Highway to Hell

Roadkill
by Rob Thurman
p. 2011

The fifth book in Rob Thurman’s yearly series, which began with Nightlife, has Niko and Cal Leandros and company hitting the road on the hunt for the latest supernatural threat, Suyolak, a demonic “anti-healer” with the capability of releasing a plague on the world. To do so requires the help of their own healer associate, Rafferty, and his cousin, Catcher. The pair of them, along with stalwart pal, Robin Goodfellow, chase Suyolak as he weaves a path of sickness and destruction across the country while concurrently dealing with the consequences of Cal’s casual trysts with werewolf paramour, Delilah, a Kin wolf whose association with Cal has earned her the distrust of her fellow wolves.

For the most part in Roadkill, the song remains the same: one-word compound title that is vague and encompassing, but relevant enough, bickering family, intense, frequent and bloody battle scenes interspersed with snappy dialogue and mountains of manly angst (or mangst, as it is conveniently referred to in some circles), big bad evil toying with the brothers until the inevitable ‘boss fight’ at the end... but Thurman changes up the style in ways that are noticeable enough to make the book feel somewhat unique.

For starters, in the last book, Deathwish, Thurman changed the formula by switching for the first time from a 100% Cal narration to a dual Cal and Niko narration. She continues that here, but Niko is subbed out for Catcher (of all characters), at a ratio of about three Cal chapters to every one Catcher chapter. I think this choice was a misstep overall. Deathwish provided the most insight into Niko as a character since the first book in the series, and taking away his narration relegates him back to the stagnant prop character he has sort of become. I mean, Niko’s awesome and all, but he borders on Gary Sue territory in his utter infallibility.

I also didn’t extremely care for the Catcher chapters because it just felt like more of the same stuff we were already getting from Cal. Thurman drew a really apt parallel between Niko and Cal and Rafferty and Catcher, the latter of whom are really like a soft version of the former, but it didn’t lead to any new revelations, at least not for the Leandros brothers. Catcher’s story (left open-ended post-Nightlife after the werewolf cousins disappeared for a few books to sort themselves out), is mildly interesting, predictably heartbreaking, and sort of wrapped up at the end. Rafferty is, for all intents and purposes, written off here as well, set aside for until Thurman needs a miracle in the future, no doubt. It’s clear Thurman is not done with him, but his story is concluded in a way that is satisfying for the time being.

Another change is the complete absence of Promise. After the sticky events of Deathwish, maybe Thurman thought the readers (and Niko) needed to take a bit of a break from Promise, but it’s kind of weird to me that she’s not even mentioned. Maybe that’s a result of Niko losing his narration, and if he were more abundantly represented, perhaps we would have caught a glimpse of Promise this go around, but at least we could have glimpsed Niko or Cal calling her for help once or twice. Geez, even Goodfellow’s boyfriend, Ishiah, was more prominently featured than Promise, thanks to the subplot of Goodfellow’s attempt to be monogamous. I was still okay with the lack of Promise overall though, because she can be something of a prop herself, and her absence in Roadkill gave Delilah a chance to shine and show what a complex character she is.

One thing that didn’t change, to my chagrin, is the Big Bad’s personality. Thurman can sketch out a damn good battle scene but her villains are all kind of the same. They are ridiculously powerful (too powerful, usually, for the brothers to beat alone, which you think they would have picked up on by now), spout some ridiculously evil, slimy dialogue, toy with our heroes like they’re playing with food, then inevitably go down in flames. They’re all just... sooo evil. And their intentions are all the same: death, chaos, victory, darkness rah rah rah. It took me five books to realize how tedious all the villains have been. I hope for a more complicated villain next time, one whose defeat leaves me with mixed feelings perhaps. Someone with motives we can understand, someone who has weaknesses. Hell, Suyolak is so powerful, there is literally not a chance that Cal and Niko could have defeated him on their own. They needed Rafferty or they would have been taken out in round one. Knowing that kind of makes the whole chase rather perplexing; what are Cal and Niko thinking chasing after something they have no idea how to beat? The Leandros brothers may fight hard, but they don’t always fight smart. Instead of exchanging banter and dwelling on brother-monster parallels, I would have welcomed seeing more interaction with Abelia-roo and the slimy Vayash clan who brought the problem into the world if it meant figuring out a way to defeat Suyolak without leaning so heavily on their deus ex machina healer.

I found some events in this book easy to aniticipate: I knew Catcher and Cal wouldn’t be cured of their respective ailments, I figured Delilah would only kind of betray Cal, I figured Goodfellow would be remain monogamous, and I just knew that having a healer literally on your side meant Cal would take more beatings in this book than any book previous (and how), but my biggest ‘totally called that’ moment was Cal’s inevitable downward spiral as he embraces his Auphe side. The only part I didn’t foresee is that the solution would come so quickly or so harshly. Cal’s mystical brain bomb should provide some interesting predicaments in future novels. Perhaps the predictability is a bad thing; perhaps it’s just a sign that, after a few books, I’ve really got these characters (and Thurman’s style) all figured out.

Don't Look Back

Madhouse
by Rob Thurman
p. 2008

I took a quick break from Rob Thurman’s series to let my mind recover from the all the angst by reading something lighter (hah! So much for that!) but I couldn’t stay away for long.

The third book in Thurman’s series is Madhouse, yet another action-filled, angst-ridden journey for Cal and Niko Leandros and their community of nonhuman friends.

This time there are two separate, unrelated threads guiding the book. The main plot is the resurrection and escape of a powerful creature called a redcap who once went by the name of Sawney Beane, the notorious 16th century serial killer. The other is a series of attempts on the life of Cal and Niko’s puck cohort, Robin Goodfellow, by an unknown assailant.

Business first: Sawney Beane is a case brought to them by an associate of Promise’s, who works in the Metropolitan Museum of Arts. When Sawney was resurrected from ash after centuries, he immediately went on a violent and not terribly discreet killing spree; Cal and Niko naturally take on the task of finding and stopping him, but this takes an awfully long time because they keep getting their asses thoroughly handed to them by Sawney. One particularly nasty encounter leads to the introduction of a new recurring character, Delilah, the sister of Flay, their werewolf ally from Moonshine. Like Flay, Delilah works for the werewolf ‘mafia’, the Kin, albeit with a few less burned bridges; Delilah, however, considers herself more of a ‘free agent’ and does pretty much whatever she pleases, which includes starting up an intimate relationship with Cal.

Delilah is a pretty interesting character; she obviously has a bit of a dark past herself, but she doesn’t seem to let any of it bring her down. I hope she sticks around for awhile, though I’m not one hundred percent sold on her sticking with Cal. Delilah, unlike sweet little Georgie, stands on her own two feet without seeming to be simply a love interest for the lead. I hope we get a chance in later books to explore her dynamics with other characters, but we don’t get very far with her here.

Despite his near–imperviousness, appetite for ravaging flesh, and his creepy army of the dead, I didn’t find Sawney as terrifying as I was supposed to. It was more frustrating than anything. The battle with Sawney seemed to set the tone for this series: a bunch of flubbed encounters and proverbial stumbling, some big setbacks, rallying friends and allies, all leading to a boss fight and some messy aftermath. Sprinkle in a liberal helping of Auphe angst and voila, another Thurman classic. I’m not really knocking it. The formula works, for the most part, and it’s entertaining. But it’s hard to take any ‘Big Bad’ that isn’t Auphe seriously when we are told repeatedly how much worse Cal’s demonic ‘family’ are.

It’s the second plot of Madhouse that is much more compelling, as it involves a little window into Robin’s past. Of course, Goodfellow’s life spans such a long time period, this can only be a tiny, miniscule glimpse into the magnanimous puck’s legacy, but I suppose that makes it all that much more telling that it affected Robin so. The attempts on Robin’s life (and I assume, though it is never confirmed, that the crossbow bolt from Moonshine was a lead-in to this subplot) are the result thousands of years of vengeance for something Robin did long ago that he is ashamed of. To be perfectly honest, I don’t even think what he did was that bad, at least, not in comparison to the nasty things Cal and Niko fight on a daily basis. The whole plot serves to prove that not only is there more to Goodfellow than meets the eye, but that he is worthy of being Cal and Niko’s friend and the hero status that is thrust upon him through this relationship to the brothers. That is to say, if Robin feels that bad about something careless he did centuries ago, it cements the idea in your brain that he is not a monster.

The only thing I didn’t like about the subplot was how blaringly obvious it was who the secret foe would turn out to be. Oh, what’s that you say? An unknown assailant is trying to have a main character murdered? I wonder if it could be that random character that supposedly has always worked for him despite the fact that we’ve never seen or heard her mentioned before. Plus, Thurman went out of her way to make Seraglio likeable and mysterious, making it all that more obvious that she would inevitably betray them. And really, what the hell is wrong with her? She’s Robin’s personal cook for god’s sake, and she couldn’t figure out a way to off him discreetly?

In the words of the illustrious Nigel St. Nigel:

“Really? That was your plan? That has to be the poorest executed attack in history. I was two feet away from you all the time. I mean, you have to be absolutely, without doubt, the worst murderer I have ever seen.”

On the Auphe front, the demonic nightmares are conspicuously absent for the bulk of Madhouse but their presence is felt as Cal starts practicing opening portals and ‘traveling’ more. Cal took advantage of this inherited talent to rid themselves of Moonshine’s ‘Big Bad’ and he continues to practice using them to do more of the same in the future, despite Niko’s strong objections. It’s a bit ‘road to Hell paved with good intentions’ cliche, and of course reminiscent of Sam Winchester’s eventual reliance on his demonic powers in season 4 of "Supernatural," but it’s still fun to see Cal embrace something about his Auphe heritage and acknowledge that it gives him an edge over the enemy.

The Auphe themselves may not be physically present for much of Madhouse but they return in a big way at the end in a frustrating cliffhanger that I had to wait a year to see resolved the first time around and had me disgustedly chucking my book at the wall when I read it (and then silently fantasizing about the day I can do the same to my own faithful readers...). I’ll see you all in book four to discuss this latest turn of events!

Bad Moon Rising

Moonshine
by Rob Thurman
p. 2007


Word of warning: this review is pretty much 50% spoilers, more for the purposes of discussing if you've already read the book than for pre-reading reviews. Therefore I have not spoiler-barred anything here. If you want a more spoiler-free version, check out my review of Nightlife.

Fresh on the heels of Nightlife, I dove right into its immediate sequel, Moonshine, which takes place some weeks after its predecessor. Cal and Niko have moved on from the Auphe business and are now working as supernatural pest control, essentially supernatural guns for hire. The horrors of the trade are the least of their worries though, when they take a job from the werewolf underworld and Cal’s psychic not-quite-paramour, George, is abducted.

The plot of Moonshine is much more twisty and convoluted than Nightlife, as there are a lot more players involved in the game. It is certainly not short on action, as the book is just a series of encounters with various deadly creatures, some directly involved in the main plot, some not so much.

I’ll speak briefly about the Auphe first. The start of the book gives you the impression that they have been wiped out and no longer pose a threat. Of course, we find out halfway through that this is not true, when a surviving Auphe steps in to derail Cal’s rescue attempts. I actually think it might have been cool if Cal and Niko actually had definitively defeated the Auphe at the end of Nightlife; it would have been unexpected, to say the least, but Moonshine makes it clear that the Auphe are here to stay and will remain the primary protagonists of the series, though for now their efforts seem to be afforded more towards personally fucking up Cal’s life than they are towards world domination. The important thing to learn from the reappearance of the Auphe, though, is that Cal seems to have picked up some of their habits—not so much with the bad ones, like murder and destruction, but the ambiguous ones, like opening portals to travel through. It’s a neat little superpower that will make things quite interesting if Cal A) learns to control it and B) stops agonizing over his Auphe genes and just accepts it as a bonus.

Given Cal’s general attitude, the latter seems unlikely to happen, but the former is a distinct possibility. Indeed, Cal spends just a little bit too much of this book torturing himself over his demonic half and it gets a bit tedious, especially when it’s obvious that it’s being used a plot device to keep him and George apart. I would like to see Cal allow himself to be happy for once. Given the twist at the end of Moonshine (that George was targeted because of who she was, not because of Cal, and it was Cal’s presence in her life that saved her), I had hoped for an opening between the two adorable kids, but the Auphe’s personal mission to destroy Cal’s happiness had to rear its ugly head and make him turn the girl away at the door. This is literally the last scene in Moonshine, ending a bit abruptly and on a sour note. I almost hope the relationship is not revisited in every book, but that will only happen if George leaves town. I’m not entirely against this; as I’d mentioned before, I find George likeable, but admittedly dull and—after her hands off approach to her own fate, demonstrated in this novel—a little frustrating, to be perfectly honest. I’m not sure I’m interested in Cal getting involved with a partner who won’t learn to protect herself, especially when she knows how much evil is out there in her own proverbial backyard.

What little Goodfellow we had in Moonshine was still gold. I had been mostly indifferent to the puck my first time around, but I’m liking him a lot more at a second glance. He’s clearly a character with a lot of history, with a lot to be chipped away, and I’m looking forward to diving deeper into that in the future novels. Goodfellow’s backstory must not only be extensive and layered, but there’s plenty of room there for twists and turns, considering he’s literally been around since the dawn of humanity. His ability to adapt to any culture and still be himself interjects a lot of fun into the otherwise angst-ridden adventures of Cal and Niko. There is a Goodfellow-related thread left open in Moonshine revolving around a mysterious attack with a crossbow at the start of the novel, evidence that some of Thurman’s subplots will likely span multiple novels. This is kind of refreshing in retrospect, but when I was reading the books the first time around, it was highly frustrating. It’s easy to forget everything that happened when you have yearlong intervals between books, the main reason I allowed myself to fall so drastically behind.

Moonshine gives us a much wider look at the Cal Leandros universe, introducing us to plenty of creepy crawlies, complete with Thurman’s vivid descriptions. She has set up a New York rich with seedy underbelly possibilities and she doesn’t skimp on the brutality. The novel opens with a brutalized little girl, dead by the hands of one of these said creepy crawlies (and perhaps setting up a parallel for the later abduction of George, an innocent ‘girl’ in her own right), and it doesn’t spare us the raw hurt of the murder. It’s sad, no doubt, but Thurman affords the right amount of solemnity to the tragic death. If there’s one thing Thurman has nailed, it is the raw emotion of her characters, which she undoubtedly knows like the back of her hand.

Like Labyrinth Meets Pan's Labyrinth... Minus the Labyrinth

The Book of Lost Things
by John Connolly
p. 2006

In World War II era rural Britain, young David, struggling to make sense of the premature loss of his mother to a wasting illness and the rapidly-altered structure of his family, stumbles upon another world, one parallel to but inconceivably darker than his own. This fantastical landscape of corrupted fairy tales provides the boy with the means to step into adulthood, but not without cost.

John Connolly’s The Book of Lost Things visits all the familiar fairy tales—and some unfamiliar ones—but they are not the Disney-saturated family friendly tales popularized by American audiences; this is because John Connolly’s The Book of Lost Things is not a fairy tale for children. Though the hero is but twelve years old and its coming of age themes follow the classic paths of any otherworldly adventure novel, this fairy tale for adults dances around themes much closer to the original Grimm style than anything animated and slapped on a screen with celebrity voices.

I found it difficult to like David at first, as he is a rather selfish and stubborn child, but such is the case in the traditional coming of age tale. I can’t say that the David who emerges by novel’s end will become a cherished favorite in my arsenal of beloved characters, but there’s no denying that he is more mature, for all that he’s been through, and it softens his earlier nastiness considerably. The reason David gets a pass early on is because the adventures he goes through are so immeasurably dark and he doesn’t fall apart when faced with them. Coincidentally this is also the reason why David will never be a favorite—because I kept wondering time and again when this kid would crumble under the enormous burden of his ‘adventure’ and it was almost inconceivable that a child so young could manage it without losing his mind (then again, maybe he did...).

The moody, bleak presence of The Book of Lost Things is what drew me in to the story. I didn’t really know what to expect from this book, but it was definitely not the tainted fairy tales I found. David meets the woodsman while running from wolves, but in the fantasy world they are called Loups, and are the product of human girls and wolves, the former playing part of seductress to the latter in a bizarrely sexual twist to Little Red Riding Hood. The boy later happens upon Snow White and her bevy of dwarves, but is surprised to find that it was the dwarves who attempted to rid the world of the no-longer-fair maiden, and who are now enslaved to her detestable whims. A white knight on a quest takes David under his wing, but his motives and the object of his quest are not what you would expect.

Creeping up on David at every turn is ‘the Crooked Man,’ Connolly’s take on Rumpelstiltskin, a devilish figure that stalked David before his descent into this unknowable land and now wants something from him to fulfill his own unseen motives. The woodsman, the white knight, the Crooked Man—all play the part of David’s father figure at various stages in his development, just as the terrible and imposing female villains in David’s fantasy world represent aspects of his dual motherly relationships—his longing for his deceased beloved mother and his complicated tension with his beleaguered stepmother Rose. Central to the novel’s themes are David’s acceptance of change and the imperfect human nature of his parents.

As I understand it, The Book of Lost Things is a departure from Connolly’s regular style of writing, but you can tell it was a very special project for him. Despite his tendency to dip into cliches, Connolly was obviously interested in the topic of traditional fairy tales and presenting his own brooding spin on them. The final 150 pages of my edition were actually his in-depth research into the topic, and a collection of the versions of fairy tales Connolly lifted his ideas from.

If my hints as to the dark direction of this novel weren’t enough, I feel it’s worth offering this final warning, though I will try to be vague: there are not very many happy endings in this book. It is not all depressing either, but it is far from ideal. Like life, there are ups and downs and if summed up in a few lines, the downs can seem overwhelming, but—like life—you take from this book what you can and hope it gives you some insight on yourself for the journey through the woods.