Hags to riches

So, I finished Jaqueline Carey's Poison Fruit on the way into work this morning. Sadly, according to the library newsletter, this is the last of a trilogy. Sadder still is that it probably should have been at least two books, since the first half is a much different narrative from the second half.

This is not to say it's not a good book, but it is a bit of a disjointed transition from the quest to banish the night hag to a lawsuit designed to bring war to Little Niflheim.

We start with our protagonist, Daisy, learning that her sort of love interest, the Outcast Stefan, is headed back to Poland to take care of old business in his old domain. Which leaves room for her probably-not-gonna-happen flirtation with Cody Fairfax, the werewolf.

Unfortunately, this mainly comes up during a search for a Night Hag, which may or may not be real. (Since this is Pemkowet, Michigan, she is real; however, it is mentioned that there is a syndrome of people having realistic nightmares about hags sitting on their chest and suffocating them.) The Hag starts by attacking an unbalanced man recently returned from a war zone,  moves on to a seven year old, and winds up killing an old woman in a nursing home. The search on how to find her leads to an abandoned campground, where they meet the bogle Skrrzzzt who tells them the way to get rid of the Unseelie Hag (And therefor not particularly under the rule of the Oak King is to tie a piece of her hair around her neck. However, this requires Daisy to have a nightmare bad enough to draw the Hag to her.

So, being a good demon spawn, Daisy hits up her ex,. Sinclair, to curse her. This has the desired effect, and it also reveals Daisy's darkest fear: accepting her birthright and ending the world. More to the point, doing that and enjoying it.

After the Night Hag is resolved, we get a small interlude as Stefen returns and asks a favor of her as Hel's Liaison. Which is to kill a friend of his. This interlude is probably the best written section of the book, bringing up discussions on euthanasia, the downsides of immortality when one has a degenerative disease, and a bit of Talmudic thought to boot.

Then, we get into the second half, which really should have been a book of its own.

Our dear friend from the last book, the lawyer Dufreyne, is back, and buying up properties encroaching on Hel's domain. He's also quite busy suing Pemkowet over the Halloween adventures the past year. Turns out he's also Hellspawn, only he long ago accepted his birthright. (Then again, his was a planned pregnancy.) As he's working under the auspices of Elysian Fields, inc., it becomes fairly obvious a figure from the Greek Underworld is trying to muscle in on Hel's territory.And given his birthright includes powers of persuasion, it gets mighty ridiculous what happens as this part of the story progresses.

As I stated at the outset, this section would probably be better as a standalone book, instead of being layered in at the end of the Night Hag adventure. As the lawsuit storyline starts around Thanksgiving and ends in early February, there would have been much more room to explore what all was going on here, from Lurine the lamia's kiss, to the burgeoning relationship with Stefen, and it would have given much more room to fully flesh out the Greek underworld figure trying to muscle in on Hel's territory.  (Since I'm not in the mood for spoilers, let's just say the presentation of said figure is kind of flat until the end of the war. There's a heck of a lot that could have and should have been done with this presentation.)

There's also the end of the war, which I kind of had figured out the basics of long before the armies meet. It seems really rushed, and the epilogue discussing the aftermath again reiterates there are still stories to tell here. I'm kind of hoping that Ms. Carey writes more in this setting, since the writing is fresh and funny in several places, while being poignant and touching in other places. As it is, it reminded me a bit of Spider-Man 3, where two very different plots got shoehorned together due to a fight between the studio and the director. Thankfully, there's no My chemical Spider-Man moment in here, but the thought remains.

Back in Little Niflheim...

I've spent most of Christmas week knee deep in Pemkowet, Michigan and its troublesome eldritch community. (again, I'm not sure why people use that word in a supernatural manner, while it's picked up connotations of supernatural goings on, it still means green.) Which can only mean I'm back in Jaqueline Carey's Agent of Hel series. The second book, Autumn Bones, came out recently, and I found it a much more balanced read than the first installment.

Again, we have out half demon with a tail protagonist, Daisy, working part time as a file clerk on Pemkowet's X-Files at the police station. She's sort of dating Sinclair, the Jamaican by birth supernatural tour guide who moved to Pemkowet from Kalamazoo at the beginning of the first book. This leads to issues, as Sinclair's twin sister shows up on Labor Day to drag him back to Jamaica The twin sister he never told Daisy about. The one who serves to balance Sinclair or vice versa.

Emmeline, the sister, is an Oxford educated lawyer, working with Sinclair's mother to get her elected to Jamaica's parliament. Sinclair has no desire to go back with his sister, since under the laws of the Obeah, the further into the light he goes, the further into the dark Emmeline goes.

This causes quite a bit of grief, since Sinclair has no desire to watch his sister pull an Anakin Skywalker.

Emmeline and her mother (also Sinclair's mother) show up with an ultimatum. Come back to Jamaica or else. Mommy dearest refuses to take no for an answer, so she unleashes Sinclair's grandfather's spirit on the town, thus creating a duppy.

Most of the book revolves around this particular conflict, which gets resolved in a very satisfying manner on All Hallow's Eve. (Hel herself mentions to Daisy that she has until midnight on Halloween to fix the issue before the wall between the living and the dead collapses because of the duppy.)

In the mean time, Daisy gets it on with Sinclair following a very amusing Satyr party at the gay bar in Pemkowet, then later mambos with long time crush and co-worker Cody, who happens to be a werewolf.

We also learn more about Bethany, Daisy's best friend's sister, who lives out at Twilight Manor trying to become a vampire, as well as Stephan, a ghoul working with Daisy on her anger management issues. (Her anger acts a bit like Stephen King's Carrie. It also could cause her to claim her demonic birthright and break the Inviolate Wall.)

And we get a fairy creature, Jojo, who I came to love, if only because she started throwing out Shakespearean insults at Daisy because Daisy dared to love Sinclair. While she never broke out the Painted Maypole comment from A Midsummer Night's Dream, she did work "scullion" into several conversations.  

Another new character is Lee (nicknamed "Skeletor". He evidently had as many issues in High School as I did.) Lee designs video games and helps Daisy build a searchable database for the X-Files in exchange for an audience with Hel herself.

Improved upon in this is Casimir, the gay shaman and head of the local coven. In the last book, he came off as a sissy sorcerer. In this one, he's much more fleshed out and not as bloody stereotypical.

With a few plots introduced to carry on into the next book, this one gets my award for most improved series writing. I look forward to seeing what comes next.

How many Norsemen does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

Five. One to hold the bulb, and four to drink until the room spins.

So, I'm reading Jacqueline Carey's Dark Currents, book 1 in her Agent of Hel series. For those not versed in such esoterica, Hel is one of the Norse Aesir; specifically, she watches over souls not taken to Valhalla. (As a note, Aesir is the plural of Ass, which really explains the Norse Pantheon.)(And Ass translates as god, but I really hate the Norse pantheon, so I'll stick with the vernacular translation.)

This one centers on Daisy, born of a rather interesting night of Ouija summoning a demon and part time incubus. As such, Daisy has a tail and a slight anger management problem. However, as Daisy and her mom live in Pemkowet, Michigan, this is much less of an issue that it may seem at first.  Most books in the genere go one of two ways. At least one major supernatural race is out of the closet (The Hollows, Southern Vampires, Anita Blake) or none of them are (Night Tracker, Blood Ties). In this, some cities (In this case, Pemkowet) have a more or less semi-aware human populace while most folks not under the influence of the Underworld (In this case, Hel actually grew Yggdrasil II in a sand dune on the coast of Lake Michigan and the underworld she inhabits is the remains of an old Dutch city that got buried in the sands.)

As the book starts, Daisy and her best friend are watching an open air concert. By the end of the evening, She and her best friend will be fighting because Jennifer has been flirting with Cody, whom Daisy has had a crush on since elementary school. However, as Cody is a werewolf, Daisy knows the all too human Jennifer won't have much luck in the relationship department. All of which gets interrupted a few pages later, as 4AM rolls around and Daisy gets called out to a crime scene.

You see, Daisy works as an Agent of Hel. Since Hel doesn't get out much, it falls to Daisy to represent the goddess in crimes that are perpetrated by and against the "eldritch community". (Basically, she's kind of like Fox Mulder, if Fox worked for the aliens as well as the FBI.) (I would also mention that while I love the word eldritch, it means green.) And since a young frat boy was fount floating face up in a fresh water river after drowning in sea salt...

As the investigations continue, we meet Daisy's second possible love interest and suspect, a ghoul named Stefan, new to Michigan by way of Poland. Stefan owns the Wheelhouse, a local ghoul bar. (For the sake of clarity here, Ghouls in this universe are more or less emotional vampires. Immortal, but feed on strong emotions rather than blood.) Stefan is working on getting the ghoul motorcycle gang out of the meth business.

We're also following Daisy's mom's Loteria card reading, which so far has been quite literal, and dealing with her Lamia godmother's attempts to get the undines and maiads to talk about what they saw when the frat boy was thrown in the water. (The Lamia, Lurine, is a famous B movie actress who married an old man and inherited his fortune when he died. She's also comic relief. Not a page goes by without a boob joke in one of her scenes.)

As of now, we're knee deep in investigating a Frat alumni and what the hell he means about being a Master of the Universe, and wondering who did kill the boy and why he had fish scales under his nails.

It's a good read, even if I do have a few quibbles. Mainly the one gay character, a guy who owns a magic shop and has purses dropping out his mouth every time he talks.

Also, this makes the third series I've read that's for some reason decided to introduce the Norse pantheon, and the second to specifically bring Hel into the fold. Wondering if Norse is becoming the new Native American in these things, or if it's more akin to Greece's mystical obsession with Egypt back in the Hellenic age. (Oh! It came from Egypt! It much be mystical!)

And I will finish this by thanking the author for not invoking Thor in her mythology. What little I actually know of Norse (I'm much more familiar with Greek, Sumerian, and Egyptian mythology) suggests that Thor is nothing like his Marvel Comics persona. In fact, he comes off as 20 pounds of manure in a 10 pound bag.