Book Review: Dark Jenny by Alex Bledsoe
Every once in a while I go out to the mailbox and discover a book in the mail that I wasn’t expecting. A lot of those books end up sitting on my review shelf, but some of those books intrigue me enough to dig my eyes into them. Such books tend to be quite good. Dark Jenny is one of those books. Dark Jenny follows Eddie LaCrosse, a witty sword for hire who’ll solve any case for a reasonable price. But Eddie also has a history that most people don’t know about, and it involves the fall of the kingdom of Grand Bruan, a feudal utopia with an Arthurian legend at its core. When a mysterious coffin is left in the snow outside his place of business — i.e., a tavern — Eddie begins to weave a tale about murder, dark family secrets, unscrupulous and vengeful characters, and a version of Grand Bruan’s fall that nobody has ever heard before. Dark Jenny is a lot like the movie Clue on a twisted date with The Princess Bride. Bledsoe’s novel is one part dark comedy and one part social critique. As a dark comedy, it benefits from having a strong protagonist and a solid cast of secondary characters. Eddie is sarcastic, witty, and clever, but he is also a farcry from the antiheroes of many popular fantasy series, despite his attempts to avoid involvement in anything other than his business. The result was a character I enjoyed reading about and a character whose motivations I could understand, even if I might have disagreed with him. This feeling is helped by the fact that Dark Jenny is a first person narrative, the result of which is a thorough understanding of Eddie’s thought processes and a lack self-referentiality — that is that the novel doesn’t suffer from requiring some familiarity with Bledsoe’s other works, however minute. Instead, the novel is made internally consistent by a character who feels fully-developed from the outset (the novel opens in a tavern and does a fantastic job of creating a sense of familiarity through Eddie’s interactions with the various minor characters around him) and whose development is then displayed full-force by a flashback narrative (one which shows that development morally through his interactions with the people of Grand Bruan, in which his aggressive nature is challenged by — and challenges — people above his stature; we then get to see how his personality functions and why he is who he is). Eddie’s voice is perhaps the strongest aspect of the novel next to the genre critiques, without which I think Bledsoe’s tale would falter. The core of Dark Jenny is an Arthurian legend twisted on its head, in part because the kingdom has descended into barbarism, which the opening of the novel indicates, but also because Bledsoe doesn’t avoid breaking down the utopianism of feudal myths (often through humor) in order to show the dark inner workings of societies which are served by those myths. To put it another way: Bledsoe’s novel, despite presenting itself as a fun, but dark comedy, is one which critically engages with the mythologies societies give to their citizens, showing the tenuous balance between maintaining order and manipulating one’s subjects. (Bledsoe is engaging with the fundamental unknowability of utopia, which Fredric Jameson discusses throughout his writing, but specifically in Archaeologies of the Future). Bledsoe relays these critiques largely through humor, which is refreshing when one considers how many fantasy novels deconstruct the feudal utopia through elaborate political or metaphysical pessimisms. Dark Jenny does have some issues, though, some of which will be the result of the reader’s taste. While the novel contains within it a heavy social critique, its outer skin — that of its comedic nature — sometimes falls short from a language perspective. Eddie frequently uses euphemisms which are far too modern for the world he is playing with. Though Dark Jenny is set in a secondary world, I felt myself being drawn away from the story when phrases like “she’s a knockout” appeared in the text. Many readers may not be bothered by such things, but I find that the language can only be modernized so much before the story’s medieval settings starts to feel strained against an encroaching modernity. There are also issues related to the Bledsoe’s use of sexual relationships. I never got the sense that certain characters were reasonably attracted to one another (though there is a twist which explains why some characters are that way). In Eddie’s case, there is a love interest, but it felt somewhat strained to me. I tend to prefer romantic relationships which develop realistically. Eddie’s “charm,” while usually evident in other avenues (such as his interactions with Kay), wasn’t given enough space in the romantic subplot. There needed to be more interaction, because without it, I got the sense that the relationship did not contain the depth that Eddie frequently announced in the text (the relationship seemed to be about sex rather than some kind of attraction beyond the physical; the novel suggested that the relationship wasn’t just physical). The novel’s structure is also interesting to note. I feel that some readers will have issues with Dark Jenny‘s jumps between the world’s present and its distant past (at about the same frequency as The Princess Bride), but I found the structure enjoyable and fascinating. This means that the novel doesn’t present itself in a straight way. Some details are revealed from the start, while others are left to be discovered — by the Eddie’s past self and by the reader. The structure works well with the mystery plot that begins the novel’s present and past, and will certainly please fans of other genres than fantasy (mystery fans might find Dark Jenny enjoyable). Overall, however, I greatly enjoyed the book. It’s a dark comedy/fantasy romp with a strong lead character, plenty of mystery and twists, and a solid plot. I’ve been inundated with too many epic fantasy stories; receiving this book in the mail was a
Book Review: Zoo City by Lauren Beukes
When my friend and I asked Lauren Beukes to describe Zoo City, she understandably remarked that the book is rather difficult to explain. Zoo City isn’t like a lot of books. On the one hand it is a noir murder mystery with a semi-New Weird slant, but on the other it is a novel about refugees, the music industry, South Africa, guilt, revenge, drugs, prejudice, poverty, and so much more. It is a gloriously complicated novel with equally complicated characters. You might even call it a brilliant example of worldbuilding from outside of the traditional modern fantasy genre. Zoo City is concerned with Zinzi December, a former convict who, like many others, must bear the mark of her crime in the form of a semi-intelligent animal — in her case, it’s a sloth. But there’s also the Undertow — a mysterious force that some claim is Hell reaching out for the damned souls of aposymbiots like Zinzi. Aposymbiosis, however, isn’t all bad. Every aposymbiot is gifted with an ability. Some can create protective charms while others can dampen magical fields. Zinzi can see the threads that connect people to their lost things. And that’s how she survives: finding things for people for a modest fee. But when she takes on a job from a music producer to find a missing girl, things get sticky. Her employer isn’t who he seems and the person she’s trying to find might be running for a good reason. Toss in her debts to a shady organization of email scammers, her complicated relationship with her refugee lover, a murder, and the seedy underbelly of a Johannesburg trying to deal with its new “problem” and you have a complex story about South Africa, its people, and its culture. Zoo City is immense in its complexity, despite having the allure of a typical genre romp. Trying to describe the novel will always leave out some salient detail, which will prevent one from conveying a true sense of the novel. It is, in part, a noir crime novel, but it is also a foray into South Africa’s present. What is surprising about Zoo City is that it breaks the fantasy tradition of disconnection from reality — what some might call the escapist nature of the genre. Zoo City roots the reader in the now, altering details as necessary to convey a world that has been changed by its supernatural affliction (aposymbiosis); it is a novel with an intimate relationship to South Africa’s present (and, by extension, its past). For that reason, I think Zoo City would benefit from multiple readings. The novel’s cultural layers are palimpsest-ial in nature, each element bleeding into another so that almost every detail, allusion, and reference becomes integral to the development of the novel’s characters and the narrative itself. I consider this to be a good thing because the novel doesn’t suffer from feeling disconnected from the world its characters are supposed to occupy (an alternate-history near-today) — that is that the characters are so firmly rooted in Beukes’ South African milieu that they don’t read like characters transplanted from elsewhere. Being so rooted, Zoo City is as much about its world as it is about its characters. The first-person-present narrative style allows for Zinzi’s voice to dominate, but that doesn’t prevent Beukes from providing useful insight into the various other characters around her main character. While the focus on Zinzi certainly shows a lopsided view of the world, it doesn’t fail to show the wider context in which Zinzi has become a part. Zinzi’s detective role, in a way, is a duality: she uses it first as a survival mechanism, but then as a way to dig into her own personal reality, discovering the truth about her friends and even herself. It is through this process that the narrative’s cultural strands build on top of one another, providing the reader with a progressively deepening view of the characters and their interaction with the world around them. Zinzi’s refugee lover (Benoit), for example, is a man with his own mysteries, and it is inevitably through Zinzi’s various other doings, some of which she has hidden even from those that know her, that she not only explains the world from which Benoit has come, but also discovers more about who Benoit is/was and how new events in her life will change the dynamics of their relationship and their relationship to the world around them. Throughout all of this, Zinzi’s humor, sarcasm, and cynicism pokes through, coloring her character and her vision of the South Africa of Zoo City (by extension, the reader’s view is also colored by these interjections). It is this attention to detail and character that I loved about Zoo City. Instead of focusing undo attention to its plot, the novel finds a balance between both plot and character. Neither is written at the expense of the other, but the characters also seem to steal the show because they are all incredibly flawed, and deal with those flaws in (sometimes annoyingly) human ways. Perfection is an impossibility in Beukes’ narrative. Zinzi has many advantages — her magical ability and her attitude, which she uses to intimidate her “enemies — but she is also limited, and knows it. Her actions are appropriately influenced by this knowledge; reading her thoughts as she comes to terms with these flaws, particularly in bad situations, is an amusing, if not voyeuristic, experience. Neither plot or character are perfectly in-sync, however. The ending, I would argue, felt somewhat rushed and without full resolution (by this I don’t mean the last pages, which I think were appropriate based on what occurs in the novel); in a sense, I think the ending shies away from the noir crime narrative Zoo City started with and delves into darker themes that might have been better served by stronger foreshadowing in the novel. Zinzi’s voice and her character flaws do, to some extent, overwhelm these minor issues, making the ending suspenseful and (slightly) insane, and I suspect that
Book Review Up: The Reapers Are the Angels by Alden Bell
I haven’t reviewed anything in far too long. This has partly been due to graduate school and partly due to my disinterest in a number of books that have appeared in my mailbox. I’m hoping this is a phase, though. In any case, I think my review of The Reapers Are the Angels by Alden Bell is the best review I’ve written yet. Maybe I’m wrong about that, but I am quite proud of that review. Yes, it’s a glowing review, but that’s because I loved the book (plain and simple). So if you’d like to check out the review and see what I thought about The Reapers Are the Angels, you can do so here.
Book Review Up: The Left Hand of God by Paul Hoffman
It’s been a while since I last posted a review, but I’m back at it and clearing out my “review pile.” This week was a little disappointing, though. You can read my review to find out why.
Book Review Up: Spellwright by Blake Charlton
I’ve been reading a lot more fantasy than I would like lately, but so be it. Here’s my review of Charlton’s debut novel. It’s an interesting read, and I think Charlton has potential, but there are some issues here or there. Read the review for yourself. Anywho! What have you all been reading?
Book Review Up: Harbinger by Jack Skillingstead
A very unique read and one I would recommend to anyone who likes lighter-flavored SF. You can read my review here. Enjoy!