Flashback: The Morrigan (Yancy Lazrus #3.5 ) by James A Hunter

This book finds me in an awkward position of trying to write a review which is functionally different from my review of Siren’s Song. Because I’m in much the same position

I like the story. I think it’s well written, I think it has a lot of action, a lot of excellent epic fight scenes and the whole awesome description of Vis and the Tuatha de Danaan. It was epic, it was action packed, it has some nice twists.

But it’s a story we know. It’s a story we know very well. It’s a story that pretty much underpins a lot of Yancy’s character. In fact it may be the defining moment of Yancy’s character

Before this book Yancy was a cynical, brutal but loyal member of the Guild of the Staff. He was their wetwork specialist, their fixer. This was the man who was called in for one reason – to break things and break people. This was the man who was hardbitten, cynical – but still very much a believer in what the Guild of the Staff represents

And then Ailia, the woman he loves, was abandoned by the Guild of the Staff after they faced the Morrigan and Yancy decided to turn his back on all of them. This in turn laid down the path which led to the main books

This isn’t the plot of this book I’m describing here. This is the plot that has been fundamentally clear since the beginning of the series. There’s no way it couldn’t be because this was who Yancy is. The whole reason why Yancy is where he is right now, the whole reason why Yancy began the series as the solo blues man he is is because of the events in this book

There was no way we couldn’t not know this story

There is no way we couldn’t know how this book ends.

We even know most of the details of this, who is involved and why.

So despite all the action and the power and the roaring fighting, I have almost the same level of frustration I have with Sirens - I know this story.

Almost

Siren Song (Yancey Lazarus 2.5) by James A Hunter

This is a flashback for Yancey, back to the days when he first learned he was a wizard: in the rainforests of Vietnam, surrounded by enemies, fighting for their lives and facing the sirens. And an ancient force far more deadly than even the modern battlefield.

For a time in this book I was vaguely frustrated

Not because I wasn’t enjoying this book – because I was. Not because it wasn’t well written – because it certainly was. It has a great sense of grimness, that classic Vietnam war-film feel all grim and gritty and normal people completely out of their element, fighting a nasty, terrible war far beyond their experience and what their training prepared them for.

Yancey’s extremely well portrayed, I can feel him, his anger, his sadness, his loss, his struggle. I can feel the camaraderie of his team and why that makes what the Siren’s music is doing to them extra painful and soul destroying.

The quality of the work, the writing, the style and the whole theme and feeling of the story is excellent

But I’ve read it before. I mean, one of the major elements of one of the books is Yancey confronting the sirens, arguing over what happened, demanding revenge and dramatically announcing exactly why he was so angry with the sirens

So I knew this story, especially since the parts that were added were classic Nam movie fiction that while it was all very thematic and atmospheric it wasn’t really adding anything. It was a fun read but then I asked why I was reading it, what it added to Yancey’s story

Especially since this was Yancey’s opening to magic but contained very little magic or wonder. And that makes sense, they’re in a war zone under constant threat. There’s a level of “just roll with it and keep moving” that simply has to apply here, no arguing that. But it’s another storyline that this book could have explored that would have added so much to Yancey’s past that wasn’t. I understand why it wasn’t, it wasn’t the time – but why this book

Then we got the answer with a big epic story about a Leshy and his plot to cause untold suffering and the noble and brave Gregg and Rat and Yancey willing to sacrifice everything to stop him because ultimately they may not be skilled or magical or powerful and they definitely have not the slightest clue what is really going on – but they know it’s wrong, they know people will die and they know they have to stop that

And it’s big and noble and epic. And, on the face of it, a good story – I want to say that again and again about this – it’s a good story, it’s well written, it’s atmospheric with some great characters being portrayed. And it’s a Vietnam war story without demonising the Vietnamese.

Savage Prophet (Yancy Lazarus #4) by James A. Hunter

Yancy carries the Seal if the Horseman of War. His mind is being colonised by the demon Azazel and it’s a battle he’s losing

It would help if he could stop drawing on the dark power the demon offers. But with the world in the balance and another seal possibly falling into the hands of their enemies, he seems to have no choice. As he drags himself through horrendous, torturous experience after another, faces agony and horror and watches the Guild of the Staff completely collapse around him – can he really say no to the demon’s magic?

But if he accepts the demon’s help, does he risk being a greater threat than the very thing he’s fighting against?

The ongoing meta plot of this series now goes into high gear as the seals of the apocalypse and the archdemons who guard them are now front and centre to the storyline. We don’t just have Yancy stumbling across a situation that happens to be related to the epic ongoing battle on which the world rests.

This feels much more directed because of this, the grand fate of the end of the world and the consequences there are much more central. Even though that has been on the cards for a while, the last book felt more local, focusing on the Big Foot (big feet?) rather than the very world being in the balance. We definitely have the broader focus here. Along with all the epic conflict and fight scenes I expect from a Yancy Lazerous novel.

Perhaps because it is so focused, I don’t feel like this book is jammed with unnecessary fight scenes – not because there are less of them, but more because each fight as actually relevant to the overall plot line. In previous books if Yancy went to a bar, asked someone for information, pretty much anything, there would be a battle. I think one of the problems I have in taking Fast Hands Steve seriously as an epic enemy (beyond the awful name) is that he was introduced in a completely random unnecessary fight. Building a whole vendetta enemy out of a fight in a bar because Yancy can’t even play music without there being conflict going on really fails as a back story. Sometimes I feel Yancy eats BBQ in restaurants all the time because he can’t go to the shops to buy groceries without fighting ninjas, demons, and vampiric girl scouts.

Here all the action was on point

There’s also some devastatingly dramatic tension with Yancy confronting Fotuna after the horrendous things he suffers in this book. It doesn’t downplay or minimise the trauma nor expect Yancy to just breeze past it – it’s devastating and presented as such.

I also like Darlene

When we first met Darlene and Yancy dismisses her as an office worker way out of her depth, I waited for him to be proven gloriously wrong. I waited for this to be proven wrong. I waited for her to pull out some ninja magical nuclear powers and leave Yancy gasping at her violent awesomeness.

And I was wrong. She was out of her depth. She absolutely fell apart in a combat situation and generally Yancy’s first impressed was confirmed in spades

This isn’t a bad thing. Why wouldn’t a fully experienced combat veteran like Yancy NOT recognise someone with combat training. Plus waif-fu – or awesome fighting power houses who don’t remotely look the part – is an annoying trope that is kind of elated to the super-hot-thin-people-eating-fried-chicken-covered-pizzas-and-not-exercising trope. Actually being an active, experienced combat fighter generally comes with a level of physical fitness and muscle tone. And that’s aside from demeanour, grim bitterness etc – there’s every reason why Yancy should have been able to accurately peg Darlene

On top of that, Darlene isn’t terrible. I mean it would be tempted to shame her, hate her, demean her or otherwise reduce her because she isn’t a fighter. But she isn’t. Her skills, her administration and her encyclopaedic knowledge of the Guild’s procedures, reports and previous events is an asset and in the end definitely gives her some extremely useful input to saving the day

I like this. I like that Darlene can be capable, useful, respected member of the team without being a combat monster. While being, yes, a soccer mum. Especially since we still have Ferraldo who is, as I’ve mentioned in several previous books, a definite, skilled, dangerous combatant and tactician. We see two female characters, both adding awesome strength to the plot in very different ways.

We do have some very dubious elements that come with the world building. This is something similar to what Supernatural faced: when you have a world setting which moooshes all kinds of mythologies together, there’s a lot of dubious tropes you can follow, along with things like colonising, appropriating and generally raiding other cultures and belief systems which are all issues we’ve covered before. This book takes those issues and then sets up, the White King, a pretty blatant Judeo-Christian mythology god, as basically above them all. We have an excellent story of Indian naga and Buddhism which seems nicely done – and then jumps into this with angelic intervention and a seal of the apocalypse. We have this whole Buddhist based legend and story and just stuck in a quick “subordinate to Christianity” in there. Aside from this then ending up as part of the story lead by Fortuna and the Fates, again, restricted and controlled by the White King. Similarly when the gang travel to Haiti we have the Loa treated the same way – with Baron Samedi being pretty much completely erased as a loa and replaced by one of the seal bearers.

Which adds into the ongoing trouble of the whole Haitian and Voodoo depiction in the genre and in media in general (and in general societal awareness for that matter). Voodoo is constantly portrayed as evil, dark awful darkness with whole lots of racist undertones and exotic/savage otherness.  And in this book? Baron Samedi is literally a demonic horseman of the apocalypse. Voodoo is all about zombies, mind control, torture, gangs, child soldiers and death. All of it – there’s no counter example at all. More, the whole power of voodoo which the mage council doesn’t understand? That’s Nox. The special demonic power which is the very antithesis of

And Haiti? This is set in Cite de Soleil, a shanty town in Haiti, that is presented as basically a lawless giant violent hell slum of child soldiers, voodoo warlords, torture and awfulness.

Look, Cite de Soleil is a terrible place, it’s on record of one of the most dangerous places. And no, I’m not saying that Haiti should be presented as wonderfully wealth and prosperous and stable without gangs and crime. No, you don’t have to present Haiti has a utopia, or Voudoun as this perfectly serene religion whose followers are all enlightened saintly people.

The there’s no counter-narrative here. Everything about Haiti, voodoo and Haitians here is presented as evil, dark, horrific and generally awful. Also with absolutely no inclusion of the very relevant history behind Haitians history here. No, I’m not expecting Yancy to give us a nice historical recap of Haiti being the first (and only?) nation founded by rebelling slaves or the crippling, punishing debt that was then imposed on it by the international community in response. However, I also don’t condone a book to take a country, culture, people and religion and turning them basically into a hell-scape for Yancy to run around killing things in. You could literally have turned his entire time in Haiti into some hell-realm controlled by goblins and made no real change to the plot because nothing about this depiction acknowledge or treated Haiti as an actual place or tried to treat any Haitian as an actual person

Also I’m going to sideswipe here at the naga Buddhist monk who was basically serene and peaceful in between dishing out kung fu and, really, really? Y’know I said that it was excellently done to incorporate Buddhism into this story was nicely done? Well it would be nicer if the depiction of the one actual Buddhist person wasn’t cribbed from a 1980s kung fu movie.

This is pretty much the POC in this book – we have some other side POC who are part of the guild, but they’re not exactly major players or hugely influential on the book or plot line which does nothing to counter this… We continue to have no LGBT characters.

This series continues to have a lot of awesome moments, a lot of epic battles and an excellent meta plot. I think this book has all of that in excellent, amazing degree – but it also has a really terrible diversity problem that is, if anything, only exacerbated by it drawing so heavily on different cultures and mythologies

Wendigo Rising (Yancy Lazarus #3) by James A Hunter

Yancy continues to want very little from life. Ribs, whiskey, gambling and a drifter’s life. But he’s been dragged into an epic secret conflict no man with a conscience could walk away from

He also cannot walk away from angry Big Feet who need his help. Mainly because they’re super fast and willing to wreck his car and his skull to make him co-operate

Despite a less than auspicious introduction, Yancy finds that the same insidious evil he has been hunting has its tentacles here as well – and the future of more than the Big Feet rest in the balance.

We know the pattern of a series like this. With every book, the current plot will feed into the greater meta plot, we will have epic confrontations each feeding into more epic confrontations to come. Great powers will be raised, will be fought and our heroes will emerge bloodied and not entirely victorious – but they will have pushed back the dark for now and emerged a little stronger, a little more powerful, and, yes a little more epic than they were before

It’s a pattern I’ve seen repeated numerous times – and gods do I love it. I really really do – so long as you can walk that shining line between the epic and the Gary Stu/Mary Sue. So long as the plot is more than just a slug fest (which this series doesn’t do that well with) and so long as the world is one epic playground in which all the awesome can be displayed – which this book certainly does do.

We have an epic world, an ever more epic conflict, lots of blood-fizzing fight scenes all with a decidedly noir bent that it actually pulls off at least 80% of the time (hey, a well maintained Noir is a wonderful and rare thing to find – but usually they try too hard). Yancy manages to be just a bit too unlikeable (there’s the gruff rogue antihero and the outright arsehole and he flirts along that line just a bit too much), but in all, all the ingredients I love are right there and this series has gone from one I was relatively indifferent about to one I will be following to the bitter end.

It also has sufficient quirks to make it special as well – I kind of love Lady Luck, the entire concept of her, her influence that always helps so very much – but not nearly as much as you’d like. Because of course, she’s bound by rules. And equally of course, she breaks them. She is Lady Luck after all. Or maybe not break, but there’s a lady who likes her loopholes

On the third book in the series I find myself with the same old problem. I like the action. The action is good. The action is interesting. That action is well paced and well written and exciting and you can see all these epic fights raging across the book. They’re really really really well done and these action scenes dropped in any other book would be so very awesome in any other book

But not in this one because, again, there are just too many. Over and over and over we have fight scenes. We have struggles. And sometimes just wonder why is everything so hard? I mean the whole opening scene where Yancy meets the Chiye-tanke we have a battle. We have a long, unnecessary fight scene between Yancy and his upcoming allies and… why? Whyyyyy? And even if there was an initial misunderstanding why did we have to go full on war zone? Why is Chief Chankoowashtay the leader of his people and this incapable of communicating coherently and sensibly with people? And why in the name of all that is sensible does Yancy have to smart mouth his way through every encounter trying to provoke a fight ALL the times. We’ve said it before in relations to a lot of oh-so-strong female protagonists and it equally applies here: your character is not tougher or stronger because they can’t stop wise cracking and disrespecting everyone around them. It’s tiresome, it’s annoying, it slows down the plot and it makes me kind of dislike Yancy.

The only redeeming element of all this is Ferraro, who is awesome in so many ways. And one of the things she does so well is constantly call out Yancy for his bullshit. When he is wallowing in angst and moping, Ferraldo is there to say he is pouting and acting like an utter manchild. She is there to slap him down for abandoning her, for centring his emotion, for constantly snarling and snapping at other people, for moping. Ferraldo is repeatedly there not to coddle his precious sadness or anger or issues, she is there to drag him out and make sure he gets through it. That’s not to say she’s unfeeling, she can and often is highly sympathetic

Cold Hearted (Yancy Lazarus #2) by James A Hunter

Yancy Lazarus is a drifter, a gambler, a drinker and a blues man and he’d really like to be left alone. He did his bit for the Guild of the Staff, the wizards’ ruling body, and now he’s past done with them.

But when an old friend asks for help to rescue his grandson from some winter fae, Yancy can hardly say no. He can’t leave a child in their hands.

Unfortunately, the kidnapping of a child is only the beginning of the problems he uncovers – and not only does he find a conspiracy that could cause immense damage, but he also places himself smack in the middle of it. Accused of murder (and then relying on the arresting FBI agent to be an ally), weakened and depowered and targeted by a pissed off mage and some ancient elemental force, Yancy’s own survival depends on him getting back in the fight.

It’s been a while since I read the first book in this series Strange Magic, but despite the wide and rich world it quickly came back to me because it has an excellent voice and tone that’s pretty unique

In the world we have a flawed wizarding organisation

In many ways it reminds me heavily of The Dresden Files but, perhaps due to length of the series so far, not quite on the same scale. But I think that’s also very much due to Yancey – because Yancey generally doesn’t want to get involved. Yancy is getting by and is quite resentful at the Guild of the Staff dragging him any further in.

Yancey is quite happy to slope around the world, preferably warm parts of the world, smoking and drinking and gambling and eating excellent BBQ whenever he can. He’s not into saving the world and he has little faith with the Guild of the Staff, with its far greater emphasis on politics and excessive caution than in actually looking out for the members it’s supposed to be helping.

Yancey isn’t involved in the wider aspects of the world setting here – which is also reflected in the world building: we have lots of hints of various monsters and creatures more than the larger organisations. This draws more from Yancey’s long and varied experiences – so we have some excellent world building about the monsters and creatures Yancey runs up against (which are varied, different and original creations which are excellently depicted for a very action packed book) than the sweeping organisations (though I love the world building around Old Man Winter and the summer and winter fae)

That doesn’t mean there isn’t epic here – but it’s epic that Yancey is beginning to uncover (and reluctantly at that) and become part of. The wider world that they are being dragged into has been excellently hinted at and I’m sure is going to develop much much further in later books.

The whole book has a very noir tone, while not set in that era. It has that cynical, jaded, world-weary sense that really does such a lot to explain Yancey’s character than any amount of overt explanation. You don’t need to have it expressly explained to picture Yancey sat in a dark, smokey bar, looking perhaps 10 or 20 years older than he should be, playing the blues on the piano with a large glass of whiskey to hand; occasionally pausing to share some painful old war stories with people he respects and tells people. The tone is excellent for world building.

Strange Magic (Yancy Lazarus #1) by James A Hunter

Yancy Lazerus, wizard, rambler, rogue, musician has lived a long, exciting life and now wants to spend his time eating good ribs and listening to good Blues. But his bleeding heart would never let him stay quiet when people are in trouble – especially when his oldest friend Greg calls him to deal with demons ripping apart people.

Of course, even if he could ignore his conscious – he can’t ignore the fact he has been framed for the deaths and there are a lot of angry men with guns who want to shoot him in the head.

I really like this world setting. It’s a classic every-supernatural-there-ever-is all squashed in, so I won’t say it’s inherently original, but it has original twists. It feels very Dresden Files with just a little more gritty thrown in. With such a wide array of creatures to call upon, Strange Magic has gone in a generally different direction – the beings of the Hub and the creatures from Hindu mythology are not things I’ve seen very often before.

I also quite like the idea of the Hub, again, it’s not entirely something I haven’t seen before, but this gritty melting pot has a lot of potential and interesting additions to the story. On top of this, we got a lot of nicely detailed world building and description that screams of books and books of notes that really makes both the magic system and the magical world seem very rich and fully fleshed out – I like that a lot

This world has immense potential.

And Yancy runs through this world in a rather wonderful Noir investigation. Through gritty and grim Blues bars in the real world to equally gritty bars in the Hub – the world is shown to great advantage with the story taking us to many parts of it and revealing lots of aspects of it along the way. It has the building blocks to being an excellent supernatural Noir story. But there’s some problems that hold it back from that excellence

The first of which is Yancy is supposed to be 60 and look about 40. I don’t really believe this – his voice, his dialogue, his mind set all makes me think teenager or, at very best, early 20s. It’s not entirely a bad voice for someone who is that young – and a young wizard running around snarking away with this much banter and even childishness would be kind of fun. But he isn’t a wizard in his early 20s – nor would the characterisation be solid enough for that.