years I spent playing Vampire: The Masquerade, I couldn’t tell you. From almost the start that niggling lack of detail about Harry’s world sort of bothered me. Admittedly, many pulp-murder stories have this same lack of detail, but none of them deal with wizards or any other strange supernaturals.
And it’s not to say that there wasn’t that background feeling there. As the story goes along, Harry reveals more and more aspects of what he does and how he does it, but it’s brought up in such an afterthought manner I sort of had to ask myself how much of this did Butcher really think out before he wrote this first novel.
One of my friends is finishing the latest novel, Turn Coat, and made a very astute statement about Butcher’s writing. It’s not a bad thing, but really his writing style is very much “guy”. It’s hard to explain, and I don’t think any author goes out there thinking they will write “guy” style or “girl” style, but there’s something about it that seems to really work on that male, testosterone level that I think is what carries a good portion of the book. And it makes it hard for me to sometimes really delve into it. At times you want to really like Harry, but he is a particularly standoffish character at first, and I’m hoping with time and further adventures this changes.
On the flip side, I don’t hate this novel. After all several of my dearest friends love it, and they can’t all be wrong. As Harry Dresden’s story is part of a series, I’m hoping that much of what I was seeking in Storm Front begins to resolve itself in the later books, to the point that I have a feeling I really will love this series when it’s all said and done. Just right now, I was sort of ‘eh’ about the first one.
I feel bad giving this a not-so-hot review, especially after I went and got this copy signed by the guy. I feel even worse one of my good college friends is being published by Roc as well and loves Jim Butcher, stalks him, etc. And I tend to trust this person's instincts in books, (especially as hers are awesome and I’ll spam those all over the interwebz closer to the publishing date.) Like I said, I want to think it’s just the rookie attempt that didn’t give me the wow factor, and that this will change with other Dresden File books.
Rate this wormy book: I give this a FAT worm. It is an enjoyable enough book for a sunny afternoon if you sit through and get it read. Not to deep in the supernatural as far as urban fantasy goes, but very good with the sort of noir-style mystery, with familiar themes and the sort of usual storyline you find in one of these stories. Why that might sound familiar and bland to most, it actually is done fairly well, and the supernatural factor does give it a sort of twist that makes it far from predictable. Just don’t expect too much explanation from the start as to how and why Harry’s world works.
Jim Butcher
April 2000
Roc Publishing
You remember a few months back I posted about Black Magic Woman, how I really wanted to like it because my friends loved it, blah, blah.
Yeah…seems this keeps happening to me.
I’m a huge fan of the film noir/pulp detective story. I’ve read Chandler and Hammett; I’ve seen every film noir known to man. I’ve listened to every episode of both Philip Marlowe, (not as good as the original), and Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar, not to mention a few other notable radio shows. I love the genre a lot, and it is clear that Jim Butcher loves it a lot too. His first outing with his wizard detective, Harry Dresden, is a more modern, and slightly altered retelling of those same sort of dark, blood drenched detective stories from our grandparents era, where the detective always gets drug into a seemingly innocuous case, only to end up being beaten up, threatened, nearly killed, and getting involved with the way wrong dame.
Dresden is a wizard. We don’t know how he figured this out or when he started practicing, but we do gather that there is an art to it, and that there are other wizards who more or less follow a code of conduct run by the mysterious White Council. We don’t know much about any other wizards, save for Morgan, a particularly pissy one who has it out for Harry. Seems back in the day Harry had a run in with dark magic and someone dying, but we don’t know any of the details of that either, only that the White Council was divided in what to do about it, so they split down the middle and decided to put a doom on him. Mess up again and we will have pissy Morgan kill you.
I suppose this tends to put a cramp in anyone’s style.
So Harry spends his days trying to keep a low profile, which is a bit difficult to do when he advertises himself as a “wizard” for hire. Apparently business as a paranormal expert isn’t so great, because he also does a gig working with a special unit of the Chicago police department that specializes in his type of thing…strange and paranormal, think X-files without the hotness of Mulder. Oh wait….
Anyway, as luck would have it, Harry gets jobs from both of his gigs in the same day, which is a boon this his bank account. One is a woman who is searching for the husband she suspects has vanished on her. She insists he hasn’t left her, but nervously pays Harry a large amount of cash to track down his whereabouts. Karrin Murphy of the CPD also calls him in on a case on the mysterious and gruesome death of a prostitute and her john, a man who happens to work for the largest criminal syndicate in town. The death screams it was done by vicious magical means, and of course all eyes turn to Harry, the guy who advertises himself as the wizard. And it isn’t just the police that are giving him the stink eye; it is Morgan and the White Council as well.
Now Harry is under pressure to figure out not just how the murders were committed, but by whom and for what purpose. His search sticks him in the middle of a turf war between criminal groups surrounding a strange new drug called “Third Eye”, the deaths of those who attempt to aid Harry in his search, and a really bad first date with a woman that Harry’s been attracted to for a while.
Not to mention an embarrassing incident with him running around naked with soap in his eyes.
For a first run for Harry Dresden, Storm Front is not a bad book. The action is tight, the plot makes sense, and it has the sort of gripping violence that makes a nice, old fashioned, pulpy ‘who-dun-it’. If you take the supernatural factor out of the story, it’s an OK crime story, of a guy who is over his head trying to figure out what in the Sam-hell is going on around him.
That being said, it is still an urban fantasy, involving a wizard, and magic, and supernatural aspects that are brought up, but then never really delved into. And I think that is where the book started failing for me pretty quickly. I admit it’s my own personal quirk that I love to know stupid details like why wizards exist, how they operate, what is the role of the supernatural in terms of the rest of the world. Perhaps it’s the years I spent playing Vampire: The Masquerade, I couldn’t tell you. From almost the start that niggling lack of detail about Harry’s world sort of bothered me. Admittedly, many pulp-murder stories have this same lack of detail, but none of them deal with wizards or any other strange supernaturals.
And it’s not to say that there wasn’t that background feeling there. As the story goes along, Harry reveals more and more aspects of what he does and how he does it, but it’s brought up in such an afterthought manner I sort of had to ask myself how much of this did Butcher really think out before he wrote this first novel.
One of my friends is finishing the latest novel, Turn Coat, and made a very astute statement about Butcher’s writing. It’s not a bad thing, but really his writing style is very much “guy”. It’s hard to explain, and I don’t think any author goes out there thinking they will write “guy” style or “girl” style, but there’s something about it that seems to really work on that male, testosterone level that I think is what carries a good portion of the book. And it makes it hard for me to sometimes really delve into it. At times you want to really like Harry, but he is a particularly standoffish character at first, and I’m hoping with time and further adventures this changes.
On the flip side, I don’t hate this novel. After all several of my dearest friends love it, and they can’t all be wrong. As Harry Dresden’s story is part of a series, I’m hoping that much of what I was seeking in Storm Front begins to resolve itself in the later books, to the point that I have a feeling I really will love this series when it’s all said and done. Just right now, I was sort of ‘eh’ about the first one.
I feel bad giving this a not-so-hot review, especially after I went and got this copy signed by the guy. I feel even worse one of my good college friends is being published by Roc as well and loves Jim Butcher, stalks him, etc. And I tend to trust this person's instincts in books, (especially as hers are awesome and I’ll spam those all over the interwebz closer to the publishing date.) Like I said, I want to think it’s just the rookie attempt that didn’t give me the wow factor, and that this will change with other Dresden File books.
Rate this wormy book: I give this a FAT worm. It is an enjoyable enough book for a sunny afternoon if you sit through and get it read. Not to deep in the supernatural as far as urban fantasy goes, but very good with the sort of noir-style mystery, with familiar themes and the sort of usual storyline you find in one of these stories. Why that might sound familiar and bland to most, it actually is done fairly well, and the supernatural factor does give it a sort of twist that makes it far from predictable. Just don’t expect too much explanation from the start as to how and why Harry’s world works.
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