2016 Book 13: Midnight Taxi Tango
2016 Book 13: Midnight Taxi Tango (Bone Street Rumba, Book Two) by Daniel Jose Older; isbn 9780425275993; 322 pages; Roc; softcover; $7.99
The Premise: (from the Goodreads page): Carlos Delacruz straddles the line between the living and the not-so alive. As an agent for the Council of the Dead, he eliminates New York’s ghostlier problems. This time it’s a string of gruesome paranormal accidents in Brooklyn’s Von King Park that has already taken the lives of several locals-and is bound to take more. The incidents in the park have put Kia on edge. When she first met Carlos, he was the weird guy who came to Baba Eddie's botánica, where she worked. But the closer they’ve gotten, the more she’s seeing the world from Carlos’s point of view. In fact, she’s starting to see ghosts. And the situation is far more sinister than that-because whatever is bringing out the dead, it’s only just getting started.
My Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
My Thoughts: It's no secret by now that I absolutely love the work of Daniel Jose Older, regardless of whether we're talking novel or short story, aimed at adults or young adults. The second Bone Street Rumba novel is no exception to this love. So let's get the gushing out of the way fast: you should be reading this series. If you haven't read the preceding book in the series, Half-Resurrection Blues, go do that first, then pick up and devour this book right after. You won't regret binge-reading them, I can assure you. If you're not sure you'll like Daniel's style, go to Tor.com and check out the short stories "Anyway: Angie," "Kia and Gio" and "Ginga." Modified versions of those three stories are folded into chapters of this book, and they give a pretty good sense of Older's style without spoiling any of the major beats or events of the novel as a whole. I know this because I read the first two when they originally appeared on Tor's website, long before this novel came out, and I was not only happy to see how well they fit as part of the whole but also how well they stand as complete stories in their own right.
Now: about the novel itself. Worthy successor, worthy continuation. I'm pretty sure every review of the book has said so, so what do I have to add to the discussion?
Let's talk about the chances Older takes with the narrative. Because it's those chances that make the book as riveting as it is.
First, as mentioned above, there's the fact that the author isn't afraid to take previously-published short stories and make them a part of the novel. I've seen some reviewers call this move a "cheat." In my own humble opinion, it's far from a cheat: it's proof that Older has this world already well-mapped-out, that he's committed to keeping it as concise and connected as he can manage. It's also proof that he feels the stories he's used to build this world are not secondary or second-class or ancilliary in any way. Those stories are the part of the fabric of these characters's immediate lives, not threads of the "oh yeah, this happened to them too" type. It's a bold move in a genre where the Novel Series Is The Serious Story, And The Other Stuff Is Just Fun But It's Okay If You Skip It. And it works well, whether you've read the stories before reading the novel or not.
The other big chance Older takes is in dividing the action between three different "first person" narrators, in light of the fact that Carlos was the only narrator for the first book in the series. The trope with urban fantasy has long been that a series is told in first person by one main character (although the connected short stories can be narrated by anyone). Take, as example, Jim Butcher's Dresden Files and Seanan McGuire's October Daye series. Some authors are slowly bucking this trend (McGuire's InCryptid novels switch narrators from book to book but not within a book; Kevin Hearne's Iron Druid books begin alternating chapters narrated by Atticus with narration by Granuile somewhere around book four), but Older is the first one I've read to jump whole-heartedly into multiple narrators with just the second book in the series. He's taking a chance that people will accept this deviation from the trope and roll with him, and again the chance pays off. So much of this book hinges on things that happen when Carlos is not, and in fact can not, be present, that it would be a completely different experience if Older stuck to the Single Narrator mode.
Of course, having multiple narrators begs a follow-up question: are those narrators distinct voices, or are they used simply to make the story easier for the author to tell? The answer is: yes, each narrator's voice is unique. You can easily tell the difference between the Carlos, Kia and Reza chapters even without the convenient chapter headers telling you who is speaking. Each narrator has his/her own specific cadences, favorite phrases, and patterns. Each narrator also has his/her own primary concerns/overlying emotions: Carlos' chapters are heavy on anguish, Kia's on sensuality, Reza's on anger. What links them, on an emotional level, is loss and recovery. Carlos, Kia and Reza each have that One Person whose loss prior to the start of the novel influences every decision they make in the novel. How we recover from such losses, how we move on, is a large part of what this book is about.
There's also a really disgusting set of villains, the Blattodeons, who absolutely make my skin crawl. I'm not a hugely squeamish person, but large numbers of crawly things crawling all over each other and over people who need to use their eyes and mouths to move and live ... pure terror, the stuff of nightmares, and Older revisits that horror not just once but several times. And each time, it's as discomfitting as the first time.
There's also a ton of really incredible fight scenes to look forward to, sprinkled judiciously across the book, each with a different rhythm. I've commented before about how musical Older's writing style is, so I don't think I need to belabor the point except to say that almost all of the fight scenes are musical in their own way.
The book's not all Doom And Gloom. There are some wonderful comedic moments to break up the tension, especially from Kia. The girl is not afraid to say what she thinks. (Witness: Chapter Thirty-Five. Trust me. It's worth the wait.)
I loved Half-Resurrection Blues, but I loved Midnight Taxi Tango even moreso, and even though the book wraps up all of the major plot-lines, there's still plenty to whet my appetite for book three, whatever it's called and whenever it comes out.
The Premise: (from the Goodreads page): Carlos Delacruz straddles the line between the living and the not-so alive. As an agent for the Council of the Dead, he eliminates New York’s ghostlier problems. This time it’s a string of gruesome paranormal accidents in Brooklyn’s Von King Park that has already taken the lives of several locals-and is bound to take more. The incidents in the park have put Kia on edge. When she first met Carlos, he was the weird guy who came to Baba Eddie's botánica, where she worked. But the closer they’ve gotten, the more she’s seeing the world from Carlos’s point of view. In fact, she’s starting to see ghosts. And the situation is far more sinister than that-because whatever is bringing out the dead, it’s only just getting started.
My Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
My Thoughts: It's no secret by now that I absolutely love the work of Daniel Jose Older, regardless of whether we're talking novel or short story, aimed at adults or young adults. The second Bone Street Rumba novel is no exception to this love. So let's get the gushing out of the way fast: you should be reading this series. If you haven't read the preceding book in the series, Half-Resurrection Blues, go do that first, then pick up and devour this book right after. You won't regret binge-reading them, I can assure you. If you're not sure you'll like Daniel's style, go to Tor.com and check out the short stories "Anyway: Angie," "Kia and Gio" and "Ginga." Modified versions of those three stories are folded into chapters of this book, and they give a pretty good sense of Older's style without spoiling any of the major beats or events of the novel as a whole. I know this because I read the first two when they originally appeared on Tor's website, long before this novel came out, and I was not only happy to see how well they fit as part of the whole but also how well they stand as complete stories in their own right.
Now: about the novel itself. Worthy successor, worthy continuation. I'm pretty sure every review of the book has said so, so what do I have to add to the discussion?
Let's talk about the chances Older takes with the narrative. Because it's those chances that make the book as riveting as it is.
First, as mentioned above, there's the fact that the author isn't afraid to take previously-published short stories and make them a part of the novel. I've seen some reviewers call this move a "cheat." In my own humble opinion, it's far from a cheat: it's proof that Older has this world already well-mapped-out, that he's committed to keeping it as concise and connected as he can manage. It's also proof that he feels the stories he's used to build this world are not secondary or second-class or ancilliary in any way. Those stories are the part of the fabric of these characters's immediate lives, not threads of the "oh yeah, this happened to them too" type. It's a bold move in a genre where the Novel Series Is The Serious Story, And The Other Stuff Is Just Fun But It's Okay If You Skip It. And it works well, whether you've read the stories before reading the novel or not.
The other big chance Older takes is in dividing the action between three different "first person" narrators, in light of the fact that Carlos was the only narrator for the first book in the series. The trope with urban fantasy has long been that a series is told in first person by one main character (although the connected short stories can be narrated by anyone). Take, as example, Jim Butcher's Dresden Files and Seanan McGuire's October Daye series. Some authors are slowly bucking this trend (McGuire's InCryptid novels switch narrators from book to book but not within a book; Kevin Hearne's Iron Druid books begin alternating chapters narrated by Atticus with narration by Granuile somewhere around book four), but Older is the first one I've read to jump whole-heartedly into multiple narrators with just the second book in the series. He's taking a chance that people will accept this deviation from the trope and roll with him, and again the chance pays off. So much of this book hinges on things that happen when Carlos is not, and in fact can not, be present, that it would be a completely different experience if Older stuck to the Single Narrator mode.
Of course, having multiple narrators begs a follow-up question: are those narrators distinct voices, or are they used simply to make the story easier for the author to tell? The answer is: yes, each narrator's voice is unique. You can easily tell the difference between the Carlos, Kia and Reza chapters even without the convenient chapter headers telling you who is speaking. Each narrator has his/her own specific cadences, favorite phrases, and patterns. Each narrator also has his/her own primary concerns/overlying emotions: Carlos' chapters are heavy on anguish, Kia's on sensuality, Reza's on anger. What links them, on an emotional level, is loss and recovery. Carlos, Kia and Reza each have that One Person whose loss prior to the start of the novel influences every decision they make in the novel. How we recover from such losses, how we move on, is a large part of what this book is about.
There's also a really disgusting set of villains, the Blattodeons, who absolutely make my skin crawl. I'm not a hugely squeamish person, but large numbers of crawly things crawling all over each other and over people who need to use their eyes and mouths to move and live ... pure terror, the stuff of nightmares, and Older revisits that horror not just once but several times. And each time, it's as discomfitting as the first time.
There's also a ton of really incredible fight scenes to look forward to, sprinkled judiciously across the book, each with a different rhythm. I've commented before about how musical Older's writing style is, so I don't think I need to belabor the point except to say that almost all of the fight scenes are musical in their own way.
The book's not all Doom And Gloom. There are some wonderful comedic moments to break up the tension, especially from Kia. The girl is not afraid to say what she thinks. (Witness: Chapter Thirty-Five. Trust me. It's worth the wait.)
I loved Half-Resurrection Blues, but I loved Midnight Taxi Tango even moreso, and even though the book wraps up all of the major plot-lines, there's still plenty to whet my appetite for book three, whatever it's called and whenever it comes out.