Carry On My Wayward Son...

Nightlife
by Rob Thurman
p. 2006




PSA: I tried staying mostly spoiler free because I hope this review attracts new readers and I don't want to ruin anything, but I couldn't resist completely. Highlight the black-barred text if you want to read my 'spoilered' section, which includes spoilers for both Nightlife and the television series, "Supernatural"

My first reread of the year, Nightlife is the first in an urban sci-fi/fantasy series written by Rob Thurman and released just eight years ago. I had picked it up about the same time and read through it in a couple of days and I was hooked. I had impatiently waited for the release of the following two books, then got a bit behind and stopped reading (though I didn’t stop collecting, as I always knew I’d pick it up again). It’s been years since I’ve been submerged in Thurman’s world; there are now eight novels in the series, each released a year apart, and I intend to have them all read by the end of 2014... so I can impatiently await the ninth book, I guess. At least Thurman’s been busier in recent years, releasing novels in different series, so I have something else to sate my thirst.

I have some complicated thoughts on Rob Thurman. For starters, I feel a small sense of victory that I was able to correctly guess that Thurman was female. Robyn Thurman purposefully left her gender ambiguous for the first few novel releases. I had to seek out her Livejournal (remember, this was 2006) before I could confirm what I’d guessed simply by her style of writing.

Speaking of her style, I both love and hate Rob Thurman... because I feel her style is exactly what mine would be like if I could just finish something. I instantly declared a silent allegiance to Thurman as an author because I was so impressed by her introspective, emotional representation of her well-drawn characters. It just falls so perfectly in line with my interests: urban fantasy, character-driven, intense and angsty, focuses on brothers, lots of dialogue, very sarcastic characters. It is because of these qualities that I first had the inkling that Thurman was secretly female. It could just be that I identified with her and projected my own gender onto her, but against all evidence to the contrary, I happened to be right, so maybe there is something to that.

There is probably also something to the fact that I love/hate her because not only has she written a story so disturbingly similar to my style and interests, but she has written many of them before I can even finish one. It’s a minor thing, of course, and any jealousy I have vanishes the moment I get sucked in to one of her books.

Let’s talk briefly about the plot: the series in question is loosely referred to as the Cal Leandros series, because that is the protagonist they have in common. Cal, short for Caliban—a cruel name bestowed on him by an uncaring mother who has deemed him a monster—is a 19-year-old half human, half demon living off the radar in New York City with only his older (fully human) brother Niko for company. Cal and Niko have been running for their lives for the past three years from Cal’s demon ‘family,’ the Auphe, hideously pasty, elven demons from another time. They’ve been banished to a hellish dimension, their numbers dwindling, ever since the induction of the human race, and they have plans for Cal to help them regain power. They kidnapped him once before—an experience that has been erased from Cal’s memory—and Niko is there to make sure it never happens again.

Nightlife is in every way an origin story. There are three supporting characters in Niko and Cal’s circle and their roles are pretty efficiently established in Nightlife. Of the three, Robin Goodfellow is clearly designed to be a fan favorite. Not only does he share his name with the author, but he gets some of the best dialogue in a story already rich with sarcastic quips and one-liners. Goodfellow is a puck, the mythical goat-man (less a pair of goat legs, a depiction Goodfellow dismisses as a poor fashion statement), and he is almost as old as the Auphe. These days he masquerades as a car salesman... until Cal and Niko come along and upend his comfortable—if lonely—existence.

I’m a little disappointed with the depiction of the two female characters, Promise, a vampire with a similar temperament as and a thing for Niko, and George, a syrupy sweet teenage psychic who clings to her notions about Cal despite the latter’s valiant attempts to push her away. Both characters are likeable, no doubt about it, but they aren’t really relatable or particularly complicated yet. They are too idealized, designed to be the perfect soulmates for Niko and Cal without really developing as individuals first. I hope this changes in later books; there’s still time, though from my memory, this doesn’t change in the first three books.

My only other complaint is that, for a first novel, Thurman’s characters are perhaps a little too well-defined. The reader can get a sense of them after the first hundred pages, and the characters themselves always know how the others are going to react. It’s comforting to know that Thurman knows her characters like the back of her hand, but it leaves little room for them to surprise you, even this early on.

That said, I liked this novel even more the second time around and my reread has sufficiently energized me to continue the series. Maybe not all at once, but before the end of the year, for sure. There are definite shades of one of my favorite television shows, “Supernatural,” in these books; even the author has admitted this after checking out the CW program, which started roughly a year before Nightlife’s release. Two adult brothers fighting monsters for a living, always on the run, one older and overprotective, the younger troubled and with shades of demonic influence to him. Hell, even the little details are strikingly similar: mom meets a fiery end at the hand of ‘demons,’ little brother takes a fatal knife to the gut and is brought back by supernatural means, and both Cal and Sam’s demonic heritage was orchestrated by the bad guys in order to use both young men as a gateway between worlds. I guess this makes Robin Goodfellow their ‘Castiel’... except a complete 180 in disposition. Where Castiel can be no-nonsense, asexual, naive, Goodfellow is a hedonistic, vainglorious pit of sarcasm. It’s an interesting contrast, though not as interesting as the difference in brotherly relationships. One thing I find refreshing about Thurman’s series over "Supernatural" (a TV show I’ve loved and hated over the years) is that Cal and Niko have a refreshingly honest relationship. They don’t spend the books constantly bickering and being emotionally stunted like Sam and Dean Winchester. I only hope the books retain this dynamic going forward.

I could say a lot more about my likes and dislikes in Nightlife, but I have seven more reviews ahead of me, and I'm sure I'll have a lot more to say, so I'll leave it for now.

Your Front Row Seat to the End of the World

Good Omens 

by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman

p. 1990

Good Omens is a book that wants to be read.

It doesn’t want much else. It doesn’t want to be revered or lauded nor does it want to be proverbially ripped apart (though if you ask its two loving fathers, it would very much like you physically beat the crap out of it, at least enough to show some wear and tear). Good Omens wants you to be amused and entertained and to love it dearly for 300-odd pages. Then it wants you to tell all your friends. It may not be able to articulate exactly why, but it’s insistent that once you’ve read it... you’ll know.

From the history surrounding this comedic tale, it seems that this work of fiction—much like the universe and humanity itself—happened through a confluence of events that appear very much like an accident. Terry Pratchett was a somewhat established writer in the fantasy genre and Neil Gaiman was just starting out and a fortuitous interview of the former by the latter inevitably led to a plot several years in the making. Two authors just trying to pick the other’s brain and make them laugh led, quite appropriately, to the story of an angel and a demon, unlikely friends in the end times, just trying to do their jobs and maintain a sort of friendship.

Crowley and Aziraphale are the demon and angel characters respectively, and they have cultivated their unusual companionship since the beginning of time—which, contrary to scientific belief, was only about 6000 or so years ago. They, along with a cast of characters as equally charismatic as themselves, must navigate the impending apocalypse as Heaven and Hell prepare to duke it out over the soul of a young boy, the Antichrist, who doesn’t know what he is yet. Also entwined in this convoluted plot are a young woman, descendent of the author of a book of prophesies that predicted this mess, a couple of witchfinders, a fortune teller, four precocious children, a not-quite-of-this-earth dog, and the Horsemen of the Apocalypse, appropriately reincarnated for modern times in the form of bikers.

I generally liked all of the plot threads; though it skipped around quite often, I didn’t find it too hard to pick up where I left off. Everything involving Dog’s point of view was gold, as was Shadwell, the last head witchfinder, whose richly-depicted dialogue was a delight to pick apart every time he spoke. Every character in this book had a ‘voice’ that you could really hear in your head, transcending the pages on which it was written.

I found myself, at times, a little impatient with the children's plot, especially about halfway through when it took over the novel for a time. They got a bit tiresome, especially seeing as the heart of this novel is the friendship between Crowley and Aziraphale, who vanished for a time to let the others take center stage, and weren’t reunited until the end of the story.

Reading this book, I couldn’t help but feel that the TV show Supernatural took some of its cues from Gaiman and Pratchett. The Horsemen evolution was one thing—though in the Supernatural-verse, the Horseman drive fancy cars as opposed to motorcycles, and then of course there are the striking similarities between each story’s version of the demon Crowley, though I would have to say that Supernatural’s Crowley has a definite agenda that Good Omens’ Crowley explicitly lacks. That is one thing that struck me about this book as being a distinctly British quality: the characters, though often in positions of considerable power, never seem to take things too seriously and rarely seem to have any idea what is going on. It is a classic trait of farcical literature that makes this book so darkly comical. Here are characters literally deciding the fate of mankind and their thoughts are preoccupied by old books, expensive cars, and childish games. It’s hilarious in its absurdness.

It was impossible decipher which parts were Gaiman’s ideas and which parts were Pratchett’s because these two authors blend together so seamlessly. Being that this was also my first foray into Pratchett’s repertoire, I expect I wouldn’t have much say on that topic in general, but I certainly intend to seek out more of his work now. The efforts of these two authors, over the course of some years, has certainly paid off in the form of this cult favorite, and their ability to create a story that—in spite of its absurdity—makes perfect sense is what I had always hoped to accomplish writing stories with my friends growing up (and may still do one day!). They just fit together.

Gaiman and Pratchett share a common interest that many book lovers and aspiring writers can relate to; they don’t want their book to change the world. They just want people to read it and to love it and to pass it on to all their friends, and I intend to do just that.