Wednesday, August 22, 2012

11 PM Book Review: The Devil You Know by Mike Carey

I started out kind of lukewarm on The Devil You Know, but I think the secondary characters are the bomb, so I warmed up quick. A noire urban fantasy for those what don't mind violence. My only caveat to that is that human trafficking is a strong theme in the plot.

In the near future, the dead have risen. Hauntings are common occurrences, even to the point that ghosts haunt their own corpse (as homeless zombies) or the bodies of animals, that they twist to resemble their former human forms (loup garous). Felix Castor is an exorcist for hire. Although he has been "retired" for a year and a half after botching an exorcism that left his best friend possessed by hell-kin, he needs cash and finally takes a job exorcising a ghost from a London archive. He has a hard time with the case at first, and the longer he's on it, the more he suspects he needs to solve the murder that created the ghost before he exorcises her...

This was huge fun. The secondary characters, especially the bad guys, are just fun to watch move around the page. The opening scene didn't hook me in, but it was well worth waiting for the plot to get going. Not a lot of romance, for them what likes romance in their urban fantasy. But for them what doesn't like glamour vamps, the milieu is very subdued (so far, first book), with strong human protagonists. There are no signs of fey courts or werewolf packs yet, just ghosts in various funky forms.


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