Jonah Heywood is a
shaman and a grifter, just scraping by -barely able to pay his ever spiralling
booze bill
Which is a problem
when you owe a large sum of money to a loan shark quite willing to break every
bone in your body then move on to your family.
So when a woman
approaches him with a deal he knows he shouldn’t take, a job he should avoid
and a magical artefact he knows he wants no part of; he has to say yes
Jonah Heywood is a
character that makes a lot of terrible decisions and he’s pretty unique for
that
At which I hear you
all yell “but you complain constantly about characters making terrible
decisions!!!” Which is true - but in those cases I’m complaining about a
character making terrible decisions that no-one - least of all the author - is
willing to acknowledge as such. This isn’t a protagonist leaping blindly
through portals or conducting one person searches of all Siberia - and
succeeding. This is a protagonist making bad decisions which are constantly
acknowledged: in fact so much of the plot ran simply because Jonah makes bad
decisions which constantly put him in bad situations and leave him with further
few good options.
Jonah is an
alcoholic. He is in debt and making terrible choices to get out of debt. He is
traumatised and not dealing well - or at all - with his traumatic past. He is
making the worst enemies in the worst ways and generally just about everything
he does I want to yell “STOP! STOP!”. But this isn’t like so many books we’ve
read because - because the book is written to EXPECT me to say “stop”. At no
point am I expected to agree with Jonah’s choices. At very least every time
near-constantly drunk Jonah gets behind the wheel of a car I cringe.
And there’s a really
nice balance between Jonah doing terrible things because he has not real choice
while at the same time Jonah simply not making good choices: largely because he
is in utter denial of where he is (especially in relation to his alcoholism)
and in utter denial of the fact He Needs Help. Jonah needs an intervention.
Jonah needs a keeper.
I want to route for
Jonah. But not for him to win but for him to LEARN. I don’t want or need him to
be awesome - I need him to be better; I don’t want him to ascend to be the all
powerful one, I want him to put his life together. I want him to sort himself
out.
And this is
interesting to me because in the opening lines of this book I was sure I knew
what this story would be - from the starting in a bar, hard drinking, war
wounded, cynical with a woman coming in - who even if she wasn’t DESCRIBED that
way you mentally call “dame”. The hyper-powered, hard bitten noir-ish: the Harry
Dresden, the Yancey
Lazarus, the Remy
Chandler (and I won’t lie, I LOVE that whole schtick. Yes yes I do) but then for
it to surprise me by turning what I expected to be a hyper-powerful
over-the-top character into, perhaps, what that cynic, hard-bitten character
would ACTUALLY look like was really an interesting twist. And I found myself
really loving that
Side note here: it
feels almost like whoever edited this book skipped the first few pages. The
writing is actually inexcusably terrible, it’s long winded, convoluted, the
dialogue is comic when read aloud, it’s super repetitive (with different
characters all quirking eyebrows at each other) and I wrote loads of notes
about the abysmal text… but that fades really quickly. I’m not sure why the
first few pages skipped editing but it’s worth it to hang on in there.
And Jonah isn’t hyper
powerful either. He has magic - he’s a shaman who has some nifty tricks up his
sleeve but he is far from dangerous and mighty and definitely not a heavy
weight. His magic nicely fits into the world building which is really nicely
hinted at in this book (i really love the depiction of spirits here) but
there’s more a foundation for more to come. For a story all about a shaman
stealing a magical artefact from an all-powerful voodoo Mambo at the behest of
a near god it’s all quite mundane.
The plot itself is
fun - not unique in and of itself: it’s a classic find the Maltese Falcon plot
line. We have twists and an exceptional one at the end; but what holds it
together is this unique character and the foundations it lays for something
truly epic to come.
The biggest powerful
force in this book is a Black woman and her family - she’s extremely powerful
but also clearly good. And that is important for any practitioner of voodoo
since it’s so often demonised in the media. She is compassionate, even in
opposition to Jonah and while she doesn’t play a huge role; she clearly represents
the road not taken: the Sensible Choice. Also I think she’s going to be a major
element of this series far more so.
We do have a gay
character - and in some ways it’s excellent that he does have his life together
despite very similar origins and obstacles to Jonah. He is what Jonah could
have been with a life, a partner (albeit one never seen) and the ability to
help others. But the flip side of this is he appears only when Jonah needs
help. He’s Jonah’s greatest friend and he literally only appears when Jonah
needs saving, a bed, a ride, someone to clean up after him: this is the very
essence of a tokened trope. I want to see him have a life and I want a friendship which goes both
ways. Similarly the only women in the book who isn’t his fridged dead sister or
a quasi antagonist is a woman Jonah’s playing Saviour to. I’d like to see a
woman who Jonah a) isn’t afraid of b) doesn’t need saving and c) has died tragically
to give him trauma.
Jonah is a disabled
man - he’s an alcoholic, has a lot of unresolved trauma and he has a disabled
leg - and it actually affects him. I’ve seen a few characters who are described
as having a bad leg - and then they promptly start sprinting, break dancing and
setting new records in the triple jump… but not Jonah.
This book has
introduced an excellent, new character with a very different focus to many in
the genre, an interesting world and a promise of a whole lot of epic coming
