2015 Book 05: Half-Resurrection Blues
Continuing book reviews out of order!
Book 05: Half-Resurrection Blues (A Bone Street Rumba novel) by Daniel Jose Older isbn: 9780425275986, Penguin, 236 pages, $7.99
The Premise: (from the back cover): Carlos Delacruz is one of the New York Council of the Dead’s most unusual agents - an inbetweener, partially resurrected from a death he barely recalls suffering, after a life that’s missing from his memory. He thinks he is one of a kind - until he encounters other entities walking the fine line between life and death. One inbetweener is a sorcerer. He’s summoned a horde of implike ngks capable of eliminating spirits, and they’re spreading through the city like a plague. They’ve already taken out some of NYCOD’s finest, leaving Carlos desperate to stop their master before he opens up the entrada to the Underworld - which would destroy the balance between the living and the dead. But in uncovering the man’s identity, Carols confronts the truth of his own life and death…
My Rating: Four stars out of five
My Thoughts: First, I have to mention just how appropriate the novel and series titles are. It’s no mistake that the blues and rhumba are referenced. Daniel Jose Older’s writing, regardless of length, is lyrical, musical. Older clearly draws upon his experience as a musician and structures his prose along similar lines, and this is what makes “Blues” (and, I expect, future installments of the series) stand out from a lot of the glut of urban fantasy on the market right now. He hits all the tropes (set in a major well-known city; first person narration; main character unaware of his own complicated history) but unspools the story with a very different narrative flow than I’ve experienced in The Dresden Files or the October Daye series, for instance. Carlos Delacruz’s language pops and simmers the way a really good instrumental piece does, moving the reader through some very intense emotional states with nuanced ease.
The story itself is a great introduction to Carlos’ world, which at the moment doesn’t extend much out of real-life Brooklyn. Grounding the story with some well-known landmarks allows Older to set the stage for those unfamiliar with Brooklyn, but the author does a great job also of helping those unfamiliar understand how one gets from Point A to Point B, and how long it would take (something some urban fantasies set in real cities don’t bother to do or take into account). Older then layers the supernatural on top of the real world in a way that feels like a natural fit rather than a replacement or invasion. The mundane and supernatural co-exist smoothly in this world (not always amiably, mind you, but at least not at war), and that makes it even easier for us to slip into Carlos’ world and worldview.
As a first book in an intended series, “Blues” does have that unenviable task of giving us a full, satisfying story while also leaving us with questions to be answered in future books. Again, Older rises to the occasion. If there was never another Bone Street Rhumba book, I would feel like I hadn’t been left hanging: the major plot points of “Blues” are resolved in this book. But Older has also seeded the story with deeper questions: about Carlos’ life before he became an inbetweener, about the nature and politics of the New York Council of the Dead (and the question of whether other cities also have such Councils), about what new challenges Carlos will face going forward. I’m interested to see where all of these plot points go in future installments.
Readers of Older’s short fiction (much of it collected in Salsa Nocturna, from Crossed Genres Publishing, but also two stories on Tor.com and in the latest issue of Fireside Fiction Company) will recognize a number of the supporting cast. You can read those stories without fear that they will spoil the events of this novel, and they’ll enhance your understanding of the Brooklyn that Carlos Delacruz exists in.
Book 05: Half-Resurrection Blues (A Bone Street Rumba novel) by Daniel Jose Older isbn: 9780425275986, Penguin, 236 pages, $7.99
The Premise: (from the back cover): Carlos Delacruz is one of the New York Council of the Dead’s most unusual agents - an inbetweener, partially resurrected from a death he barely recalls suffering, after a life that’s missing from his memory. He thinks he is one of a kind - until he encounters other entities walking the fine line between life and death. One inbetweener is a sorcerer. He’s summoned a horde of implike ngks capable of eliminating spirits, and they’re spreading through the city like a plague. They’ve already taken out some of NYCOD’s finest, leaving Carlos desperate to stop their master before he opens up the entrada to the Underworld - which would destroy the balance between the living and the dead. But in uncovering the man’s identity, Carols confronts the truth of his own life and death…
My Rating: Four stars out of five
My Thoughts: First, I have to mention just how appropriate the novel and series titles are. It’s no mistake that the blues and rhumba are referenced. Daniel Jose Older’s writing, regardless of length, is lyrical, musical. Older clearly draws upon his experience as a musician and structures his prose along similar lines, and this is what makes “Blues” (and, I expect, future installments of the series) stand out from a lot of the glut of urban fantasy on the market right now. He hits all the tropes (set in a major well-known city; first person narration; main character unaware of his own complicated history) but unspools the story with a very different narrative flow than I’ve experienced in The Dresden Files or the October Daye series, for instance. Carlos Delacruz’s language pops and simmers the way a really good instrumental piece does, moving the reader through some very intense emotional states with nuanced ease.
The story itself is a great introduction to Carlos’ world, which at the moment doesn’t extend much out of real-life Brooklyn. Grounding the story with some well-known landmarks allows Older to set the stage for those unfamiliar with Brooklyn, but the author does a great job also of helping those unfamiliar understand how one gets from Point A to Point B, and how long it would take (something some urban fantasies set in real cities don’t bother to do or take into account). Older then layers the supernatural on top of the real world in a way that feels like a natural fit rather than a replacement or invasion. The mundane and supernatural co-exist smoothly in this world (not always amiably, mind you, but at least not at war), and that makes it even easier for us to slip into Carlos’ world and worldview.
As a first book in an intended series, “Blues” does have that unenviable task of giving us a full, satisfying story while also leaving us with questions to be answered in future books. Again, Older rises to the occasion. If there was never another Bone Street Rhumba book, I would feel like I hadn’t been left hanging: the major plot points of “Blues” are resolved in this book. But Older has also seeded the story with deeper questions: about Carlos’ life before he became an inbetweener, about the nature and politics of the New York Council of the Dead (and the question of whether other cities also have such Councils), about what new challenges Carlos will face going forward. I’m interested to see where all of these plot points go in future installments.
Readers of Older’s short fiction (much of it collected in Salsa Nocturna, from Crossed Genres Publishing, but also two stories on Tor.com and in the latest issue of Fireside Fiction Company) will recognize a number of the supporting cast. You can read those stories without fear that they will spoil the events of this novel, and they’ll enhance your understanding of the Brooklyn that Carlos Delacruz exists in.