2008 urban fantasy. Detective Inspector Chen's partner has
disappeared, finding himself stalked by tiger-demons. And someone is
trying to assassinate the new Emperor of Heaven.
But what's really important here is badger, the family familiar
of Chen's wife Inari, who becomes a viewpoint character for the first
time. Badger has simple priorities, and sticks to them, when others
seem to be losing sight of the situation. Badger is great.
Unfortunately, not only is this a book with multiple threads and
viewpoints, it's one that chops them into short chapters, averaging
under 1500 words each. That's enough for one scene, just about, but
some of those scenes are cut quite short, and even more than in the
previous book any hope of rising tension is lost when we have to check
in with three other strands before we get back to see how the latest
cliffhanger was resolved; the end feels sudden and rushed. (And
there's not a whole lot of Chen, considering the series is named for
him.) One couldn't separate these strands completely, beause the
stories do overlap and merge, but I could certainly have done with
longer chapters and fewer switches of perspective.
And that's a shame, because what's happening here is great. This is
very much a series about huge changes happening across the multiple
worlds of Hell, Earth and Heaven, which at the same time doesn't lose
the individual touch. If anything there's a bit of a step back in
scope from the third book, but there was a lot of picking up of the
wreckage to do after those events, so that's fair enough. I keep
saying that I want to care about the people more than about the
things they do, and Williams hits that dead on for me.
"Surely there are scores of young actresses just waiting for their
big break?"
"We needed more than that. Certain qualities, you know?"
Chen was not sure that he did, but Go seemed to have some kind of
artistic principle in mind: he was making hand gestures which seemed
too abstract to be a representation of the female form.
Still very good, in spite of some problems of format.
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