Killer Clowns for Outer Philly

Finished the last few pages of R. S. Belcher's King of the Road prior to clocking in this morning. While I will say his Golgotha series is probably my favorite of his ongoing series, all of them are really good reads everyone should pick up at some point.

What we have here are two major plots and one which wiggles through the narrative, setting up something we'll likely be returning to in future volumes. The major ones involve road witch Lovina and Builder Max pursuing a cult of alchemical harlequins that like to murder people as well as Jimmie and Heck trying to fix problems with the Blue Jocks Motorcycle Club, currently dealing with Cherokee Mike's drug running with as of yet undefined supernatural entity Viper. We also get hints that the Benefactors and the Builders have been working on a project involving the Road (and the Rail) that the Brethren do not know about that would likely cause a civil war if it got out.

So, we'll peel off and start with the clowns. That plot deals with a group of killer clowns run by seemingly immortal clowns recruiting from the ranks of juggalos not happy with the more wholesome ranks of juggalo culture. As such, they join up with the Harlequins, who get special face paint that does tend to make them longer lived, although it becomes addictive over time. This, in turn, leads to special ritual murders related to the Cleveland Torso Murders and the Black Dahlia in LA. Which also gets wrapped up in hobo culture and the idea of the Rail, which predates the Interstate. When Lovina dreams of a specific victim who's mother lives in Louisiana now, she winds up in Coalport, Pennsylvania, where the victim vanished from. This winds up involving Emmet, a hobo clown who got involved in tracking down one of the clowns in the 30s, and Dusty, who's a modern hobo, as well as Max, who enjoys field testing theories. Towards the end, Max gets more involved than she bargained for, and winds up proving herself more capable than she likely imagined.

Meanwhile, in North Carolina, Heck, who is still Jimmie's squire, is dealing with the Jocks falling apart, since no one has stepped up as President as of yet. While Heck is likely to do so, he has to finish his Squirehood first. Given the uncertainty, the jocks are splitting off, with Cherokee Mike leading stragglers away from the club to do more illegal activities, like Meth. Part of this is done with Viper, who seems to have magic of his own, and the aid of dark fairie creatures. The Viper Mike alliance also is trying to start a war between Heck's faction, and the Bitches of Selene, a female led MC filled with were creatures, including a transgender Werebear who is 50 shades of awesome and deserves their own spin off now.

The plots wrap up in good fashion, leaving you satisfied and wanting more.

I think the real appeal to me with his various series is that while I may not be as far out on the fringe as his characters wind up being, I'm also a bit beyond the hem in real life, so I can relate to the feelings of not being part of the main body of society. That and the fact his stuff is well written makes for an author I'm keeping alerts open for new material from.

The wheel turns, the temple restored, the invisible hand

Well, I'm home from a weekend of camping, which lead to an evening of sitting on the deck of a rented camper finishing R. S. Belcher's latest novel, The Brotherhood of the Wheel.

Now, earlier on this week, I had posted that this one was a bit like a cross between Seanan McGuire and Simon R. Green. After finishing it, I think we can add Neil Gaiman's American Gods and Clive Barker's Books of the Art to that list. This is not to say it's not an original and exhilarating read, but more to say it's one of those that left me hungry to read other books I felt echoing through the prose while waiting for Mr. Belcher to release a new one eventually. (On the bright side, a quick perusal of goodreads shows he's got a third Golgotha coming, and a follow up to Nightwise in the works. Hopefully Jimmie also gets a sequel.)

So, here we go. Jesse James Aussapile is a long distance trucker with his own rig. He also operates as a Knight in the Brotherhood of the Wheel. Which is... well... shorthand for being part of one of the three branches left of the Knights Templar after the dissolution a few millennia ago. (The others, The Benefactors and The  Builders have their own foci. We'll come back here in a sec.) The Brethren are kind of a loose alliance of folks who patrol the roads trying to keep people safe from BAD things. The Builders are the knowledge gatherers, and The Benefactors the influence peddlers. We meet Jimmie outside St. Louis as he helps stop a highway serial killer who thinks of himself as the Marquis. (He read 120 Days of Sodom, skipping the philosophical bits.)

Jimmie has a 14 year old daughter and a pregnant wife who know very little of his side job that doesn't pay much of anything.

We meet Heck, who rides with the Blue Jocks, a Motorcycle club his mom and adoptive dad work with. Heck's stepfather has died when we meet him, leaving his mother to tell him to seek out Uncle Jimmie and become his squire.

We have Lovina, an investigator out of New Orleans, investigating a series of missing children. Who gets confronted by Black Eyed Kids. Who are pretty much what they sound like, children and teens with black eyes staring out from under hoodies, who knock on doors and tell people to join them. No one knows what happens to thos who take them up on their offer.

Eventually, we also get Max, a Builder, who comes out to help figure out what's up with all the mysteries.

Also, in the mix, although a separate story line until about 2/3 of the way through, we have the town of Four Houses, somewhere in Kansas near the geographical center of the US. Except no one knows where the heck it actually is. We enter Four Houses with 4 teenagers on their way to a party, who get run off the road by a guy on a motorcycle who's helmet is like that of a Japanese Oni. The Scode brothers tow them to town, wherein one girl dies by Black Eyed Children, two get captured, and one Ava, finds shelter with the town crone, a former M15 operative taking care of her dementia ridden husband.

Lest I forget, another subplot in here revolves around two missing adults, one of whom is on good terms with George Norse, who runs a late night AM radio show exploring the supernatural as well as a TV show.

There's a heck of a lot of metaphysical theory in here. Some of it, the idea of the US highway and interstate system being physical representations of Ley Lines (or long xian, dragon lines), I'm familiar with. While I won't comment on the validity of the theory, I think anyone who's live anywhere along I70 can confirm the thing is a weather line. Others, like the idea of the 3 feminine principle embodied in Maiden, Mother, and Crone and the male principle embodied in The Horned Lord are also represented by the Tetragramaton, I wasn't. His timeline is a bit off on some stuff, since he mentions reports of Shadow People not showing up until the 90's.....

Like his other three published books, this one delights in peeling back a layer of objective reality and giving us a peek at some alternate realities that exist behind the curtain. And, like the other three, the conclusion leaves me, the reader, wanting more.