Adrian Collins's Blog, page 163

REVIEW: The God is Not Willing by Steven Erikson

I received a review copy of The God is Not Willing in exchange for an honest review. Thank you to Steven Erikson and Bantam Press. I don’t believe my review contains spoilers, but with releases this anticipated I tend to include a minor spoilers may follow warning.

Set approximately ten years after the events that concluded The Crippled God (MBOTF #10), The God is Not Willing returns readers to Northwest Genabackis, specifically Silver Lake. In House of Chains (MBOTF #4), the warriors Karsa Orlong, Delum Thord, and Bairoth Gild ventured here to cause havoc. Now, less than twenty Malazan marines have been sent to investigate stirrings in the North, bringing them to the garrison at Silver Lake. The tribes of the Teblor are setting their sights on the South and in addition to these thousands of warriors, something cataclysmic approaches Silver Lake too.

I feel the need to mention early on in my review that Karsa Orlong does not feature in The God is Not Willing. Now referred to as The Shattered God, Karsa resides in a dwelling outside Darujhistan, being generally morose and miserable and refusing the affections of those who revere him.

In The God is Not Willing the main characters are the “knifey-mage” Stillwater, Oams, who may or may not be a Claw assassin, the last and arguably the least of the Bridgeburners, Spindle, and the young half-Teblor Silver Lake resident, Rant. He’s the bastard son of Karsa Orlong and was conceived during a rape a decade and a half ago.

Two of my favourite characters in The God is Not Willing were Rant and Spindle. We’re introduced to Rant as something pretty harrowing happens to him, a scene that may be upsetting for quite a few readers. Throughout the novel, he develops and changes a lot, goes through a plethora of feelings, yet there’s still much potential for further growth and innocence to lose. Quite early on in the book Spindle graces the pages, a character that I vaguely remembered from my time reading Memories of Ice (MBOTF #3) and Toll the Hounds (MBOTF #8), so I was pleased to see a player that I recognised being in the mix here. Spindle is calm and unshakeable, probably the most experienced Malazan marine still active in this era, although none of his squad believe he was actually a Bridgeburner, whereas Rant is raw, emotional, and confused. In a way, Erikson could be presenting us the old school and the new school of this world through these two characters, their differences, and their world views, and I was intrigued throughout to see whether or not their paths would cross.

Although Karsa doesn’t feature, his actions and legacy can be felt throughout, especially witnessed from the views of the Teblor contingent of the Dramatis Personae which includes two of Karsa’s daughters, Delum’s son, and Bairoth’s widow and her daughter. Even the Malazan marines are aware of the events that occurred at Silver Lake many years before and about Karsa’s ascendancy.

I finished my read of Malazan Book of the Fallen about five years ago and I rate it one of my top two fantasy series. My expectations for the first novel in the Witness trilogy were high but I tried my best to keep them leveled to avoid disappointment. The God is Not Willing is as good as I expected it to be. A solid 8/10 and an admirable first entry. Erikson continues to showcase his talents as an impressive wordsmith who I believe sprinkles the perfect amount of humour and camaraderie to balance the darkness and impending doom. Frequently, especially in the second half of the novel, I found certain scenes and set-pieces to be almost hypnotic with the way they drew me in, being equally mesmerising and memorable. Add to this intense battles, witty banter, advanced warfare, new curses, new gods, and escapades with warrens and this world’s supernatural and you’ll see why I had such a good time with this book.

There were also some very neat and unexpected, albeit brief cameos by a handful of major players from the main series. To mention who would be to spoil, but I can’t help but think these were more thank yous or easter eggs to Malazan fans rather than significant to the plot. I hope I am wrong though, as would love to see some of these players get more page-time in the rest of the trilogy. There is a lot of depth to this world as Malazan readers will already be aware and this novel rewards people who know what has come before. I couldn’t help but chuckle or smile at occasions such as a character saying “it’s not a couple of Necromancers is it?”

Could you start your Malazan experience with The God is Not Willing? I honestly don’t know. This is my sixteenth book in the shared world of Erikson and Esslemont so I’ve built up a decent knowledge of the way this world works. That being said, I did find this an easier, more succinct and streamlined read than the main series though, with a reading experience similar to the excellent Path to Ascendency novels.

The God is Not Willing is a worthy next step after the mighty Malazan Book of the Fallen. Not as grandiose in scope but still packed with the qualities that I previously adored. It features a heavy body count but has lots of heart at its core. I’d also like to add that I admire everything about the cover artwork and how it relates to events in the book.

Read The God is Not Willing by Steven Erikson

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REVIEW: Ten Low by Stark Holborn

Chaos reigns at the edge of the universe. Ruling in second are all the outlaws. Ten Low by Stark Holborn is the story of an ex-convict known as Ten, and her desperate plight for redemption.

Ten Low takes place on the desolate moon, Factus. This barren land is scarcely habitable, but surviving its harsh terrain is only the first battle. Yellow rot plaques its inhabitants. Organ-stealing cults hunt the rest. There is a force or demon that manipulates the fate of those living here, distorting reality and possibility. Only those with no other choice would dare seek refuge in this wasteland. Yet here, Ten hides from the Authority of Accorded Nations and the bounty on her head.

Ten lives for a tally. Using her skills as a medic, her life mission is to save as many lives as possible. She keeps track of this number, counting each life as if her very own depended on it. At first, her criminal past is shrouded in mystery. We don’t know the full extent of her charges nor why she is compelled to this penance. Her guilt-ridden conscious rarely permitting her to self-reflect, we only get scraps of history to piece together throughout Ten Low. I loved learning more about this conflicted character.

Ten Low begins when Ten witnesses a ship crashing from the sky. She scours through the wreckage and rescues a young girl. To Ten’s dismay, she discovers that not only does this girl belong to the Accord, but she is a General from the Minority Force. A group of genetically crafted super soldiers designed to be the Accord’s greatest asset. They discover the crash was no mere accident, the young human weapon is now the hunted.

“How to explain to this child, who is no longer a child, that the tally is all? That it matters over compassion or fear, that it drives me more than the threat of arrest ever could?”

Ten Low is bleak. The novel challenges us to question whether we control our own lives. It destroys romantic ideologies and replaces them with the importance of atonement. The real story begins when everything seems impossible.

From the quarter of this book and on, the pace of Ten Low is light breaking. I’m not sure if I read or inhaled all the grit and twisted turns of this novel. Its story is a violent course of Dune and Mad Max. I hope we see more of Ten in a sequel. Her story is captivating and ended far too soon.

Read Ten Low by Stark Holborn

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REVIEW: Skin by Peter Fugazzotto

Skin is a novella with a creepy cover image of a human skeleton with its skin removed. The blurb is equally creepy, giving us the promise of a horror tale set in a fantasy world. It suggests a story in the vein of John Carpenter’s The Thing, with a setting similar to the realms of Game of Thrones. With this in mind, of course I wanted to snatch it up and read it right away.

The Thing is an apt comparison, as the story takes place in a desolate location in the dead of winter. There seems to be a monster that’s stealing the skins of people and replacing them in this micro society. Of course, as the characters learn this horrifying truth, they aren’t sure who is still themselves or who might be “it”.

Hemming is an old soldier, a veteran of a long career of warfare. He’s burnt out on all the pointless killings and endless conflicts that don’t seem to be going anywhere. He wants to get away from it all, so he asks for an assignment on the border in a remote keep. Across the border is another keep that is manned by the enemy. But this should be an easy job with little action, as the only thing these two forces do is sit there to make sure the other doesn’t cross. Even when fighting is thick elsewhere, at this site nothing ever happens.

Until it does.

The choice of compacting this story into a novella is a huge strength of the story. The author was able to trim the fat and get right to the heart of the matter, catching the reader’s attention and holding it in a state of suspense all the way through. It’s long enough to get to know the main characters and become familiar with the setting, but not so dense that it takes hundreds of pages to understand what’s going on. It’s really a great blend of tense horror and condensed epic fantasy.

I will say that while the comparisons to The Thing are spot on, the Game of Thrones resemblance is much less defined. I understand that this is a marketing tool geared towards grabbing the attention of the casual fantasy fans, and GoT is of course the most recognizable brand in that genre. But the world here isn’t portrayed as deeply or as complex, though it certainly could be in a larger, separate work. I would be interested in reading such a thing, to learn more about this fantasy setting, but for the sake of this story, the length of narrative and brief worldbuilding is just right.

What strikes me most about this story isn’t the monster itself or even the tense scenes where it’s confronted. Those are fine and good, but for me the terror of it all is set in the foundation of what it’s really about. That is, a combination of the debilitating effects on the psyche of extreme cold with the planting of the seed of paranoia in the mind. Hemming and the others are already miserable to some degree as the blizzard sets in and makes it even colder. Then the bad stuff starts to happen. I’d say it adds fuel to the fire, but that takes away from the imagery of just how painfully cold it is where they’re at.

But then just when things are almost completely hopeless, Hemming learns that he can’t even trust his companions. Any one of them could be the monster. The human brain starts working, looking for telltale signs of monstrosity from one’s comrades and making more of what it seen than should be. But you can’t be too careful, right?

That’s where a good horror story completes a total mindf**k on its readers.

Read Skin by Peter Fugazzotto

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REVIEW: Remnants edited by Stephen Coghlan

Remnants is a collection of stories about a world ravaged and left for dead, with only a few leftovers- remnants, if you will. Instead of focusing on the horrific monsters that have violently changed life as humans know it, these tales focus mainly on how the few survive and who they become. The stories showcase tenacity, an unwillingness to lay down and die, and the best- and very worst- of humanity. Although, in some cases, humanity has long since left the building.

The concept behind Remnants is not a new one; post-apocalyptical stories like this have been created before. However, where this anthology is different is in its execution. Instead of full stories, there are short vignettes, brief glimpses in time. Some stories are touching, others incredibly brutal. Like humanity itself, the stories have a sliding scale of morality, with some unwilling to cross boundaries that other characters don’t even see as existing.

I found the examination of humanity to be fascinating. Like most anthologies, some stories worked better for me than others, but this was a collection that I consistently enjoyed. While some readers might wish for a little bit more focus on the monsters themselves, I really liked that following the survivors were the main event. Although in some cases, I could argue that not all the characters alive had actually really survived.

Each story added something to the overall atmosphere of the book. The first story, “Resistance” by Stephen Coghlan, set the tone for Remnants. It’s also a good lead-in, preparing the reader for stories that range from bizarre to emotional to disturbing or almost grotesque. The main storyline might be centered around one event, but the way each author tackled it was completely unique. I was never in danger of losing interest at all.

There were a couple of stories that were really unique in their telling. “Heatwave” by Aaron Lee takes a rather coldblooded look at the fallout, in which there is a blog that keeps tracks of death “statistics”, that the blogger utilizes to try to understand the nightmare that they’re living in. I thought this one was both fascinating and chilling.

“First Swarm” by J.D. Sanderson followed two photographers and their experiences, which left me mulling over whether viewing something through a camera lens helps expose truths otherwise denied, or if it allows the photographers to separate themselves from the reality of what they’re seeing. Short yet powerful, this was one of my favorite stories in the collection. The creativity behind both “First Swarm” and “Heatwave” are what elevated them above some of the other stories in this collection, although they were all well written.

Remnants is one of the stronger additions to post-apocalyptic fiction that I’ve read recently, with the grimdark and horror aspects working incredibly well. Thought provoking and just flat-out cool, this is not a collection to miss. I highly recommend it.

Read Remnants Created by Stephen Coghlan

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REVIEW: The Wood Bee Queen by Edward Cox

I think the best way to describe The Wood Bee Queen by Edward Cox is to say that it’s a children’s fantasy adventure for adults. This does not mean that it’s a childish book or a story without depth, but that its form as a portal fantasy, coupled with a fairy-tale style world and its use of a deus ex machina plot device is most often found in that area. As I love both adult fantasy and children’s books, I thought this was a really cool concept and I really enjoyed my reading experience. It is the story of Ebbie Wren, small-town librarian, stuck in a seemingly dead-end life, thrust into an adventure when the homeless women he has struck up a friendship with dies, makes him her heir and turns out to be the long-lost queen to a magical kingdom. Ebbie is swept away to the other side of the sky and the sea, where the Queen of House Wood Bee has been murdered. With the help of his dead friend’s inheritance, Ebbie has to persuade the not-very-competent thief Bek Rana to help him find the magical stones Foresight and Hindsight and hopefully get his friend’s granddaughter found and crowned. But neither Ebbie nor Bek are really the hero type. Or even interested in being heroes. At all.

The Wood Bee Queen is humorous, compelling and entertaining. The story is quite fast-paced and keeps up tension throughout. It is well-written in that slightly whimsical tone that readers might be used to from authors like T. Kingfisher, or – dare I say it – hints of Pratchett-esque writing. It is most definitely on the more lighthearted side of what we report on here at Grimdark Magazine, but then, even the darkest of reader hearts need some whimsy every once in a while. I think what might make The Wood Bee Queen a make-or-break kind of book is the use of a deus ex machina device that explains things to the characters and leads them on their journey – enjoyment of the story is hinged on being able to go with it and accept a magical guiding hand. The plot as a whole isn’t anything new – it’s a fairly straight forward quest – but its packaging in a detailed and imaginative world makes it stand out.

I really enjoyed the characters – Ebbie Wren, small-town librarian in his late twenties who doesn’t know what to do with himself is far too relatable for comfort. Bek Rana is a badass snarky thief and I fell for her very quickly. And Mai, whose death is the catalyst for the story, never appears herself, but oversees the events through her memory. Simply wonderful. Another thing I appreciated about this book is that there is NO ROMANCE. It’s just a story, a quest, with found family elements and friendship. So good to read a book that focuses on those elements rather than romantic ones for a change. In short, The Wood Bee Queen is a wonderful piece of escapist fantasy literature.

Read The Wood Bee Queen by Edward Cox

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REVIEW: The Book of the Baku by R.L. Boyle

The Book of the Baku is more than a horror story. Within its pages, I found terror and infectious sorrow. Its author R.L Boyle runs the entire gamut on what it means to be human and experience deep grief.

While just shy of turning fourteen, Sean is no stranger to suffering. Growing up on the violent streets of Dulwood aged him. It made him cynical and more perceptive of the world. I immediately became fond of his character. Despite his upbringing, there is a sincerity that radiates from him.  Something horrible happened to Sean. An event so traumatic, it robbed him of his ability to speak.

The Book of the Baku could have easily been a book about a disabled child, instead it does something better. Sean’s disability is always the first thing people notice about him, but not to readers. R.L Boyle took particular care to introduce Sean as an individual first and always.

The Book of the Baku begins roughly when Sean is taken into the care of his Grandad. Eager to help, his Grandad reintroduces art as a form of healing and a new way to communicate. Unlike Sean’s mom, his Grandad does not discourage Sean’s interest for horror and darker art. His Grandad understands the odd comfort that darkness brings.

As their relationship develops, it becomes clear that his Grandad is hiding something. There is a secret lingering, not so dormant, within the ominous shed on his Grandad’s property. A mystery that threatens to break everyone’s sanity. The horrors present in The Book of the Baku are not only paranormal, but what also remains unspoken among Sean’s family.

When Sean finds his Grandad’s collection of novels, one instantly captures his interest; a story based on a Chinese and Japanese mythical creature. When called upon by a child, the Baku devours their nightmares. It must be summoned sparingly because the Baku’s appetite is not easily satisfied. Left hungry, it will consume that child’s hopes and spirit. This legendary being now haunts Sean.

Some of the best horror stories have involved monsters plaguing children with their own nightmares, stories such as Freddy Krueger and Stephen King’s It. The Book of the Baku renovated this concept and gave it a refreshing modern vibe.

While The Book of the Baku is a mature story with adult themes, its darkness is balanced by pop culture references, turning it into an equally fun read. This book has the brilliance of The Babadook with the charm of Stranger Things. I highly recommend it and will be keeping an eye out for Boyle’s future work.

Read The Book of the Baku by R.L. Boyle

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REVIEW: The Post by Kevin A. Munoz

The Post by Kevin A. Munoz is a strange and brutal tale. Often dark to the point of being physically unnerving and bulging with well-crafted battles between the main character, Police Chief Sam Edison of the Little Five, and hollow-heads, unkillable cannibals no longer capable of higher thought. All within the context of a small struggling community fighting to make a home again after an apocalypse of illness and destruction ten years prior.

The Post revolves around our main protagonist, Police Chief Sam Edison. A once upon a time coast guard captain has fallen into the role of the Police chief and leader of a small community called Little Five. Sam struggles daily with memories of the past and the death of Sam’s wife and daughter. Edison continually attempts to atone for deaths that were no one’s fault and spends much of the novel recriminating herself. This causes a compulsive need to protect the innocent, much to the detriment of those around him. Two strangers arrive at the fence of Little Five, hoping for assistance. One of the strangers happened to be a young, pregnant, and abused young lady. They are promptly murdered within days of arriving. They were killed to protect a secret. To make matters worse, the beloved stepdaughter of the mayor is kidnaped. Sam feels compelled to right this wrong, find Phoebe, and bring justice upon those who hurt young women.

At this point, the primary basis of The Post has been laid, and the pace of the novel picks up. We are treated to battle after well-crafted battle between Hollow-Heads, gunmen, and town traitors on Sam’s quest to rescue Phoebe. The reader has a choice at this point, either cheer for Sam or scratch their heads at Sam’s misguided stubborn refusal to abandon this quest. It is the weight of one innocent’s death versus the death of many. That in itself adds to the horror and pacing of the story. I know that I often wondered at Sam’s motivations and the motives of supporting characters that assisted Sam in his endeavors. This usually broke the suspended disbelief of the story for me.

Another quibble I have in an otherwise excellent piece of writing is the use of two plagues. One a strange catch-all cannibal creating disease that has affected the population at large. The other is vague allusions to oil going bad about the same time as the cannibal creating illness. The fuel going bad sets up plot points further into the story, but I found it unnecessary and even distracting. If facing an apocalyptic scenario, oil would go bad and become scarce as a matter of course. No people means no oil refineries. Bio-diesel would become a tradeable and necessary resource for a community to thrive.

One thing that Muñoz does exceptionally well is creating a believable apocalyptic world, aside from my minor quibbles about oil. He makes a setting in which the town, Little Five, is surviving and in some ways flourishing, but never for a moment is it forgotten how close to the edge of destruction they are. It is believable in many of the ways that most apocalyptic scenario stories are not.

The ending is a bit messy and less satisfying than I would like, but I will leave that to you readers to find out for yourself. All in all, this is a reasonably enjoyable read, a bit confusing at times and head-scratching, but still gratifying. If you are a fan of “The Walking Dead” and “A Walk Amongst the Tombstones” by Lawrence Block, I think you will enjoy this.

Read The Post by Kevin A. Munoz

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REVIEW: The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones

The Only Good Indians, by Stephen Graham Jones, is an absolutely incredible horror novel. It follows four Indigenous men, a decade after a disastrous hunting trip, as they are hunted by a vengeful spirit.

The Only Good Indians has a prologue and three sections that read essentially like novellas tied together. They work like dominos, the prologue touching the first story, the first story punching into the second, and the second crashing into the third. It having been a decade since the hunting trip, two of the characters have moved away from the reservation, and two remained.

Each of these sections follows one of the men involved in the hunt. By structuring it this way, the shorter scenarios give just enough time to set up all the pieces that will cascade together into their tableau of horror.

The spirit hunting them doesn’t want to directly confront the hunters. We aren’t given much of an idea of what the spirit hunting them is capable of, but early on she seems to enjoy toying with them and letting them ruin themselves.

The Only Good Indians does exceptional character work, especially in Lewis’s section. With Lewis, Jones gives us no reprieve, no other points of view. We see what he sees, regardless of how accurate to reality it is. We watch his uneasiness turn to full-blown paranoia.

We don’t know how much of what Lewis sees is accurate. There are scenes where we know he imagined things, because he manages to talk himself off the ledge. Lewis is the only one who makes a guess as to why this spirit is hunting them now, but given how unreliable his narration is, and how he admits he’s making a supposition, the reason for the spirit coming after them after a full decade remains ambiguous.

Lewis’ section was, I felt, the strongest of the book, because we are reading a slow delve into paranoia. When all the pieces fall into place, it’s absolutely ghastly, a slow-motion wreck I couldn’t tear myself away from, with a final image that was chillingly uncanny.

The second section of The Only Good Indians focuses on the two men who remained on the reservation, Gabe and Cassidy. They decide to have a sweat lodge ceremony, and the local police officer asks them to take his son as well, hoping it will help with his recent delinquency. Unlike Lewis, Gabe and Cassidy are ignorant about what’s happening, so the tension comes from the audience knowing what they don’t.

The spirit takes a more direct approach here, working as best she can to isolate the men while they have their sweat lodge ceremony. There’s a ghastly irony as the hunters mention that sweat lodges are sacred, and that there’s no safer place on the reservation.

I won’t get into the third section so as to not spoil it. It’s the shortest (besides the prologue), but it definitely ends the book on a strong, solid note.

There’s a lot of detail in the book about what it means to be Indigenous. Ricky and Lewis represent the ones who leave the reservation, but are still shaped by it; Gabe and Cassidy are tight-knit with their community. Gabe in particular is ostracized by it, but you never get the sense that he would consider leaving. Cassidy is maturing as he ages and finally having people view him with trust.

The character work through the book is sharp, the pacing is perfect, and the tension is near-unbearable at parts. The Only Good Indians is incredible and terrifying. I would recommend it to any horror fan.

5/5

Read The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones

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10 days to go in The King Must Fall Kickstarter!

20 days down, 10 to go, and The King Must Fall has passed AU$43,000, added three new authors to the lineup, put interior art on the title page of every story, and is providing backers with an ever-fattening bag of digital swag to go with it. These are pretty exciting times!

Get caught up on all the hype in 1 min flat

If you’ve reached the point in this article and you’re wondering just what The King Must Fall is all about, check out our trailer below to get caught up.

What do backers of The King Must Fall get so far?

There’s plenty of good stuff already there for people who want to pledge to The King Must Fall today. The anthology now includes the following authors:

Bradley P. Beaulieu (The Song of the Shattered Sands, The Lays of Anuskaya)Kameron Hurley (The God’s War Trilogy, Worldbreaker Saga)Michael R Fletcher (Manifest Delusions, Black Stone Heart)Anna Smith Spark (Empires of Dust)Shawn Speakman (The Annwn Cycles, Unfettered)Daniel Polansky (Low Town, Those Above)Devin Madson (The Reborn Empire)Adrian Tchaikovsky (Shadows of the Apt, Children of Time)Anthony Ryan (Raven’s Shadow, The Draconis Memoria)Lee Murray (Into the Mist, Hounds of the Underworld)Jeremy Szal (The Common)Justin Call (The Silent Gods)Trudi Canavan (The Black Magician, Age of the Five)Peter Orullian (The Vault of Heaven, The Astonishing)Anna Stephens (Godblind, The Songs of the Drowned)Alex Marshall (The Crimson Empire)Luke Scull (The Grim Company)

As well as having black and white art by Carlos Diaz on the title page of every story to go with that gorgeous cover from Felix Ortiz and Shawn T. King.

In addition, backers of this project already get:

All of the Grimdark Magazine e-issues published in 2018, 2019, and 2020, andebooks of Michael R. Fletcher’s Black Stone Heart and Smoke and Stone

Now, that’s certainly not the worst value, ever! But the bigger this project gets, the more we can jam into your anthology and rewards.

What’s next for The King Must Fall?

We’ve got ten days to make sure your pledge provides you with something that is as big as possible, is in as many formats as possible, and is cool AF. The following backer targets are waiting for us to claim them and add them to the project:

AU$46,400 (US$34,900 approx.): Audie award-winning narrator Greg Patmore will create an audio version of The King Must Fall to be sent to all backers. Greg also delivered the audio version of our last Kickstarter anthology, Evil is a Matter of Perspective.

AU$48,000 (US$36,100 approx.): Deborah A. Wolf will write an additional short story based in the Godsword world.

AU$52,000 (US$39,200 approx.): Author pay increase by another AU$0.02 per word.

AU$55,000 (US$41,400 approx.): Matthew Ward will write an additional short story based in the Legacy world.

AU$59,000 (US$44,400 approx.): Author pay increase by another AU$0.02 per word.

AU$62,000 (US$46,700 approx.): Open window for fiction submissions at full pay rate for one short story purchase from the slush pile.700 BACKERS: The entire SNAFU military SF horror catalogue from Cohesion Press in mobi and ePub. You’ll know some of these stories from Netflix’s LOVE, DEATH + ROBOTS.

There is a lot to get excited about there. Click the image below, back the project, give it a shout out to your friends to keep building it–this is going to be something awesome.

 

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REVIEW: The Haunting of Tram Car 015 by P. Djèlí Clark

The Haunting of Tram Car 015 is a story that takes place in an alternative history of Egypt after the British rule was overthrown in 1879. Now, the year is 1912. Cairo is written as a mix of history, culture, steampunk, and magic. Djinns walk the world freely, ghosts haunt, and magic makes the world flow. This story stars a collection of characters, namely agents Hamed Nasr and Onsi Youssef. They represent the interests of the Ministry of Alchemy, Enchantments, and Supernatural Entities and are called in to investigate a tram car, part of the transportation system in Cairo, that seems to be haunted.

Nothing is as it seems, but they are tasked to fix the situation as speedily as possible.

One of the best parts of Clark’s writing is the texture and beauty of his descriptions. He builds a fluid, and magical world that is on one hand, believable, but on the other completely stretches the imagination. The story is fascinating in its own right, but the backstory and the current political tensions that flow behind the main characters are well done and bring depth to the tale. Political upheaval is everywhere in the form of women’s suffrage. Women are close to getting the right to vote, and that plays a massive part in how characters behave and relate to other characters in the story. The political climate is a live wire snapping and sparking.

“That spirit was just a formless being minding its own business. Then, it encountered men. And they decided to make it this beautiful woman or this monstrous crone, because that’s the only way many men can even view women. Maybe they were looking for a way to explain why their wives died in childbirth, or why infants died in their blankets. Maybe they were just afraid of old women. So, they made up this al, conjured it up as a woman, and blamed it on her!”

Hamad, the lead investigator for the story, is a steampunk world-weary sam spade type character. He has seen a lot, experienced a lot, and has developed a certain pragmatism towards cases. But what makes him such a great character is his ability to adapt. As issues pop up he pragmatically handles them but is intelligent and adaptable enough that he can look beyond the easy. He is also funny and adds a bit of mischievousness to the story which adds a much-needed levity. I enjoyed reading about his interactions with various people and entities.

Clark writes a fascinating story in The Haunting of Tram Car 015, and one that doesn’t fall short. There are no coy or trumped-up false moments. This is just fantastic storytelling. Since writing this story, Clark has gone on to write Ring Shout and A Master Djinn which is a full-length novel that takes place in this universe. Again in those books, Clark’s imagination soars.  I recommend reading the entire series thus far of the Dead Djinn universe, you cannot go wrong with this level of storytelling.

Read The Haunting of Tram Car 015 by P. Djèlí Clark

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