Driving all night, hands wet on the wheel

 So, a while back, R. S. Belcher wrote an audiobook, and they finally made it a published paperback. (I have nothing against audiobooks, I just can't listen to them at work or home.)

And thus we come to The Queen's Road.

 We meet Ray, young drag racer/barkeep in Port Arthur, Texas, who's mother owes money to the local drug dealers. Ray is trying to pay off her debt, which requires more money than he has access to at the time. He runs across a late 60's Ford Galaxie and tries to boost it, only to find out someone's still alive inside. Said living being dies and gives Ray a ring and directions to seek out someone named Chain. 

Which leads to the fun of the titular road, kind of an intergalactic autobahn, with connections all throughout the universe. Turns out one race of worshipers of Chaos and entropy are back from exile, and it's up to Rey, Chain, and a whole host of other Rangers to stop it. 

What follows is part heist, part fish out of water, and really fun, even if it does feel a bit like Hal Jordan fighting Audrey II to defend the Frontier from the Ko-Dan Armada. 

Needless to say, it's a really enjoyable read, and everyone should read more of Belcher's work.

Run to the hills

 Eventually, I'm going to get the tag fixed on R. S. Belcher's always fun Golgotha series, but....

Let me start by saying The Ghost Dance Judgement is a bit different than the previous three volumes, mainly because its frame story is set in the modern era, which may or may not explain a few references that happen in March of 1872. We start with one of Deputy Jim Negry's (the one with the jade Eye of the Moon) arriving in the nearly abandoned ghost town of Golgotha and stopping to ask questions at the general store run by one of Malachi Bick's descendants. It's here we hear the tale of the Ghost Dance some 20 years prior to the more famous outbreak. 

We start with Izsua as a little girl dealing with the slaughter of her village by settlers. She winds up finding a cave to the underworld, where she learns secrets of the dead. (This is roughly 18 years prior to the main bulk of the story.) She's involved with Deputy Mutt's old nemesis, Snake Man, we find out later. Anyway, she's found a way to lead the dead back to fight the living, with the promise that they'll drive the settlers back to Europe.  

In the mean time, President Grant has sent General Caxton to Golgotha to take care of the "savages" raiding the area. Along with him comes Deputy Kat's old boss Pinkerton, who's back to wooing Deputy Kate, even if she is in love with Sheriff Jon Highfather. Porter Rockwell, Brigham Young's right hand man, is also in town to ostensibly help Mayor Pratt with the Indian problem, but also make sure that Pratt's role as the Mormon champion won't challenge Young's leadership of the Church. Pratt's dealing with his relationship with both James Ringo and Black Rowan, the local brothel owner. Rowan is trying to get Pratt to get a Mormon encampment to move to make way for a dogleg of the railroad, but Pratt has reasons for resisting this. 

And then we have Maude and Constance, who are the first to encounter the dead Indians in the desert. And find out the Sons of Typhon have come to Golgotha to find an avatar for the thing under Argent Mountain, here referred to as both Uktena and Typhon. That plot involves Augustus's baby, which may or may not have been conceived prior to his wife bringing him back from the dead. This winds up roping in Professor Mephisto, who helps sort out the mess under the mountain. 

By the end, which involves a few armies converging on Golgotha and a fight under the mountain, we have quite the fun experience, since there really aren't that many people in the book who qualify as moral and upstanding. I mean, yes, the residents of Golgotha are essentially good people, but the moral gray areas with everyone, including most of the villains are ample enough to swallow the desert. 

Again, Belcher gets points for his portrayal of Pratt, who's closeted relationship with Ringo rings with honesty and pathos. Really, this goes for all the folks in relationships in the book. He also gets points for making a reference towards the end to the black sheriff in Rock Ridge. 

This also provides another sterling example of something I've long suspected, since a certain entity named Coyote shows up in here about halfway through. I'm fairly convinced at this point that Coyote and his prose portrayals are all the same creature existing across several universes at a time, since regardless of who's writing him, he steals the scene and behaves in very specific manners. Here, he gets bonus points for breaking the narrative long enough to point out he hasn't really been talked to since book one. 

The only problem I had, which I never did go back to figure out if the page numbering reflects it or not, is that one of the chapters is printed twice, back to back. I read it again, to see if maybe there was a subtle difference, but no, pretty sure this was a print error.

Great book, though. I can't wait to see what happens next.

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.

Conspiracy!

Not long after starting R. S. Belcher's The Night Dahlia, I had to go look up the previous volume in this series just to refresh my memory on Latham Ballard and his drunken magic.

So, this volume is not quite as conspiracy heave as the previous volume, although a fairly large one looms later on in the book as the mystery coalesces between Where is Crystal vs. How is she related to the previous serial murders that drove Latham out of LA several years ago?

Let's start at the beginning. The first chapter concerns Latham's continuing deal with the Devil, then we get to meet Ankou, a rather large presence in the Fae world who's also quite rich. Ankou's daughter vanished several years ago and no one can figure out where she is, leading Ankou to find her. A few deals are struck, and Latham is off to Greece with Vigil the Knight in tow. In Greece, connections are made, and we end up in the City of Angels, where Latham trained to be a Nightwise and ended up dropping out of the program. (There's a lot of information presented with this, in dribs and drabs. By far the most attention getting to me was that the Nightwise are funded by The Builders, out of the Brotherhood of the Wheel.)

Again, the actual mystery goes plaid over time, with cameos by Charles Manson, evil Buddhists half human crash carts, a few really seedy and one mildly classy sex clubs...drugs, alcohol...

Really though, much of the book is the gradual redemption of Latham from his own demons. And boy does he have a few. But really, exploring previous interpersonal relationships he had in LA when he was sure he was a good guy and how he started down the road he's been on and the start of climbing out of the hole his life is when everyone is telling him he can't is an interesting story hiding behind some very strange narrative points.

I look forward to returning to him whenever that time comes.

I miss the rains down in Bridgetown

So, I went in to R. S. Belcher's latest return to Golgotha, Nevada, with as much of an open mind as I could muster, since, unlike previous entries in the series, this one is focused predominantly on only one character. Given the last two books in the series have been ensemble pieces with all the lunatics playing their own roles in the proceedings, I wasn't sure if following Maude Stapleton away from Golgotha would retain the magic that made the first two books so entertaining.

As it turns out, I needn't have worried much, since it seems Golgotha's weirdness isn't the only pocket of surrealness in the post Civil War world. Indeed, while Maude's narrative is set in 1870, we also follow her "Grandmother", Pirate Queen Anne Bonney across the oceans of 1721 on a quest of her own to find Carcosa deep in the heart of Africa. And in one really strange passage, the two timelines converge, making for one heck of a passage.

So, basically, we catch up with Maude not long after the end of The Shotgun Arcana, returning to her roots in Charleston, South Carolina, where her father has taken her daughter Constance. Leaving behind her new love, Mutt, she seeks full custody of her daughter and control of her inheritance from her Grandmother. Not to say there aren't complications of both the normal legal, but that comes in later.

In the mean time, we join Anne escaping the hangman's noose in Port Royal, Jamaica. She's gravid with child, and ends up delivering a son on the beach as part of her escape. Giving her son up to a friend to deliver to her family in South Carolina until she can return, she sets off on a quest for a city she's dreamed of paved with the bones of monsters.

Anne's story eventually chronicles her voyage to becoming the first Westerner to become a Daughter of Lilith. Maude, already being one, and in the process of teaching Constance to be one, must deal with her sisters within the rather small company, who seem to think that Constance needs to be sacrificed to refill the Grail that Maude emptied towards the end of book 1. We learn of the origins of Lilith mythology in this setting, and we learn of Lilith's husband, Typhon, who has a sect of his own, the aptly named Sons of Typhon, who's blood is much like the slick oil that was causing people to go nuts back in book 1.

As with just about every book in the Golgotha series, there's much to unpack in terms of mythology represented. Anne's tale takes us through the Oya and Orishas, while Maude's contemporaries represent Aztec and Oriental cultural mythologies as well.

It's also fair to say that Golgotha gets a little of its own placement in the narrative, as letters between Maude and Mutt travel a few times in the narrative. Mind you, this is where the odder bits of humor float up, as the local golem maker is reported to have hooked up with Shelley Wollstone, and a new brand of snake oil is drawing in customers from places like far off Night Vale.

And Maude even gets a bit of non-Mutt romance with a reporter who trails her doggedly through the book, even joining in her desperate flight to Carcosa on Anne's old ship, the Hecate.

My only regret on finishing this volume is realizing it's likely be a few years before we get another Golgotha volume, since I assume we'll be dealing with his other two series again before we return to Nevada.

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.

Hello twelve, hello thirteen, hello nihilism

Long time readers on here will likely remember what a fan I was of R. S. Belcher's fantastic books set in 19th century Golgotha, Nevada. While I still hope he returns to Golgotha at some point, his more modern Nightwise is still a pretty good substituite for the weird Western.

Unlike Golgotha, here we're in a first person narrative, centered on one Laytham Ballard, a Wisdom out of West by-God Virginia. Well, sort of a Wisdom, since he's pretty much mortgaged part of his soul, doing drugs on the regular, and his Occult Rat pack is dissolved and dying off. One of his former cohorts, Boj lies dying of AIDS related complications in a Hospice, extracting a promise from Laytham to go after Dusan Slorzack, a Balkan bad guy who was responsible for many atrocities against Boj's wife.

Problem being that Dusan can't be found by any means, physical or mystical. And to be honest, someone really doesn't want him to be found. An investment banker with a tenuous link to Dusan winds up crucified in his office. That said investment banker is also part of the Illuminati isn't helping.

Which of course leads deeper down the rabbit hole, eventually involving a transgender Aborigine who runs a Nightclub in NYC, a hacker extrordinaire, the hacker's girlfriend, a gypsy girl with a touch of the power, and an acidmancer. (We're skipping a whole bunch of plot here, but....) We also get to meet a part fae girl who more or less acts as an intermediary to the gods. She gets a rather good line about discussing fan fiction with Etruscan gods of the harvest. Hell, even the Devil himself shows up at one point.

Based on my own readings into the subject matter, Belcher has done his research quite well into various occult practices of different cultures, which also came across in the Golgotha books. Ultimately, the takeaway here on his system of magic for this book is that will and intent matter much more than any particular system. Mind you, having Google translate handy for some of the Latin phrases Laytham uses as a focusing agent leads to some extra humor in a few places. (As an aside, I have to be amused that the idea of secret Occult knowledge can be found in a mass market paperback. Then again, a book can give you knowledge, but experience is how you learn what it really means.) also, some characters get mentioned who would make interesting additions to later installments, like the Twittermancer, who divines people 140 characters at a time.

Conspiracy theory also plays a large part in much of the plot. While Icke's lizard people don't show up, we get a alot about the Illuminati, the Masons, the US Treasury, 9/11.... In some ways, I felt like I was reading a novelization of someone's hand of Steve Jackson's Illuminati card game.

I enjoyed the ride with this one. It was kind of like reading an American version of a Simon R. Green novel, only with more drugs.

Hakuna Fthagn

So, I finally finished a book I've been waiting to read for quite some time, and other than a few quibbles, I rather enjoyed it.

R. S. Belcher returns to Golgotha, Nevada, in late November of 1870. Well, minus a small prologue a bit earlier, involving a certain dinner party in the Sierra Nevada mountains. A special party, where the dinner menu includes long pork.

Anyway. Welcome to The Shotgun Arcana.

When we actually get to Golgotha, following the aftermath of the Donner Party and Biqa (nee Malachi Bick) and Raziel (nee Ray Zeal) having a minor tiff about the source, we join Deputies Jim and Mutt chasing down a vampiric lizard that likes to prey on goats. Which leads into discovering the body of a dead lady of negotiable virtue outside the Dove's Roost brothel. Well, not exactly a body, as someone has rather artistically arranged the interior of her to suit some kind of pattern.

We also have returning characters from the first book, Augustus, now married to Gillian, despite Clay building a new body for Auggie's dead wife, who's head is being kept alive in a jar. Maude and her daughter are still female warriors of Lilith; however, Maude and Mutt (the Indian coyote shapeshifter) are stepping out and Constance is sweet on Deputy Jim. Sheriff Highfather gets a minor love interest of his own with the arrival of Kate, who works for the Feds. We also have Black Rowan, who takes over the prostitution rackets in town, having retired from Barbary Coast pirating. Mayor Pratt is still in love with Ringo, but still not up to admitting to the relationship, since everyone is still keeping an eye on him in his new role of Defender of the Faith, since he wields the Sword of Labon. Malachi has a surprise of his own as his daughter Emily arrives on the coach.

There's a heck of a stew of gods and legends wandering through these pages, but unlike the first book, Malachi gives a better explanation to Emily about how so many things can fit in such a small place. (Short version: God is too big to wear just one face. It's much more detailed, but that works for the time being.)

The main plot, after all the subplots start coming together really starts picking up towards the middle, when Ray Zeal and his Praetorians ride towards Golgotha. Throughout the first half, we meet people who have teeth scattered from the skull in the prologue. All of whom are vicious killers, assassins, and cannibals. The skull was Raziel's to guard, and he abandoned it to Biqa. Now he wants it back. It becomes quite a ride, particularly as our protagonists all meet their opposite numbers among Raziel's forces.

A few scenes really stick out for me. When Maude, Black Rowan, and Kate meet for the first time, one can almost hear Fergie's cover of "Barracuda". It's less Maiden, Mother, Crone and more Lawful, Neutral, Chaos. Another involves the lynch mob that forms when people see Mutt stepping out with a white woman and Pratt rides into the rescue. Given Pratt and Mutt aren't exactly friendly, the conversation on what they have in common (society not particularly liking them for whom they love) is very telling and touched a nerve in me.

The resolution of the main plotline is satisfying, although the wrap up had one place that was like biting tinfoil. On the other hand, there are new threads for another book of Golgotha, and I look forward to returning.

Dark Lady won't live to turn a card again...

So, while I was out of town, I managed to finish 2 books and start another 2, thanks to the Nook and some Library Wi-Fi. Also picked up St. John's Lutheran Church's recipe book, which has become a sacred relic. (Whomever used it last added annotations that had everyone laughing. That, and being published in 1979, some of the recipes are quite dated.)

None of which has to do with the two-fer I plan on posting tonight. That, and I will not likely be posting about the one book I got digitally, since I don't really think people want to hear about what turned out to be Gay Amish Romance Porn written about the level of USA today.

Anyway, I had started R. S. Belcher's The Six Gun Tarot before I left, but I finished it while I was gone. And since I wasn't about to try to type a blog post on a tablet with a stylus...

This was a fun book that left almost no cliche unused in places, and had a few parts that disturbed me, but probably not for reasons the author anticipated. (One involved the drinking of a mythological creature's menstrual blood, the other involved a hentai like scene wen something in the silver mine claimed its bride.)

However, there is quite a mythological mess contained within. Which, as written, works out well, since none of the characters involved in the mystical shenanigans seems aware of other characters' special place in their respective mythologies.

We get introduced to Jim, trying to cross the 40 mile desert on his was to Golgotha, Nevada. It's post Civil War Era, but not quite past the Gold and Silver Rushes of the mid to late 19th century. Jim nearly dies, talks to a Coyote, and winds up getting saved by Mutt, a Native American who's been outcast by his tribe.

Mutt refers to one of the coyotes as as his brother.

Then we meet Sheriff Jon Highfather, who strangely has several noose marks around his neck, where they tried and failed to hang him.  Who saves Maude and Auggie from a man rambling about worms while trying to rob the general store. Maude is married to the local banker and is training her daughter to be one of Lillith's avengers. Auggie, with help from the local taxidermist, is keeping his wife alive in a fish bowl of chemicals in a Frankenstein way. 

You get the idea.

Add into this mix the Mormon mayor with two wives and a boyfriend who plays piano at the Chinese brothel (and access to such Mormon paraphenalia as the plates, the glasses, and the sword of Latham), The mysterious man who owns most of the town, and seemingly unrelated passages relating to Biqa, an Angel guarding something on the Earth when not being tempted to rebel by Lucifer Morningstar. (This proves what Uncle Milton already know. Lucifer is a scene stealer.)

Then there are the mad preachers who somehow got control of the mine and start waking up what's bound inside. Which is when all the Lovecraftian incantations start coming out and someone gets tentacles in her private parts.

I know this sounds like a corny train wreck, and there are a few parts where is really is, but there are some rather fascinating meditations of what is real, and how our perceptions of reality are colored by what we believe. Because there are about 5 different explanations of what exactly lies under the mountain, and all of them are treated as equally valid.

It really is a supernatural western, and quite the enjoyable ride. Almost makes me wish I could find that picture of Cthulhu in a stetson.