What aunt_zelda Thinks: Professor Moriarty, The Hound of the D'Urbervilles
You need to get your hands on this book RIGHT NOW!
Go on, I'll wait. Go to your local library. Nip down to the bookstore. Find a friend and steal their copy. Order is from amazon.com. Just get your hands on a copy, because you need it. Trust me, I've been a Sebastian Moran fangirl for three weeks.
Honestly, I saw the cover that said "Professor Moriarty" and picked it up instantly. And then I read the back which had a quote from Neil Gaiman saying that it's "compulsory reading … glorious" and you can't get a better recommendation than THAT when you're writing for a … certain crowd. Having the Dark Lord of Geeks endorse your book has got to feel good.
Anyways, onto the story itself!
Moran is the narrator in this and he's so delightfully vulgar and unapologetically mean and racist and horrible and it's FANTASTIC. I can't explain it, but it's some of the feelings I got from Gene Hunt, to be honest. (Except Moran is really evil, whereas Gene Hunt was kinda … well, not exactly good, not exactly Lawful, but not evil … Neutral Good? I dunno … ok, this could be a whole essay and I'm not going off on that tangent right now.)
Basically I enjoy reading the perspective of a character who doesn't give a damn if he's offending you, or anybody really (except Moriarty, obviously) and is concerned with going through life as a big damn bastard and having as good of a time as they possibly can. And Moran certainly fits the bill. There's something dreadfully refreshing about a protagonist who point-blank states his intentions to shoot tigers, kill people for money, gamble the money, and have sex with whores. That's … all he really wants to do in life. And it's awesome. John Watson may be the man you wish to appear to be (especially to The Ladies), but Moran is the guy you WISH you could be. I want to be bros with this guy, and if the author does her job, so will you.
The book is divided up into chapters, which mirror Sherlock Holmes tales somewhat, with a darker, criminal underworld twist: Moriarty is awesome, people die, Moran leers at tits, Moriarty is weird … and not necessarily in that order.
Did I mention the dialogue and obscure slang? Because it is there, and it is glorious. Just unfamiliar enough to be interesting and cool, instead of incomprehensible and difficult to get through. There's several instances where I did a mental double-take and re-read a line to make sure Moran had just said what I thought he'd said, and he usually had, because Moran is delightfully crass almost all of the time. He also appears to get off on crime and murder somewhat, btw, if you're into protagonists who are into that kind of thing.
Also: HoYay! Moriarty/Moran: I ship it HARD, people. And so does the author:
But at that moment, I was his, and I remain his forever. If I am remembered, it will be because I knew him. From that day on, he was my father, my commanding officer, my heathen idol, my fortune and terror and rapture.
(page TWENTY-NINE!!!)
Moriarty certainly likes to get handsy with Moran if the mood strikes. When Moran gets rude when they first meet, Moriarty's reaction is to slap him, kick him enough to send him sprawling into a chair, pin his arms to a chair, and get all up in his face and snarl a bit of dialogue at him. UNF. Later he grabs Moran's wrist so hard it hurts, because Moran wants to shoot someone NOW, please dad, and Moriarty is like "not NOW honey, maybe later if you're good" and oh good god their sex must be so violent and fantastic.
Moran alludes to wanting to not only have sex with a blonde French whore but a chick who's her "friend" too. Wow. And he's disappointed because he and Moriarty had tickets to see two ladies in corsets wrestle in custard but instead they're going to a science lecture by Moriarty's ex-pupil/nemesis. Dude, Moran, I am SO up for the ladies-in-corsets-wrestling-in-custard thing! Take me with you!
(Don't worry, later on Moriarty and Moran go to the custard wrestling. Awwwwww, and they say that romance is dead!)
Also, Moriarty sends one of Moran's favorite whores away to Alaska because Moran snickered at him when a scientist was tearing up Moriarty's book before their eyes. Instead of, y'know, killing Moran for laughing at him, he just sent away Moran's second-favorite fuckbuddy. Who was a woman. HOOOOOOOOOYAAAAAAAAAAAAY …
Best of all? Less than fifty pages in and we have autoerotic asphyxiation! I am not even kidding, Moran gets captured by the people he's staking out to assassinate and they tie him up and put him up on a table with a noose around his neck. Then the guy he was going to shoot starts shooting out the table legs from under him. And the noose gets so tight that Moran starts to … react, as it were. And as Moran does so, he dwells on the fact that he heard guys talking about this when he was at college. (And of course he went to Eton, I'm starting to sense a pattern here … Captain James Hook … Sebastian Moran … who else went to that den of higher learning and evil?! And why didn't I apply there myself last year when I was looking at colleges?!)
Irene Alder: rock on, you sexy mofo, you.
(I hope Moran and Irene hook up later and have hatesex while Moriarty watches. I know that's probably not going to happen, but a girl can dream, right?)
Complaints/critiques? Well, I don't much care for the framing device of a modern scholar coming across papers and a bitchy administrator having the scholar write things up and omit historical facts. It just strikes me as unnecessary, is all, the story stands very well on its own without this framing device, thank you very much.
I'd prefer the footnotes to be on the actual page instead of the back of the book, as it's quite annoying to have to keep turning back whenever I see a little number for a footnote. Most are worth reading and/or amusing, so why shove them so far away?
Also, things are a little cliched here and there. When Moran meets Moriarty, Moriarty has pinned a kitten to the wall with a knife to study the lasting effects of morphine. (Yes, really, He Is So Evil, He Killed This Kitten.) Later Moriarty laughs and pigeons literally drop dead across the street. Those are just cartoonish actions, my friends, and distract from an otherwise fantastic novel.
However, these are small complains for such a fantastic book, and I cannot recommend it enough. In fact, I am having a very hard time indeed not reading it all night, because 1) I have MOUNTAINS of homework and 2) I want to make it last.
And I'm only on page 137 and the book is over 460 pages. And Sherlock and Watson show up somewhere towards the end. *SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE*