Do No Harm, by Robert Pobi / ****

A quick disclaimer: I met Rob Pobi nearly a decade ago at a writing convention, and we’ve stayed in touch ever since then; basically, I consider Rob a friend, so it’s only right I say that at the outset. At the same time, I’ve given bad reviews to friends’ books before (no, I’m not linking them here), and honestly, if Do No Harm were actually bad, I probably just wouldn’t review it. Still, full disclosure and all that.

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When I reviewed Under Pressure, the previous entry in Rob Pobi’s Lucas Page series, I commented that “I do wonder how long Pobi wants to keep Lucas Page going; even now, you can feel him straining against the confines of a series, pushing at the status quo to his utmost and writing a book that wants to be its own thing entirely. But that very push is a lot of what makes Under Pressure so good – the sense that what Pobi had was a gripping thriller to write, and just happened to already have a series to fit it in.” That same push-and-pull – Rob’s idiosyncratic style pushing against the nature of a series, all while that very nature necessitates certain elements – makes Do No Harm, the third entry in the series, all the more fascinating. Once again, Pobi delivers a dynamite plot, one that definitely feels unique and unexpected through every twist and turn, but it’s definitely one where some of the series’ requirements hold it back a tiny bit.

The plot here is a fascinating one, and it’s one I don’t want to delve too deeply into, other than to say that Pobi takes a great premise and finds a way to both pay tribute to a classic of suspense while turning it entirely into something all its own. The setup, though, is simple: Lucas Page, suffering through a medical gala dinner, finds himself running the numbers during an “In Memoriam”-style reel – and finding that there’s a quite disproportionate number of doctors dying. Not so many as to be obvious, no, but with Page’s analytical (some would say “cold”) mind running, it stands out. Now, some are accidents; more are suicides than you might think…but beyond being doctors, there’s really not much in common here – but if you ask Page, that’s at least thirty unsolved homicides that no one has even noticed.

That’s the setup for Do No Harm, which finds Page once again pulled into the world of law enforcement, albeit a little more on his own terms than usual. (Given that by this point, Page is much more metal prosthetics than man, you can forgive his reluctance.) That personal interest in solving the case doesn’t make Page any more kind or outgoing; no, he’s still the same blunt, unapologetic, brilliant, antisocial ass that he’s always been – and, as ever, without those cutesy humanizing touches so many authors and stories fall back on. Yes, Page is a good parent, but that’s about it – and it’s certainly a side that pretty much no one else ever sees. Now, do I find Page’s dismissive, grouchy, irritated tone a delight? Yes. Yes I do…but your mileage may vary. Suffice to say, though, three books in, and no one seems to have sanded down any of his rough edges…which is one of Pobi’s victories here: keeping Page as genuinely standoffish as possible, all while helping the reader understand both his attitude and his genuine brilliance.

At the same time, there are definitely a few elements of Do No Harm that don’t work quite as well as others. While there’s a far better plot reason for Page’s family to find themselves in the crosshairs (Page’s wife is a doctor), that doesn’t stop the moment where his family is under attack from starting to feel a little de rigueur here – as with many series, there comes a point where either you have to make clear that these aren’t empty threats or else you turn them into schmuck bait, and this one comes dangerously close to the latter – saved, admittedly, by Pobi’s strong prose and the intensity with which he depicts the sequence. Less successful is the ultimate revelation about one of the villains of the book, which falls back onto “maybe he’s just crazy” in a bit of a disappointing moment – you can’t help but feel that the man who gave us the killer of Bloodman and the nightmarish law enforcement officer of Mannheim Rex could give us a villain with a bit more nuance, especially given the extensive role that character would have had to play.

For all of that, I still had a blast with Do No Harm – especially when compared to another thriller I’ll be reviewing in a few days here, it’s notable just how good Pobi is at bringing characters to life, even in brief scenes or throwaway moments. There are a lot of thrillers with short punchy chapters and cliffhangers aplenty, but not enough of them have the dry wit, the gleefully dark sense of humor, the rich characterization, and the sheer cleverness of Pobi’s books. Do I think we’re maybe one step closer to Rob snapping and blowing up Lucas Page? Yeah, maybe…but for the time being, Pobi has given me another great thriller, and one that has personality – and to quote Jules Winfield, “personality goes a long way.”

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20th Century Ghosts, by Joe Hill / **** ½

I first read 20th Century Ghosts not long after its release, when all I knew about Joe Hill was that he’d written the dynamite horror novel Heart-Shaped Box. I didn’t know about Locke and Key; I didn’t know that he was Stephen King’s son; I didn’t know that his storytelling was less straight horror and more sprawling – and more ambitious, in some ways. All I knew was that Hill had written a great horror tale, and I wanted to see what else he had to offer. And while I appreciated 20th Century Ghosts then – and still do – what’s maybe most immediately apparent about it all these years later is what it’s not: a horror short story collection.

Oh, Hill knows his way around horror, make no mistake. Stories like “Best New Horror,” in which a jaded horror anthologist finds a way to push the boundaries and finds himself thrust into the story, or “The Black Phone,” where a young man is trapped in the basement of a predator finds himself assisted by voices on the other end of a disconnected phone, show that Hill has knowledge and love of the genre, and knows how to unsettle. Indeed, almost every story here does indeed have some element of horror to it, sometimes subtle and unnerving (“Last Breath,” with its eerie museum of final breaths), sometimes gory and direct (“Best New Horror” especially, though it’s not alone here – “You Will Hear the Locusts Sing” has its fair share of nightmares).

But to expect a straight horror collection is to be disappointed by 20th Century Ghosts, a collection that loves horror but refuses to be so easily pigeonholed. The title story, for instance, is indeed a ghost story, but one that explores our love of cinema, the memories of our lives, and more. “You Will Hear the Locusts Sing” feels like a more visceral and upsetting take on Kafka, but it’s also the study of an outcast rejected by everyone around him, to where the horror elements almost feel incidental. “Abraham’s Boys,” one of the best stories of the anthology, follows up with Abraham Van Helsing long after the end of Dracula, imagining what it might feel like to grow up under the guidance of that learned, paranoid man, and ends up giving you a story that rivals Bill Paxton’s underrated Frailty in its depiction of the thin line between madness and horror – and does so with almost no supernatural elements whatsoever.

And that doesn’t even get into the sheer number of stories that don’t even fit into horror at all. “Into the Rundown” is a horrific story, but one entirely about rejection, depression, and isolation; “Better than Home” is about a love of baseball and a fractured home life; “The Widow’s Breakfast” is about a Depression-era tramp who finds a comforting meal on the road; “Bobby Conroy Comes Back from the Dead,” one of the highlights of the collection, is the story of an old relationship that finds itself revisited on the set of Romero’s Dawn of the Dead. And, of course, there’s one of the essentials of the book, “Pop Art,” which uses a simple case of magical realism – what if there was an inflatable boy? – and turns it into a beautiful story of friendship. Some of those have dark elements, but many are just stories of human beings in their lives. Do some end up with frustratingly ambiguous endings that feel more akin to The New Yorker tales than what Hill would later do? Sure…but for a first short story collection, I’m more willing to give that some leeway.

I’m especially willing to do that because of “Voluntary Committal,” the longest – and best – story of the collection, which feels like the most Joe Hill-esque of any of them – it’s here that you can see the imagination that would give us Keyhouse, or Christmasland, or so many other visions that Hill would craft. It’s the story of two brothers, one of whom happily designs mazes out of cardboard boxes and trash…and how that brother disappeared, along with a one-time friend of our narrator. It’s also a story of adolescent rage, of violence – oh, and it’s undeniably a story that’s willing to push us into horror, even if it’s less direct and visceral than, say, “Best New Horror” – but probably more effective for that subtlety.

Revisiting 20th Century Ghosts after so long, I’ll say that I think Hill has improved from here; while I still liked these stories, a lot of them don’t compare to his later, more polished work. But that’s okay – first of all, because they’re still pretty astonishing (especially for a first collection), but secondly, because you can see Hill working in advance to refuse to be penned in. At some point, they were going to find out that he was Stephen King’s son, and while that DNA is in these stories, you can see Hill in advance saying “I’m not just a horror writer.” And in stories like “Abraham’s Boys,” “Pop Art,” “Bobby Conroy Comes Back from the Dead,” “Voluntary Committal,” and more, you can see Hill showing off his range and his talent – and more than that, blowing us away. He might improve from here – but a lot of writers wouldn’t even start at this point to begin with.

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The Collapsing Empire, by John Scalzi / *** ½

The idea of John Scalzi writing a massive, epic space opera is an intriguing one – if for no other reason than just to see how it works. Scalzi is known for his accessible, witty writing; indeed, from what I understand, the novel Lock In apparently partially arose from a bet to see if he could write a novel without jokes in it. So to imagine Scalzi’s very character-centered writing – with his witty, bantering characters and plain style – working in service of a large epic tale is an intriguing notion.

That The Collapsing Empire works – and it does, generally, with one fairly serious caveat that I’ll come to in a moment – falls largely on the fact that Scalzi knows his strengths and plays to them successfully, giving us what appears to be a massive story about the fall of a galactic empire, but doing it all through the eyes of a few people in the middle of it all: a young scientist whose data predicts the collapse of the empire’s infrastructure; the foul-mouthed, confrontational, very direct daughter of a guild matriarch who’s mainly focused on maintaining her family’s power and wealth; and the new Emperox of the Interdependency, a young woman who never wanted the job and never planned on having it, only to find herself in the middle of a violent uprising – and probably in charge of the empire in its dying days.

Staying focused on these characters allows Scalzi to constantly remind us of the stakes of all of it, which is important here – ultimately, over the course of what feels like a pretty short novel, he has to a) establish the premise of the Interdependency, this new galactic nation, b) establish the idea of the Flow, which is this sort of current of space-time that allows the Interdependency to be connected even across the universe, c) reveal that the Flow is collapsing, d) convey the consequences of that collapse, and e) most importantly, make us care. And with a reluctant empress, a naive young scientist worried about the greater good, and that gleefully swearing power broker, Scalzi gives us a broad enough spectrum of reactions to sketch it all in. We see the political ramifications, we see the social ramifications, we see the consequences for the long term – and we see the holes in the society that are about to be very open to being filled by the less than scrupulous.

Indeed, it’s somewhat remarkable how effortless and light The Collapsing Empire feels, given how much it has to cover – and in the end, that’s where that caveat comes in. By the time you finish it, The Collapsing Empire feels less like its own story and more like the long prologue to the story Scalzi really wants to tell. Yes, it’s an engaging read; yes, I ripped through it pretty quickly; yes, I enjoyed the characters. But by the time I finished, I felt like I’d read a long book of table-setting, and that the real book was finally about to begin – and that’s not a great way to draw me in. I’m intrigued about where the series goes from here…but I’m also more than willing to wait until my library copy comes in instead of paying for the second book of a series that took a whole volume to get going. And that’s not really the best way to leave the end of the first book of a trilogy, is it?

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The Northman / **** ½

At a point in history where it feels like a lot of what I love about cinema is on the ropes – thrust aside in the name of franchise filmmaking and a theatrical experience desperate for safe bets – there is something so exciting about the fact that Robert Eggers is out there making Robert Eggers films, and to hell with what anyone wants. The Northman, Eggers’s third feature film, is almost exactly what you would expect from someone giving the man behind The Witch and The Lighthouse 90 million dollars to make a Viking revenge film – and in this case, I mean that in a good way.

In its broadest strokes, The Northman is a retelling of the same legend that inspired Hamlet – this is the story of a young man whose father (Ethan Hawke) is killed by his uncle (Claes Bang), and who seeks revenge upon that man. (Is the young man named Amleth? Well, so Shakespeare didn’t reach too far for that particular name.) And, to be fair, that story is…well, it’s fine. There aren’t a ton of wrinkles to this tale from a plot perspective: Amleth runs for his life, grows up (into an insanely ripped and intense Alexander Skarsgård), returns home, and begins a campaign of terror, violence, and revenge against the man who stole his mother (Nicole Kidman). Along the way, he strikes up a kinship with a potion-making young woman (Anya Taylor-Joy), who helps him but gives him more to live for than just revenge and death.

That’s it – and yes, as someone who was kind of excited to see what Eggers might bring to a plot like that, it’s a bit of a letdown to say that he doesn’t really bring that much to the plot…but to every other level of the film? Eggers brings everything. By all accounts, The Northman is among the most meticulously researched Viking film ever made, and that certainly feels like the case; much as he did with The Witch, Eggers doesn’t so much re-create the past so much as just immerse you into it effortlessly, making it feel less like you’re watching a modern retelling of the story and more like you’ve just opened a window into the past, done without irony or modern judgment.

But there’s more to The Northman than just its milieu, astonishingly captured though it is. (And that atmosphere is absolutely supported by a slew of strong performances; Skarsgård carries the film through his haunted eyes, but Willem Dafoe and Björk both make the most of their eerie, unsettling cameos, and Bang takes what could have been a one-note character and gives him a complexity beyond the simple villain role.) What turns The Northman into something more fascinating and ultimately a bit unsettling is the way that Eggers embraces the belief system of the Vikings, giving us religious rituals that commune with the dead, resurrected creatures of evil, prophecies from unnatural figures, and more, all juxtaposed with the grimy, grounded reality of the film. Eggers even gives us glimpses of surreal visions of twisted family trees and the gates of Valhalla, all done with primarily practical effects but made to shine and gleam nonetheless.

To all of this, Eggers brings his patient craft, gliding through the film with extended long takes that flow through the midst of battle sequences, carefully dole out information, and frame elements for maximum impact. As we follow Amleth through an assault on a village (including an astonishing moment involving the catch and return of a spear) or as he prowls in the night, Eggers camera conveys the impact of movement – and stillness, for that matter – carefully staging his sequences for maximum intensity. And trust me, there’s intensity to spare: this is a Viking film, and Eggers is willing to let it get bloody and violent. This isn’t maybe on the level of violence that some filmmakers would go with this, but The Northman isn’t for the faint of heart – with torn-out throats, spilled intestines, crushed skulls, and more, Eggers remembers that violence is most effective when you make each occurrence count. And count they do.

Roger Ebert always said that movies were not about what they were about, but how they went about it. To describe the plot of The Northman will make it sound a little generic and disappointing, and there’s little denying that anyone looking for the psychological intensity of The Witch or the…you know, everything of The Lighthouse will find this his most conventional and accessible (sort of) film. But as an experience, The Northman is a knockout – it will give you images and moments that take your breath away, it’s crafted with a patience and a focus on imagery that I don’t see often enough in big releases, and it tells its tale with intensity, passion, and an attention to detail that brings its historical world to life. As a story, it’s fine; as a film experience, it’s unmissable.

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Nettle & Bone, by T. Kingfisher / **** ½

“T. Kingfisher” is a pen name for Ursula Vernon – more specifically, it’s the pen name she uses when she writes fiction for adults. It is not, it’s worth noting, the pen name she uses for exclusively horror fiction, despite what I had assumed based off of the two horror novels of hers that I had read (The Twisted Ones and The Hollow Places, both of which blew me away). And while I may have picked up Nettle & Bone under false expectations – because this isn’t a horror story – I’m so glad I didn’t know, because it might have kept me from reading this delightfully dark, witty, imaginative take on fairy tales and magic.

In its broadest outlines, Nettle & Bone feels like a dark take on a fairy tale – a princess escapes her fate of being married off to an abusive prince, but finds a group of allies – a witch, a warrior, a fairy godmother, and a dog – who help her in her quest to revenge her murdered sister. There’s magic here to spare, blessings at infant christenings, cloaks made of thistle, creatures crafted of bone, jars of moonlight, goblin markets, fae magic – in other words, a lot of the elements of classic tales, viewed through Vernon’s clever perspective of a princess whose naïveté and goodwill put her at a fundamental disadvantage in the world. (There’s no small amount of Neil Gaiman feel to this book, too, particularly in sequences like the goblin market, with its unsettling bartering and arcane rules.)

But to summarize Nettle & Bone as just a dark fairy tale doesn’t really do it justice. It doesn’t convey, for instance, just how good Vernon is at inserting horror elements into her work, from deep magic to the horrifying reality of bargains. (There’s a moment where our heroine has to pay an agreed-upon cost that absolutely curled me up in discomfort and unease – and I think I have a pretty strong tolerance for these things.) That same comfort with the surreal and the dark infuses the whole text, from a raid on a grave that grows more and more nightmarish to a skeletal familiar made of wire and bone and nothing more…

…except – and this is what makes Nettle & Bone such a great read – that some of those same elements are often funny, witty, weird, and delightful, even as they’re strange and upsetting. That skeletal dog, for instance, is one of the best creations of the book: a horrendous unnatural beast that’s also an adorably dumb and doofy dog who just wants affection and to chase birds. The group’s fairy godmother is an affable ditz who’s as likely to ramble you to death as she is to curse you – but rest assured, the latter is on the table. The witch has fearsome powers, but also, a demonic chicken.

All of this should clash more badly than it does, especially when you factor in how much Vernon spends on making sure we understand the emotional stakes of the novel for our heroine – an unwanted princess, a disliked sister, a guilt-ridden nun who’s oblivious to reality until it’s too late – to say nothing of the stark politics of the situation, which are never as simple as “be good and be nice,” no matter how much she wishes it was. And yet, somehow, all of those elements work perfectly in concert, mixing horror and comedy and drama and tension all into a mixture that delivers on every one of them without undermining the others – and that’s no small feat.

The biggest shortfall for Nettle & Bone is that ultimately, there’s not quite enough plot to support the book – indeed, most of its pleasures come from the details of the world, or the side stories, or the conversations. The story works fine enough, but it feels a bit thin by the time you’re done with it all, and the conclusion feels a bit abrupt and cobbled together. But given how rich the atmosphere and feel of the story are, how good the characters are, how eerie the horror and how funny the comedy, that’s really a small nit to pick. The best stories are great not because they tell us something new all the time; they’re because they immerse us in a world that we like being in, and Nettle & Bone does that and then some. Who cares if it’s not the horror novel I was expecting – it was still a great time.

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The Master and Margarita, by Mikhail Bulgakov / **** ½

Sometimes I end up reading a book that I can’t remember how I got turned onto, and it’s a bewildering experience. I’ll read something, and while I might like it, I can’t help but try to remember – who was it that told me to read this? What did they think of it? Because man, would I love to remember who told me to read Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita, a truly off-the-wall piece of Stalin-era Russian satire that’s wholly unlike anything I’ve ever read before, and honestly, probably unlike much I’ll ever read. Did I enjoy it? Oh, yes – but that doesn’t mean I feel like I got it at all, and this is a book that all but demands to be talked about with people.

How on earth do you describe this book? I mean, this is a novel where a talking tom cat who serves as the devil’s familiar gets into a shootout with the police, and it’s not even the strangest part of the book. In the broadest terms, The Master and Margarita is a story in which the devil comes to Moscow, and absolute chaos unfolds from there; it’s also the story of the titular couple, in love despite their own marriages, and separated by madness and obsession; and finally, it’s the story of Pontius Pilate on the day of the crucifixion. And if you’re thinking, “well, that seems like a lot to contain,” well, you’re not really wrong…and yet, somehow, it all more or less works, even if it’s all chaotic and held together in bizarre ways.

Because, rest assured, The Master and Margarita is undeniably a comedy and a piece of satire; it’s one with a deeply dark sense of humor (at least one sequence involves the Rube Goldberg-esque series of events that leads to a man being decapitated), and a sense of laughing in the face of a world that might be ultimately the nonsensical element of life. Indeed, much of the commentary I found on Master after I finished the book leans into this interpretation of the book – that it’s a look at the insanity of life under Stalin, where violence and death are just arbitrary and absurd, where corruption is both open and yet a horrible offense, and where religion can’t be discussed even though everyone knows it’s there. And so, by the time the Devil shows up in Moscow, well, he fits right in – and pretty much no one is prepared to know what to do.

But there’s more to Master – indeed, probably a lot that I haven’t even yet begun to think about. This is a book interested in the concept of evil, but also realizes that evil is a necessary part of the world – as the Devil says in the book, “what would the earth look like if shadows disappeared from it?” And yet, for all of that, the evils of the book come less from the devil and his compatriots (yes, including a very grouchy talking cat) and more from the citizens themselves, as their own fallibility leads them into danger and death. And if that’s not enough complexity for you, Bulgakov explores thoughts about love, the validity of art, courage, purpose in life, and more – all while telling a story that involves a celebratory ball for figures of great evil, a magic show that leads to mass chaos, naked witches flying on brooms, literary societies controlling apartment rentals, and more. In other words, it’s a deliriously and deliciously weird ride, but one that’s got a lot more on its mind than its chaos might suggest.

Look, I’ll admit that I feel a bit unprepared to review The Master and Margarita after a single read; it feels like a book that benefits from multiple reads, and that’s not enough getting into any possible issues with the translation I read*. But I can say that what I read was a weird, bitterly funny, off the wall book – a defiant laugh at a truly bizarre society that didn’t seem to have much use for Bulgakov. It feels like the epitome of that slightly bleak, slightly defiant Russian sense of humor – and done with weirdness to spare. I may not have gotten it all, but I more than enjoyed the experience, and I think that that second read may be inevitable.

*Translation note: I read the pictured edition, which is the translation by Mirra Ginsburg. I’ve read both that this is an ideal read and the worst possible translation (would you expect anything less from the internet?). I can’t speak to the faithfulness of it all; I’ll say that the prose felt a little clunky at times and the flow a little odd, but that may well be inherent to the original text. I don’t feel like I have enough expertise to comment further; in short, I didn’t have major issues with it, but a different translation might have been a wholly different experience.

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The Ballad of Perilous Graves, by Alex Jennings / ***

There is little more frustrating than a book that’s overflowing with stunning and imaginative ideas, but ultimately collapses into a pile of incoherence and nonsense. Sadly, that’s the case with Alex Jennings’s debut novel, The Ballad of Perilous Graves, a book that’s full of imagination and things you’ve never seen, all told with verve and originality, but held together by little more than tape and minus any sense of internal logic or coherence whatsoever. It’s like if Gabriel Garcia Marquez wrote a story in New Orleans…but plotted it using Calvinball.

Look, tell me the premise here isn’t incredible: in a version of New Orleans filled with magic – floating, sentient graffiti tags; spirits that can initiate a dance party as they drift into being; occasional superpowers; music as a gateway into magic – someone is kidnapping songs. And because of that, the city itself is in danger. So it’s up to, as the jacket copy said, “failed magician Perilous Graves” to save the day and find who’s capturing and killing the songs.

Sounds amazing, right? Sounds like a weird magical noir?

Well, first, Perilous is about 12, and he’s not alone in this; he’s accompanied by his younger sister and his best friend. Oh, and his best friend has super strength. (She’s also an orphan who lives next door on her own, a thing that no one really seems to comment on all that much until it becomes dramatic enough.) That alone is a shift in my expectations, but that’s okay – for much of the first few chapters, I was just enthralled with this strange, magical realism-infused version of New Orleans (called Nola, not New Orleans) and the world Jennings creates. More than that, by populating his book with primarily African-American characters, and letting their dialogue flow naturally, Jennings makes the book feel fresh and vibrant – a very Black take on magical realism and New Orleans mythmaking.

And, oh man, if you like New Orleans, you’re going to fall in love with this world quickly. Look, New Orleans is maybe my favorite city I’ve ever been to (a lot of my family lives there, and I go there at least once a year), and even if I’m a white out-of-towner, I can tell you that The Ballad of Perilous Graves absolutely nails the spirit of New Orleans: the lackadaisical feel, the love of music, the deep history in every street corner, the willful idiosyncrasy, the rich history of Black culture – it’s all there and then some, and even if Nola isn’t quite New Orleans (and we’ll come to that in a moment), I can’t argue with the fact that Jennings does what he wants to do here: he wants to tell a magical, mythmaking story about Black culture and music in New Orleans…and at moments, he succeeds.

The problem is, it’s only in moments. Because once you’re a few chapters into Ballad of Perilous Graves, you’re going to start getting more and more confused. Why do the characters sometimes call it New Orleans and sometimes call it Nola? Why are there apparently multiple characters with the same name who don’t know each other? What does Perilous’s grandfather have to do with the songs? Why are some things normal in that “magic realism” way and others aren’t? And if you manage all of that – and more power to you if you do – good luck following any rules of magic in this world, which are absolutely nonsensical and chaotic. I mentioned earlier the game of Calvinball; for those unfamiliar, it’s the game Calvin and Hobbes played in which they made up rules as they went along. Such is the case here, as rules constantly bend and shape in ways that defy dramatic stakes or reason, because you can’t find the drama in a situation if the rules can just become whatever the author needs them to be at any given moment. Without consistency – even if that consistency is only something the author sees, but we don’t – the book can’t hold together. And the problem is, Ballad of Perilous Graves doesn’t have that.

The result is a book that thrilled me at first, started to baffle me as I got into it, started to frustrate me further in, and ultimately just left me glad that I was done with it – and that’s genuinely disappointing, because, my lord, the ideas here are incredible. Jennings’s imagination is jaw-dropping, I love his ear for dialogue, his world is fascinating – there are just so many good elements in this novel. But a bunch of ideas do not a coherent story tell, and ultimately, Ballad of Perilous Graves feels like someone who’s tried to pack in every idea they’ve ever had into one book. Are some of them good ideas? Sure…but maybe when you throw them all together, you’re just left with a big mess.

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Paradise Sky, by Joe R. Lansdale / **** ½

Given Joe Lansdale’s strength – that is, natural dialogue that drips its Texas influence and accent all over the place, turning writing into a rich monologue as much as a storytelling device – it’s really no surprise how well Paradise Sky works. The story of a Black bounty hunter/cowboy/soldier/marshal/more, Paradise Sky‘s narrator, Nat Love, all but invites you to pull up a chair next to him at the bar while he sips his sarsaparilla (Nat’s not one for heavy drinking) and tells you his story, starting with how he ended up on the run and culminating many years – and more than a few bodies – later. Is it all done with gloriously idiosyncratic regional dialogue, an ear for character, a perfect sense of comic timing, and a complexity that sneaks up on you because it all looks so casual? Of course – didn’t you hear me say that this was a Lansdale book?

What’s maybe more notable here is that Lansdale is working with a real figure here, as it turns out that Nat Love is a famous figure of the Old West – one notable enough to have his own Wikipedia page, if that matters to you, as well as being the subject of a few books and even some movies. Now, to be sure, Lansdale is less interested in a straight biography than in telling a good yarn (as Nat says, “Most of it is as true as I know how to make it, keeping in mind nobody likes the dull parts”), and I’m not an expert enough in Love to know how much is real and how much isn’t. But what I can say is that Paradise Sky absolutely feels like a blend of how the West was with just a hint of Lansdale’s Huck Finn-esque storytelling, never skirting away from the ugly realities of the time (race is a major factor in the book, albeit never quite in the way you might think it will be) but also being willing to deliver great setpieces or gloriously weird action.

That also means that Paradise Sky wanders into familiar territory for some readers, as the book spends some time in famed town of Deadwood, and there’s no way that anyone who’s seen the iconic HBO series (and if you haven’t, what’s wrong with you – especially if you liked Paradise Sky, that’s a no brainer) will be able to read some of the scenes without picturing the cast of the show. But that doesn’t stop Lansdale from bringing his creations to life, most notably Wild Bill Hickok, whose friendship with Love is a major thread in the book and genuinely warm and welcoming, and whose presence reminds you just how good Lansdale is at capturing male friendship, as bonds are so often carried by seemingly shallow or superficial conversations.

If I haven’t spent much time on the plot of Paradise Sky, well, that’s because, much like a lot of Lansdale’s work, it’s less about the plot and more about the journey. In the broadest sense, the book is framed by Love’s escape from – and subsequent quest for revenge upon – a white man from his hometown. But for many stretches of Paradise Sky, including some of the strongest, that’s barely an afterthought; instead, the joys of the book are the incidents themselves, the ways Nat interacts with the world, the people he meets, and so forth. And in the end, that’s what sticks with me about Paradise Sky as much as anything – less the story or the payoff, but the gloriously windy, circuitous path it took to get there, and all of the delightful weirdness along the way. If you’re a fan of Lansdale or a fan of Westerns, look no further; if you’ve never read either, I suspect you’ll still have a blast here.

Amazon