Book Reviews

Speaks the Nightbird

I have been a devoted reader of McCammon's horror novels for a long time.

His post-holocaust epic Swan Song is right up there with The Stand and Lucifer's Hammer at the top of my favorite end-of-the-world books. As I never got into the whole broody Goth vampire craze spearheaded by Anne Rice, I rate McCammon's They Thirst as my #1 vampire read; gritty, inhuman, and totally soulless. His werewolf spy thriller, The Wolf's Hour, is wonderful. Stinger, too (and makes a great one-shot roleplaying adventure, btw.) As a mother, I was chilled and thrilled by Mine, one woman's desperate journey to get her baby back. His short story collection, Blue World, contained at least two tales that consistently give me nightmares.

All in all, McCammon's books catapulted him to a lofty spot in my personal horror author hierarchy.

And then he retired.

I was shocked. And dismayed. The only worse blows to this aspect of my life came when Stephen King was struck by that van, and when I discovered the marvelous books of Richard Laymon right in time to learn that he'd died.

But the thing about being a writer is that it's not what you do. It's what you are. And the true writers can't stay down for long. Eventually, they come back. So I believe, anyway, as a writer myself.

The 10-year dry spell after the publication of Gone South ended in 2002 with the debut of Speaks the Nightbird. For part of those 10 years, Mr. McCammon was concentrating on the challenges of fatherhood. He then began researching a historical novel, but found difficulty interesting a publisher - his reputation as a horror author straitjacketed their opinions of his work and made them unwilling to give this new project a try.

More fools them! When Speaks the Nightbird finally did see print, what a debut it was! 726 pages in hardcover, this definitely not-unlucky thirteenth novel is a genuine masterpiece.

Speaks the Nightbird is a departure from the rest of McCammon's work in that it is not set in our contemporary world (or, as in the case of The Wolf's Hour, even our living memory). The reader is taken back to the end of the 17th century, where a young woman is put on trial for witchcraft.

Stephen King called this book a cross between Burn, Witch, Burn and The Crucible. I found it more like Twin Peaks meets CSI meets the Salem witch trials. The entire town is slightly off-kilter in that David Lynch-ian way, a pervasive mood of not-quite-rightness that surrounds its population of dark and quirky characters.

The main character is Matthew, an assistant to the magistrate called in to try the case. In the mental movie I saw as I read this book, Matthew was played by Johnny Depp, who has proven himself more than perfect for that sort of pale, scholarly, intense young investigator who cannot be as emotionally detached from the case as he'd like.

Matthew and his employer find their visit to the town of Fort Royal off to a bad start before they even get there - at an inn, they are beset by villains and barely escape with their lives. Robbed and wretched, they arrive in Fort Royal, where the people are only too glad to see them. They can't wait for the magistrate's rubber stamp of justice so they can legally burn their witch. The news that the magistrate actually intends to conduct a proper trial is not received with overwhelming delight.

The accused witch is Rachel, singled out by her beauty, her foreignness, and her vulnerable status as a widow. Witnesses claim to have seen her cavorting with unholy creatures. Tools of the Black Arts are found in her home. A curse seems to have fallen on Fort Royal, with buildings inexplicably burning and grown men being found hideously murdered. Rachel's adamant refusal to speak the Lord's Prayer only furthers the conviction in the minds of her neighbors that she must be the guilty party.

When the magistrate falls ill, the burden of the case is placed upon Matthew's shoulders. His curiosity and his methods of investigation are radical as far as the townsfolk are concerned, and his attraction to the beautiful Rachel makes everyone - himself included - question his objectivity.

The historical voice of the book is incredibly well-done. No anachronisms in speech leap out (something I've taken exception to before in other novels), every character is clearly drawn and interesting, and the smooth unraveling of the mystery keeps the reader guessing until the very end.

I suppose that I can forgive Mr. McCammon for his long absence, with a comeback like this. Speaks the Nightbird is truly excellent, one of the best books I've read in a long time.

The Jester

It's just been my month for reading historical tales by authors whose usual works are more modern. Close on the heels of Speaks the Nightbird, I was given James Patterson's The Jester as a birthday present.

Well, James Patterson and Andrew Gross. To give credit where credit is due and all. However, I am often suspicious when I see two names on the cover. Except in cases when it's a pairing like King and Straub (The Talisman, Black House), and both authors are established 'big names' in their own right, I wonder what's going on. Is the lesser-known newcomer coattailing on the 'big name'? Or is the 'big name' letting the partner do most of the work while glomming all the glory?

I met an up-and-coming fantasy writer at a convention once, and we got into a conversation about this topic. She had written several books with a 'big name' author, and told me that it was a thankless job. The lion's share of the credit went to the 'big name,' who actually did comparatively little.

When I look at The Jester and see that the entire back cover is a full-color photo of James Patterson, and Mr. Andrew Gross rates a 2-inch photo on the inside back flyleaf . . . well, it just makes me wonder.

I have read most of Patterson's work and enjoyed most of it. My favorite of them thus far is When the Wind Blows, a science-run-amok thriller. Sometimes, I find the split between his first- and third-person narration as in the Alex Cross stories to be a distraction . . . not to mention something of a cheat, really. Part of the greatest challenge of writing something in the first person is the limit of what the character perceives and knows.

But I digress. I was struck by two main things about The Jester, one of them general, and one of them personal. The personal one is something I am sure every writer runs into from time to time: when you've got an idea or work-in-progress, and run into someone else who's already done something similar. Not that I was planning to write any sort of medieval Crusader novel. But one of the key elements in The Jester is something I'd planned to have be one of the key elements in my next horror novel, His Blood. So, of course, I was a wee bit irked. The end products will have nothing else in common, but there's always that twinge of "damn it, he used my idea!" when something like this happens.

The general thing that struck me was the very modern feel of the dialogue. As I've mentioned in reviews of other historical novels -- Speaks the Nightbird and The Crimson Petal and the White most recently -- I really like it when the dialogue sounds like it did (or at least, like I imagine it did) during that era. I've taken exception to novels that don't make the effort. I find it, in a weird sort of way, insulting. As if we, the readers, aren't smart enough to understand unless it's put in everyday words with which we're familiar.

And, sadly, I felt a lot of that in The Jester. Everyone sounds like they stepped right out of the 21st century. Even the jokes that the title character tells are ones I've heard, only slightly tweaked to better fit the context. I was bothered by it, and it did take something away from my enjoyment of the story. I spent too much time wondering why - was it because of the reason I suggested above? Or was it because the author didn't feel comfortable with archaic-sounding dialogue for personal reasons? It took me out of the story, and anything that takes the reader out of the story -- as Dean Koontz pointed out way back before he started doing it too much himself -- is not usually for the best.

The Jester is the story of Hugh De Luc, an oppressed French innkeeper in the last few years of the 11th century. He has a lovely wife and is best known both for his flaming red hair and his ability to make people laugh with his jokes.

When a party of people on their way to join the Crusades passes through Hugh's village, some of his neighbors take up the cause. This doesn't rest well with their lord, whose knights take it out on those who stayed behind. For some reason that's unclear to me, this cruelty prompts Hugh to leave his home and follow the Crusaders. The logic falls apart a little -- does this guy not realize that he's just going to bring down that same wrath on his loved ones?

Apparently it doesn't, because off he goes. He picks up a haphazard education in the ways of war, suffers miserably on the way to the Holy Land, and eventually deserts and heads for home, disillusioned. When he gets there -- surprise, surprise -- he finds that his inn was burned to the ground by the knights, his infant son (whom Hugh hadn't even known existed) had been killed, and his wife was abducted.

Deciding that his Sophie must still be alive, Hugh determines to get into the lord's castle and find her. He finds a benefactress in a young noblewoman, who gets Hugh an apprenticeship to a jester. Hugh augments his jokes with tricks of acrobatics and juggling, and sets out to win his way into the company of his enemies.

In the meantime, though, Hugh is being hunted. This is another part that didn't quite make sense. People are looking for him more than a year before he gets home, wanting something he brings back from the Holy Land. That they start torturing his neighbors for information while he hadn't even returned yet perplexed me.

The story did move right along, with some good action scenes and a spicy smattering of sex. Overall, it was an okay read. None too shabby. But worth nearly 30 bucks in hardback? Well . . . I'd recommend instead either checking it out from the library or waiting for the paperback. It passed the afternoon, but it didn't grab and hold with nearly the intensity I'd hoped for.

review by Christine Morgan