Gustainis, Justin: Black Magic Woman
Black Magic Woman (2008)
Writer: Justin Gustainis
Genre: Urban Fantasy
Pages: 317
This book has been on my radar for some time. For starters, I love the cover art. Then there's the title which intrigues me even though I know my brain always tries to misread it as Black Woman Magic instead. But for whatever reason, I never gave this book a chance until I was browsing through the Odyssey Writing Workshop website and discovered that the author is an Odyssey graduate. I was like, REALLY? COOL!!! But then I discovered that not only is Mr. Gustainis an Odyssey graduate, but that he went to Odyssey this past summer. As in 2008. As in, after he'd already published the novel I'm reviewing today.
I found this quote from Gustainis on the 2008 Class's page of the Odyssey website:
I sold three novels before I came to Odyssey. I just wish I had gone to Odyssey before I wrote them--they would have been better books. Odyssey freakin' rocks!
I'm sorry, but I can't even BEGIN to express how much this heightens my respect for this guy. How many times do we read books or short stories by authors we feel (especially if we've been through a program like Odyssey or Clarion or the SHU Writing Popular Fiction Masters) the author should've gone through more training before publishing? And how many times do we hear of authors who believe they're above criticism just because they're published?
I've never met Gustainis, but that quote alone made me order this book pronto. Reason being that this is the start of an urban fantasy series, that book two was just released (another pre-Odyssey sale) and that once I got through THOSE, there's a good chance I'd get to see just how much his writing has changed in book three (and if not book three, then definitely book four). I can't tell you just how excited I am to see what that change is.
The premise: Quincey Morris's family has been fighting the supernatural ever since the days of Dracula, and Quincey is no exception. When he's approached by a desperate family about getting rid of a ghost intent on killing them, he brings in his partner Libby Chastain, a white witch who's got the ability to counteract what's really going on: there's no ghost. Instead, the family suffers from a curse that dates back all the way to the Salem Witch Trials, and the only way to stop it is to find the witch who's performing the magic. Their investigations take them all over the United States, and no matter where they go, someone's trying to stop them. And that someone will do whatever it takes to see Quincey and Libby dead.
Spoilers ahead.
So I know this is technically not Gustainis's debut novel. That honor goes to a book called The Hades Project, which I don't think is related to this. Despite that, this reads very much like a debut. VERY MUCH. There's a lot of things that might've had me throwing the book across the room if not for the fact I know Gustainis will improve and for the fact that despite the flaws, the story in and of itself is a pretty fast read.
Let's see: multiple POVs. We get the POV of everyone from the white witch who sentenced the black magic witch at the Salem Witch Trials, we get the POVs of Morris's clients, Morris himself, Libby, two different black magic practitioners, one driver of one of those practitioners, a random guy who gets possessed by magic to run Morris and Chastain over, the witnesses of a murder, the FBI guy and the South African detective called in on a case that's not related, and . . .
Oh, there's so many. Furthermore, the POVs tend to bleed into each other, and if they don't head-hop, then it's so vague that you're never sure just whose head you're supposed to be in during a given scene.
Crude language/spelled out dialect: in the good old days, cowboys used the term "partner" in reference to one another. I suspect this practice remains in tact today, especially in Texas, where Quincey is from. If I were to spell out how I've heard "partner" said, it'd be "pardner." It makes sense, especially when you said it out loud. But Quincey doesn't say it like that. He says, "podner," and no matter how many times I saw it and tried to reconcile it with how I've heard it said in the South, or by Texans, I couldn't do it. Maybe that's a failure of my imagination, but I just couldn't do it. Then there's the crude language: any time sex became a subject, whether someone was talking about it or thinking about it, words like "cunt" were used as well as "big cock". I'm sorry, but when I read that college girl thinking about how much she enjoyed the feel of her boyfriend's "big cock" moving inside of her, I laughed out loud. It just sounds so much like something a guy would put in a woman's head. Oh, and then there was one character, who is very CLEARLY painted as a racist asshole who'd prefer to still live in the pre-Civil Rights days, who uses the n-word.
All around, bad form, even if the choice of language is appropriate for the character using it. Part of the bad form is that most all of these characters come across as types or as cardboard, so when they're using language like this, it's hard to remotely take them seriously. Added on top of that, most of it just wasn't necessary. This is one area that I hope to see Gustainis improve upon.
Then there's the two main characters: Quincey and Libby. I never got a solid feel for their ages, even though I think I was told: they read like they're in their forties, but they're depicted (on the cover anyway) like they're in their twenties. Libby seems even older than her forties in certain respects, which made reading these adventures unintentionally funny because I'm picturing some guy, in his forties, fighting demons with a sixty year old lady using white magic right beside him.
And let's look at the supernatural elements, shall we? Save for the fae, I can't think of a single supernatural creature that DOESN'T make an appearance in this book: vampires, werewolf, zombies, witches, demons, succubus (which is a demon but deserves a distinction here). OMG! Was it all related to the overall plot? NO. Morris and Chastain's investigations rather randomly took them across the US, and they either encountered these things or were told about them. The vampires weren't part of the plot at all, but were used instead as an opener. The focus, the witchcraft, lost some of its power with all this other stuff cluttering the book, even though in some of the cases, witchcraft was the cause of it.
And let's talk about witches and magic, shall we? I really liked the idea of the curse dating back to the Salem Witch Trials. I like the struggle between white and black magic. I don't even mind the whole black magic being more powerful. But I had a lot of trouble believing that Christine Abernathy was some all powerful and all feared black witch that even Snake feared. For starters, she's still a teenager. And I don't care what kind of family tradition she had beat into her, I just found it all too convenient that she was THAT powerful and even was able to identify and spy on Morris and Chastain. Save for the scrying spell, we never got a really good explanation on how Christine was able to discover who Chastain and Morris even were. If we'd seen Christine break into the LaRue home and discover one of Libby's talismans/charms, then it would've made sense, but we got no such thing. So Christine's ability to track the two and then send back magic their way was a little hard to swallow.
Then there's the second plot too: there's some big, bad guy who wants to rule the world. At least, that's what I think he's trying to accomplish, but whatever he's doing, he's employed Christine to find people to work the magic he needs done. Christine hires Cecelia, an African woman who specializes in muti-murders in order to perform ritualized magic. She kills children, and when she did it in South Africa, she killed the daughter of a detective who's been on her trail ever since. Van Dreenan, who seemed more German to me than anything, grew up in South Africa and has been brought over by the FBI to investigate the muti-murders. Obviously, Van Dreenan wants revenge, and who can blame him? This side story doesn't get entirely resolved (everyone but the big bad guy who wants to rule the world dies, and I have a feeling he's the focus of the next book), but what bugs me is this:
Villain: Cecelia Mbwato, black woman who uses black magic.
Hero: Van Dreenan, white detective from South Africa.
Hero (who does little to nothing): Fenton, an FBI agent who I'm pretty sure is black.
As far as race goes, at least Cecelia's black magic balances out with Christine Abernathy's black magic, because one woman is black and one woman is white. And as far as world building goes, it makes sense since that the type of magic Cecelia is specializing in originates in Africa. But what's a little more ridiculous, even though I know there are white people in South Africa (God knows I did a double take during the Summer Olympic Opening Ceremonies when South Africa was introduced and I saw nothing but blond white people), I couldn't abide by Gustainis's reference of Van Dreenan as the South African. Unless Van Dreenan dresses up in some kind of native African gear, no one looking at the man should be able to tell he's from South Africa, and yet more often than not, you get a description that implies that some random stranger looks at Van Dreenan and finds it odd that a South African is wherever HERE is in the US. Really? Does Van Dreenan have a neon sign flashing SOUTH AFRICA pointing at his head?
Anyway. The main story gets resolved in a near anti-climatic way: Morris uses a talisman of Libby's to repel a spell Christine sent his way, and the spell kills Christine. Not so exciting, but at least the job got done.
My Rating
Give It Away: This book is very far from perfect, and if I hadn't invested myself into seeing how Gustainis grows as an author, I would've stopped at the end of this one. In all truth, it reads more like it should be an episodic television series. There's lots of action, and it reads really, really fast and I think you're fascinated in spite of yourself. I went ahead and bought the second book in the series, but again, I'm invested in seeing how Gustainis's style changes as the series grows. I think for people wanting to try out this series, which is entertaining, pick up Black Magic Woman as a mass-market paperback, which is available now. Of course, that means if you fall in love with it and want the sequel ASAP then you'll be forced to get the sequel in a trade, so that's a decision you're just going to have to make. :)
Cover Commentary: the characters look far younger than I picture them, but YAY for an urban fantasy cover artist who RESISTS THE URGE to give the heroine a tattoo! If I ever publish in this genre, I want Chris McGrath to do my covers. Seriously. Though I am wondering why Libby is wearing a rather Marilyn Monroe-ish white dress. She's wearing it on the cover of the second book too. Interesting.
Next up:
Kitty and the Dead Man's Hand by Carrie Vaughn
Still working on:
Midnight Never Come by Marie Brennan and Thirteen by Richard K. Morgan