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4.11 AVERAGE
4.11 AVERAGE
While not quite on par with the gripping horror and melancholy of [b:Every Dead Thing|175242|Every Dead Thing (Charlie Parker, #1)|John Connolly|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1393929687s/175242.jpg|890720] and [b:Dark Hollow|175243|Dark Hollow (Charlie Parker, #2)|John Connolly|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1364165262s/175243.jpg|950230] I can safely say that John Connolly seems to be pulling himself together as his much maligned protagonist Charlie Parker stumbles through yet another dark journey to learn the truth before a bunch of people kill him.
I felt myself significantly more emotionally invested in this one than I have for the last five or so books in this series. I mean let's be honest, fifteen books is a damn long time to stick with one character, and I can't be the only fan wondering just how much more poor Charlie is expected to take before he's at last confronted with whatever it is that's waiting, waiting, waiting in the dark for him.
For the uninitiated I will attempt to encapsulate this very, very, very long series. Charlie Parker is a former police officer who's wife and daughter were horribly murdered by a killer known as "The Traveling Man" in the first book in the series. As a result of his experiences fighting and destroying their murderer Charlie found himself transformed into an almost supernatural magnet for all the evil in this world and the next and with an almost otherworldly desire to rend that evil limb from limb. With the help of his best friends Angel (a cat burglar) and Angel's husband Louis (the single greatest hit man in the world) he's more or less confronted every kind of evil there is and part of my issue with this series has been there's only so much people can do to torture each other in the name of whatever made up god they're worshipping or wackadoo grand plan they have before I go "yeah, yeah I get it he's making human skin shoes for his army of demonic cats ohhhhh super scary!!!!"
In a nutshell Connolly has been trapped in the formula of his own writing for a long time now. Someone would be barbarically killed, Charlie would find out about it, He, Angel, and Louis would go check it out. The real police/FBI/CIA would get pissy with them. Charlie would solve the case but get no closer to learning what the "grand scheme" is in the series. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
I swear I've written this same review about seven times now.
Anyway this time around we are once again introduced to a group of "very bad people" who in this case are the descendants of the spookily named "Brethren." The Brethren made some kind of pact hundreds of years ago with something that isn't immediately clear but results in clandestine meetings where we find out that they like to keep largely to themselves and they get super pissy whenever anyone starts investigating them. Which someone did.
That someone is another private detective named Eklund whose own disappearance is the reason Charlie gets involved. Now on retainer with the FBI he's tasked with finding Eklund and hopefully working out what it was about his latest case that might have caused him to disappear.
There still isn't a great deal of narrative tension to be had. The Brethern, for all that they're murderers, are relatively benign. They don't enjoy killing people its just something they have to do. The leaders of the Brethern are all gifted with the ability to see the ghosts of the Brethern of the past which is kind of neat but again, there's not much menace. The ghosts aren't especially scary.
Connolly does a pretty solid job of making Eklund someone we actually kind of care about which certainly helps. But the course of Charlies investigation into Eklund's investigation is what's interesting not so much the Brethern themselves. There's a brief, totally unnecessary side story dealing with the mafia scene in Providence Rhode Island that more or less just totally distracts from the main story line. Its like Connolly's editor thought the page count was too low so he wrote what amounts to a totally unrelated short story to fill the space.
What helps this entry in the saga separate itself a bit from the mire of mediocrity we've been dealing with up till now is Connolly's very wise decision to spend more time with Sam, Charlie's daughter with his ex Rachel. Several books back, in very, very brief asides, it began to become apparent that Sam is possessed of certain abilities. What those are aren't clear but she can see and hear things others can't, including the ghost of Charlie's first daughter. Those interactions are pretty damn neat and spooky.
Things are coming to a head for Sam because Rachel, who left Charlie in part to keep Sam safe from his crazy lifestyle of killing and almost being killed more or less constantly, is finally taking legal steps to formalize their custody of Sam. Charlie can see her but only in a supervised setting etc.
Sam clearly knows more than any of the other characters what the deal really is with Charlie who apparently has some role to play in an upcoming rumble between good and evil. She also loves her father and she's enraged at her mother and grandparents for trying to prevent her from "helping" her father though its not yet apparent what that help entails.
I'd love to see Connolly just cut all the evil cabals trying to murder people stuff and write whatever the hell this story is between Sam and Charlie and whoever they're meant to be fighting.
Whats slightly insane with these books is that the characters are aging as the books go on. I'm slightly afraid that poor Charlie is literally going to die of old age before we find out what the hell is really going on here...get a move on John!
I felt myself significantly more emotionally invested in this one than I have for the last five or so books in this series. I mean let's be honest, fifteen books is a damn long time to stick with one character, and I can't be the only fan wondering just how much more poor Charlie is expected to take before he's at last confronted with whatever it is that's waiting, waiting, waiting in the dark for him.
For the uninitiated I will attempt to encapsulate this very, very, very long series. Charlie Parker is a former police officer who's wife and daughter were horribly murdered by a killer known as "The Traveling Man" in the first book in the series. As a result of his experiences fighting and destroying their murderer Charlie found himself transformed into an almost supernatural magnet for all the evil in this world and the next and with an almost otherworldly desire to rend that evil limb from limb. With the help of his best friends Angel (a cat burglar) and Angel's husband Louis (the single greatest hit man in the world) he's more or less confronted every kind of evil there is and part of my issue with this series has been there's only so much people can do to torture each other in the name of whatever made up god they're worshipping or wackadoo grand plan they have before I go "yeah, yeah I get it he's making human skin shoes for his army of demonic cats ohhhhh super scary!!!!"
In a nutshell Connolly has been trapped in the formula of his own writing for a long time now. Someone would be barbarically killed, Charlie would find out about it, He, Angel, and Louis would go check it out. The real police/FBI/CIA would get pissy with them. Charlie would solve the case but get no closer to learning what the "grand scheme" is in the series. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
I swear I've written this same review about seven times now.
Anyway this time around we are once again introduced to a group of "very bad people" who in this case are the descendants of the spookily named "Brethren." The Brethren made some kind of pact hundreds of years ago with something that isn't immediately clear but results in clandestine meetings where we find out that they like to keep largely to themselves and they get super pissy whenever anyone starts investigating them. Which someone did.
That someone is another private detective named Eklund whose own disappearance is the reason Charlie gets involved. Now on retainer with the FBI he's tasked with finding Eklund and hopefully working out what it was about his latest case that might have caused him to disappear.
There still isn't a great deal of narrative tension to be had. The Brethern, for all that they're murderers, are relatively benign. They don't enjoy killing people its just something they have to do. The leaders of the Brethern are all gifted with the ability to see the ghosts of the Brethern of the past which is kind of neat but again, there's not much menace. The ghosts aren't especially scary.
Connolly does a pretty solid job of making Eklund someone we actually kind of care about which certainly helps. But the course of Charlies investigation into Eklund's investigation is what's interesting not so much the Brethern themselves. There's a brief, totally unnecessary side story dealing with the mafia scene in Providence Rhode Island that more or less just totally distracts from the main story line. Its like Connolly's editor thought the page count was too low so he wrote what amounts to a totally unrelated short story to fill the space.
What helps this entry in the saga separate itself a bit from the mire of mediocrity we've been dealing with up till now is Connolly's very wise decision to spend more time with Sam, Charlie's daughter with his ex Rachel. Several books back, in very, very brief asides, it began to become apparent that Sam is possessed of certain abilities. What those are aren't clear but she can see and hear things others can't, including the ghost of Charlie's first daughter. Those interactions are pretty damn neat and spooky.
Things are coming to a head for Sam because Rachel, who left Charlie in part to keep Sam safe from his crazy lifestyle of killing and almost being killed more or less constantly, is finally taking legal steps to formalize their custody of Sam. Charlie can see her but only in a supervised setting etc.
Sam clearly knows more than any of the other characters what the deal really is with Charlie who apparently has some role to play in an upcoming rumble between good and evil. She also loves her father and she's enraged at her mother and grandparents for trying to prevent her from "helping" her father though its not yet apparent what that help entails.
I'd love to see Connolly just cut all the evil cabals trying to murder people stuff and write whatever the hell this story is between Sam and Charlie and whoever they're meant to be fighting.
Whats slightly insane with these books is that the characters are aging as the books go on. I'm slightly afraid that poor Charlie is literally going to die of old age before we find out what the hell is really going on here...get a move on John!
I was thinking a lot about [b:The Scarlet Gospels|23014674|The Scarlet Gospels|Clive Barker|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1426127782s/23014674.jpg|984888] by Clive Barker while reading this, also about a detective who has made an unholy bargain. Especially as Connolly has now taken the irrevocable step of making his angels/demons manifest, and Hell a tangible, alternate reality. The frustrating thing is while we, finally, get some hints as to Sam’s role in all of this Lovecraftian foreshadowing, Parker remains a very odd cipher. Perhaps he has been that all along. And as for that ending? I must admit I did not foresee that one coming; who would have thought that Connolly could be so devious, and so heartbreaking, at the same time? Still, we’ve been in a holding pattern for the last book or so. Time to reap the whirlwind, to stop the widening gyre, and to let all Hell break loose.
"A new fall of snow had settled upon the old, like memories, like the years.
It would freeze, too, according to the weathermen, adding another layer to the ice that blanketed the city, and another day or two to the slow thaw that must inevitably come, although any release from the cold seemed distant on this February evening. Still, at least the latest snowfall, the first in more than a week, hid beneath it the filth of earlier accumulations, and the streets of Portland would look fresh and unsullied again, for a time.
Although the air was chill, it held no clarity. A faint mist hung over the streets, creating penumbrae around the streetlights like the halos of saints, and making a dreamscape of the skyline. It lent the city a sense of duplication, as though its ways and buildings had been overlaid imperfectly upon some earlier version of itself, and now that shadow variant was peering through, the people of the present within touching distance of those of the past."
It's not fair. One of the one writers who I would absolutely read a literary fiction book by has never written one. Oh, it's integrated, to be sure. I would just prefer even more passages devoted to our main characters, and even less time on various depravities. I liked the emotions in this book; there's tough work with Parker and Rachel, and serious things developing with Angel that result in some solid conversations. Jennifer and Sam both appear and do interesting things, although Sam's are definitely from a more age-appropriate perspective, and Jennifer's are from her otherworldly one.
For future-carol.: Parker is asked by Ross, FBI agent to informally look into a missing P.I., and Angel and Louis end up helping him out. This book is slightly more distinguishable through the multiple viewpoints that include Parker, Lewis, Jennifer, Sam, villain, the Collector, side villain. There's significant threads from other books brought in, particularly the Collector and his father, and the remnants of the Webb family (who I had forgotten). There horror factor is dialed far down, with only one torture scene, and the supernatural spooky is dialed up.
The short, spoiler-y (but not really) summation: this is the one wherethe villains are all suburbanites--apparently Connolly's new go-to; the Collector's father is aging; Rachel initiates custody proceedings; Angel is hiding serious medical symptoms; there's a weird side story with Webb's son and an attempt to take over a criminal enterprise that is responsible for the other part of the gore/violence factor.
Read again? Probably not. Except that first page. Solid.
It would freeze, too, according to the weathermen, adding another layer to the ice that blanketed the city, and another day or two to the slow thaw that must inevitably come, although any release from the cold seemed distant on this February evening. Still, at least the latest snowfall, the first in more than a week, hid beneath it the filth of earlier accumulations, and the streets of Portland would look fresh and unsullied again, for a time.
Although the air was chill, it held no clarity. A faint mist hung over the streets, creating penumbrae around the streetlights like the halos of saints, and making a dreamscape of the skyline. It lent the city a sense of duplication, as though its ways and buildings had been overlaid imperfectly upon some earlier version of itself, and now that shadow variant was peering through, the people of the present within touching distance of those of the past."
It's not fair. One of the one writers who I would absolutely read a literary fiction book by has never written one. Oh, it's integrated, to be sure. I would just prefer even more passages devoted to our main characters, and even less time on various depravities. I liked the emotions in this book; there's tough work with Parker and Rachel, and serious things developing with Angel that result in some solid conversations. Jennifer and Sam both appear and do interesting things, although Sam's are definitely from a more age-appropriate perspective, and Jennifer's are from her otherworldly one.
For future-carol.: Parker is asked by Ross, FBI agent to informally look into a missing P.I., and Angel and Louis end up helping him out. This book is slightly more distinguishable through the multiple viewpoints that include Parker, Lewis, Jennifer, Sam, villain, the Collector, side villain. There's significant threads from other books brought in, particularly the Collector and his father, and the remnants of the Webb family (who I had forgotten). There horror factor is dialed far down, with only one torture scene, and the supernatural spooky is dialed up.
The short, spoiler-y (but not really) summation: this is the one where
Read again? Probably not. Except that first page. Solid.
Weird blend of standard private eye stuff and the supernatural. The fact that this is No. 15 in the series indicates there's an audience out there for what seems to be an odd hybrid, a sort of sub-sub-genre. Connolly gets points for painting his American landscapes in considerable detail from his writing desk in Dublin.
So I just jumped right into this series at book 15 and boy oh boy was this a strange ride. You'd think I would be lost from all the recurring details, but the book goes waaaaaaaay out of its way to explain everything, both vaguely alluding and flat-out explaining character backstories. This meant the book started off pretty slow for me as it held my hand to catch me up on all the characters it expected me to have attachments for.
Also, another weird benefit of having never read any of the fourteen previous books, I thought this was going to be a dark, gritty detective story about a man solving murders done by ghosts when obviously it wasn't done by a ghost. I was expecting Scooby Doo, not supernatural, as out of the blue a bunch of crazy supernatural stuff just happens! It was a smack out of left field and I had a blast with all the silly supernatural nonsense.
But outside of that, I kinda thought the book cycled between fun and dull. There's a crime family subplot that I couldn't have cared less about and ultimately goes nowhere except to set up a future villain for a later book.
This book is a weird point to view the series at. It's a transitionary book. The actual menace of this story is small time, but the story serves to move characters around to more interesting dramatic positions for later. As a result, a lot of actions feel inconsequential with no real satisfying conclusions. Because of course not, these character's stories aren't done yet. There's another book to read. But sadly, I wasn't blown away enough by the prose, captured by the characters (I will admit though, Parker is a fun detective character even if he feels too samey to others), or wowed at the greater dark forces at work to pick up this series at another spot unless it's by accident again.
Also, another weird benefit of having never read any of the fourteen previous books, I thought this was going to be a dark, gritty detective story about a man solving murders done by ghosts when obviously it wasn't done by a ghost. I was expecting Scooby Doo, not supernatural, as out of the blue a bunch of crazy supernatural stuff just happens! It was a smack out of left field and I had a blast with all the silly supernatural nonsense.
But outside of that, I kinda thought the book cycled between fun and dull. There's a crime family subplot that I couldn't have cared less about and ultimately goes nowhere except to set up a future villain for a later book.
This book is a weird point to view the series at. It's a transitionary book. The actual menace of this story is small time, but the story serves to move characters around to more interesting dramatic positions for later. As a result, a lot of actions feel inconsequential with no real satisfying conclusions. Because of course not, these character's stories aren't done yet. There's another book to read. But sadly, I wasn't blown away enough by the prose, captured by the characters (I will admit though, Parker is a fun detective character even if he feels too samey to others), or wowed at the greater dark forces at work to pick up this series at another spot unless it's by accident again.