Clayton Cane was not born, he was created. During the
American Civil War, in a plantation house a scientist used the darkest of arts
to try and create a new source of soldiers for the beleaguered south by
stitching together and animating the corpses of the fallen. He was destroyed
before he could produce more than one – but Clayton Cane, with the memories of
dozens, if not hundreds, of soldiers, was born.
He is now a bounty hunter. Reviled by most because of his heavily scarred appearance, he is exceptionally good at his job, hunting and killing people and monsters no matter what arcane arts they practice
But he is more than just a hunter and more than a
monster, as we follow Caine through his adventures that take him across the
United States and far beyond, there is definitely more man than monster to him.
A man that can be moved by compassion, a man that won’t tolerate the
victimisation of the innocent – and a man who is becoming tired of the trials
of his life.
I really like Clayton Cane as a protagonist. His
monstrosity of both creation and appearance often separates him from humanity.
A separation that is only increased by his job – bounty hunter, killer for hire
– and his extreme skill at it. And he is good at his job and works to be this
cold hearted, ruthless gun-for-hire. Yet he is human, he has a heart of cold, a
conscience and a powerful sense of compassion that constantly drives him to
help those who deserve it. His ruthlessly efficient dispatching of the guilty
instantly melts when facing the innocent. Together it not only creates an
awesomely complex character but also a character with a lot of pain, especially
in the later stories where Cane is, more clearly, feeling the burden of living
the life he does. Just by showing these
conflicting sides and the constant rejection he faces, we have a far greater
sense of his pain than we would have got from pages and pages of angsty
whining.
The setting was also intriguing because it was so wide.
We have the character and we have the time period – in the 19th
century. But Cane can be called not only across the United States and Mexico,
but to London and Egypt as well – he roams to follow his work ensuring a great
diversity of settings
I have said it before and I’ll, no doubt, say it again –
I don’t like short stories. I find they’re usually very badly rushed to cram
everything in, contain info-dumping, have little character development and
either needed to be part of a greater story or didn’t need to exist at all.
Which is why I was quite pleased to read this book because all the short
stories in it did it right. Each story carefully contained, there were no loose
threads and they were clearly more than prologues for a greater series or
novel. They didn’t contain any irrelevant information, they didn’t pad and they
didn’t rush. They’re wonderful little stories and they all stand on their own –
with stories like these I could grow to like the short story format.
The problem is that I am nearly sure that each of these
stories did stand on their own in separate publications. In these separate books,
they would have been excellent. But they don’t work nearly so well in one book.
Firstly there is a lot of recapping of Cane’s creation.
Every short story has it, sometimes in a rather convoluted manner, and by the 5th
story it’s starting to look a little ridiculous. The stories all had a similar
structure as well: Cane is hired to face a threat. He does some minimal
investigating (usually he’s pointed straight at the enemy), then he faces a
horde of monsters – cultists, undead, jotun, whatever – then he wins. This isn’t
a vague summary of one of these eight short stories, this is a summary of all
of them. While there were certainly different elements to each story, I still
felt vaguely like I was reading the same story 8 times. Even the writing in the
fight scenes is very similar. The book just felt very repetitive.
We also had some repetition of powerful themes – the most
common of which being the humanity of Cane compared to the monstrosity of the
people he was facing. From the first story with Cane, Alligator men and
Loup-Garou all being more human than the rich, racist plantation owner to Dead Man’s Band and Monster Men of Malachite Flats where Cane refuses to accept being a
novelty to people who will offer him pretend respect in exchange for his
service. They’re excellent themes of
humanity and judging based on appearance.
Similarly Red
Blades in Whitechapel, Ghost Dances and Tomb
of Kings say a lot about not trusting those in power just because they’re
in power – and “civilised” authority doesn’t necessarily mean good or decent
people. We have themes of heroism in Monster
Men of Malachite Flats, Tarantula and Valiant
Dead with both the cost and burden of it – as well as the rewards.
I love all of these themes and I think they are done excellently well conveying messages without being preachy and truly fleshing them out with some great characters. But, again, we have the repetition, the same message told repeatedly because these short stories were never intended to be together.
Inclusionwise, these short stories have 3 women in it –
but 2 are capable, handle themselves better than any of the other side
characters in a crisis. They are more than just weapons, having ties –or severed
ties – to family that matter to them. They’re not perfect or amazing – they’re
human and competent and they’re not damsels to protect. The third is a victim
to protect – a pregnant Black woman giving birth who is being hunted, I did
rather feel the protection and value of her applied as much or more to the
child than she herself.
We have a number of POC who are dismissed with slurs and
contempt of the time – but that is repeatedly challenged. The Arabic and Black “savages”
in Tomb of Kings are far more
informed and sensible than the white British lord. The Lakota man in Ghost Dance is far more human and morale
than the brutal, evil cavalry trying to hunt him down. These are just some of
many instances where were have the bigotry against POC – but the bigots are
evil, cruel, savage and callous while the POC are good, human, honourable and
kind.
There are no GBLT people in these stories.
In the end, I liked this book. It was interesting, had
some great stories, a really intriguing protagonist, some excellent themes and
was generally really well written, well paced and a whole lot of fun. But the
repetitiveness means that towards the end of the book I was rapidly beginning
to lose interest.
A copy of this book was provided by Netgalley
