2007 urban fantasy. Detective Inspector Chen and his demonic partner
Zhu Irzh just want to get on with solving crime. But they're set to
escort a celestial diplomat from Heaven on a visit to Hell…
Well, yeah, don't start here, because while you can pick up that
in this world Chinese Heaven and Hell are definitely real places,
there are details (including reasons for people here to act as they
do) that you'll miss if you haven't read the second book, and that was
in turn more fun because I'd read the first (even if there is a bit of
early instalment weirdness to deal with).
Singapore Three, even at this time of night, was still almost
gridlocked. The city had been bad even before the earthquakes, and
now it was close to impossible. Chen had thought he'd been given a
tough job as liaison officer with Hell, but it was nothing compared
to being a member of the traffic department.
There are also multiple plots going on here: as well as the police
business, a chorus boy and part-time prostitute with the Opera finds
himself in Hell without the formality of having died first, and an
elderly woman finally gets her daughter married, and looks after her
grandson. (Her daughter died some decades ago, but they still talk
regularly.) An ancient dragon travels to meet the rest of them. Oh,
and it seems that Hell is gearing up for war…
There are perhaps slightly too many stories going on here. Yes, of
course they all come together eventually, but the constant switching of
viewpoints is jarring, particularly with many short chapters.
On the other hand, Chen and Zhu spend most of their time working
together, which is when this partnership is not just strongest but
most fun to read about. (Chen also gets to be a fish very much out of
water when he accompanies Zhu to the latter's mother's birthday party;
well, he can't get out of it, being already in Hell and all…)
When he died, as a devoted servant of the Goddess Kuan Yin, Most
Merciful and Compassionate, he might reasonably expect to enter
Heaven himself. Okay, he'd married a demon. His right-hand man was
from Hell. On a previous, unfortunate occasion, he'd used the
goddess' sacred image as a battering ram. Good thing she was
Merciful and Compassionate, really.
Most importantly, though, Williams isn't writing a series of novels in
a static setting: she's clearly willing to knock down the mighty and
make profound changes to the structures of power. It's easy for a
fantasy to bog down in the small stories and leave the large ones
untold; this has those large stories affected by the small ones, in
ways that make sense.
I space these books out because I enjoy them so. I shall continue to
do this.
Comments on this post are now closed. If you have particular grounds for adding a late comment, comment on a more recent post quoting the URL of this one.