Jake and Rick, with their cousin Nicki, work for their
father’s company retrieving hard to find items at very high cost for their very
rich clients. Unfortunately, not every item is safe nor is every client as they
find out when Jake’s father is murdered
They must return to New Pittsburgh, ducking hired killers
along the way to uncover a conspiracy that is festering in the city and goes
far further than a few items they transported.
There’s a lot about this book I love.
I love the characters – each of these characters has so
much potential for being a book series in its own right. I love their history,
their interactions and just about everything about them. In fact, this becomes
one of the problems simply because they can’t all be suitably awesome at all
times
I really love the world setting, the Victorian
industrialness with a touch of steam punk and a whole lot of magic and the
supernatural being added to really richen the whole thing. It draws upon the
supernatural from many European superstitions and belief systems and does an
excellent job of creating a city that is defined by its immigrant populations.
The different neighbourhoods, the way the city works and the immigrant
diversity come together in a really rich tapestry. On top of the magic and industry
and aesthetics and Victorian etiquette (which can also be used for the best
humour (“Get out of here, Aunt Catherine. You’re in mourning. You can’t be
shooting people, it wouldn’t be proper.”) there’s also some really
excellent analysis of class. How workers are constantly used as fodder and
disposable, the battles of the rising union movement in the face of the mine
owners who are willing to raise armies and massacre the workers as well as the
restrictions that are hemming in women. We also have the Oligarchy, the very
essence of the entitled Robber Barons of the era and their near untouchability
along side the disposability of the poor and how little their deaths matters
Class moves nicely in to the immigrant cultures and works
alongside the supernatural and magic and world building to make for a truly
excellent world building. We throw in some extra bonuses like Kobolds which
suggests a whole lot more supernatural creatures lurking and permeating every
level of society.
The plot itself draws on every element of this – the
supernatural and monsters. The untouchability of the Oligarchy, the
disposability of the workers. Magic being used in shiny and scary ways. Massive
industry and super-steampunk devices. It was all displayed and it was just so
huge and so much fun
Ok, problems, alas, there are problems. For me the
biggest problem was the switching POV. I’m not against POV being switched, I
quite like following different characters. When done well this lets me see the
world and the characters through different lenses and allows for a lot of fun
nuance and possibilities. But when done badly it can be clumsy, and this is
clumsy on several levels. Part of that relates to the many many many many
characters and all of them basically following the same clues and making the
same revelations separately. And then recapping each other at great length. The
whole book feels a whole lot longer than it needs to be and very repetitive as
we just go over the same ground over and over again with different characters.
This is exacerbated by some of these POV characters being the actual villain. Not just is one of the POV character a villain but pretty early in the book we get him and his evil partner basically expositioning their entire evil plan. Almost as soon as the book starts I know who the bad guys are, what they’re doing, why they’re doing it and how. Literally every last scrap of mystery about the bad guys’ master plan is revealed really early on.
Then we spend the rest of the book with our heroes trying
to discover this plan. Which we already no. This really adds to the repetitive
feel of the book – we have pages and pages of the heroes questioning,
researching, discovering and discussing something we have known almost since
the book began.
So the book does feel so very long compared to what it is
– which isn’t helped by a truly huge number of characters. Sooooo many names,
so many many names and I have rather a lot of trouble keeping track of them all.
This frustrates me because I’m interested. Even when I’m trying to juggle these
80 gazillion characters, the ones I remember and can pin down are really
appealing. I love Nicki (swashbuckling female character) and Cady (female
researcher) and Catherine (Jake’s mother and perhaps the subtle power behind
the throne) and am frustrated that they felt superfluous to this actual story
because there are so many people. I like the relationship between Jake and Rick
with Miksa thrown in (the two heir apparents of the company and their
bodyguard) but we don’t really have time to develop it. We had Adam and his
super-science and a whole lot of shiny items which people are fighting over and
the expert dirigible pilot… sooo many people. So many great people…
This related to the supernaturals as well, Renate, the
Absinthe witch (which is an awesomely different and weird concept I loved) and Andreas
the vampire witch and, again, no real development, on top of a couple of Agents
working for a government supernatural agency that is mentioned and looks very
interesting and just isn’t really developed.
I’m left with the feel that we have several REALLY
EXCELLENT books here. Nicki & Cady together? That’s a duo leading a book
series. Renate and her witchery? That’s a book series. Jake and Rick running
their adventurous retrieval company and occasionally duelling? That’s a book
series. Drostan the detective who can see ghosts and is solving supernatural
cases with his contacts with the police and medical examiner? This is another
book series! These would make several awesome book series set in the same
world, occasionally guest appearing in each others’ series would be really
awesome. But smooshing all these characters and their stories together in one
book is just too much – none of the awesome concepts have the chance to really
develop and become the awesome storylines and the awesome characterisation. It
just saddens me, it saddens me because this book should not just be 5 Fangs,
but ALL THE FANGS because it has the seeds of absolute awesome in it – which
just isn’t realised.
Alas, the diversity is poor as well. There are no
memorable POC – all that diversity if immigrant groups and excellent look at
class and different cultures is really limited to white Europeans. All the
immigrants and their cultures are really eastern Europe, there’s no real
depiction of Black or Asian or Native American people or Latino people adding
their own culture immigrant mix to this melting pot. Given how well this is done
so far, it’s disappointing that the same attention isn’t given to
non-Europeans. There are also no LGBT people
I really liked Catherine and Nicki and Cady and Renate –
but there are still relatively few female characters compared to the sheer
number of men. I also feel like they were kind of relegated to a side role,
their storylines were somewhat after thoughts or an aside to other storylines
and characters. Nicki spent most of the last battle in the airship, watching
which was kind of sad and a terrible loss of her full potential.
This book has more potential than almost any other book I
have read this year. It should be awesome. There’s no excuse for it not being
awesome. I am damn annoyed that it is not one of my favourites of the year.
Alas, there’s just far too much squeezed in for any of it to flourish. I do
hope though, with this all established, that the second book will be more
allowed to develop
And won’t include the villains expositioning their plan in the opening chapters. That’d also be nice.
