Deacon Chalk can’t even enjoy a quiet dinner out with his
friends and loved ones without witches swooping in and ruining the meal.
Witches are a pretty new one to face, especially witches as powerful of these, transforming demon witches, witches that raise the dead and witches that can kill with a word. And they have one target in mind – the Trinity, Sophia’s baby triplets. If they get them, they may have power enough to end the world.
And Deacon Chalk faces conflict in his own inner circle
as people close to him try to find their own solutions.
There are elements this book that continue the improvement
of the writing style we saw in the second book. It’s cleaner, the descriptions
less inclined to be too overwrought and there’s less of the utter melodrama –
the writing style is definitely improving.
We’re also having a sense of meta-plot. Not just
repeating characters and growing power on Deacon Chalk’s part, but the new
connection with the government, Sophia’s 3 mystical children are definitely
going to lead to more in the future.
We have a lot of the women growing as well, Sophia is
ferocious in defence of her children – yes, an old trope. But we also have Tiff
growing into her own, becoming a capable and dangerous hunter in her own right
and seeking her own place and own career in monster hunting in her own right.
While, naturally, very much under Deacon Chalk’s shadow still – and certainly
never in a position to challenge him (because no-one is ever allowed to do that
ever – Kat tried in this book and is suitably punished for daring to question Deacon
Chalk).
We continue to have a diverse range of antagonists and
powers suggesting the world is extremely broad which is always something I
favour. The story itself isn’t complicated or difficult – being a rather linear
“protect the prize, kill the enemies” with no great mystery or twists. The
enemies are known pretty much from the beginning, what is needed to be cone is
known from the beginning. What they’re after is pretty much known from the
beginning. It’s another action-film type book, it’s there for fighting and
action and adventure and taking hits and keeping moving and overcoming all the
odds.
All pretty good so far. And it was a book I couldn’t put
down until I’d lost rather a lot of sleep – but not because I was enjoying it,
but because I was angry at it – too angry to put it down in case it somehow
managed to either redeem itself or damn itself thoroughly. And it damned
itself.
What broke me? Deacon Chalk is an arsehole. He’s a
self-righteous, judgmental arsehole. He’s right, everyone else is wrong. It’s
been growing through the books but this one was the straw that snapped the
camel in two.
When people argue with him he intimidates them. He beats his fists against tables, walls, cars. Even with people he’s supposed to love – Tiff presumes to argue with him and he’s slamming his huge fist into car roofs and walls and whatever. He threatens them – in the last book he’s threatened Charlotte, he threatens Larson, he’s threatened nearly everyone around him. He’s a huge man, we’re constantly told this, a leather clad massive man, a thug as he calls himself. He’s huge, he’s intimidating, he’s strong, he’s dangerous – and he uses that to force people to obey him. He’s a bully. He’s a violent, angry bully. Are we supposed to be impressed by what a big, hard man he is that he loses his temper and has tantrums unless everyone does everything his way without question?
The one shred where him insisting everything go his way
would make a fragment of sense if he actually had ANY kind of plans or even
relevant experience of, well, any of the encounters we’ve seen in the book. But
he doesn’t – his plan is constantly “show up and kill stuff”. That’s the fullest
extent of his planning – he hopes he’ll think of something and, ta-da, by
authorial fiat he comes up with something on the spur of the moment, usually
after he’s had some dramatic “ugh, my rib has been cracked for the 11
thousandth time, oh it hurts but I’m so manly I’m going to keep going!” moment.
They even make a joke of the fact he never ever has a plan – but everyone has
to obey him and follow orders?
The only reason this character isn’t a shining beacon if
arseholery is because author will makes him right all the time. He is the
ultimate Gary Stu, he is never wrong, he is never mistaken, his lack of plans
never go wrong because he always comes up with just the right solution on the
fly
He decides all magic is evil. Does he know all magic is evil? Have we any indication that he can be sure about this? It doesn’t matter – Deacon Chalk says it so he must be so
He blames Larson for the witches arriving based on…
nothing, he’s Deacon Chalk and there’s no way the witches could have possibly
tracked down the Trinity to the city by any other means or wouldn’t have come
anyway – he’s Deacon Chalk, he knows. Arson’s magic to heal himself, he knows,
he’s Deacon Chalk. Larson’s magic to heal Kat couldn’t possibly work, he’s Deacon
Chalk, of course he knows.
And then there’s the glorious exceptions. Magic is evil – but Deacon Chalk’s ever expanding Angel powers? Don’t count. The three impossible kids with their special, unknown powers? Don’t count. Deacon Chalk controlling a vampire in exactly the same way as a necromancer (evil) did not a few paragraphs before? Doesn’t count. It’s Deacon Chalk! What he says is evil is evil and what he says is good is good. There’s no reason behind this no further depth not even proof of knowledge or research. Deacon Chalk is right. You agree with him or you are wrong and probably evil and need threatening or killing.
And I love that when he has one MILLISECOND of questioning his self-righteous, bullying, “my way or the high way” beliefs and he has both Father Mulcahy and Tiff there warning him against the dangers of questioning and self-doubt and even a holy weapon that works better so long as you don’t question and are certain in how right you are. I could almost take that as some kind of commentary on religious dogmatism, but it’s clearly serious in the book.
Deacon Chalk is an arsehole and he’s not presented as one, we’re not expected to think he’s one. We’re expected to cheer for him, to like him, perhaps even to want to be him.
Which brings us to the next issue – not only is Deacon Chalk right, right and always right in his own right, but he’s also Catholic and that same arrogant, self-righteous, definitely right everyone else is wrong attitude continues. A weregorilla loses his faith after the love of his life is killed and he starts drinking (which is described as “alcohol steals his soul”. If someone loses their soul because they’re grieving that hard then I wouldn’t want anything to do with a god that cruel) – and gets possessed by a demon – and in the aftermath is being taken to Mass; grief counselling? Maybe even discussing why he lost his faith? Nah, he lost his faith – that was Wrong in the Book of Chalk so now he goes to Mass and is Right again. All power from god (the One god) is good – but anyone else? It’s a demon. All other deities and their powers are demons tricking you – satanic even.
This also ruins one of the few positive elements of
inclusion in the book – Boothe and his partner are gay men. Now they’re
problematic in some ways – there’s that classic heterosexist need to make one
partner big, strong and alpha and the other much much smaller and more delicate
and younger (repeated over and over), but they weren’t bad. And nobody gave
them grief except the demon possessing someone. Which I like – except when they
realise they kissed in front of the priest and stop worried about his reaction.
Now I love that he doesn’t have a problem, what I don’t like is the complete
dismissal of the idea that he would have or could possibly have. I don’t like
the complete handwaving of the possibility of Catholic homophobia or that the
Catholic church has any issues with homophobia – they turned what could have
been a glorious accepting moment into a whitewashing of bigotry.
Inclusionwise we have the gay couple mentioned above and
some passing POC bit parts, without Charlotte being in this book they were largely
relegated to villain roles. We also had a fat vampire – and everything he did
was covered in commentary on how very very fat he was. Larson, the disabled
character, uses magic to heal himself in this book – which is an annoying and
gross trope in and of itself. But from the beginning, Chalk threatens and
attacks him for daring to use magic and, in the end, uses his magic to rip away
Larson’s cure, leaving him collapsed and crawling on the ground.
There still is an awesome world in this book and the core
of a good story – and a lot of potential for more. The hooks of the three
children (not so much Deacon Chalk since we’re getting a typical not very interesting
power creep there) and the already huge world are fascinating and could go far.
The writing issues of the first book are much more downplayed as well as are
some of the other problems. But Deacon Chalk has evolved into something
intolerable. The only thing stopping him from being an intolerant, bigoted
bully is the author insisting he’s right about everything. Without that clumsy
writing, he would be one of the worst people you could hope to meet and I
simply cannot abide him.
