Penny Dreadful in The Velvet

Mar 01, 2010 Colin Miller rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: novels, cant-remember-well-enough-to-review

Two stars.

Omnibus review:

Will Christopher Baer is a more respectable version of Chuck Palahniuk. They’re very similar—both are dark, first-person storytellers with a predilection for the twisted underworld of sex and violence—but I’d place Baer more on the side of dark storyteller and Palahniuk on the side of shock writer. Plus Palahniuk bled one narrator into (many, but for sure his initial) four novels; Baer just accepted his love for that voice and made a trilogy.

The Phineas Poe trilogy—Kiss Two stars.

Omnibus review:

Will Christopher Baer is a more respectable version of Chuck Palahniuk. They’re very similar—both are dark, first-person storytellers with a predilection for the twisted underworld of sex and violence—but I’d place Baer more on the side of dark storyteller and Palahniuk on the side of shock writer. Plus Palahniuk bled one narrator into (many, but for sure his initial) four novels; Baer just accepted his love for that voice and made a trilogy.

The Phineas Poe trilogy—Kiss Me, Judas; Penny Dreadful; and Hell’s Half Acre—is narrated by the disgraced ex-cop turned ex-junkie of the same name. In Kiss Me, Judas, Poe wakes up in a bathtub full of ice, missing a kidney. He spends the rest of the novel chasing the hooker, Jude, who stole it from him, bumping into other characters—some friends, some enemies—and inadvertently dragging them into this mess, if they weren’t involved already. Though the novel is a dark neo-noir, it is also sophomoric. Usually adding the term sophomoric to any review (since authors are supposed to be the deft and mature minds of the world) is a slight, but it works in Kiss Me, Judas. Hell’s Half Acre sheds a bit of the noir skin, but ends the series strong as Poe and the other surviving characters participate in the making of a snuff film in which no one knows who is going to be the one to die.

The problem is Penny Dreadful. Most fans of the series are split on this middle book. You either think it’s the best or the worst of the three. Unlike Kiss Me, Judas and Hell’s Half Acre, Penny Dreadful jumps through several character’s viewpoints, most of which end up sounding far too similar. Phineas Poe unknowingly enters into “the game of tongues”—a subcultural game turned deadly when one of the role players begins killing people instead of simply biting their tongue to claim victory. The problem? It’s incredibly dorky. We’re talking LARPing (Live Action Role Playing) dorky.

Where Kiss Me, Judas and Hell’s Half Acre are four star and 3.5 star reads respectively, Penny Dreadful is a two star shoulder shrug of what it should have been—a mild side note to a much longer novel or a different novel that didn’t involve Phineas Poe. The events that take place in Penny Dreadful seem more set apart, disconnected from the bookend novels. The minor Kiss Me, Judas characters could have been involved, made it a fun side-by-side comparison of the universe Will Christopher Baer has created, but the force of the love/hate relationship between Jude and Phineas Poe is diluted by what should have been a small plotline. Though the trilogy is graphic in violence and sexual abuse (including gang rape), Baer also displays scenes of incredible tenderness in this twisted mess, perhaps more tender because of coldness of the surrounding text. Flashback scenes to Poe’s terminally diseased wife are some of the trilogy’s finest. Despite the flaws of Penny Dreadful and what can be viewed as too many loose ends come the end of Hell’s Half Acre, Baer has crafted a sleek, quick-read trilogy for fans of the darker side of fiction. Three stars. ...more

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Aug 11, 2009 Livius Nedin rated it it was amazing

Book two in the Phineas Poe Trilogy has a distinctively different feel from Kiss Me, Judas. It revolves a lifelike roll playing game in which Phineas becomes caught up. Again, much like Kiss Me, Judas, and absolute must read for everyone!

This is my second reading of this book.

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