Review: Unperfect Souls, by Mark del Franco

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Description: In the Boston neighborhood known as the Weird, a decapitated body floats out of the sewer, and former Guild investigator Connor Grey uncovers a conspiracy that may bring down the city’s most powerful elite. As the violence escalates, Connor is determined to stop it-with help from one of the most dangerous beings of Faerie. Even if it means unleashing the darkness that burns within him.

This review is based on a free, review copy received from the publisher/author.

The Bibliomaniac’s Review:

I frequently annoy the hell out of my husband when we watch a movie together.  Usually, by the time the movie is halfway over – and sometimes by as little as a third or a quarter of the way through – I’ll turn to him and say something along the lines of, “If I had written this movie—“ and then proceed to detail plot twists leading up to the ending.

About three times out of four, I’m right.  It irks him to have me see the ending coming so far in advance, and lately he bemoans the dearth of original plotting in new movies.  (It’s even worse with remakes, sequels, and prequels, since there’s hardly ever any originality involved with those to begin with.)

But we don’t read books together; reading is much harder an activity to share than sitting and watching the same movie together.  This, as far as he’s concerned, is probably a good thing, because I can guess the outcome of a book’s plot even more often than I can with movies.

Mark del Franco is one of the better new writers to appear on the urban fantasy scene over the last few years.  Although the English major in me is perennially annoyed with what it insists is his misuse of the word “druid” in the Connor Grey series (a druid, my English major side insists, was one of the priesthood of the ancient Irish, British, and other Celtic human races, not a species of Fey), Mr. del Franco’s writing and plotting remain consistently impervious to guessing the outcome.

(I recognize the right of authors to redefine certain commonly-known terms for the purpose of their stories.  This is especially important in works of fantasy and science fiction, where the main focus of the story is about discovery and exploration of the unknown.  The English major part of my brain is just a traditionalist.)

Unperfect Souls continues this trend.  I had thought, after reading the last book in this series, Unfallen Dead, that Mr. del Franco’s work had gotten as good as it could get; I was that impressed with the book.

Although I wasn’t able to guess the ending of Unperfect Souls any more than I had been able to do so with the previous books in the series, I was wrong in this respect.  Unperfect Souls is better than Unfallen Dead.  It is more tightly plotted, with enough labyrinthine twists and turns for a minotaur; the characterization is as steady and engaging as ever, showing us new sides to characters like Eorla Kruge and Leo Murdock; and the same vibrant, intense description that makes the Weird live and breathe and reek on each page.

At the end of Unfallen Dead, it seemed that TirNaNog had been destroyed, and the Dead who had dwelled there set free to make their way in the mortal, living world again.  Connor Grey had run across old foe Bergin Vize in the battle leading up to the destruction of TirNaNog, and he had uncovered a new side of his abilities—and those of the dark mass within his mind.  In Unperfect Souls, during the course of his investigation into deaths among both the Solitary Fae and the Dead, Grey discovers a chilling revelation into the nature of the black mass in his head, encounters someone who knows just what that mass is and what it does.  More chilling still is that this person’s knowledge indicates what he might be becoming.  Connor also learns something about someone from his past that, in the end, sheds light on one of the maddening mysteries he has dealt with for years.

If there is any flaw in Unperfect Souls, it is in some of the frustration I feel in dealing with Connor’s imperfect memory.  Granted, amnesia caused by the trauma to the brain such as he has suffered is hardly unusual, and Mr. del Franco portrays it realistically and consistently.  Still, it’s sometimes exasperating to think, as you’re reading, that you’re about to find out something monumental about Connor’s past, only to have it disappear in a flash of mental vacuity.  It’s a plot element that can only be used so many times before readers begin to weary of it.  Some of Connor’s past was revealed in Unperfect Souls, and I’m hoping that we’ll find out still more of it in books to come.

In the end, Unperfect Souls ties up many–but not all–of the loose threads from Unfallen Dead quite neatly and satisfyingly, although it leaves enough still dangling to tantalizingly lead to what I hope will be the next Connor Grey book.  If Mr. del Franco’s writing continues to improve with each book, I’m going to run out of stars to award him (a fate worse than death, no doubt).  I can’t recommend this one enough.