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fussbudget's review against another edition
3.0
I was insane for the first two Joe Pitt books, obsessively stalking the sequels, but the last couple were less fabulous. This one seemed to promise to wrap up the Joe Pitt saga, and it killed off an epic number of characters, Game of Thrones style, but did not provide a satisfying end or really an end of any sort.
bhalpin's review against another edition
5.0
Figured I'd read the last Joe Pitt Book. Figured I loved the first, second, and fourth ones.
And yeah, I admire the way Huston writes and the way he dared to open this story up and make it bigger with every book.
Didn't figure on this: My Dead Body is the best book Huston's ever written. Couldn't put it down. Even half dead and one-eyed, Joe Pitt is a badass.
Don't want to spoil anything. Think that ruins the book for some people. Let's just say having read the Hank Thompson trilogy, I figured I knew where this one was going. Figured Huston's only got one kind of ending for this kind of thing.
Figured wrong.
Great book.
Writing this on Easter, wondering if it's wrong to worship Charlie Huston. Probably is. Figure I'll probably do it anyway.
And yeah, I admire the way Huston writes and the way he dared to open this story up and make it bigger with every book.
Didn't figure on this: My Dead Body is the best book Huston's ever written. Couldn't put it down. Even half dead and one-eyed, Joe Pitt is a badass.
Don't want to spoil anything. Think that ruins the book for some people. Let's just say having read the Hank Thompson trilogy, I figured I knew where this one was going. Figured Huston's only got one kind of ending for this kind of thing.
Figured wrong.
Great book.
Writing this on Easter, wondering if it's wrong to worship Charlie Huston. Probably is. Figure I'll probably do it anyway.
rsurban's review against another edition
Though it ties up most of the loose ends, I thought the ending was rushed and confusing, not like the previous books in the series
carol26388's review against another edition
4.0
I'm re-reading this book, and have decided this series--and particularly this book--has a carol-metaphor-story.
Once, in the early witching hours of the morning when absolutely nothing good happens, I got called out of bed to respond to a roll-over car accident out by Highway N. My partner and I jumped in the ambulance and raced to the scene, still half-asleep, ambulance lights and siren flaring in the darkness. The car had rolled off the road, but the scene was obvious from a mile away, lit up by white-hot spotlights and the strobes of police cars. Officers doing a search had found a teen thrown from the car, sprawled in the matted corn, limbs askew, barely conscious. He was in a halo of light, rimmed with an expanse of corn, enough to get lost in. As I knelt, crushing stalks under my knees, I took his head in my hands to hold his spine straight until my partner could apply a collar. He might have moaned as we worked. For his mother, for a cigarette, for a drink--who could tell? I could smell the sweetness of alcohol on his breath as I watched his breathing. When we shifted and wrapped his body, buckling him to the hard plastic longboard, I heard the deep thuk thuck of the helicopter blades as they slowed.
The Charlie Pitt series is a lot like that scene. Violence, stupidity and noble intentions; life and struggle; purpose and accidents; tension and inevitablity; darkness lit by flashes of white and red lights; poetry and philosophy in short choppy bites. Impressive and uncomfortable. The high of adrenalin coupled with tragedy.
***************************
The finale in the Joe Pitt series satisfactorily brings it all together and leaves a warm afterglow. Truly, I wasn't sure it would. The beginning was rocky; Joe is apparently taping a chronicle of events, and of all things, laughing as he narrates. What?! Joe doesn't laugh. Maybe, at most, a dry chuckle or a bitter half-curve applied to the lip. It felt awkward. However, I stayed with it and it took off like one of Joe's matches flaring in the dark. Chubby comes to call and request a favor, dangling the chance for Joe to break even, and setting it with a sharp hook. Joe is dragged in despite himself, and soon finds himself traversing Manhattan looking for Chubby's missing daughter and her Vampyre lover.
Once again, the underbelly of New York comes alive, particularly the beginning when we follow Joe through his new turf, and the following subway sequences. I can just about feel the grime and hear the rumble of the train from Joe's shack. Every time Joe meets that pasty white Enclave skittering through the shadows, I shiver.
The overall action sequence felt a little re-hashed, but it worked well. It's the finale, and appropriate both in term of the plot and the arc of Joe's life, and frankly, it's satisfying to revisit the gang. Digga, Percy, Amanda, Sela, Phil, Lydia, Terry and Hurley, Predo, the Count. They all get a chance to wax philosophical, and what do you know--they all have some surprising insights that are true to character. Digga is my clear favorite, but Hurley's period accent and mindset runs a close second. The relationships have developed enough over the course of the series that it's not a replay--more of a jazz riff, escalating to a dramatic conclusion. Huston is not afraid to play hardball with his characters; like Hamlet, the stage is littered with bodies by the end.
And damn if the writing doesn't keep grabbing me:
"I'd say I was thinking about Evie, but that would be redundant. She's my white noise. Always there, crackling static in my brain. Inescapable. Mostly you tune it out. The second you focus on it, it drowns out everything else."
"Not that she's done me wrong. Just that she radiates danger with a half-life of forever."
"If it go that far. Which I ain't sure about as yet. Possibility people could all have a sudden attack of gettin' they's shit together. Never know."
Cross posted at: http://clsiewert.wordpress.com/2013/07/02/my-dead-body-by-charlie-huston-vampyres-as-shakespearean-tragedy/
Once, in the early witching hours of the morning when absolutely nothing good happens, I got called out of bed to respond to a roll-over car accident out by Highway N. My partner and I jumped in the ambulance and raced to the scene, still half-asleep, ambulance lights and siren flaring in the darkness. The car had rolled off the road, but the scene was obvious from a mile away, lit up by white-hot spotlights and the strobes of police cars. Officers doing a search had found a teen thrown from the car, sprawled in the matted corn, limbs askew, barely conscious. He was in a halo of light, rimmed with an expanse of corn, enough to get lost in. As I knelt, crushing stalks under my knees, I took his head in my hands to hold his spine straight until my partner could apply a collar. He might have moaned as we worked. For his mother, for a cigarette, for a drink--who could tell? I could smell the sweetness of alcohol on his breath as I watched his breathing. When we shifted and wrapped his body, buckling him to the hard plastic longboard, I heard the deep thuk thuck of the helicopter blades as they slowed.
The Charlie Pitt series is a lot like that scene. Violence, stupidity and noble intentions; life and struggle; purpose and accidents; tension and inevitablity; darkness lit by flashes of white and red lights; poetry and philosophy in short choppy bites. Impressive and uncomfortable. The high of adrenalin coupled with tragedy.
***************************
The finale in the Joe Pitt series satisfactorily brings it all together and leaves a warm afterglow. Truly, I wasn't sure it would. The beginning was rocky; Joe is apparently taping a chronicle of events, and of all things, laughing as he narrates. What?! Joe doesn't laugh. Maybe, at most, a dry chuckle or a bitter half-curve applied to the lip. It felt awkward. However, I stayed with it and it took off like one of Joe's matches flaring in the dark. Chubby comes to call and request a favor, dangling the chance for Joe to break even, and setting it with a sharp hook. Joe is dragged in despite himself, and soon finds himself traversing Manhattan looking for Chubby's missing daughter and her Vampyre lover.
Once again, the underbelly of New York comes alive, particularly the beginning when we follow Joe through his new turf, and the following subway sequences. I can just about feel the grime and hear the rumble of the train from Joe's shack. Every time Joe meets that pasty white Enclave skittering through the shadows, I shiver.
The overall action sequence felt a little re-hashed, but it worked well. It's the finale, and appropriate both in term of the plot and the arc of Joe's life, and frankly, it's satisfying to revisit the gang. Digga, Percy, Amanda, Sela, Phil, Lydia, Terry and Hurley, Predo, the Count. They all get a chance to wax philosophical, and what do you know--they all have some surprising insights that are true to character. Digga is my clear favorite, but Hurley's period accent and mindset runs a close second. The relationships have developed enough over the course of the series that it's not a replay--more of a jazz riff, escalating to a dramatic conclusion. Huston is not afraid to play hardball with his characters; like Hamlet, the stage is littered with bodies by the end.
And damn if the writing doesn't keep grabbing me:
"I'd say I was thinking about Evie, but that would be redundant. She's my white noise. Always there, crackling static in my brain. Inescapable. Mostly you tune it out. The second you focus on it, it drowns out everything else."
"Not that she's done me wrong. Just that she radiates danger with a half-life of forever."
"If it go that far. Which I ain't sure about as yet. Possibility people could all have a sudden attack of gettin' they's shit together. Never know."
Cross posted at: http://clsiewert.wordpress.com/2013/07/02/my-dead-body-by-charlie-huston-vampyres-as-shakespearean-tragedy/
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