I'm kind of all over the place with this one. By the end, I can say that I enjoyed the book. But the beginning was confusing, and the middle was kind of boring. This one started out with feeling a lot like American Gods, but in London. Certain sects of differing gods being worshipped in an underground community of magical and magic-ed creatures and humans. A special police unit devoted to sorting out the good guys from the bad.
The story begins with Billy Harrow, a scientist working at the Darwin Center. A research and museum facility in London whose main attraction is a giant squid preserved in formalin and appearing at the center of a specimen room. When the squid is stolen, Billy becomes involved in the London underground world of cults and magic. He's completely unprepared, and his disorientation is a bit disorienting for the reader as well. That I listened to this one on audio book was probably not helpful. If you're thinking about picking it up, I'd recommend reading rather than listening.
Two thugs for hire, Gus and Subby go around tormenting all kinds of mystical folk at the direction of "The Tattoo" a arch villain reduced to, yes, the tattoo on the back of some poor sod forced to an eternity of facing backwards while the Tattoo orders his minions about. Turns out that the squid is a revered god for a Kraken-ist cult and the theft of such a large specimen signals and impending apocalypse. So the magical world is scrambling to figure out who took the squid so they can prevent such and end.
The way the story is laid out is well done except again for the middle parts which felt repetitive and fell flat. Because I listened to it on audio, I thought I had caught a word in one section that became a suspicion of a certain character through the entire book and therefore ruined the final "who done it" aspect for me, even if the the word I had thought I heard in the beginning was just a part of my own imagination. But see, that's part of the problem with the book is that there was so much extra stuff in it that I drifted off in several parts because the facts just exceeded my curiosity, even about a world that was being created whole cloth out of the myths and alleyways of London.
3/5 Stars.
I received this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. After I opened up the book and read the first few lines, I was wondering what I'd gotten myself into. I went back and read the Goodreads description. Medea, from Jason and the Argonauts, retold in prose, from Medea's perspective. I was familiar with the story of Jason and the Argonauts, in as much as I had heard their names, and knew it involved the recovery of a golden fleece, but that was it. I asked my husband, "What do you know about Jason and the Argonauts?" His reply, "Is it a band?" So after about 15 minutes on Wikipedia, I felt backgrounded enough to start in on this story. The prose writing feels like a hat tip to Greek epics, and indeed, Jason and his Argonauts had plenty of adventures in recovering the Golden Fleece, but Bright Air Black starts off with Medea on the bow of the Argo, hacking her brother to pieces in and tossing him into the sea in order to slow her father's pursuit. And for what? A fleece covered in gold only because it was used to sift for gold in a stream in Medea's kingdom. As the Argo speeds toward Iolcus, Jason's home, the gold dust slowly shakes out of the fleece, and the entire Jason and the Argonaut myth unravels for us, and for Medea as well.Expected to arrive in Iolcus as a hero, and granted the throne his birthright demands, Jason instead finds his uncle Pelias enthroned as king, Jason's own father, brother and mother, all killed by Pelias in brutal fashion. Jason and Medea are enslaved. Over the course of six years they have two sons together while Medea plots revenge on Pelias that would give Jason his kingdom back. But things never go quite as Medea thinks they will. Yes, the people are afraid of her, as she wanted, but that doesn't always give her the result she expects. And she has this awareness of things, of knowing that the stories which are ultimately told will not match the truth of events. I can see why ancient Greeks were so intrigued by her. A princess who commits horrendous acts in the name of love, for Jason, for her sons. But who sacrifices all those things she claims to love in the name of revenge. She's a deft with a blade as with poison, as with trickery. Does she really even love Jason? Does she really have any power at all? Medea is such a rich character that of course Euripides would make an entire Greek tragedy of her later years. David Vann's retelling is remarkable all the more for giving us yet another view of Medea. She's altogether ancient and modern. This book was a real pleasure.
4/5 Stars.
I don't even know where to start on this. That this book could have existed for ten years without my having read it, having known about it, seems impossible now. Hyperbole? Maybe, but it's hard for me to really put into words what I thought of this without resorting to statements of grandeur. It's a novel of a vast concept so it requires vast descriptions.The premise of the novel is fairly straightforward, America is a melting pot, and when immigrants arrive here, they bring their gods with them. Gods from all over. And while those religions or those beliefs die out, the gods remain, diminished in power, but here all the same, wandering our country, or taking jobs to make ends meet, until finally they are extinguished, forgotten. So a man named Shadow, a convict, is released from prison and on his way home to his wife,when he learns she has died. Grieving and bereft of an alternative plan, Shadow meets a man named Wednesday who offers him a job. Shadow then travels with Wednesday, meeting gods and learning about the dark world the gods inhabit. A war is brewing, between the old gods and the new. Gods of media and the internet, versus traditional gods of ancient and lost kingdoms. Wednesday is trying to rally his troops as they prepare for battle. Shadow is his cohort, his companion on the journey. But Shadow isn't an ordinary man, in his dreams he straddles the world of the gods and sees into the "shadows" created by their existence. He sees things that others miss. I was immensely fond of Shadow. He's such an interesting character. He's a roll with the punches guy. He's often underestimated, but he's very intelligent. People are drawn to him, intrigued by him. He makes mistakes. He admits them. He's just as confused about the world of the gods as the reader.The audible version I read is the 10th anniversary edition. With an introduction by Neil Gaiman, whose silky voice narrates the "Coming to America" interludes found in the story and the epilogue. The 10th Anniversary is a "author's cut" of the story, longer than the original that was published more than a decade ago. I'm so happy this book was mentioned in passing by a co-worker. I'm so pleased to have read it this year.
5/5 Stars.
