2016: Book 2: Maelstrom
2016 Book 02: Maelstrom (Whyborne & Griffin Book 7) by Jordan L. Hawk; isbn 9781519353788; 260 pages; JLH; softcover; $12.99
The Premise: (from the Goodreads Page) Between his father’s sudden-and rather suspicious-generosity, and his own rash promise to help Christine plan her wedding, Percival Endicott Whyborne has quite enough to worry about. But when the donation of a mysterious codex to the Ladysmith Museum draws the attention of a murderous cult, Whyborne finds himself in a race against time to unlock its secrets first. Griffin has a case of his own: the disappearance of an historic map, which quickly escalates to murder. Someone is sacrificing men in dark rituals-and all the clues lead back to the museum. With their friends Christine and Iskander, Whyborne and Griffin must discover the cult’s true goal before it’s too late. For dark forces are afoot at the very heart of the museum, and they want more than Whyborne’s codex. They want his life.
My Rating: Five stars out of five
My Thoughts: The Whyborne & Griffin series ranks with Jim Butcher's Dresden Files and Seanan McGuire's InCryptid books as my "top three" favorite urban fantasy series. Tall, gawky, awkward sorcerer Percival and rugged, affable, insighful private detective Griffin return in this seventh novel-length adventure and once again author Jordan L. Hawk crafts a story that I hard a hard time putting down.
I think the fear, with any ongoing series of this sort, is that at some point series arc plot threads will overwhelm the individual stories being told, that the series mythology will become unweildy and characterization will take a back seat. I've heard of other series falling victim to this problem. Seven books in seems a likely time for the W&G series to fall prey to that problem if it's ever going to happen, and I'm happy to report that Hawk has managed to avoid it even in a book whose entire plot motivation relies on major and minor plot points from all six previous books. The author references events from those books both obviously and obliquely but never awkwardly: the first person narration allows the two main characters to remind themselves of things that have happened to them without it feeling like they're info-dumping all over the reader.
Since these books are Lovecraftian historical urban fantasy, there's a lot of action. Fight scenes in open natural areas feel just as claustrophobic as those that happen in tight quarters, and each fight balances supernatural and physical components easily. Each action sequence is engrossing and also propels the plot forward; there are no "action for action's sake" set pieces.
If there's any complaint to be made, it's that the Lovecraftian/horrorific components in this installment feel a bit less horrific and alien than they have in previous volumes. Especially in the first three books, Hawk really captured the tone of Lovecraft, with monsters and events that make the characters doubt their sanity. Perhaps because all of the main players have now had years to become accustomed to things like the ketoi and the umbrae, their reactions are far more calm and common-place, even when encountering a creature they've never seen before (in case, a disturbing rat-creature). To this end, Hawk brings a former supporting character, Miss Parkhurst, further into the center of the action; her reactions to being thrust into this world bring back something of the internal horror the main characters no longer default to.
And of course, it's the characters that continue to draw me in. They continue to grow: Whyborne is not nearly as socially reclusive as he was at the start of the series, and Griffin is not as emotionally closed off. Christine is still as brash and Niles (Whyborne's father) still as domineering, but neither remains simply the archtypes they were at the beginning. And supporting characters like Miss Parkhurst and Mister Quinn the librarian are now being given more depth as well.
Hawk's characters are not what was considered the societal norm of the time (Whyborne & Griffin are gay; Christine is a brash, bold woman marrying a man of mixed-race heritage) and they struggle with both the supernatural threats to their lives and the more mundane threats: will marrying Iskander ruin Christine's carefully-built but precarious career? will the next knock on their door be the police coming to haul Whyborne and Griffin off on sodomy charges? Unlike so many historical gay romances that gloss over the very real danger of being gay in earlier time periods, Hawk keeps the fear front and center, to show that threats from The Outside and from secret cults bent on world destruction are not the only things that could destroy these characters' lives.
While I can't recommend jumping into the series with this book, given how much of it hinges on previous novels' developments, I can say it's worth starting at the beginning and working your way towards what I think is the best book in the run so far. There's even a sense of closure, almost like this is the end of "season one," setting the stage for a new sequence of stories.
The Premise: (from the Goodreads Page) Between his father’s sudden-and rather suspicious-generosity, and his own rash promise to help Christine plan her wedding, Percival Endicott Whyborne has quite enough to worry about. But when the donation of a mysterious codex to the Ladysmith Museum draws the attention of a murderous cult, Whyborne finds himself in a race against time to unlock its secrets first. Griffin has a case of his own: the disappearance of an historic map, which quickly escalates to murder. Someone is sacrificing men in dark rituals-and all the clues lead back to the museum. With their friends Christine and Iskander, Whyborne and Griffin must discover the cult’s true goal before it’s too late. For dark forces are afoot at the very heart of the museum, and they want more than Whyborne’s codex. They want his life.
My Rating: Five stars out of five
My Thoughts: The Whyborne & Griffin series ranks with Jim Butcher's Dresden Files and Seanan McGuire's InCryptid books as my "top three" favorite urban fantasy series. Tall, gawky, awkward sorcerer Percival and rugged, affable, insighful private detective Griffin return in this seventh novel-length adventure and once again author Jordan L. Hawk crafts a story that I hard a hard time putting down.
I think the fear, with any ongoing series of this sort, is that at some point series arc plot threads will overwhelm the individual stories being told, that the series mythology will become unweildy and characterization will take a back seat. I've heard of other series falling victim to this problem. Seven books in seems a likely time for the W&G series to fall prey to that problem if it's ever going to happen, and I'm happy to report that Hawk has managed to avoid it even in a book whose entire plot motivation relies on major and minor plot points from all six previous books. The author references events from those books both obviously and obliquely but never awkwardly: the first person narration allows the two main characters to remind themselves of things that have happened to them without it feeling like they're info-dumping all over the reader.
Since these books are Lovecraftian historical urban fantasy, there's a lot of action. Fight scenes in open natural areas feel just as claustrophobic as those that happen in tight quarters, and each fight balances supernatural and physical components easily. Each action sequence is engrossing and also propels the plot forward; there are no "action for action's sake" set pieces.
If there's any complaint to be made, it's that the Lovecraftian/horrorific components in this installment feel a bit less horrific and alien than they have in previous volumes. Especially in the first three books, Hawk really captured the tone of Lovecraft, with monsters and events that make the characters doubt their sanity. Perhaps because all of the main players have now had years to become accustomed to things like the ketoi and the umbrae, their reactions are far more calm and common-place, even when encountering a creature they've never seen before (in case, a disturbing rat-creature). To this end, Hawk brings a former supporting character, Miss Parkhurst, further into the center of the action; her reactions to being thrust into this world bring back something of the internal horror the main characters no longer default to.
And of course, it's the characters that continue to draw me in. They continue to grow: Whyborne is not nearly as socially reclusive as he was at the start of the series, and Griffin is not as emotionally closed off. Christine is still as brash and Niles (Whyborne's father) still as domineering, but neither remains simply the archtypes they were at the beginning. And supporting characters like Miss Parkhurst and Mister Quinn the librarian are now being given more depth as well.
Hawk's characters are not what was considered the societal norm of the time (Whyborne & Griffin are gay; Christine is a brash, bold woman marrying a man of mixed-race heritage) and they struggle with both the supernatural threats to their lives and the more mundane threats: will marrying Iskander ruin Christine's carefully-built but precarious career? will the next knock on their door be the police coming to haul Whyborne and Griffin off on sodomy charges? Unlike so many historical gay romances that gloss over the very real danger of being gay in earlier time periods, Hawk keeps the fear front and center, to show that threats from The Outside and from secret cults bent on world destruction are not the only things that could destroy these characters' lives.
While I can't recommend jumping into the series with this book, given how much of it hinges on previous novels' developments, I can say it's worth starting at the beginning and working your way towards what I think is the best book in the run so far. There's even a sense of closure, almost like this is the end of "season one," setting the stage for a new sequence of stories.