War is Hell.

Well, we're back in the alternate Earth wherein Captain Reddy took a WWI destroyer fleeing the Philippines at the start of WWII  through the Maelstrom into a world where the lizard like Grik are trying to annihilate the humanoid Lemurs, the mi-aanka.

So now, here we are 10 books in to what was originally announced as a trilogy.

Straits of Hell picks up with two fronts in the war, the allies holding Grik City on Madagascar and Fort Defiance in Costa Rica.

The book is mostly focused on defensive battles, with the exception of the naval excursion into Paso del Fuego by the Eastern navy. We do get some glimpses into other happenings along the way, including a Fascist state on the Mediterranean, "The League of Tripoli". Said League shows up first negotiating with Japanese leader Kurakawa who's busy trying to screw over the Grik.

The League is also in southern Africa interfering with USS Donaghey and their mission to rile up the Republik of Real People, who were supposed to be harrying the Grik further north to relieve pressure on Madagascar.

So, that makes our newest antagonist in the ever expanding war. Who seem to be mostly acting at diplomacy level intrigues rather than actually joining the war.

It's a long haul, what with the Grik trying to take back Madagascar and some political drama between different factions within their ranks, and the two fronts with the Dominion.

Again, we're also following around one whole hell of a lot of plot lines, which leads to Game of Thrones levels of giving major characters maybe one or two chapters throughout the course of the novel.

Good read, but wow, I think this has been going on longer than WWII did in our own world.

Sartre was correct.

Once again, this blog is descending into another version of Hell. Although this one had less to do with people going in or trying to get out, and more to do with the mechanics therein.

The Devil's Detective by Simon Kurt Unsworth focuses on Hell's Information Man (one of 3 at the outset), Thomas Fool. Fool's role in the afterlife is investigating crimes and passing the results up to the bureaucracy. He's also a lackey for said bureaucracy, thus why we meet him at the entrance to the tunnel to Heaven awaiting the Angelic delegation to arrive for negotiations with Fool's boss, Elderflower.

Said emissaries find out quickly that while in Hell, they must follow Hell's rules. Adam, of Gabriel's line is the nice one, while Balthezar is of Michael's lineage, and tends to think the current Hell of bureaucracy and random torment doesn't include enough suffering for the sinners within.

In this iteration of Hell, Souls swim in the ocean of Limbo, get fished out with no knowledge of who they were in life or why they're in Hell, only what role they are to perform in Hell until they either die again (and have to repeat the process) or they get elevated. Thus one of the major punishments is that of Hope. Hope of atoning enough to ascend, hope of surviving another day. (This differs from Dante's conception, where there was no hope in Hell. for that, one had to suffer through reading in Purgatory.)

Not long after meeting, Balthezar gives Fool one of his feathers, kind of as a joke. Mind you, everyone in Hell covets the damn thing, including the Man of Plants and Vines. Said man is somewhat like the sentient Vines in The Ruins, except he still has sort of a physical body. The Man trades in information and favors.

The major thrust of the novel, though, is the dead Genevieves, male prostitutes who whore themselves out to demons. The few witnesses (who don't really see much of anything) report nothing but a blue flash upon death. Those that Question the dead find that the bodies have no souls, leading to the conclusion that something is eating the souls, rather than sending them back to Limbo.

Fool, who spends most of the novel trying to avoid being noticed, gains notoriety among both demons and humans as he investigates, and by the end, we do indeed know whodunit and why.

While there are more than a few red herrings thrown in, it's not that hard to spot at least one part of the final twist fairly early on. Not a bad read, but not anything I see myself picking up again.

Why am I covered in tally marks?

On July 9th, 2355, at 11 AM California time, the last broadcast from Dr. Zeus Inc is broadcast across the temporal advisory channel to all agents of a certain security. "We still do not know..." This marks the end of the Temporal Concordance and the end of known time as near as Dr. Zeus's operatives in the past know of it. Known as The Silence, it's been foreshadowed since early on in The Garden of Iden, and every book in Kage Baker's The Company has inexorably lead up to the arrival of the end of time. Which is finally covered in the penultimate book, The Sons of Heaven.

As a quick recap, we have at least 4 known cyborg factions going into the Silence. We have Aegeus and Labienus, the two Executive Facilitators who want the Cyborgs to rule the world after taking down Dr. Zeus, but differ on how humanity should be dealt with after that; we have the Enforcer Bupu, who wants to kill off the human behind Dr. Zeus humanity alone, and we have Executive Facilitator Suleymen, who wants the silence to end without cyborgs particularly killing anyone.

We have the Homo sapiens umbratilis running around, with one hybrid (Bugleg) working for Dr. Zeus, and Bugleg's cousin Ratlin, who figured out how to disable Literature Preserver Lewis in the underhill. Ratlin is adding nanobots to chocolate in attempt to disable the cyborgs. In the mantime, Tiara, one of the female Umbralites, has managed to escape from Quean Barbie and found her own lair, which conveniently houses the remain of Lewis. Whom she rehabilitates.

The Humans who actually work for Dr. Zeus are paranoid that the silence will be like the game Cyborg Conquest, which sort of resembles The Terminator on speed. They become convinced that ALL of cyborg kind will rise up in The Silence and overrun them. To that end, they create an AI to house all of Dr. Zeus, and use a Hellenic statue as its avatar.

And somewhere out of time, we have Mendoza, who has Nicholas Harpole and Alec Checkerfield locked in her head someplace, as Edward Alton Bell-Fairfax managed to remove both Alex and Nicholas from Alec's body and lock them up in Mendoza's head at the end of the last book. He'll release them, but only if given immortality and only if Alec's AI program helps Edward and Mendoza have twin boys who will house the consciousnesses of Nicholas and Alec. While Edward has his own designs on ruling the world, most of his plans change after having children. Some of this is due to figuring out how to free himself and Mendoza (and the AI Captain) from linear time, and some of this is from having to raise children of his own. However, the children have to be raised in linear time, so...

There's a lot going on throughout the book, and given that time does not particularly follow linear progression throughout, one is forced to read with the assumption that everyone will arrive where they are supposed to WHEN the are supposed to. Particularly when Suleymen goes back to Alpha-Omega (back at the beginning of time-ish) the night before the Silence to get all of Dr. Zeus's store genetic information. (which Alec et al raided in the last book for his own genome.)

While the book takes some time to get moving, and having to make a few detours to show where in the end times events in previous books got their start, by the time we reach July 8th, it becomes a masterwork.

On Catalina Island, Aegeus and Labienus gather the night before the Silence with their entourages, sitting in the same room for the first time since probably early Egyptian civilization. Both presume Victor, the plague bringer, is working for them. And dinner is superb, with all the courses the same as what were served to the First Class passengers on the Titanic. We see the two argue over their ideals while Gotterdamerung and requiems play accompaniment. And as the last course comes around, The Commandant from Don Giovanni comes to dinner. And the cyborgs become reflections of Don Juan, the statue, and the demons. It's beautifully rendered.

And towards the end, as the Silence descends, and all the characters wind up where they need to be for the end, Joseph finally reaches some kind of peace with his "daughter" Mendoza, and the world as was recorded ends. While I won't spoil the world to come, I was very amazed at how well Baker managed to reconcile so many disparate plot lines and give this series a satisfying ending. We've come a long way from the frightened girl rescued from the Inquisition, turned into an immortal cyborg, and then heartbroken as her first love, an English Lutheran/Calvinist is burned at the stake during the brief reign of Mary.

While I will admit concern as to how and indeed if the series would end, given that Baker died in 2010 and Wikipedia lists the last book in the series as being publish in 2012... However, a quick look at Amazon reveals that the books following this one are either set in the same setting, but not directly related to the main story arc, or are prequels.

Really, I wish more of my friends would read this series, since I'd love to have a big book club discussion on the series as a whole.

Here we are again

I've mentioned before that Simon R. Green tends to go over the top more than an 80's era Sylvester Stallone action movie. However, with A Drood to a Kill, we're not nearly as silly as some of the other volumes in this series.

We start with Eddie Drood returning to Drood manor for a conversation with the new matriarch. Which involves breaking in, because of course it does. He's seeking information on why  the family won't give him resources for figuring out what happened to his parents after the end of Casino Infernale. Long story short, he winds up getting suckered into going on a mission for the family to figure out why things are leaking out of a spy station run by the British government. This takes up most of the first half of the book, and includes Jack the Armourer giving Eddie the tricked out Bentley. That tends to take shortcuts through other dimensions.

Which leads, or course to meeting Uncle James' former Elven lover in the shifting lands. Who sends Eddie home without explanation, until he finds out the real reason, Uncle Jack died.

Which leads to a Drood funeral and a wake. From which Eddie's fiance, Molly Metcalf disappears. Which leads to a search to figure out where the Powers That Be took her to play The Game, wherein killing off the other contestants also gets rid of any infernal or divine contracts one may have pending on one's soul.

When Eddie finally makes it to the game, about three quarters of the way through the book, he not only finds Molly, but his parents.

It's quite a ride, and the plotting is extremely non-linear. Not to mention Green takes more than a few chances to tie in Deathstalker to the world shared by his other series.

However, there are a few themes crossing through this narrative that give it a bit more depth than normal. Among other things, after an encounter at the Department of the Uncanny, Eddie decides he doesn't want to kill anymore, regardless of who's asking him to. This gets explored quite fully during The Game. The other, as evidenced with the death of Jack and a few others, is that of old players leaving the spy game. It's actually kind of depressing.

Fun read.

Hopefully not the end.

While Kelly McCullough's Darkened Blade doesn't have a preview of the next book at the end, I can onl;y hope this isn't where the series ends. I've grown quite attached to his characters, and this one is quite a finale any way it goes.

We start not long after the end of Drawn Blades, with Siri, Faran, Aral, and Kelos in the city of Wall. We open on Aral dreaming/ visionquesting and meeting with Namara in a bar crowded with those he's killed over the years. While the goddess may be dead, a piece of her lies in Aral, and encourages him to continue the path he's been walking since the end of Book 1. Which means, at last, it's time to confront the strange Risen who currently heads the Church of Shan. Well, at least moreso than the occasion where Aral snuck in and cut the Son's face.

Anyway, a possible alliance with members of the church army fall apart as an army of Risen attacks the place where the meeting happens. The army of Risen actually act as a motivational device to get everyone to Jax's school and then on to the fallen Temple of Namara where they finally find a way to bind Namara's infused swords to their wielders, something that hasn't been done since Namara herself invested them with the Blades.

And then we journey into the Celestial city for the final confrontation, which pretty much takes up the last third of the book.

Along the way, we see Aral get appointed  First Blade by Siri, the students of Jax become full fledged Blades, and meet a few legends of the world in which this is set.

We also see Aral's final transformations into Campbell's Hero of 1000 Faces. Ultimately, by the end, Aral Kingslayer struggles with his desire to do justice without the deaths of millions in the Civil Wars to follow the death of the Son and his desire to become more than the tool of his mentor in Kelos' mad plan to upset the apple cart and create a new world without corrupt nobles and royalty.

It's really a fine book, although it feels a bit like the last chapters of a D&D campaign, with no real transition between plot points.

I do hope he writes more in this series, given the rather.... brief ending, but then I'm still hoping for another WbMage book which will probably never happen. 

A nice quiet cozy

Many years ago, a Fangoria magazine review of The Dead Hate The Living started off by mentioning that a Full Moon title without the words "Puppet" or  "Toys" in it was a good sign. Which is kind of how I felt about finding a new Simon R. Green without one of his usual series names underneath it. (Not that I don't like his other series fiction, but it's always nice seeing something new coming from someone who tends to write series.)

The Dark Side of the Road introduces a new character, a new series, and while I assume it's part of the shared world inhabited by Nightside, The Droods, and the Carnaki Institue, they aren't exactly mentioned in this text. While the cheekiness factor is there in these new characters, it's not nearly as plucky as Green's other series. Which does make for a very nice departure from everything else of his. (Then again, this is book one, so lord knows what sharks are going to get jumped further down the line.)

We start by meeting Ishmael Jones, who starts the narration by echoing Melville. Ishmael works for an organization so secret, he only knows of it as The Organization. His boss and only contact with The Organization, known to him as the Colonel, calls Ishmael and asks him to join him at his family estate for the Christmas holiday. Ishmael is a bit disturbed by this, as he and the Colonel are mostly business. Ishmael also spends his life trying very hard to avoid being noticed. Some of that has to do with his work for Black Heir, the British organization responsible for dealing with illegal extraterrestrials. Given that as near as he can sort of remember, Ishmael is an extraterrestrial, leaving Black Heir became important when the new director took on the attitude of "Let's kill and vivisect everything!"

So, Ishmael ends up driving through blizzard white out conditions to reach The Colonel's family estate, Belcourt Manor. Once there, he meets the Colonel's (now known to him as James)
 father, mother, step mother, and half sister, as well as their dates, escorts, and business partners.

All of whom have axes to grind with each other.

And a missing Colonel.

James shows up about a third of the way through the narrative, buried in a snowman and missing his head. About which time we find the blizzard has cut off the Manor from the outside world, and the murderer must be among the guests.

Oh hey! We have ourselves a little slice of English cozy here! I can live with this!

To be fair, by the time we find out what's going on, some of the Green we all know is back, since the murderer has their own hidden abilities, but honestly, it's kind of nice to read a nice murder mystery without valkyries riding on pterodactyls.

I'll be interested to see where this one goes, and how long before it goes off the rails.

That's one Hell of a tale....

A few notes before we start this. First, the book I'm covering today and the mythology that surrounds it is very adult in nature. As this blog is normally "G" rated, be warned that adult concepts may appear. Second, due to the nature of the mythos, I'm using Wikipedia for background, which will take up the first few paragraphs.

So, let's start back in the year 1986, when Clive Barker first published The Hellbound Heart, a novella concerning Frank cotton, and his unusual nihilism and taste for the very exotic in the boudoir. Frank opens The Lament Configuration, a puzzle box that also serves as an interdimensional doorway. Promising pleasures unheard of, Frank instead winds up guests of the Cenobites, sort of extradimensional sadomasochists. Frank, as we find out, wasn't expecting that.  Anyway, Frank's brother, Rory, and his lovely wife Julia move into the house where Frank opened the box. And Rory bleeds on the spot where the Cenobites grabbed Frank. Frank comes back, he and Julia rekindle their... um... extracurricular activities. A friend of Rory's, Kirsty, who loves him, witnesses Julia bringing men home (to help Frank rebuild himself through murder), and goes into to confront the hussy. Long story short, Frank kills Rory, Kirsty opens the box, makes a deal, and everyone winds up dead but Kirsty, who not only gets to meet The Engineer, but also gets custody of the box. She sees Frank and Julia's reflection in the box, and wonders if another box would take her to whatever paradise Rory wound up in. Anyway, a year later, Barker adapted the novella into a movie. Kirsty becomes Rory's daughter, and we become acquainted with this guy:

Yes, that was supposed to hurt.

whom in the book and the movie is never really named. He did, however, pick up the moniker Pinhead from the special effects guys, who had to spend 4 hours making Doug Bradley look like that for what amounted to about 10 minutes or so of screen time. The movie series continued for 9ish movies, but only the second one had Barker's involvement. Then again, after the fourth one, they tended to shoehorn Cenobites into preexisting scripts just to use the Hellraiser franchise name. Also of note, despite the names, the dimension of the Cenobites was never really named as an Abrahamic place of torment. Later, Barker returned to his Cenobites in Comic Book form, and that set of stories (which I'm summarizing via wiki, since I never read them), involves Ol' Pinhead leading a revolt in Hell after Kirsty kills off the original appearing Cenobites. Somehow, by the end, Kirsty becomes Pinhead. (There was a bit in the second movie where we find out about the human origins of the Cenobites.)

Whew.

Next up, we need to introduce Harry D'Amour.

Well, HELLO, Harry!

 

Harry first appeared in The Last Illusion (which evidently showed up first in Books of Blood, but I first ran across in a collection that also included Cabal, which was later turned into Nightbreed.) Harry is a paranormal Private Investigator, covered in protective sigil tattoos that let him know when trouble is coming. Harry shows up again at the end of The Great and Secret Show and becomes a major character in the follow up, Everville. (Harry evidently also becomes a Cenobite and leader of Hell's armies in the comic books.) 

Which finally brings us to Clive's new book, The Scarlet Gospels, which as you may have guessed, centers around Harry and Pinhead (or The Hell Priest, as he's generally referred to in the book. Pinhead is a derogatory nickname characters use to insult said Cenobite.) 

We open with a necromantic rite designed by the last Magicians of a secret order to raise Joseph Ragowski, former leader of said order, from the dead. Joseph isn't exactly happy about being woken up, and pretty much tells his raisers that it's kind of pointless, since a certain demon has pretty much killed off everyone in the order to get at the rarest magical tomes each hoarded away. We get graphic descriptions of how said demon dispatched folks, then ol' Hell Priest shows up in the flesh, so to speak. Let's see... all but one of the summoners dies, one after giving birth to Pinhead's baby. The survivor is to become HP's puppy. 

Cut to: Harry D'Amour is in New Orleans on a mission on behalf or Norma, a blind woman who sees and talks to dead folks. (Pretty sure Norma showed up briefly in Coldheart Canyon.) A dead gent who was quite the upstanding man in life had quite a secret life hidden away in New Orleans. Which means Harry's on payroll to go clean up his affairs post-mortem. Well, among some rather... um... explicit games the man had been playing with barely legal boys, Harry finds the Lament Configuration. Which does indeed open somewhat of its own accord, and Harry meets Hell Priest. Only there's no "I'll have what she's having" in this meeting. HP wants Harry to chronicle the undertaking he's working on, or else. HP uses large hooks on chains and his "puppy" to try to convince Harry to do so. HP doesn't really want to take "No" for an answer. Harry escapes, and winds up getting healed with a little help from Dale, who dreams the future. (Most of the healing comes from a Hoodoo woman, but she tries to kill Harry using a monster straight out of Dogma.) 

Anyway, Harry heads back to New York, which is about the time the book starts getting interesting. 

See, we get an idea of what HP is actually doing, as he is found in violation of his Order's rules of NO MAGIC. As such, he gets kicked out by the Cenobite's leader. So, like any good S/M demon, he uses his magic to kill off everyone else in the order. After doing so, HP and his "puppy" make a visit to New York, where they wind up kidnapping Norma, which winds up with Harry, Caz (Harry's tattoo artist), Dale (who dreamed of coming to NYC), and Lana (a stone cold woman who's probably buried in one of his other books) descending into Hell to rescue her.

What follows is a travelogue of Hell, as the Harrowers chase the Hell Priest on his quest to meet his maker. While the journey is fascinating, I can't go into great detail in here without spoiling some of the bigger surprises in the narrative. 

What I will say is that some of the plot threads reminded me of some of the bigger stories in Neil Gaiman's Sandman graphic novels, and as I stated above, there's a scene early on where I half expected Silent Bob to show up with air freshener. Also, I think he raided some of his own comic work from the Pinhead series for some of the plot. Which doesn't really matter, since the narrative as a whole holds together, despite retconning the original source material to a large degree. Not that pretty much everything that came after The Hellbound Heart didn't change things to suit their need as well. The Hell Priest's motivations are a bit shaky, and his turn towards chaos seems a bit oddly defined after an eternity of ordering the Damned, but honestly, it seems more a case of demons being bound to the rule that affects humanity: there are things Man (and Demons) aren't meant to know.

I will also say Barker writing, as usual, is filled with a visual flair, his words paint such pictures in the mind. It's been one of his gifts from the beginning. I also love some of the droll references that slip in, like the largest city in Hell being built on 8 hills, just to outdo Rome. While this won't replace Imajica as my all time favorite Clive Barker novel, it is probably one of the best things he's written in a long time.

Non-Smoking, please

I was a bit concerned when I picked up Kelly McCullough's sort of most recent Fallen Blade novel, Drawn Blades, mainly because it's book 5 in the series, and his other series, WebMage, ended after 5 novels.

Thankfully, as we find out after this one ends, there is indeed a 6th one that evidently got released this month.

None of which is helpful here, beyond letting readers know that Aral's adventures will continue.

Anyway.

We rejoin Aral in the city of Tien not long after the end of the last book;s tales of government restructuring. To that end, Aral is back again sitting at his favorite bar (although he's now sober) when a smokey ghost forms from the tavern fire, looking nothing so much like Siri, one of the other blades who's nickname was Mythkiller. Siri's avatar performs a pantomime ceremony of handfasting, leaving Aral with a rather interesting ring made of smoke on the 3rd finger of his left hand.

After an attack by a mythic beast and some assistance from Aral's librarian contact and his familiar, contact is made with Siri through smoke again, and the end result Faran and Aral are off to The Sylvani Empire. Which is an adventure in and of itself, since in quite possibly the most unique way of gaining travel speed, they wind up traveling by Dukoth as far south as the Wall. (Note here: The Dukoth are a race of First Ones who are more or less Elemental Earth. Aral's smoke ring gets their attention, and the need to speed Aral and Faran across the land.) Along the way, we learn more of the First Ones, races created by the gods prior to humans. Seems the First Ones rebelled again being slaves to the gods, and there was a war in Heaven. The gods won. As such, most of the First Ones live behind the Wall that separates the Empire from the human lands. Mind you, a few of the First Ones rose to a level near Godhood and were punished to be buried and never dying. One of the Buried Ones was dealt with by Siri before these novels began, thus her title of Mythkiller.

However, due to magical principles and a dead goddess, when we finally meet Siri in the flesh, we find out her smoky nature is due to her becoming part of the binding holding The Smoldering Flame in his burial. Namara, before she died, helped keep his influence over Siri in check, but after the Emperor of Heaven killed Namara, the binding weakened a bit, giving Siri and her Shade some smoke overlap.


Not longer after the touching reunion and consummation of wedding vows as part of the deeper magics, Kelos enters the picture, making for a Namara's disciples reunion from Hell. Kelos is working to find a key that will resurrect a god before the Son of Heaven finds it, and before one of the Buried Ones finds it and tries to use it.

There's much going on in this book, including filling in much of the metaphysics of the world. things like the true nature of the blades Namara gave her acolytes, the nature of the Son of Heaven and his end goals, and the rather fractured relationship between Kelos and Aral and Kelos and Siri.

I reserved the new one this evening, and I look forward to seeing where this goes next. McCullough may miss a few dangling plot threads (like the attack by the mythic beast that never really gets explained), but his world building is nothing less than spectacular.

Go ahead and make the scene all day, but tomorrow there'll be hell to pay

It took a while to warm up to Ofir Touché Gafla's The World of the End, but by the end, I was sort of in love with it.

We start by meeting Ben Mendelssohn, a fairly recently widowed man in Tel Aviv, who throws a party for his now deceased wife Marian on her birthday. The night ends with fireworks, after which his friends come back in to find Ben has shot himself in the head to be with Marian.

Ben becomes aware again in a white room being provided an orientation on how to deal with the afterlife along with a multitude of folks who died on the same day he did. This covers how to entertain one's self in the afterlife, what jobs are available, the lack of any kind of trade or commerce, the idea of Vie-deo (where one can watch one's life played back), and a general overview of how housing is assigned to souls. There's also an explanation of the fancy neck gadget one presses buttons on to make phone calls, sleep, etc. If one punches the 3 button 7 times, one also can sleep eternally.

What Ben does not find after exiting the orientation is his wife waiting on him. He does meet a wheelchair bound Belgian who tells him of his love, whom he (the Belgian) waits on every day as the doors open. The Belgian does give him contact information for the Mad Hop, one of the Other World's private investigators.

In the mean time, we get wrapped into life in the world of the living, where people tangentially related to Ben keep winding up in comas under the care of Ann, who spends most of her nursing career getting people to provide euthanasia to their spouse or loved one, with the goal of retiring after 100 deaths. Ann used to watch Ben working out in the window of a gym and fell in love.  Adam, a game programmer and celibate pedophile thinks she was staring at him and asks her out. Adam;s brother, Shafar, is an actor with his own connection to Miriam.

We also meet two very passionate people who love Salman Rushdie and meet in Tel Aviv for the first time. Problem being that Yonathan has a heart attack and goes into a coma before he can meet his lady love, Marian.

Ben's search for Marian in the Other world keeps getting nowhere, although we do meet his entire family and get a bizarre explanation of his family's death curse courtesy of the Aliases. (Aliases would be the souls of children never born. They, like the Charlatans (people who are in comas or between worlds), are among the only people who wear clothes in the Other World.

Eventually, this all gets wrapped up and we finally towards the end find out how all of these disparate plot lines tie together.

While the book was originally written in Hebrew, the copyright on the English translation is by the author himself. While this is good, since it better preserves the flow of the narrative and allows the word play to stay intact. On the down side, some of the idiomatic phrases don't translate well, making a few passages a bit rough to read. There's also the entire subtext of Rushdie, which largely flew over my head. (Honestly, I tried reading The Satanic Verses about 25 years ago and couldn't get into it. YMMV.)

But honestly, it was probably one of the better books I've read this year, and his vision of the afterlife is rife with some very interesting ideas and some very vivid mental pictures.

Return of the master

So, I finished Benedict Jacka's Hidden on the way into work today.

Much like Simon R. Green's work these days, there isn't much material here to really review without getting spoiler heavy, sadly. Which is bad, since this book delves deeper into themes about the differences between Dark Mages and Light Mages, and the grey area Alex operates in.

But basically, Ann, the life mage gets kidnapped early on after dropping out of the Light Apprentice program. This sucks in the usual cast to figure out where she is and why she was kidnapped.

When they finally get that far, it ends up being Alex on his own entering a Shadow Realm owned by Ann's former master, Sagash. Which also allows for the first current time appearance of Alex's former Dark master, Richard. Whom, it seems, has returned from where ever it was he vanished off to before the series started. Richard, who offers a deal that both Ann and Alex refuse.

However, we also learn of Ann's training under sagash and why it is she's such a pacifist.


It's a fun read and addition to the series, although much of it seems to exist mainly to beef up plot lines down the road.