Angel of Darkness by Charles de Lint

Goodreads Synopsis:
In the early 1990s, Charles de Lint wrote and published three dark fantasies under the name "Samuel M. Key." Now, beginning with Angel of Darkness, Orb presents them for the first time under de Lint's own name.

When ex-cop Jack Keller finds the mutilated body of a runaway girl in the ashes of a bizarre house fire, he opens the door to a nightmare. For a sadistic experiment in terror has unleashed a dark avenging angel forged from the agonies of countless dying victims....


My Review:
Get ready to see a different side of Charles de Lint when you read this book. Just a warning, this book is graphic and has disturbing subject matter (sexual and violent). There is also explicit language. If that doesn't bother you then I recommend reading it. De Lint is known for using the power of music in many of his stories. It serves as a fountain of magic that can either help or hinder his characters. He employs the same theme in this book, but it plays a much much darker note. 

In Angel of Darkness, the line of real/unreal and victim/criminal is blurred. De Lint's characters are never quite on steady ground and this feeling of uncertainty definitely transfers to the reader. His sense of setting, as always, is outstanding. After reading this book, my respect for him as a writer has doubled. He creates several characters that are ROTTEN. Awful, despicable, rotten. And de Lint's ability to get completely inside the head of someone like that then jump back to a "normal" character's point-of-view is pretty amazing. He nails everything, from the psychology of that character, their motivations and the thoughts running through their head. I wouldn't be surprised if he needed a long shower and a smudging after writing these particular sections.

More than anything, this book gives a voice to victims. It opens your eyes to the things they have to endure and how difficult it can be for some of these people to break away from that victimhood, no matter how hard they try. This, ultimately, gives the book a feeling of sadness. Read this book with the intention of opening your eyes to a side of this world that we usually prefer to ignore. 

The Author

Favorite Quote: (from the Introduction) "Mostly, the darker sections of my novels arrive from the human psyche, with the magical elements playing against the shadow. But the Otherworld contains as much darkness as it does ambiguity and light, and to ignore it entirely strikes me as only telling half the story, hence the books I wrote under the pen name Samuel M. Key.  Angel of Darkness originally had a working title of The Killing Time, and it wasn't a book I enjoyed writing- its shadows held on too long after the day's work at the keyboard was done- but I felt compelled to write it all the same. There's no other reason to write a book, as far as I'm concerned."

Fevre Dream by George R. R. Martin

Goodreads Synopsis:
Abner Marsh has had his wish come true - he has built the Fevre Dream, the finest steamship to sail the Mississippi. Abner hopes to race the boat some day, but his partner is making it hard for him to realise his dreams. Joshua York put up the money for the Fevre Dream, but now rumours have started about the company he keeps, his odd eating habits and strange hours. As the Dream sails the great river, it leaves in its wake one too many dark tales, forcing Abner to face down the man who made his dreams become reality.



My Thoughts:
All in all, a fantastic book. It's a bit slow-going in the beginning, but once it picks up IT PICKS UP. By the end of the book, I became extremely fond of the characters Abner Marsh and Joshua York. It's an unlikely bond, but a memorable one. Martin does a good job with developing the main players without going overboard (...although a fan of his series A Song of Ice and Fire, I'm thrilled he didn't create 200 characters just to have half of them die a few sentences later). Woo hoo! 

What I enjoyed most, surprisingly, was Martin's obvious enthusiasm for steamboats. I've never really been a steamboat kind of girl (insert dirty joke here) but he got me into the history and lifestyle of that time. He really did his late-night boat reading and I always love when an author takes the time and care to research something in depth. About halfway through, you can tell that if you ever got stuck on an elevator with George R. R. Martin and said the word "steamboats" he'd launch into a 2-hour conversation about them with a silly grin on his face. I can envision him spending hours riding these things in a Captain's jacket and jotting down notes. Plus, there's only so many ways to describe water. I'll give two thumbs up for him not sounding redundant. 

If you're a vampire fan then you should give this a read. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that Martin takes a very interesting and thoughtful angle on the whole sucking blood business. That being said, I don't read a lot of vampire fiction so you can yell at me in the Comments section if I'm wrong. I was going to explain his angle on it, but I'm thinking it might be a bit of a spoiler...so nope. Just the read the book. It's good.

Subterranean Press has put out a fancified deluxe illustrated edition for super fans. Here's one of the illustrations by Justin Sweet (props to his talent and ability to capture the mood & characters):

The Author

Author Tidbit: Martin's father was a longshoreman (waterfront manual laborer). He grew up by the water and sold monster stories to other kids to make a few pennies.

We still love you though

Mulengro by Charles De Lint

Book synopsis from Goodreads:

        The increasingly bizarre murders have baffled the police--but each death is somehow connected with the city's elusive Gypsy community. The police are searching for a human killer, but the Romany know better. They know the name of the darkness that hunts them down, one by one: Mulengro.

 

My Thoughts:

       Well, folks, De Lint did it again. He wrote another good book. (Shocker!) Charles De Lint is the White Wizard of urban fantasy, but he takes a slightly different turn with "Mulengro," and dishes out some good horror. It's dark, it's violent, it's gory. But the story still has that special something that all De Lintian stories have. I can't even explain it properly, but every time I read him he reminds me of the raw magic that exists in every single moment and day. If you haven't read him before, try "Greenmantle" or "Moonheart." If you like fantasy you'll be hooked.
          As a writer, I catch myself trying to dissect the author's style. Near the beginning of the book, I came across a character description that I absolutely loved:

"Briggs looked up at his partner's call. Will Sandler was a tall and sharp-featured black man who went through life in a constant state of suppressed tension. It showed in the taut pull of the skin at his temples, around his eyes and the corners of his mouth, in the bird-like darting of his gaze. He contrasted sharply with the unimposing figure that Briggs cut- five-eight with a perpetual slouch that made him appear shorter, dark hair that was prematurely gray at the temples, sorrowful eyes. His suit was rumpled, tie loose, shoes scuffed. Will, on the other hand, always looked like he'd just left his tailor's. But the two men made an effective pair, for their strengths augmented each other's weak points. Briggs was a slow mover, a deliberate collector of details with little imagination, while Will's mind moved in intuitive lunges. Since they'd been paired, their success on cases had reached a departmental high of sixty-seven percent."

        So you're just meeting these guys and already you have a SENSE of them. Good writing.  The next scene that just sealed the deal for me that Charles De Lint is magnificent is that he actually has a moment in the book where the cat, Boboko (who is a talking cat, by the way), is watching on TV what his owner is dreaming of in the next room....!?! And the way he describes it is so vivid that it borderlines on intense.
        All in all, this book will keep you interested. There are enough characters from different backgrounds and with different perspectives that it creates a variety that will not bore you. Also, if you are interested in gypsies (or Rom) then you will fly through this book. It moves quickly, but once you reach the last quarter of the book it is fast-moving and action-packed.

Favorite Quote (by one superb hippie named Zach): "Some say that the devil's like a big old ugly black dog...there's a little piece of him in every one of us- a place where it's dark and our fears grow, where anger comes roaring up and bad vibes hang out. And the thing we've got to do in this life is to, like, keep that darkness down and not let it creep up and take us over. That's how you get an evil man, you know. He doesn't come from a bad family, or a bad street or a bad part of town. He comes from somebody who wasn't strong enough to hold back the darkness, or was too lazy to, or just plain didn't care. I think they freak me out the most-the ones that don't care."

The Author