TDF’s thoughts on the series: I’ve read some of Carey’s work on the X-Men comics, and so I was excited to read his novels. My excitement was not misdirected. Carey writes a damn good book. The Felix Castor novels are modern hard-boiled detective stories with a supernatural twist and a healthy dose of black humor. The mysteries are twisty and complex without being overly convoluted; each time, I got to the climax and gasped aloud because I didn’t expect the truth, but damn, did it make sense! I loved being along for the ride as Felix struggles against time and the bad guys to figure out the mystery before whatever Very Bad Thing that might happen happens. I also loved Felix’s sense of dry, foul-mouthed, and self-deprecating humor, along with his amazing mental backlog of obscure pop culture references. My kind of guy. And “fuck your mother” as a surprised exclamation made me laugh a lot more than it should have. ;)
The books are written in first person, as is traditional in detective novels, and Carey writes it very well. First person is always iffy with me; it usually takes a very talented author to write from a character’s head without sounding awkward. Carey also never lets any omniscient narration slip into Felix’s stream of consciousness, so the reader only knows what Felix has figured out after Felix decides to share it in his internal narration. Carey is very descriptive, and I really appreciate it. Sometimes too much description becomes boring in its exhaustiveness, but Carey’s vivid descriptions are always fascinating and paint a strong visual for the reader.
The world itself is fascinating. It’s our world, set in our time, but sometime within the last twenty or thirty years, the dead began to wake up. Some come back as ghosts while others possess their own dead bodies ( as a zombie) or take over animal bodies (as aloup-garou). There are also nastier things surfacing: demons like Asmodeus, who possessed Felix’s friend Rafi a few years before the beginning of the series. I’m very much looking forward to what Carey has planned for the next books in the series, because the underlying issue of the dead rising is a driving factor in what Felix does. His own private version of exorcism is music; he plays tunes that “describe” the ghosts on his tin whistle. That is so unusual and so utterly cool. And his dealings with the dead in these books bring about some excellently written character development. Felix is slowly growing a conscience after spending years playing ghosts into the great whatever-comes-next. His cynical atheism provides a nice counterpoint to the traditional religious reasoning behind the dead rising, and it adds a nice level of uncertainty.
Buy: The Devil You Know
The Devil You Know
Description: Felix Castor is a freelance exorcist, and London is his stamping ground. At a time when the supernatural world is in upheaval and spilling over into the mundane reality of the living, his skills have never been more in demand. A good exorcist can charge what he likes — and enjoy a hell of a lifestyle — but there’s a risk: sooner or later he’s going to take on a spirit that’s too strong for him.
After a year spent in ‘retirement’ Castor is reluctantly drawn back to the life he rejected and accepts a seemingly simple exorcism case — just to pay the bills, you understand. Trouble is, the more he discovers about the ghost haunting the archive, the more things don’t add up. What should have been a perfectly straightforward exorcism is rapidly turning into the Who Can Kill Castor First Show, with demons, were-beings and ghosts all keen to claim the big prize.
But that’s OK, Castor knows how to deal with the dead. It’s the living who piss him off…
The Fangirl’s Review: A-
I picked this book up on vacation, after I caught a cold at Comic Con. I proceeded to spend the next three days curled up in a Poäng armchair, glued to the pages. In The Devil You Know, Felix is called upon to exorcise a ghost from The Bonnington Archive, and he finds himself embroiled in a plot that goes far beyond preserved letters. The ghost of a young woman, her face a blur of red mist, has been wandering through the archive, and she just got violent. But after sniffing around and following his gut, Fix discovers that there is something much darker going on than he previously thought.
This mystery is wrapped up in gangsters, prostitution, the sex slave trade, and most of all, murky secrecy. Despite his former habit of snuffing ghosts out and sending them packing without a second thought as to where they go after he plays his tin whistle, Felix finds himself reluctant to just rid the archive of its ghostly visitor. He wants to find out exactly what happened to her and why she’s there, of all places. I love Fix’s growing sense of unease when it comes to exorcising ghosts, and the awful truth behind the ghost’s existence was perfectly played; definitely not sappy, but also not cold. There’s just the right level of compassion and horror to keep the story in a good zone; it’s not gratuitous, but it’s definitely horrifying enough to evoke a reaction.
Vicious Circle
Description: Following in the footsteps of megasellers Neil Gaiman and Jim Butcher, comic book writer Mike Carey presents his second hip supernatural thriller featuring freelance exorcist Felix Castor.
Castor has reluctantly returned to exorcism after the case of the Bonnington Archive ghost convinced him that he really can do some good with his abilities (‘good,’ of course, being a relative term when dealing with the undead). But his friend, Rafi, is still possessed; the succubus, Ajulutsikael (Juliet to her friends), still technically has a contract on him; and he’s still — let’s not beat around the bush — dirt poor. Doing some consulting for the local constabulary helps pay the bills, but Castor needs a big, private job to really fill the hole in his overdraft.
That’s what he needs. What he gets, good fortune and Castor not being on speaking terms, is a seemingly insignificant ‘missing ghost’ case that inexorably drags himself and his loved ones into the middle of a horrific plot to raise one of Hell’s fiercest demons. When Satanists, sacrifice farms, stolen spirits and possessed churches all appear on the same police report, the name of Felix Castor can’t be too far behind…
The Fangirl’s Review: A+
Immediately after finishing The Devil You Know, I grabbed this one and settled back into that Poäng chair. I finished it on a flight from San Diego to Dallas, two days later, after a marathon reading session.
This book is creepy. The first book was unsettling, particularly in its violence, but this one is much more sinister in mood, and I loved it. Felix is hired by a distraught couple to find their missing daughter; the catch is, their daughter is already dead and has been for a few years. Someone has stolen her ghost, something Fix didn’t know was possible, and in the end, both curiosity and pity for the sad, scared ghost makes him take the case.
As as usual for poor Fix, he finds that this case isn’t what it seems from the outside. I don’t want to give away the plot, so I’ll just say that this one had me gasping in shock several times, and I had some seriously bizarre dreams after reading before bed. The church scenes, in particular, creeped me the hell out. And I loved every minute of it.
Dead Men’s Boots
Description: You might think that helping a friend’s widow to stop a lawyer from stealing her husband’s corpse would be the strangest thing on your To Do list. But life is rarely that simple for Felix Castor.
A brutal murder in King’s Cross bears all the hallmarks of a long-dead American serial killer, and it takes more good sense than Castor possesses not to get involved. He’s also fighting a legal battle over the body — if not the soul — of his possessed friend, Rafi, and can’t shake the feeling that his three problems might be related.
With the help of the succubus Juliet and paranoid zombie data-fence Nicky Heath, Castor just might have a chance of fitting the pieces together before someone drops him down a lift shaft or rips his throat out.
Or not…
The Fangirl’s Review: B+
While I really enjoyed this book, it just wasn’t quite as good for me as the first two. This is the first book in which Felix ventures outside of the labyrinth of London (I felt like I should have read this series with a map handy), and for me, that disrupted the flow just a bit. But Fix’s character development more than makes up for any brief disruption to the atmosphere; I really appreciate that all of the nasty shit that he’s done and that’s been done around him is finally catching up with him. And not only is he trying to figure out what fellow exorcist John Gittings had been working on before his suicide; he’s also got to fight to keep his friend Rafi from being delivered into the hands of Jenna-Jane Mulbridge, a specialist in the science of the dead and an all-around sadistic bitch.
As in books 1 and 2, the mystery is richly developed and twisty enough to keep me guessing. I am pleased to report that by book 3, I was making some pretty damn good guesses, and I even got one of them right. Hooray!
So… when will book 4 be released in the States? :)
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